I’m constantly looking for inspiration and today I ran across this video on Phillip Bloom’s favorites page on Vimeo. It’s a touching story of a high school cross country team pushing to win a state championship for their coach who’s suffering from ALS disease.

This story has great visuals, but even better is has a story with content and emotion. These are the types of stories I strive to tell. Kudos to Evolve Digital Cinema for a job well done.

Yesterday I got together with several of my video making friends to test some new Kessler Crane gear that Josh Fulkerson had purchased. Our main focus was to use the Kessler KC 12/8 Crane with Revolution Head and Oracle Controller. Josh also purchased a Cineslider, but I’ll save that for a rainy day.

As we gathered I threw out the idea of trying to create a short film using the equipment rather than just shooting shots. So we come up with an “Untitled” piece. Since this was a short, and there was some sort of storyline we reserved the crane for epic shots. The rest of the shooting was mostly handheld using a Zacuto Striker and Crossfire. We threw in an occasional tripod shot using the Vinten Vision Blue as well.

Chris Neal was gracious enough to be our on camera talent. Brian Notess did most of the directing and let Thomas Bernardin and I throw in our two cents worth as we shared DP responsibilities.

Damon Hancock (Fat Head Media) shot behind the scenes footage for us, which I hope to use in a review of the KC12/8.

It was a fun day work with these guys. The team has amazing talent and yet everyone was willing to work with each other with a very give and take attitude. It’s not the most amazing story and we are considering redoing the end to create a bit more of an emotional take away, but only time will tell. We all have busy schedules so we’ll see if we can pull something together.

In the end it’s about testing and getting experience with the Kessler gear before using it in the real world on a paying gig. I can say we accomplished that and a bit more.

This is a story I’m in the process of working on. I’ve got about a third of it shot, and I’m still re-working the script for voice over. Not to mention this is a very rough cut!

From the beginning I wanted this project to have a bit of a vintage vibe to it so I started experimenting with 5D Leaks.

I’ve found turning the opacity down around 50% has worked best for this project so far. The challenge is finding balance. What’s too much and what leak looks best (there are 50 clips included in the package). It’s all about patience and experimentation just like any other effect.

I didn’t spend much time creating a grade so I think tying the leak pallet to the color grade will help in the future.

I like the ease of use of 5D Leaks. It’s very simple to use in Final Cut. Drag clip on to the top most layer of your timeline, control click and use composite mode. I used “add” for the project. You can find a tutorial here.

You can also create light leaks in camera. James Miller has a guest post on Philip Bloom’s site on the art of lens whacking. It’s not for the faint of heart! Check it out.

I’m seriously considering updating cameras. I’ve been shooting most projects with the Canon 7D, which I love. However, any HDSLR has its limitions, and is by no means a proper video camera. The highly compressed H264 Codec limits the post-production capabalities for one thing. Then there’s the 12 minute recording limit, the lack of audio monitoring, no XLR mic inputs, and more.

Why the Sony FS100? First off, the price is right. I’d love to grap a Canon C300, but its cost drives it out of my reach. The jobs I do don’t require a camera at that price point. So I regretfully pass on Canon’s latest offering. It’s my opinion that you don’t get what you pay for with the C300. No 10bit, and no 1080p over-cranking? What was Canon thinking?

I figure as I do my research I’d compile a list of videos demoing, and/or reviewing the Sony FS100. I hope it helps save you time!

Here’s a link to the Vimeo FS-100 Users Group.

Philp’s demo shoot for Sony. Lovely imagery and great use of shallow depth of field (of course). More BTS on his blog here.

A review comparing the FS100 and its big brother F3. Includes some side by side shots.

Demo footage of the FS100 in the real world. Full review on Strapping Production’s blog.

Endgadget’s very practical and thorough review of the FS100. Blog post here.

James has done a ton of testing with the FS100. Visit his blog for more info.

This is the most recent video I produced for One Life Church. Austin Maxheimer, the small groups leader, approached me with a very simple concept for the video. The idea was to show Life Group leaders at work and leading their groups. What Austin wanted to communicate is the “why” these guys lead a Life Group and at the same time show visually these are everyday people with jobs like the rest of us.

I spent about four hours shooting the footage. An hour at work for each leader and an hour hanging with their groups at homes. I recorded the voice overs at the group meetings in a separate room to avoid background noise. I also tried to keep some of the natural sound from the clips in the mix to add a bit of life to the footage.

I graded the footage in black and white for two reasons. One to save time! Because of scheduling I was rushed to deliver everything on Friday. Secondly, I was inspired by a picture Jeff Seymore had sent us on a baby dedication concept for pictures. I liked his design of graphic, and was inspired to use the same look in the videos. See photo below.

