Summer is upon us. It’s been well over 100 degrees the last two weeks with no end in sight. The secret to beating the heat is to never, under any circumstance, leave the pool. You want your photo taken? Sure! As long as I don’t have to get out of the pool.

Here are a few pics from a just-for-fun shoot with Amanda, aka Salamanda. I had one day left on an underwater housing rental and wanted to try something different. We didn’t have time to put together a wardrobe so Amanda pulled something from her closet – a wedding dress.

Light came from a single 1.2Kw HMI. It was pointed into some painter’s plastic that we pulled tight across one section of the pool, just above the water’s surface. Light falloff in water is much stronger than air and I definitely noticed the HMI didn’t have the same reach under the surface. Could have used an extra stop or two but we made due. The hardest part was getting the light where I wanted it. Due to the obvious consequences of mixing electricity and water, we couldn’t put the HMI *in* the pool. With a heavy top light I was limited to a deep shadowed look. So we just went with it. By the way, the housing was an Aquatech from Borrowlenses.com. Check ‘em out. They’re good people.

Kudos to Michelle our MUA and Lyn the bubble wrangler. Lyn also shot some pics of another model and from what I’ve seen so far they will be epic.

If you want to see what a really deep underwater shoot looks like, check this out this underwater stage at Pinewood Studios.

If you’ve been wondering how the heck to transition from shooting stills to shooting motion, might I suggest a little reading – Vision in Motion: A Photographer’s Introduction to Digital Video. This wonderful resource was written by none other than filmmaker, photographer, and friend Trevor Meier.

So what’s in the eBook? Well, I’ll tell you what’s NOT in the book. This is not a step-by-step gear guide. Pixel peepers look elsewhere. As the title suggests, VISION IN MOTION is about vision. Trevor suggests ways to help you find your vision and the best practices for communicating that vision through the medium of motion. Don’t underestimate the importance of vision. In both photography and cinematography, you need a vision, you need a direction. But the added complexity of time when shooting motion makes vision crucial. Motion implies movement and time implies change. If your characters aren’t moving toward some goal and changing over time, then you’ve got a story about…well, nothing. You’ve got to have a vision. This book will help you discover yours.

But the eBook is not all theory. There’s some technical talk, too. If you’re coming from a photographic background, there’s new lingo and techniques to learn. For example, in photography you can use shutter speed to control exposure. Video is different. Try shooting a whole film with the shutter at 1/8000 and see how long before your audience walks out. If you don’t know why this is a bad idea, you need to read this eBook.

Check it out here: VISION IN MOTION. You might even see a familiar face or two in the pictures!

As much as I love shooting tethered, sometimes it’s just not practical to lug a computer around, especially on remote location shoots. More gear means more crew. And more crew means bigger budgets (something that’s sadly lacking in the industry these days). On a run-n-gun shoot, even tethering to a laptop is awkward at best. Imagine doing a “walk a-about” photo shoot where you are tied to an assistant with a 10 foot rope. That’s ONLY convenient if one of you happens to fall into a crevasse.

Here’s a better solution. Wireless tethering to an iPad. No wires, no worries; portable and practical.

OK, onto the technical milieu. There are a few variations on the following workflow, but for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to share what I’m using to go from my Canon 5D MkII to the iPad.

First thing you need is a little app called ShutterSnitch. It’s $8 and available in the app store. ShutterSnitch creates a landing point for the photos that are getting sent from the camera. There are some other great features built into the app, but rather than write about them you can read about them here.

There are a couple ways to get the photos out of your Canon dSLR wirelessly. Canon makes several WFT (as in, Wireless File Transmitter) devices for their various flavors of dSLRs. But, one look at the price and you might want to rearrange that acronym to WTF (as in, WTF!?). The cheaper option, and the one I’m using, is a wifi card from Eye-Fi. Eye-Fi makes SD cards that have a microscopic wifi antenna hidden inside. These cards can connect directly with ShutterSnitch. But there’s a caveat with Eye-Fi cards and the 5DMkII. The camera won’t recognize the newer X2 version so you’ll need one of the older classic pro models.

Now, at this point you’re probably thinking,”WTF! How am I supposed to use an SD card in a CF-only camera like a 5DMkII?” Gotchya covered there, too. You simply need an SD to CF card adapter. Yeah, I didn’t know those existed either. Eye-Fi does not officially support CF adapters for their cards, but I found one that works well with my MkII. The CF multi from Syncrotech. Some adapters will cut the wifi signal strength so be sure to find one that has been tested for use with Eye-Fi cards. The CFMulti seems to have no effect on the Eye-Fi’s ability to transmit. So far I’ve used it successfully up to about 25 feet with no file errors.

To make all of these photo transfers work, both the card and the iPad have to be connected to the same wireless network. Not a big deal if you’re shooting in a studio or any place there’s power. But if you’re on location you’re going to need a way to create an ad hoc wireless network. I cannot officially condone jailbreaking your iPad (nor does Apple), but it will allow you to install an app called MyWi. Yes, MyWi is the same app that people are using on their iPhones to share their 3G connectivity with other devices. Running the app on the iPad will create a network for the Eye-Fi to use for transferring photos. The great thing about this solution is that you’re carrying your network with you. Which means wireless tethering will work even if you’re deep in the jungle or on top of a mountain.

