Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 12:47PM 8 Hours in Brooklyn w/ the Phantom Flex
Blog written by Jonathan Bregel.
A couple weeks ago, Producer James Douglas gave me a call to DP a spot for MMA clothing company, Cagehero , which would be directed by the super-talented collaborative, GrandArmy. In the early concept development process, James Douglas pitched the idea of shooting the spot primarily on Rule Boston Cameras Phantom Flex camera. Having just shot several days on the Phantom Flex for Taylor Swift, I was all for the idea since I was now very familiar with the workflow. After the concept was developed, the Cagehero commercial was booked to shoot on a Saturday, which meant we would have the camera all day Sunday to shoot whatever we wanted. Being as big of a camera nerd that I am, there was no possible way I was going to let the Phantom Flex idle for a day. I immediately called the producer, James, and convinced him to let me take the camera out Sunday. (thanks for being cool James) Little did he know that I would be skateboarding with the Flex hours later..lol.
Anyway, the idea behind this video was to document whatever sort of culture we could find within an 8 hour span with literally no pre-production. I have honestly seen too many slow-motion explosions, face slaps, and popping water baloons, that I thought capturing real culture, and real emotion would be a cool change of pace. My goal was to successfully pull of a few of these shots with a small crew in order to be able to pitch the Phantom Flex for a lot of the documentary work we shoot/produce. A big misconception is that you need a massive crew and massive lights in order to use this camera...false. However, you do need to know how to use natural daylight to your advantage along with having a kick-ass core crew to support you.
The day started out with myself, good friend Dan Selby, and good friend Jesse Korman. Thank the Canadian God's that Chris Dowsett was in town to help us out later in the day (he was lost on the subway for about 2 hours). As the day went on, I got more and more ambitious and ended up riding a skateboard down the street with the Flex in order to get a shot of the skateboarders riding into the sunset. It was just one of those shots that I knew was really stupid to do, but I think it was worth it in the end...you guys can be the judge of that...One of things I am learning more and more is that you really have to do some stupid stuff in order to push the envelope (I think my buddy Tom Lowe can relate). By the end of the day, I was very excited because we had just pulled off a few cool shots with a really small crew. I feel that my goal was met in that we have proven the Phantom Flex can be used effectively for docu-style shooting.
Below are some BTS pictures taken by Chris Dowsett
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Reader Comments (57)
Beautiful stuff man. The skateboard shot was silly good.
Isnt Chris IN pic no 2? Mad BTS Skillz
Thanks Jared!
Andrew...ha yeah it is, hes so good, he can levitate his camera and control it from his mind.
Sickness! Illa to tha villa homie.
So dope! Love the Phantom Flex's ability to go HAM on the fps. Produces relly nice slo-mo...the music was just the icing on the cake. Rad on the grading. The skateboard frame will be generating alot of buzz, in addition to the other clips...that one just stood out. The angle and lighting was on point. So much that Twixtor can do at this moment. Sony is forcing engineers to step up their hardware/software game. Nicely executed guys!
Who did the music for this video, it really added to the already awesome video. Great work.
Can you license this video under Creative Commons?
Awesome! Was that water/street slide shot done on a skateboard as well?
Hey, that's an wesome clip you've done here. I really liked the scenes and the soundtrack. What soundtrack is it? Hope to see many more movies like this from you guys! Really nice job (read about it on Gizmodo) :D
The song is "Where You Should Be" by Skream
bravi........
Such a great video! Love the music too.. I looked it up and it's Where You Should Be by Skream
The slip n slide shot was pure New York. Beautifully captured.
Amazing work. I've watched the video several times over and shared it across the net.
People need to this!
STUNNING!!!!! I can't stop watching.
Lovely stuff. Congratulations. Very evocative.
The video is THAT amazing ! The music flawlessly fits with it ! GREAT !
Superb video...awesome music!! Who's playing? :)
@ Florin:
The music:
Skream - Where You Should Be ft Sam Franck
@iKos Thanks dude