I saw this video on Michael Schmidt’s blog, and thought I’d post it here as well (sorry for stealing the idea Michael).

I have two Zeiss lenses, a 50mm/f1.4 ZF, and an 85mm/f1.4 ZF, that I love. I hope to review them someday.

Alex Serban has done a great job with this video, and special thanks goes to him for putting in the time and effort to produce something more creative than boring technical review.

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Christmas. Instead of busting out my HDSLR camera and shooting video of my family’s Christmas experience I decided to shoot everything with my iPhone. I carry it everywhere, and it’s so much smaller and easier to shoot with.

I also thought it would be a challenge to edit on my phone as well. And to be honest it was a tedious experience using the iMovie app.

I shot everything using the Vintage Camera app, which gave me the 8mm look. I was going for a home movie feel. The disadvantage of this was I had to save all of the clips from the Vintage app into my camera roll, an annoying added step. It also didn’t take advantage of the iPhone 4s 1080p camera specs.

Once in iMovie things were very straight forward. Cutting on the iPhone is limiting, but iMovie is sufficient. It’s tedious, but at least you can edit video on your phone. So I won’t complain.

Here’s another video I shot a while back using the Vintage Camera app.

Open Your Eyes will be reviewed on Critics mid-January. Broadcast date to be announced.

What a difference a day can make. Pardon the cheesy cliche, but it’s true. Yesterday I posted “How I Almost Made It On Critics.” The series is over so I thought I would tell the story of how close I got to being on my favorite web series. After posting the blog I shared it with Steve Weiss via Facebook since he was mentioned in post. I thought he may find the piece humorous.

I also noticed Philip Bloom “liked” the video piece I had blogged about yesterday so I figured he may have seen the post thanks to Zacuto Mandy re-tweeting it. To say the least the number of hits on “Open Your Eyes” jumped significantly after he liked it. I thanked him via Twitter. I was excited to see Rebecca’s story being shared with more people.

Later that evening I had the house to myself because the girls went out to the movies. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to watch “Restrepo”. I set up Netfix on my wife’s Wii and got lost in the amazing story.

After getting everyone to bed I checked my blog’s stats to see how many hits it had gotten. It was a big day for me (I average about 50 hits per post so I’m not a blog superstar). Then I noticed Steve had commented on my post. I thought, “Wow, that’s really cool of Steve to interact on my blog. What a nice guy.” Then I proceeded to read his post. I literally said, “Holy crap.” If you know me that’s pretty strong language.

Here’s his response:

“Chris,
I watched your piece twice now and I cried less the second time. I remember struggling on if we should review your piece in season 3 and it was a hard call for anyone who has a daughter like myself to be able to watch the piece and be able to rationally critique it vs. just letting its emotional power drive the review.
That being said, I want you to come to Chicago on the 19th of January where just for you we are going to create a special Critics event. We will review your video with you on the show. I want to hear your feedback as a part of the show. Let me know if you are game.”

Needless to say, I’m game. I’ve had all sorts of friends congratulating me and telling me I’m a rock star. I’m far from it, but I’m excited to go on my favorite web series to discuss one of the toughest stories I’ve ever told. I’m humbled by Steve’s gesture, and look forward to meeting him again. I also look forward to honoring Rebecca and her parents, Brandon and Jessica, by sharing what it was like to be a small part of their story.

Sadly the web-series “Critics” has run it’s course and will no longer be produced by Zacuto. I’ll miss the banter between Steve Weiss and Philip Bloom as well as their critical feedback of short films. Honestly, I looked forward to each episode mostly in hopes of seeing my own work being critiqued. In the final series Weiss and Bloom opened submissions from anyone and everyone willing to submit their posted films on the internet. From there a few-hand selected films made the final cut for their review. This is the story of how my work almost made it on Critics.

Last year I went to Chicago for a Bloom meet up. I had a great time connecting with other shooters and meeting the man himself. I ended up sitting at the VIP table with Bloom, Steve Weiss, Susan Rapp, JJ Kim, Karen Abad, Kevin Otterness, Kim St. Aubin and more. It was a very cool experience. I watched Bloom and Weiss argue over techie camera stuff, chatted with Karen about the pain of pre-production, and J.J. filled me in on how his equipment was stolen at a church when he was shooting a wedding.

The irony of all of this is I didn’t know I was sitting at the VIP table. I came in early and grabbed a seat with Bloom because I shared a taxi with him (he paid for it so I guess it wasn’t really shared). In some ways my ignorance paid off. I actually felt horrible once I realized my mistake and later apologized to Kevin and Kim. They were very kind to me and didn’t think anything of it.