Just to recap, here’s what you need:
1. Older model Eye-Fi card
2. Synchrotech CFMulti adapter
3. MyWi app
4. ShutterSnitch app

One last tip on setting up the camera. Be sure to set your camera to shoot RAW+JPEG (small works best). The RAW files stay on the card, the JPEGS get transfered to the iPad for reviewing.

Big props to Matt Jeppsen of FreshDV for turning me on to this idea. We shared a few tweets back and forth on the workflow and Matt pointed me in the right direction. Check out FreshDV.com for tasty snippets of video industry news.

Two of mankind’s greatest inventions, together at last. Note: this is an exploration of what is possible, not necessarily what is practical. Tweet from the street at your own risk!
iPad Version Here

The footage for this demo came from a stock footage fashion shoot we did a couple weeks ago. Here’s a little bit of randomness from the day:

And just because the ladies did such a great job, here’s a few more clips of them posing.

I’ve been itching to try some stop motion lately and luckily found a project that seemed suited to the technique. Here is a TVC I created for a women’s health fair event (sidenote: TVC is industry-speak for “television commercial”). The challenge was to visually show a connection between “health, fitness, and fashion.” Shooting stop motion allowed for some creative transitions that helped tie the three themes together. Notice there are no cuts in this spot.

And now some technical details.
We shot this on a blue paper backdrop. It was lit with a couple of kino four-banks from the front. I went with hot lights instead of strobes to eliminate any potential flickering due to variation in strobe output. Don’t get me wrong, I love AlienBees, but they are not as consistent as, say, Profoto. Plus, shooting with constant light meant I could shoot at a higher fps without waiting for strobes to recycle.

The spot was shot on a Canon 5DMkII in stills mode (not video). I cheated the stop motion where ever I could. Cheating meant having the model move in slow motion and varying the shutter interval manually. It probably averaged somewhere around 4 fps. Other setups required the standard (and tedious) method of positioning the frame, snapping a picture…reposition…snap…repeat ad naseum. Text was done in After Effects using a combination of jitter settings in Path Text and Time Posterization.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again. Filmmaking is one long string of creative problem solving. A great example of this is the “toiletry mobile” constructed from a mountain bike wheel and fishing line (see picture below). This little gem allowed the toiletries to easily orbit the model’s head. Big thanks to Casey our fearless model, Anna with make up and hair, Amy the apple eater, and Lyn production manager extraordinaire. Also thanks to InHouse Marketing for all their help with production logistics.

I’ll explain. Traditionally, books and magazines are in a portrait orientation and film and TV are landscape. You don’t read books on your TV and you don’t watch movies in a magazine, until now. With the advent of the iPad (and other handheld computing devices), the lines between print and motion media are being blurred. Books AND movies can now be consumed on the same device. A device you hold in your hand and flip any way you wish.

With the iPad, there’s really no longer a landscape limitation for video. Maybe you want your vid to appear full screen in portrait mode? Maybe you need a long, tall video banner-ad on the side of a digital magazine page? I think we’re going to start seeing a lot more vertically shot video soon. The simplest way to get a portrait orientation out of your video camera is to flip it. Flip it good. So get yourself an L-bracket and get shooting (if you shoot with a fixed monitor you might want to also get yourself a neck brace and a chiropractor).

Last weekend I shot some vertical beach scenes. These were shot on Red with a Canon 10-22mm.

Beach Verticals from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

All this vertical footy got me wondering what some of this might look like as an iPad magazine cover. So I did a little Sunset Magazine mock up. Sunset Mag, if you’re reading this, call me. We’ll talk.

I’m working on a personal project right now about the costal Redwoods. After spending two days deep in the jurassic mists I started to get a little stir crazy. You ever feel like raptors are watching your every move?

In addition to almost twisting my ankle falling off this tree, I think I really scared two old ladies that were walking up the trail behind the camera. There, now no one can say I take myself too seriously. Enjoy the buffoonary.

Spent most of the afternoon working on this diy cable cam. The “pulleys” are sealed-bearing scooter wheels I picked up from a local bike shop. Please chime in if you have any design suggestions. I’m just winging it right now. Once I get the kinks worked out, and some stronger cable, I hope to fly the Red on this thing. In the meantime, here’s a quick clip of the first spin with a sandbag.

A couple weeks ago, we decided to drive to Vancouver to take part in the Olympic festivities. The 5D mkII went with us and I ended up shooting enough video to throw together a quick edit. I do love the portability of this little camera. Almost as much as I love the Winter Olympics.

Art and Science
When I was a kid I was fascinated by bugs. Something about their alien-like bodies and bizarre behaviors captured my curiosity. I would wander around outside turning over rocks to see what new googly-eyed or slimy specimen I could discover. I collected them, anesthetized and skewered them with mounting pins. I kept my six-legged treasures in an oversized Sees Candy box lined with styrofoam. Yes, I was that creepy kid depicted in all the Far Side cartoons. I was sure that when I grew up, I wanted to be an entymologist, paleontologist, archeologist, or meteorologist (anything that ended in “gist” would have been fine with me). It wasn’t until I picked up a camera in highschool (in order to photograph bugs) that I started my love affair with visual arts. When choosing a major in university, I felt like I had to decide between two paths, Art or Science. I didn’t realize at the time that the two disciplines were so closely related.

