I had the privilege recently of being asked to DP and co-direct a commercial for Microdry with my friends over at studioCase. Microdry create innovative items for the home such as stress mats for the kitchen and floor mats for the bath (among other things). This 1 minute video is currently on loop at Bed Bath & Beyond. Shaun Clarke was my Lighting Guru for the shoot (as he is whenever I can get him!) and always makes us look good.
We shot this at the fantastic Shooting Kitchen in Tribeca, NYC and it’s been on loop at Bed Bath & Beyond since the holidays. We shot the opening sequence with a 5 foot cineslider by Kessler Crane and their time-lapse motor setup, the Oracle Controller and the ElektraDRIVE motor. Shot on Canon 5DMKII and Zeiss CP2 lenses: 85mm, 25mm, 50mm. Of course, it was a one day shoot with kids and animals…what was that old saying? Both were wonderful to work with.
The Kessler set up was easy to work with. We had envisioned this type of tracking timelapse shot, for the opening and I had seen it done, but I’d never done it. I jumped over to Tom Guilmette’s site and he has a couple of really great kessler demos for getting going on the Oracle/Elektra set up. We did a test run in the office the night before, and pulled it in to FCP and it worked like a champ. I was confident we’d get what we needed for the shoot the next day.
My suggestion to anyone doing this in the future would be to mark action points along the cineslider. We ended up with a lot of compressed action in certain spots, and this could have easily been avoided if we had marked out “where” in the camera slide we needed specific action to occur. Next time!
I had my friend Leilani come along to take some BTS stills, as I knew it was going to be a fun shoot.
4 Comments
Fun to hear you geek out on the equipment and to see some of Leilani’s shots from the day—even if I (errr…my shoes) only appear once.
Always a pleasure working with you my friend.
Fixed Yancy…You made the cut
Ha! Thanks.
Very nice, thanks for sharing.