The Promo we shot for Canon
 

More details on our blog but basically, we shoot Canon for photo and video and they wanted us to shoot us shooting a wedding. We produced a little promo piece and traveled across Canada showing the promo and speaking at the Expo.

Boy was it tough interviewing myself with mulitple cams, lighting, audio etc. In the video, I'm the one with the Steadicam. Amina is shooting the photos. Rob is the male photographer. Michael appears in the printer bar segment. Tony is shooting the rings and has a shot of him before the ceremony.

Thought some of you might like to check it out:

http://stillmotionblog.com/?p=189

Patrick
www.still-motion.ca

Wow Patrick! That's quite an honor!

Kudos to you my friend!!!
This is an incredible promo piece which im sure Canon are more than happy with. Showing a good insight into a variety of options and as Amina says, staying ahead of the game.

Head off to http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php and drop this down to the wedding forum for some more phtoographic feedback dude.

once again, youve outdone yourselves. Next time ur down in Aus, drop me a note and we'll go for a coffee ;)

Cheers
P

Absolutely amazing, and inspiring...ur quite easily the world's best team at this stuff

well done on getting Canon under your belt, does that mean loads of free canon stuff? are you sponsored by them now?

also, do u care to share your age with us, u look alot younger than i expected

keep up the great work.....update on myself: i have an amazing new girlfriend, moved in to her house with her last weekend, proprosal next year hopefully...so can i book u for 2010? :)

Very nice, Patrick!

How many people do you have on your team? And how many cameras do you bring out to an event? The Steadicam stuff looked great.

The only thing I noticed that 'felt' weird, was your interview clip, where you're on the far left of the screen, looking to the left. Why not look to the right there, into the open space? :)

Again, nice work!
Eric

Yeah Eric, that stood out as jarring to me as well. Otherwise, good stuff and a great idea to offer the printer bar.

-gb-

Yeah the printer idea is great. I was unclear as to whether the cameras were provided, or anyone could print from any camera?

It's like offering disposable cameras to everyone at a wedding and then rounding them up at the end and developing them. Except accelerated about 1,000x, with better pictures and instant gratification. Such a cool idea.

I believe that's what Patrick stated in his dialog. They set it up and let people print pictures from 'their' digital cameras during the reception.

-gb-

Right, that's what it sounded like. I guess I was overthinking this. If they're using memory cards, they just put those in the printer.

I was thinking a bunch of USB adapters/cables for everything that's out there, PictBridge and everything else support, etc. Nevermind. ;)

Thanks again Richard. It is more of a partnership with Canon vs a sponsorship. We can beta test some things, borrow gear, and we also get some other perks like being able to put the Canon logo on our site.

Most of the team is mid-wenties with some of us slightly older and some slightly younger.

Now why are you talking 2010- if you are thinking of a proposal next year, late '09 would work, no? Congrats.

Patrick

Eric,

We have three photographers and three videographers on our team. A large package with a same-day edit would have 3 video and 2 photo at the wedding. Most packages would have about 6-7 cameras there, but that is so that they are all ready for different things (35mm adapter, merlin, steadicam). Ceremonies are anywhere from 3-5 cams.

About the interviews, I totally agree. They wanted me to be in the interview, and that portion happened rather late in the storyboarding so I didn't have time to get somebody else to shoot it for me. There was an idea that would fill up the empty space, but that never materialized. Looking at it as soon as it was done, we totally should have moved the cutaway cam to the other side, and had me looking into the frame. As-is, looking in the opposite direction would have had me stairing straight at the tight cam and not looking at the interviewer (who was sitting on the left). The size of the room and time constraints made it very tight to make changes though. More than having me look out of the frame with all of the empty space, I think my posture really hurt that section too. Especially considering that Amina really did a great job with speaking.

Patrick

Canon tossed the idea to us with a digital camera on each table as well, but there were concerns over all the cameras still being there at the end of the night. Right now, we just rent the 5 printers, we operate the station, we refill the printers and supply all the paper/ink we need. The printers take cartridges that have both the paper and ink in them so it is a very easy setup. Guests then use their digital cameras and can make free prints. The printers also have a retractable USB cable on the side so you can plug your camera in if it doesn't accept the memory cards your using.

The excitement level matches that of an SDE with the right crowd. Obviously the meotion is much lower with the printer bar, but people really really love it.



Patrick

It looks like your team is really familiar with one another, so you're able to capture stuff without too much overlap. I did enjoy seeing the Steadicam op running around at 30mph during the dance. He's quick! :)

Perhaps a luma key/horizontal flip would be a quick solution to that. Though someone might catch that the buttons run down the wrong side of the shirt, and assume you're wearing a woman's shirt. But otherwise, I think it would help :) Or luma key it and just move you to Amina's position. She seems like a hard act to follow anyway. ;)

Even some of the printer bar shots were great. They looked like they were from a commercial, really. The one with the lady squatting down smiling at printer level was priceless. Really nice work there.

Hi Patrick,

Congratulations!

Excellent work Patrick, your use of the flyer is exemplary.