Typically, Art and Science are thought of as polar opposites. On one side of the hall, the science geeks hang out and discuss computers, chemistry, mathematics, and chess club. Across the hall the art freaks lean against their lockers discussing band class, painting, indie films, and skinny jeans. What the kids don’t realize is, at the core, they’re really not that different. I think Art and Science are deeply entwined. I’ll explain…

It is impossible to create art without science. If you look back in history you’ll see that every artistic movement has followed some sort of scientific breakthrough in communication technology. There were no painters until someone invented paint. There were no poems before someone invented language. Even those primitive cave drawings would have been impossible without a cave-man writing stick and dinosaur ink. Art cannot exist without science because all art is made from, and with science. In the words of my favorite comedian, Demetri Martin, “Think about it.”

Now what about the flip side? Is there creativity within the discipline of Science? You bet your pocket protector there is! It takes a brilliant and clever mind to take seemingly disparate data and form a universal scientific theory. It’s not unlike Mozart (an artist, by the way) looking at a sheet of music and hearing the song in his head. Think about the great scientific discoveries in the modern era: the theory of relativity, the atom, space flight, vaccines, dinosaurs, the double helix, plate tectonics, Facebook – some single mind had to be so insightful, so in tune with the “notes” that they were able to compose these wonderful symphonies of scientific discovery. Every scientific breakthrough is ripe with creative (and thus artistic) expression. The act of discovery itself is a form of art.

Science and art have a very circular relationship. Art leads to Science, and Science begets Art. James Cameron is not a scientist, he’s a filmmaker. Yet Cameron had to personally develop the camera systems and workflow for his 3D epic ‘Avatar’. The tool for Cameron’s artistic expression did not yet exist; he had to invent it. He needed the science of filmmaking to catch up with his art of storytelling. Cameron’s art was the impetus for technological advancement, and, now that these 3D tools exist, no doubt they will be used to create more art. And the cycle continues.

Still with me? Good ’cause here’s where I think it gets juicy. I believe that artists and scientists operate with the same goals in mind: to describe the world around them. We are all human beings after all. We all have the desire to catalog, order, and describe our world. We just use different tools. Both artists and scientists have to be keenly perceptive and observant in order to describe and interpret reality. Now of course there are differences. A scientist would describe a sunset differently than a painter or photographer might. But their motivation is the same, they seek to understand. They are looking for truth. Science can describe why a sunset is red, and art can describe how that sunset makes us feel. I got into filmmaking because I wanted to understand more than just cameras, lenses, resolution, compression, and waveforms, I wanted to understand the emotional side, the story-telling side as well. I used to watch television and movies and wonder not only how a particular shot was done, but why it made me feel a certain way. The “how” is science, the “why” is art. And I use both “how” and “why” in every creative endeavor.

For me, the process of creating art is like running thousands of micro experiments in my mind. I’m constantly asking myself, “I wonder what would happen if I tried this?” The only way to find out is to run the experiment and analyze the results. Did the 85mm create empathy? Did the color red communicate urgency? Did that edit create excitement? If so, then can I create an “emotional theory” (for lack of a better term) surrounding that particular technique? The more micro experiments I perform, the more I learn about the craft, and the greater my understanding of art (specifically filmmaking) becomes. Even though my job title doesn’t contain any variation on the “gist” suffix, I still get to be a mini-scientist. I’ve just traded a bunsen burner and a thermocycler for a camera and computer.

There’s no question in my mind that Art and Science are bedfellows. I don’t think we can have one without the other. Ultimately, their goal is the same: the search for truth, be it empirical or emotional, objective or subjective, absolute or relative. I’m a lot older now, but still looking for bugs, both real and imaginary.

p.s. Congratulations on making it through such a long post. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

Here are a few MadMen inspired shots of my friend Jim. Though I’d never seen Jim smoke a cigar before, this is how I always picture him in my head – a bit of daring, with a dash of dashing. Jim has a long resume that is full of acronyms like CEO and MBA. I don’t know what any of those mean but I do know that Jim is a nice guy and a good friend.

Lyn and I set up a little photoshoot last week to test out the newly arrived backdrop (ordered it here: neutral gray), and the new high-output beauty dish. The lighting setup for these shots was pretty simple: beauty dish boomed over head (with AB1600), and two speedlights in small silver umbrellas as kickers (with the exception of one shot where they didn’t fire).

Now how about that HOBD? If, like me, you’ve been on the fence on whether or not to pick up the new High-Output Beauty Dish from Paul C. Buff, let me save you the worry. Just get it. You will not be disappointed. Now, I’d used the old dish before and liked it. But the HOBD has been completely redesigned for efficiency and I really didn’t know what to expect. The light spread on the HOBD is about 45 degrees (old model dish was 140 degrees). That’s a pretty focused light. In order to get that kind of narrow beam on the older, less efficient dish, you needed to lug along a grid modifier. Let me tell you, it’s a lot easier (and more efficient) to *diffuse* hard light than it is to *focus* soft light. So far, I’m really liking the narrow focus of this dish. I figure if I need a softer look from the HOBD, I’ll just throw the sock on it and approximate the light spread of the old dish. Boom. Done. The HOBD is made of aluminum and is very light weight compared to the older, Webber-BBQ-inspired dish. My only complaint is the way the direct-light blocker mounts. It is not connected to the dish itself but runs through a hole and into the umbrella holder of the Alien Bee. It’s a clunky, and somewhat proprietary way to mount the blocker. I have no idea if the hole on the HOBD will match up on any other monoblocs.