So the next day before checking out of my hotel room, I direct messaged Philip one of the videos I submitted to Critics. I had asked him the night before if he and Steve reviewed my video earlier that day (they were in production at the time). He didn’t remember so I thought I would send him the video I had submitted so he could connect me with my work.

Now this is where things got really exciting for me. I may have peed my pants a little to be honest. I got a message back from Philip that he liked my video. At first I was shocked he watched it. Then another message from Philip: “I’m going to try to get it on Critics today.” It was the last day they were shooting. I couldn’t believe it!

So as I drove home from Chicago all I could do was daydream of what Steve and Philip were going to say about my piece. Did they think it was good? I bet Weiss wanted me to use natural sound. Was it too long?

Of course I also kept telling myself there’s no guarantee it will make it on the show. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. When I got back to Evansville I stopped by my office. I got a DM from Bloom again telling me they needed some more quality stuff and he was trying to convince Steve to watch it.

The story I had shared was a tough piece. It’s a brief story of a couple that lost one of their twin girls after only 74 days of life. Philip warned me that Steve would have issues watching it because he didn’t like watching that type of stuff. I totally understood so again I tried not to get my hopes up.

So each time a new session of Critics was released I watched to see if they reviewed my video. And each time no review. I was beginning to lose hope.

A few months later I was attending CFLive in Nashville and had to know. Did Steve and Philip give my video a review? I finally asked Philip if the video made the cut. Philip was nice enough to tell me it didn’t make it. Steve couldn’t bring himself to watch the video. At least Philip told me it was quality work, and that meant a lot to me. So there’s the story of how I was so close to getting my video on to my favorite web series, but didn’t make it.

This is the video I submitted to Critics that didn’t make the cut.

An image taken in Jasper, Indiana, from my early days of shooting as a photojournalist. Capturing everyday moments was my favorite assignment.

Looking back there was a time I thought I would never do video. I wanted to be a stills shooter and nothing else. When I was attending Ohio University studying photojournalism there was a movement called “platypus”, which was comprised of journalists doing both stills and video. At that time I snubbed my nose at the thought of doing video. I was going to be purist. I shot film. Why would I complicate my life with video? You have to move the camera, and then there’s the whole audio thing you have to worry about as well.

When I moved to working for a church as an arts director, I found the most popular way to communicate was the medium of video. We used it in our services and posted stuff on the web. I even found myself doing short films for bigger projects. I was no longer a stills snob and quickly learned how effective video could be.

I also found editing to be a cool challenge. Putting visuals together to tell a story was something I had learned in school and was easily applied to in timeline editing. I still consider myself a student when it comes to telling stories. I certainly haven’t arrived. However, editing came easy to me and I still enjoy cutting.

One of my early shorts shot on the Sony PD-170. Written and directed by Andy Mullins.

When the HDSLR movement began it did affect the quality of videos I was making. Because I was familiar with DSLR’s and the ability to change lenses it was a no brainer for me to jump on board. I abandoned my Sony PD-170, and grabbed a Canon 7D (I’m a Nikon stills guy at heart).

The first short film I shot with the 7D turned out fairly good. I didn’t know about locking my shutter speed at a 50th, neutral density filters, or Philip Bloom’s suggested color/contrast settings. In fact all I had to work with were my Nikon lenses and a really cheap tripod. Despite all of those things the film is still one of the best stories I’ve done! It goes to show you don’t have to have fancy equipment to tell stories.

My first story shot with the Canon 7D.

After finishing that story a whole new world of story telling was opened. Damon of Fat Head Media shared Josh’s story with St. Mary’s Hospital and offered to do the same with them as a client (it was his 7D we used in the production). A few weeks later we were shooting videos for them. I also built up a number of clients for myself.

My first commercial gig shot with the Canon 7D.

So I owe a big thanks to Canon for developing an affordable tool that produces a great quality image. It really has helped me, but never forget that content trumps any amount of cool gear. My favorite quote from Terry Eiler, Director and Professor of Visual Communications, was, “The greatest tool you have is found between your ears.” The more I’ve shot the more I’ve seen the truth of this statement.

It’s a great time to be alive if you use video as an artistic tool. The quality of image one can get out of an affordable camera is amazing. There hasn’t been anything like this in the history of video, and I love it.

I haven’t totally abandoned stills shooting by any means. However, I’m not a daily stills guy anymore. When I worked for The Press Journal that’s what I did. And I can say the more you shoot the better you will get. That was the disadvantage of me attending VisCom with no experience in the real world. I owe the quality of shooting I pull off today to shooting daily for newspapers. I wouldn’t trade my training as a photojournalist for film school any day.