You kiddng John? His flyer work totally kicks a$$!!!

Very nice!! Great shots and good editing. Only thing was that after watching it the first time without sound, I thought it was a promo for Steadicam Flyer.

Wow! Great stuff Patrick. Just wondering how much grading you do on your video? What software do you use?

Patrick:
Can I come over to your house and play? :) Inspirational work!

Thanks,
John

I am always inspired by the work of the Still Motion crew. Inspiring indeed.

So, it looks as though Canon has made big improvements in the lux department. I've had an XL1 for years and I can't stand it in low light. It looks like the Canon HD cameras are doing well in low light.

-Don B.

I believe they improved it with the XL2. :)

Patrick,

the work is superb.

For the "same day video", what NLE are you using?

Feeling inspired,

marks

Sorry for the delayed reply guys- we are currently shooting a wedding in the Dominican. I should have a pretty wild trailer up for the wedding down here later today/early tomorrow.

Dennis,

I do a lot of grading to every shot. Maybe 1/3 of the shots receive color/exposure correction, then I throw on 3-4 other filters to customize the look. These days, every shot in an SDE or highlights is thoroughly graded. I'm using FCP and a combination of the built in filters.

Don,

Canon has definitely brought up the low light. Being that these cams can do 24F/24P, you an even shutter down to 1/24 and get some great really low light footage depending on the context. Being out of thecountry, we had to pack very little gear, so it was awesome to shoot the speeches at 1/24 and be able to work with minimal lighting. It is quite an improvement over the XL2 in my opinion.

Mark,

The NLE we use for everything is FCP- the latest version. I edit on either a macbook pro or a 24" imac.

Thanks for all the comments.

Patrick

They actually improved it with the XL-1s. It had a sensitivity increase of 4db over the original XL-1.

With the XL-2 came improved noise handling via DSP advances.

-gb-

Details, details. :)

I was just saying the XL1 from 1997 has been improved upon a while back I guess. :)

I liked the wedding footage. How many hours can you use that steady cam before exhaustion?

The interviews were a little off though. Looking too far off camera. And some of the dialog seemed a bit canned.

PS you guys look like a secret agent squad with those black get ups. "Patrick's Angels." Or "The Patrick Ultimatum". 00-Pat.

With the flyer, I guess can easily clock up to 10hours, if you are well used to it. You do not wear that thing every single minutes do you? Have a break in between.

I use the steadicam all day if need to, and I've had 3 weddings in a weekend this year, all of which I wore it for at least part. It is easier for me to use than the glidecam, although you do get more sweat with it.

I believe the interview section has already been discussed, so I won't go back over that. All the dialog we actually came up with as we spoke, so it was the furthest thing from being canned. Yor probably the only person to actually tell us that too. Oh well, you can't please everybody. I think it worked very well for what it was meant for.

No, I would rarely wear it for an entire shoot. Usually most of the preps, the photo-session, and a good portion of the reception, with a couple minutes of ceremony thrown in for the highlights.

what brand of steady cam is that? is it a DIY?

The steadicam is a flyer. We had a DIY of sorts- the magiqcam- for a year or so but quickly outgrew it.

Patrick

Dennis,

I do a lot of grading to every shot. Maybe 1/3 of the shots receive color/exposure correction, then I throw on 3-4 other filters to customize the look. These days, every shot in an SDE or highlights is thoroughly graded. I'm using FCP and a combination of the built in filters.



Wow that is a lot of grading. What filters do you use in FCP if you dont mind me asking?

Hi Dennis,

I use several copies of the 3-way corrector quite often. Nattress's simple curves are also a staple for my color work.

Patrick

Shooting wedding is a sure way of slimming down, especially with all those steadicam gears. You be sweating most of the time I guess. :)

Congratulations on the partnership with Canon, Patrick. Your team certainly deserves some more exposure (pardon the pun).

Thanks Travis,

We have some big Canon news coming up in the next month or so.

which Canon vid cams
 

Hi Patrick,

I'm sorry if you've posted this already, but what Canon vid cams were you using for this shoot? I'm still quite pleased with my PD/VX combo (thank you) and I plan on using those for the next year. About a year from now I may be ready to go HD. I had an XL, now I have the Sony cams that you know about. Maybe my next move will be back to Canon. (?) Seems as though their marketing idea of working with you is working. ;-) I am impressed... not just with your work, but also with the performance of the cams.

BTW: I've learned a bit of working with the Magiqcam but I still have a way to go before I consider myself good with it. I think I need to experiment more with balancing.

Always a treat to see your stuff. As always, thanks for sharing.


-Don B.

^^ Hi Don,

on behalf of Pat,

http://stillmotionblog.com/?page_id=153

In short we use pretty much all the 1/3" ccd/cmos canon hdv cameras available today (other then the xh-G1).

Thank you Michael. I knew I saw the info somewhere. I forgot it was on the blog and not in this thread. Thanks.

-Don

Thanks for posting that for me Mike.

Right now we have the XL-H1 as the steadicam cam, several XH-A1s for the brevis, tripod cams etc. and hv20s to import and backups.

Patrick