Overall I’m very happy with the dish. Next project is to test its efficiency by doing some daytime shots a 580 EX mounted to the dish.

Last spot in the Better to Play series. I just watched all four back-to-back and I must say I’m pleased with their consistency. Yay for branding. This spot was shot on Red and posted in FCP with some help from Magic Bullet and After Effects (for the motion graphics). I’m pretty sure the idea for this spot came from an episode of Arrested Development. RIP Arrested Development. We’ll always have the banana stand.

Had a little free time last week so I pulled together an impromptu shoot with some friends. This was an experiment to test out some lighting setups with on-axis fill.

On-axis light is light that is on the same axis as your camera lens; e.g. your on-camera flash. This kind of light illuminates everything very evenly, creating a flat, and generally unflattering image. It’s akin to xeroxing your subject. The idea here is to create shadow and depth with some off-axis lighting and then let the on-axis ring flash (AB800R) act as a fill and lift those shadows out of the dark. Daniel (pictured) mapped out the the setups on his nifty Strobox iPhone app. Also, the first pic in the gallery below is a 100% crop of the pic above. I put a lot of post work into these photos and don’t want the finer details to get lost to web resolution.

This is true in Photoshop, too. I’m all about the layers. I usually make a new layer for every step in the edit. Healing brush, dodge and burn, sharpening, curves – each major step lives on its own layer. And I always keep the original layer in the stack, too. That way I can go back if I get lost. Plus, if you’re like me, you love soloing layers to see how far a photo has come.

Here are a few test shots with the new AB1600 down by Whiskeytown Lake. Using the PocketWizard Mini and Flex I was able to get a useable strobe sync speed of around 1/640. Strobe was boomed overhead with a small silver umbrella. Looking forward to setting up some more daylight blasting sessions soon.

We have a rad dog named Stella. She’s a unique little creature. Here’s a little flick Lyn and I created to show a typical day in Stella’s life. This was shot entirely on the Canon 5DMKII. It’s a good proof-of-concept to show that you don’t need a Red camera to create interesting visuals. You just need, well, interesting visuals. The small size and low weight of the MKII made it easy to get some of these hard to reach POV shots. Huge thanks to the talented Jef Gibbons for his musical contribution.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas to all.

First the problem: When you hit ’stop’ on a DVD and then ‘play,’ normal behavior for a DVD is to ‘resume’ playback from the stopped point. If you hit stop, and then stop again, this should reset the disc as if you’d just inserted it into the DVD player. The problem with my disc is that, after hitting stop twice and then play, the disc would start on track 1 and not the first play menu. (My log read, “User action: System initialization. Jumping to Track: Track 1) How annoying is that? I still don’t know why this was happening. But it’s likely an issue with the way DVD Studio Pro writes it’s GRPM and SPRM values. Now you could buy expensive software and learn how to program DVD discs from the ground up, or you could try this…

My Solution: No matter what I tried, I could not get DVDSP to return to the menu after a double-stop. I tried scripting it, I tried rebuilding the project, I even tried some demo versions of that expensive software I mentioned but it quickly got over my head. Since DVDSP was being stubborn, and completely set on restarting at track 1, I finally gave up and said, “fine you can have track 1, stupid software, but I get to tell you what’s going to be on track 1.” And that’s the solution: put 2 seconds of black on track 1 and then tell the DVD to end-jump to the main menu. Hey, it’s not perfect, but it works.

If anyone has another way to solve this problem, please let me know.

First up are some audio goodies. There was a time in my life when I thought I was going to make hit records and wear gold-plated diapers. Well, that hasn’t happened. So I’m reluctantly letting go of some of my recording and monitoring gear. Here is a like-new pair of Dynaudio BM6A mkII monitors. These are beautiful near-field monitors that create stunningly clear sound. If critical monitoring is important to you, (and it should be), do a little research on these. But do it fast ’cause you’ll get the best deal through me and supplies are definitely limited. I bought these new about a year ago through Sweetwater Sound. Only used them a couple times.

Next up in the audio department is a sweet little audio interface, the Mobile I/O 2882. The big selling point for me on this box was the high-quality pre amps (there’s eight of them); and it’s completely BUS powered through Firewire. Just mate this to a Macbook Pro and you’ve got a portable recording studio. 

And lastly, let’s move over to the video side of life. Up for sale is a used Matrox MXO. Great for monitoring and color correcting video on an external monitor. The MXO converts your secondary DVI output to a true REC709 broadcast signal. It also allows you to calibrate an Apple Cinema Display or other DVI monitor using a proc amp. Works with the lappy tops too! Great little box that I simply no longer need.

