… evoking a little more mood – Combat video …

I’ve been going over the end sequence of the “Combat” video and cleaning up the footage. When I shot it with Liz, Dave and Steve at the Columbia Gorge Model Railroad Club, back in late May, I had one day to shoot half of the animation sequences and all the live action footage for the end of the video. Jonah, my DP for the bunker sequence wasn’t there so I had to DP, direct, act and help Liz and Dave figure out how to run a camera they had never used before.

They did great and I got the shots I needed.

Needless to say, the footage turned out better than could be expected but needed a little kick. I’ve been doing a bit of color and level work and “drawing in” animated masks for additional depth of field. I enjoy this tedious work in a demented way. It’s nice to see progress on a miniscule scale.

When we lit the wide shot, we only had my puny pair of Briteks to work with. Wide open, they barely filled the space. Not too pretty.

The HV-20 has a sensor the size of a gumdrop which doesn’t lend itself to low light or awesome depth of field.

I have to overcome both of these limitations in post … but that’s half the fun, right???!!!

I like the result so far. The changes may look slightly obvious or heavy-handed in the stills but they work when the footage gets rolling at 24fps in super-stutter-vision!