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Skate Newport Cox Communications TV Spot – Letus Ultimate and Sony EX1
I was hired by a good client of mine out of Rhode Island, Cox Communications, to DP a short spot for the Newport Skating Center. I had a few rough storyboard emailed to me and I was asked to shoot the project using my EX1, Letus Ultimate and my PVC skateboard dolly system. We shot outdoors at a skating rink and I used all natural light.  I knew the job was going to be a fast shoot, so with the help of two Cox interns, we were able to knock out each shot very quickly. I am mastering the use of the PVC pipe dolly and it works effectively with little setup time. The entire commercial was shot within two hours. Very simply spot, nothing flashy here. I enjoy directing kids. The secret is to give them hot chocolate, tell them to act natural and never look at the lens. When the hot chocolate runs out, the problems begin!
One thing that helped me rush through the setups was a bit of insight from one of the Cox people. I was told that the “Digi” costume was designed only to be worn for ten minutes. Apparently, the white bubbly-headed mascot did not have any air holes for breathing! Just a little obstacle you can sometimes run into on location. I used the Letus Ultimate and the Sony PMW-EX1 because the client likes the XDCAM EX work flow. I just transferred the footage at the end of the day using my Mac Book Pro onto a Cox external USB hard drive. The producers took the drive back to the station and dumped the footy into their NLE system. I had a backup of all the files on my external drive and held on to it for a few weeks, just in case.
I could have shot this using the Canon 5dmk2, but I am still making a lot of money using my XDCAM and the Letus 35mm lens adapter. Plus, I love the look of the old Nikon Nikkor lenses and the Letus Ultimate! I mostly used the fast Nikon 55mm f1.2 and the super sharp Nikon 105mm f2.5. I shot on my Vinten Vision 10 AS tripod and used ten foot spans of PVC pipe under my skateboard dolly. I also used a set of Vinten babylegs on the dolly for the low sliding moves. All the stuff shot on the ice was done handheld. Antony Finucane at Cox Communications edited the spot using Final Cut Pro. I found it interesting that he decided to use two-frame dissolves instead of cuts for all the transitions. Softens up the look I suppose. I really liked the use of a wipe when the white cups of hot chocolate sweep out of focus across the frame. That was not part of the storyboards. I was hoping the editor would pick up on that! Special thanks to John Parris for sending me this video file to post. 14 comments to Skate Newport Cox Communications TV Spot – Letus Ultimate and Sony EX1 |
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Copyright © 2012 Tom Guilmette - All Rights Reserved |
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Hey Tom, was this shot in 24fps, or did you vary the frame rate at all? Some shots even seem a little slowed down! Looks great.
i shot the spot in 1080p 30p. not sure what ant did to effect the footage.
thanks for checking it out and taking the time to place a comment.
Hey Tom – Ant actually edited this on Adobe Premiere on a Mac.
cool! sorry bout that. i seem to always assume people use final cut pro when editing on a mac!
were the two frame dissolves by design or was that a product of the web encode?
Your voice has gotten much higher since I last saw you.
HA! i don’t even know what that person is! but i swear its not me doing the vo on this spot!
We auditioned voice talent through Star Trak Studios in Warwick, RI. Cox uses them quite a bit.
http://www.startrakstudios.com
thx john.
hey tom do you upload the video to the flowplayer and then copy and paste the code to your blog just like vimeo?
no. i upload a .mp4 file to my server via FTP. i then use code in my wordpress page to display the player and the video file. i use a flowplayer plugin for wordpress that generates the code. i host all my video on my web server. you could always use vimeo, exposure room or youtube to save server space instead.
[...] wonder what it takes to film a :30 TV spot? A lot of hard work, that’s for [...]
Hi Tom – We at Skate Newport loved your insight into how the TV spot came to be. We’ve linked to this article on our Facebook page and on our blog:
http://www.facebook.com/waterfrontevents
http://www.newportwaterfrontevents.com/harborchatter/?p=631
Thanks again!
hey glad you liked it! thanks for the post and the link. always nice to hear from the client.
Love your work, Tom. Thanks for sharing. I’m an EX1/Ultimate user like yourself. I have a nice collection of Nikon lenses for the Ultimate and am waiting for Nikon to produce something that can compete with the 7d, or with the new Rebel T2i for that matter, so I can use my lenses. Do you know of any plans for such a release? Also, you’ve shot with both the EX1/Ult and the HD DSLRs (5d or 7d), is the image on the HD DSLR so much better than the EX1/Ult setup? I kinda want to get into the DSLR for low light reasons. Your thoughts. Thanks in advance.