Finally finished up the edit for my cousin’s wedding back in Colorado. Here’s a gallery with a few of my favorites. It was fun seeing some of the extended family, many of whom I hadn’t seen in 10 years or so, including my cousin Matt. He was a great resource for me when I was first learning about photography. Back in ‘those’ days we shot film and had to walk to the photo lab, through the snow, uphill, both ways, etc, etc, kids these days with their rap music and digital cameras…

Since I traveled to Colorado by plane, my gear was limited to what I could fit in a carry on bag. No worries; perfect excuse to summon the strobist ninja inside and find ways to do more with less. A single speedlight (580ex) and shoot-thru umbrella seemed to do the trick. Avoiding direct sunlight meant I didn’t need lots of watts to over power the ambient. In fact, we had to move fast after the ceremony to make use of what sunlight was left. Thankfully, Matt was a not only a great photo assistant, but an excellent VAL (voice activated lightstand).

The photos were processed in Lightroom, DXO Optics, and Photoshop. Yes, all three. DXO is a great piece of software that automagically removes distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberrations. It does this by peeping your EXIF data, and applying custom corrections based on your lens+camera combination. This is particularly useful with wide angle lenses like the 17-40mm that have a lot of barrel distortion. I didn’t realize just how much distortion was present with this lens until I compared the corrected and non-corrected photos. Yikes. Now, if only we could get DXO to work as a Lightroom plugin the trifecta would be complete.

The pic you see above was processed by creating two exposures from the RAW file, one for the foreground and one for the sky. Neat thing about shooting RAW is all that detail is hiding in there you just have to coax it out. RAWr.

Last month Lyn and I jumped down to Santa Rosa to film Levi Leipheimer’s Gran Fondo. I know what you’re thinking, “What the heck is a gran fondo?” Well, according to levisgranfondo.com, it is a “long distance, mass-participation cycling event – not a race.” There, now you know. I must say it was a grand gran fondo. The course wound its way through deep, dark forests and across golden hillsides.

The standard practice for covering cycling events is from the back of a motorcycle, or from a helicopter. Luckily, we had both. Carl Burchfiel, our fearless leader, wrestled a fully-kitted Red inside a tiny chopper while Lyn and I took the motos. I rode behind Bill and Lyn rode behind Val Kilmer Chad on his BMW 1200GS (For the record, I can neither confirm or deny the possibility of me being obsessed with this particular motorcycle).

As I was building out my camera the night before, I discovered I was missing the top handle – probably left it in the rental car in Cleavland. Operating a Red One without a top handle is like trying to cut a steak without thumbs. It’s awkward, and makes you look stupid. Hanging onto the back of a speeding motorcycle made it all the more challenging. I still managed to get some decent moving shots from the back of the bike. The rest of the time we’d try to leapfrog Levi, pull over, and film as he passed. Lyn carried the tripod on her back and our motos rode together. We were a motorcycle gang of two.

It was great meeting Levi. He’s a really nice guy and put together this ride as a fundraiser for the city of Santa Rosa and Forget Me Not Farm.

What I learned on this shoot:
* Size matters – can’t wait until Red comes out with some smaller cameras for this type of work. I hear the Scarlet should be out by 2015 [sarcasm].
* Story, story, story – I was reminded that gorgeous vistas and cycling celebrities do not an interesting video make. It always has, and always will be about the story. Even though we had rough audio and limited time with The Levi, I think I managed to eek out a subtle story line here. Enjoy.

For those of you who don’t know, Lyn and I had the privileged of making several trips to Rwanda over the last few years to work on a documentary film. We premiered the film in Redding last January at the Cascade Theatre and are now happy to announce the DVD is available. Our good friend Trevor directed the film and had this to say:

It’s hard to believe that almost five years ago, five friends started planning for a trip to Rwanda. Our plan was to shoot a documentary in two weeks, spend a month in hard-core editing, and have it ready to watch by the summer of 2005.

I was so naive, in so many ways. I had shot several documentaries by this point, but nothing on this scale. The process has been intense, difficult, and there was more than once that the whole thing almost didn’t happen. But here we are… the film is ready for the world to see on DVD.

You can get your copy here: Hope Rises Store. There is more info and trailers on the website as well as a Facebook fan page.

Thanks for all of your support over the years to get this thing made.

Extra! Extra! This just in. Canon has announced their newest flagship DSLR. I’m watching the walk-through video as I type this. Here’s what I’ve gleaned so far:

• 16.1 Megapixel APS-H sized sensor
• ISO Range 100-12,800 native with extend ISO up to 102,400. It’ll be interesting to see how this stacks up to the low light performance of the new Nikon D3s
• New 45-Point AF
• Auto Lighting Optimizer. I have no idea how this is supposed to work, but it looks kind of like it may add a little “fill light” to the picture. Similar to how Photoshop’s shadows/highlights feature works. Don’t quote me on that though.
• 1080 24p + 720 60p. I wonder if they are still employing line skipping to generate video image? And…does anyone shooting for web or SD broadcast care?

Find out more for yourself with these tasty links.
Canon USA
Vincet Laforet Video in HD

Here are a few spur-of-the-moment shots from the local skating rink. We threw this shoot together very last minute with the help of a Facebook casting call (don’t forget to follow via Facebook and Twitter!)

