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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Here’s a quick little video I did for an online photography contest. Hopefully we’ll win some schwag from PocketWizard and Strobist.com.

Matt Hoplin liked this idea and photoshopped me a few extra strobes for good measure.  Matt says:  “I see where you’re going and its just crazy enough that it just might work.  The only problem is you haven’t taken it far enough.  Hence I give you: the human ring flash.  This is the entry level model. The full version I’m building has 250 WS strobes in flash boxes powered by the gas powered electric generator mounted to the back pack. Weighs in at a couple hundred pounds and  9 of them at the lowest setting require a stack of neutral density filters but it’s totally worth it to get those circles in the model’s eyes.”