high up the sky

[rhervag]

yesterday was quite a personnal challenge to overcome the growing vertigo while carrying my gear up to the highest local spot to grab some cloud action.
the skies had been acting silly for a while now so it felt like a lottery getting up at 5am to check if the weather had decided to follow the forecasts...
however it seems i got lucky this time and managed to capture beautiful sights of the city waking up from the mist.
shot on both 5DmkII & HV20 via a variety of lenses including fisheye, tilt-shift...
i hope you'll enjoy those unique views on the surrounding landscapes of my hometown as it was one of my most exciting experience so far despite the initial scare and very stong wind...

[ame="http://vimeo.com/6046736"]LAVAL 10.08.2009 on Vimeo[/ame]

[bmsweb]

Love the shot at 1:07

[rhervag]

Love the shot at 1:07

Thx ! indeed there was much rejoicing when the sun finally cracked open the heavy curtains of mist after the gloomy early hours

[kurisu]

Really great footage, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Ace]

Very good, I was wondering if you could tell us briefly your setup and method of capture for the time lapse...thanks.

[1]

Brilliant!

[rhervag]

Thx!

Very good, I was wondering if you could tell us briefly your setup and method of capture for the time lapse...thanks.

'igth, here's the fulll scope :
this water tank is a 200 feet conic tower located in the industrial zone of the western district. i went there on friday morning with the city technician to check for access and security.
a central narrow spiral staircase leads up through 4 tight platforms over the vaccum and final step ladders reach to a dome-shaped rooftop over the water tank. about halfway up, looking around and down triggered unpleasant feelings : oh boy that's high ! hopefully once arrived, the breathtaking view urged me to man up a shoot for monday's sunrise, wondering how to limit the load and carry everything in a single journey.

there was no way to rely on cheap support against the windy situation up there so i settled on 2 heavy manfrotto clones hoping the camera stabilisation would iron out most of the remaining micro shaking.

pondering over the weekend on the best compromise for a versatile dual shooting kit, i ended up stuffing a big trekking backpack with the following :
naked HV20 for crisp deep depth of field + 4 tapes and 2 long lasting batteries (from lunchbox here).
5DmkII with 4 16GB CF, 2 batteries & JJC TM remote timer (tc-80n3 clone found on ebay)
Hoodloupe, FD>EOS adapters (from jinfinance on ebay) and selected lenses :
Canon FD15mm f2.8 fullframe fisheye for a mild curved distortion,
Canon TS-35mm f2.8 tilt-shift for that lovely miniature effect,
Canon EF 50mm f1.8 for lowlight performance
Canon EF 24-105 f4 L IS for general wide use & image stabilisation
a compact Sigma 70-210mm f4-5.6 zoom that a friend lend me for the extra reach.
filter kit including : ND2-ND400 & grads, linear & circular polarizer, etc...
+ compass, citymap, flashlight, couple swivel hooks & straps, mp3 player, 1L of redbull + dried fruit & cereal snacks

Taking off at 6 am weighting an extra 20kg, i met up with the technician and we rushed our way up to set & secure things up in the mist.
i started recording before the city lights went off and managed to get most of the situation despite a very gloomy day.
the HV20 was set to either cinemode or sunset mode, i used vivid color when available and either cloudy or automatic white balance. whatever looked right in the viewfinder and matched the other cam.
i would set them 90° angles apart and trigger record for short bursts then move on to other spots when the light was about to change direction. really a hit and miss job that kept me busy running from one tripod to the other managing recording media, batteries and orientation until it felt complete & all media were full.
i mostly did continuous recording on both cams so that i could later use the exact retiming to fit a soundtrack unknown at that point.
why didn't i use more the remote timer ?? because i want to preserve my 5D shutter after reading scary reports of mirror failures around 150K actuations. not that many clicks in a row if you do the math...
also, having f*cked up so many takes in the past by choosing poor shutter/interval combinations on location, i like to enjoy straight video whenever possible to allow further latitude in post : subsampling the stream and/or blending adjacent frames for a smoother trailing effect on moving objects looks better to me than high shutter stuttering.
i used virtualdub and aftereffects to batch process sequences of pictures, trim clips and timestretch everything while listening to the music...

i wanted 30p output so everything was first converted to intermediate PNG frames to retain max quality throughout the whole project without much correction except adding a bit of saturation and unsharp mask on the HDV footage to better match the 5D vibrant output.
project files were eating 200GB before the final render to fullHD 30p DIVX at maximum quality which took overnight.

there you have it! hope that was informative and not too boring...

i'm currently looking for a true editing workflow, i am learning sony vegas with the trial ; i would buy it in an instant if only it wasn't limited to a lame 4x speed playback and 3x velocity curve... if anyone knows a better deal i'm interested you'd suggest what to try in a comment ! yes the 5D is a bitch to edit and no i am not buying cineform. i guess i'll stay an AE guy for a while...

[Timay]

Very nice! You can see a shadow of the tower at 3:20...how much HV20 footage did you use?

[rhervag]

Very nice! You can see a shadow of the tower at 3:20...

exactly !
also visible in the first half of this older video in the right of the frame on the horizon line

[ame="http://vimeo.com/4923853"]LAVAL 24.05.2009 on Vimeo[/ame]

how much HV20 footage did you use?

about half of the final video is from the HV20 : most medium shots and closeups are. 5D did all the wider shots + fancy fisheye / tilt-shift views.
i can't really tell which one took some of the shots without checking the source files.

i did not color correct anything just aggressive sharpening & saturation boost of the HDV footage to push it in the same ballpark as the 5D image. i was pleasantly surprised at how they seamlessly intercut after that.
it was the first time i re-used the hv20 naked since getting my handy35 adapter. for this, i wanted the deepest focus and it did the job just right.