I first tried setting up the light on a stand and had the skaters roll by as I shot. This yielded horrible results. I quickly realized that I needed to get the camera and light rolling along with the skaters, at a consistent distance, to get consistent focus and exposure. Well, it just so happens that I spent a good portion of the ’90s roller skating on a weekly basis. Yes, I was THAT kid. I skated in front of the subject and had an assistant (thank you Jeremy and Lyn) on wheels skate along side holding the flash (580ex, shoot-thru umbrella, triggered via PW). Shooting blind meant I shot a lot of frames and hoped to get some keepers. Doing a photo shoot on roller skates really got me wondering how much more efficient my life might be if I could wear roller skates all the time. Imagine how fast shopping at Costco would be with a pair of skates.

I’ve been seeing a lot of motion graphic spots on TV lately that rely more on well designed graphics and less on dazzling motion. Figured that might be a good approach to this spot since I only had a few days to complete. Wish I could have spent more time on transitions between scenes but I like how it turned out thematically.

I’m home for a week now, long enough to catch up on some last minute editing before I fly off to Colorado to shoot a wedding. Can’t wait to see the fall colors in that part of the country. I leave you with a few iPhone shots from the last few weeks of whirlwinding.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know a thing about 3D. But I do know how to push software buttons. While waiting for some proxies to render, I thought I’d have a go at Cinema 4D. These are simple test renders, nothing fancy. Inspiration came from watching some videos on Greyscalegorilla.com. Hopefully, I can create more of this stuff. It would definitely add another dimension to my work. Oh yes, I went there.

If you watch this and assume that commercial shoots are a lot of fun, you’d be right. But they’re not all pillow-fighting-feathers-flying goofiness. They’re also a lot of hard work, stress, creative problem solving, work, waiting, and more work. This set required some serious room “remodeling” including hauling in two twin beds from an adjoining room and pulling stubborn artwork off the walls.

Our lovely grandmas needed no coaching for the pillow fight, well other than, “have fun and try not to hit each other in the face.” Jumping on the bed makes quite a bit of noise and I found out later that the staff at the reception desk downstairs didn’t know exactly what kind of video we were making. They had a good chuckle about all the pounding noises coming from our room.

It took about two hours to vacuum up all the feathers after we wrapped. This shoot was months ago and I’m still finding feathers in the camera bag. Here are a few random snaps from the shoot (Lyn likes feathers).

Lyn and I had the honor of shooting Ryan and Nancy’s nuptials a few weeks ago. Here are few of our favorites.

Storyboards are a valuable production tool, but creating them is such a pain. Why is it so hard? Well, filmmaking is hard, and when you storyboard you are essentially “writing” the visuals of your film. Many creative decisions come into play. You’re acting as director, director of photography, and editor all at once.  You’re deciding what shots, with what lens, and in what order tell your story best. No easy task. And when you can’t draw your way out of a paper bag (like me), spontaneity and creativity gets stifled. Wondering what that shot might look like from a bird’s eye view? Sure, just give me…20, 30 minutes or so. And I’m going to need a couple more erasers. Enter Hitchcock (frame left).

Hitchcock is a mobile storyboarding application for the iPhone. Instead of tediously drawing each panel, you use photos. This is a no-brainer for me. I’m already using my iPhone camera for location scouting. Now I can have a working storyboard before even leaving the location. The process is simple. Launch the app and import photos via your photo library or shoot photos straight from the camera. Each picture becomes a “panel” in your finished board. You can rearrange panels, set their duration, add characters (silhouettes), add markup arrows and text, record audio, keyframe pans and zooms. Wow. But by far the best feature of this app is that it gives you an animatic of your board. At any point you can hit play and see how your shots cut together, complete with recorded audio and camera moves. This is an invaluable feature for anyone storyboarding with time constraints (like a :30 commercial spot for example). When you’re finished, you can export the whole thing to a PDF and email it to the client or crew.

Reasons to buy Hitchcock:

1. It’s Mobile. You never know when and where inspiration will strike.
2. It’s intuitive. If you know how to work your iPhone, you can work this app. I love the tactile feel of positioning characters and rearranging panels.
3. It’s cheap. If $20 is too much to spend on a tool that will likely enhance your creative process, well then maybe filmmaking isn’t your thing. Twenty bucks is how much I used to spend at Starbucks scribbling with a pencil for three hours trying to finish the shading on that upper lip.

A few things I’d love to see in the next version. An export-to-video feature so I can email myself the animatic. I don’t know how the guts of the iPhone work but I’m guessing this might be an OS limitation. Also, the ability to add a music bed would be sweet. 

Here’s an example of a Hitchcock storyboard being turned into an actual spot. Check it:

This app is a valuable tool that every filmmaker should have. Do yourself, your productions, and your clients a favor and check it out.

Visit Cinemek.com for more juicy info on Hitchcock.

Canon 100mm Macro + Red One. Yes, I hate these things too, but I love to hate them. Working with this guy for about an hour emptied my adrenal glands. Definitely will need a spider wrangler next time. The spider was either sitting completely motionless, or scampering away off the table. That made me think that a subject like this would work really well for a “living photograph.” Click the pic to see what I mean.

Here’s a really simple way to rig your dSLR to your body for those high-action, POV-type shots (think skiing, biking, motocross, etc). No expensive helmet-cam rigging required.  All you need is a bungee cord.

Check it:
Most cameras come standard with a neck strap. You’ll need to make sure this is attached. Next, hang the camera from your neck. Good, now you look like a tourist. Chances are your camera is hanging somewhere near your stomach. You’ll probably want to shorten up the camera strap so that the camera hangs over your chest. Unless your tummy is sporting a six pack (I’ve got a six pack IN my tummy), you’ll find it much easier to wear the camera higher so it’s pushing against your chest rather than gut. To accomplish this, I had to shorten my camera strap by tying a knot in it. Your mileage may vary.

Next, attach the bungee cord, hook facing out, to one side of the strap near the body of the camera. Wrap the bungee around your back and hook it to the other side of the camera strap. Done. That’s it. If the bungee is the right size, you should feel the pull of the bungee holding the camera tight against your body. Notice as you move, the camera moves with your body. Now your hands are free to hang on to the handle bars, ski poles, or dog sled(?)

A couple things to note:
* You should be ’slightly’ uncomfortable. In order to hold the camera tight against your body, you’ve got to get the bungee cord relatively tight. If your torso goes numb and you can’t feel your legs, it’s too tight. 
* Try to find a bungee cord with plastic hooks. Plastic is less likely to scratch your camera and less likely to poke you in the sides. Do not attempt this mount if you are ticklish.
* This method holds the camera tight for most lateral forces, but the camera is still free to bounce a little up and down. For jarring activities like running or pogo sticks you might want to add a vertical strap as well. Let me know if you find something that works.

Here’s a clip of me on my trusty lil’ Suzuki 450GS. This was shot with a Canon MKII and a 17-40mm f/4. The POV riding shots were accomplished with the bungee-mount method.

I shot this footage last December at the US Grand Prix of Cyclocross in Portland, Oregon. My buddy Chris was racing and I figured this would be a great way to try out the new Birger mount. After shooting for about a year with only the Red 18-50mm, it was pretty liberating to start shooting with some different focal lengths via Birger and EOS glass. This footage has been sitting on my hard drive for the last 8 months and I finally got around to editing some clips together. This is not meant to be anything more than a camera test so don’t look too closely for a theme or story.

I started this project with the Color workflow in mind, but ended up getting much better results out of the new color science in Red Alert. The final tint was done inside FCP with Magic Bullet Looks. Enjoy!

Ever wonder how abandoned shopping carts end up where they do?  Me too.

Cart
Written & Directed by Jesse Rosten
Music by Peter Lance

The idea for this film was hatched a few years ago.  Lyn and I were driving through town and had Radiohead’s OK Computer on the CD player.  As we drove by an empty parking lot, we happened to notice a shopping cart looking rather lost and disheveled.  This visual, combined with Yorke’s longing melodies, had us both feeling like we were experiencing something dramatic and cinematic.  So, naturally, we started laughing.  The next few minutes were spent joking about “the little cart that could.”   “Wouldn’t that be funny if…” “He’s got the heart of a champion.”  Fast forward a few years and we hadn’t forgotten about the cart.  When I learned that my hometown was hosting a film festival to showcase local talent, the idea of the shopping cart resurfaced. Can’t get shown up on your home court, right?  A few beers with friends and many script revisions later and we had a story.

The film was shot with no budget, over a few weeks.  The question I get asked the most is, “how did you get the cart to move?”  Simple.  String.  Ugly Braid 40lbs test fishing line to be exact.  We went through several brands before we found one that didn’t show too much on screen.  Even so, when shooting at 4k it’s hard to hide anything and I ended up having to comp the string out of a few of the shots.  Big thanks to Derek and Lyn for all their hard work on the production.  Also, this film wouldn’t be what it is without the beautiful music composed by Peter Lance.

Please enjoy the film and don’t hesitate to ask (in the comments section) if you have any questions.  For the tech-heads, this was shot on a Red One with Canon EOS lenses via the Birger lens mount.

1. I love visual storytelling.  This can take on many forms, film, commercial, music video, photo, or animated piece.  

2. I love light.  Light is, after all, what creates an image in the first place.  

It’s safe to say that this blog will most likely cover anything that falls under those two topics.  Which is a round-a-bout way of giving myself license to cover anything under the sun.  Feel free to RSS subscribe to the blog so you can be notified of new posts.  If you’re not using RSS you are missing out.  Or you can stay up-to-date via Facebook or Twitter.  Thanks for stopping by.  And, hey, let’s be friends.

-Jesse

ps. I grabbed some of the more “industry related” content from the old blog and republished it here.  So while the blog is new, there are some entries from last year.

Thanks to everyone who came out this weekend to enjoy the festival. Our film “Cart” took top honors at the festival. Yay!

From Record Searchlight: “Director Jesse Rosten, left, composes his shot, while Lyn,middle, his wife keeps the camera dry as production assistant Peter Lance holds the line used to reel in the main character, a shopping cart. The three were filming clips early February for their upcoming piece “Cart”, their entry for the first annual Sundial Film Festival. The Festival which will highlight still photography and short films, will be shown March 13th through the 15th at the Cascade Theatre. Nathan Morgan/Record Searchlight”

Lyn got her makeup done did by the lovely Michelle. Going for the Twiggy look here. I’d say it’s pretty close. This was shot with a small camera flash modified with a shoot through umbrella. The umbrella is choked up a bit to create a harder light and thus harder shadows. It’s really amazing how versitle one flash can be.

Cart, my first short film, is premeiring this Friday night at the Sundial Film Festival. Tickets are $15 at the door ($10 for students). You’re invited to come. It will be a lot of fun.

Here’s a shot we did for The Dance Project – Redding’s best dance troupe. (If you disagree I’d be more than happy to arrange a ‘dance off’ with the troupe in question). I’ve been using the same lighting setup for most of my shots lately. It’s a very simple, three-light setup. One key light overhead (in a shoot thru umbrella) and two kickers on either side in the back. This is the same setup for the Supermom shoot. Even though I’ve been trying to use this set up consistently, I feel like each time I get something different. The same lighting setup, with subtle differences in key light, distance, angle, diffusion, intensity, and ambient fill all lead to different results. Einstein once said (yes, The Albert), “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Point taken. Perhaps I should call this my INSANE lighting setup. Or maybe it’s just me.

Hey, at least going crazy is going somewhere.

Title: Super Mom
Location: Kids Kingdom Playground, Redding
Model: Angie and her daughter. Special thanks to Michelle for her stellar make-up work.
Lighting: Three 1200ws strobes (I forget the brand), shoot-thru umbrella, high output fan (for the cape) and a generator to power it all.

For this shot we used the trusty (and glossy) three light setup. No, it’s not the three-light setup you’re thinking of (key, fill, back). It’s an edgier take on the three-light. Actually, it’s more like a four light setup if you count ambient as a light source. So we’ve got a strobe with a shoot-thru umbrella camera left as the key. It’s about a stop over ambient allowing ambient to act as fill. And then to add the “light-wrapped” look, dual strobes coming from behind at 45 degrees. The light from the left strobe was blocked by the swinging girl so doesn’t quite reach the subject, but you can really see the wrap effect on the monkey bars and rear right pole.

Couple things I learned on this project:
1. 20 seconds of adjustment on set can save HOURS of time in post.
2. Dodge & burn and the healing brush are the skin’s best friend. Great way to smooth the skin without ending up with a textureless, poreless, plasticy mess. Let me tell ya from experience, if you’re going to BLUR the skin to smooth it out, be sure to add some texture back in using some high-pass filter. I’m tired of seeing photos of people that look like two eyes and a mouth floating in a solid patch of skin-toned color. Wow. A bit of a mini-rant there.

Meet the Gallagher family. About 4 years ago we met these lovely folks while manning our video booth at the Redding Wedding Extravaganza. (Side note: no, we don’t shoot wedding videos anymore. Unless, of course, you want your wedding shot in 4k. Call me, we’ll talk.) The Gallaghers have since become friends and they’ve multiplied into a little family. We were privledged to do some Christmas pics for them. Here’s the strobist rundown for all the camera nerds out there:

* Two kino 4 banks as 45degree kickers. (It’s not that we needed kinos for this, it’s just that’s all we had.)
* Nikon Sb24 with shoot thru umbrella overhead.
* Silver reflector on the floor.

Props to Lyn for her masterful camera work!

The background is wrapping paper Lyn bought from the dollar store. We ran strips vertically on the wall and photoshopped out the seams. The sticks are dead bushes from our backyard, painted white. The ground cover is cotton from JoAnne’s fabric store. We found the snowflakes there as well. They’re edible cornstarch flakes. In retrospect, we were very glad we didn’t get the polyester flakes as a lot of them ended up in little Daniel’s mouth. When he wasn’t eating the snow, he was screaming, terriffied by the white stuff falling from the ceiling.

After a few failed attempts at building an underwater housing device for the Red (can you say large open tupperware with a viewing window at the bottom? Me neither), I settled on the simpler task of building one for the lowly Canon HV20. It was pretty easy to do, actually. A few pieces of ABS from Lowes, a little pipe dope, some teflon tape, and a used filter attached with silicon. The final setup setup looked kind of like a weapon with its nifty handle (which I filled with lead weights for stability)

Location of choice was Clear Creek right beneath the falls. Most of the healthy salmon split once I jumped in the ice cold water. But I found this little fella’ that was too blind and sick to scram. So what exactly is all that ick on his face? Well it’s Ich. Or more specifically, Ichthyophonus hoferi. Ich (pronounced “ick”). It’s a well-known disease, (caused by a parasite) and is harmless to humans. It starts as white spots on the fish’s heart and spreads outward to the skin. Ick, indeed.

And while we’re on the topic of fish, please enjoy the photo below of a monstor salmon found in our own Battle creek – Lyn’s old fisheries biologist stomping grounds. The fish was dead when found but was estimated to weigh around 90lbs when alive. You can see from the photo that this fish is about the size of a cow and probably would have fed a family of three for an entire winter.

It’s finally done!

Tasty links:

www.hoperisesfilm.com
www.thewellspringfoundation.com
www.trevormeier.com

Scenes from our annual, color-seeking trek into the woods.

For those of you who think we work with a big crew, here is evidence to the contrary. In fact, I think this was the biggest crew we’ve had to-date.  Choreographer, makeup artist (x2), PA, and Agency were all present.

Many, many months ago, I shot some test footage of Dad riding his motorcycle. Finally got around to pulling the footage together – just for fun. Enjoy.