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Ultimate Boston
Behind the scenes blog of “Ultimate Boston”: Click Here. I have a Letus Ultimate in my possession and with the busy schedule of the Playoffs, I have not been able to use it enough. I managed to put aside time to shoot for an entire day, from 5am to 6pm in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. I met up with a friend of mine, Craig Stevens, and we shot a lot of great images. Craig also shot a bunch of still photos of me in action for my behind the scenes blog. You can find the 35mm adapters that I use at letusdirect.com. We pushed around all the gear on a Magliner cart for almost 12 hours. It was close to 90 degrees and many people were outside enjoying the weather. I did many time lapses with the Celestron 114GT telescope panning/tilting head and all of them where set at one frame for every one second. The motor head was set at “5″. Most of the footage in this short was filmed with the Letus Ultimate. Some of the Red Sox time lapse and the baby geese at the end were shot last spring in Boston with the Letus Extreme. You can see the difference (as far as seeing the pattern of ground glass in the shots) compared to the super sharp and clean Letus Ultimate. The shooting locations for this short were the banks of the Charles River, Paul Revere Park, Quincy Market, Post Office Square Park, South Boston Waterfront. I shot this short with the Sony PMW-EX1, Letus Ultimate, Vinten Vision 3 tripod system, and Nikon manual 35mm film lenses. I used mainly these lenses: Nikon 200mm f4 tele, Nikon 300mm f4.5 tele, 50mm f1.4, and the 16mm f2.8 fisheye. I color graded in post with my own secret brew using Magic Bullet Looks. I also used Twixtor to slow down some of the frog footage to 26-55 percent. The ripples in the water look great when processed with the Twixtor 4.5 plug-in. I shot most of this film in 720 30p in over crank mode (60 frames per second). A few of the shots were shot at 30p. The music is “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers and it has been remixed by Jacques Luconts, Thin White Duke. I must thank the kind people at Post Office Square for allowing me to shoot inside the beautiful park. TRT: 7 minutes 06 seconds 20 comments to Ultimate Boston |
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Copyright © 2010 Tom Guilmette - All Rights Reserved |
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Nice piece as usual, Tom – I’ve some of your other nature videos and some from the stadium. Just curious about choice to use 30p over 24p? What are your pros or cons for this? I hope I’m not asking something you’ve already explained a hundred times. Also, when you do a push-in during slow-mo, is that while shooting or in post? I’m asking for super secrets, I know!
@jeremy: I use 30p because I like smooth motion (this site is 30p) and also when shooting overcrank S&Q Motion, I like shooting at the highest possible frame rate, 60FPS for fluid slow motion. Sites like Vimeo are 24p, so it is nice to shoot 24 when just posting to a site like that.
As for the slow zooms…. they are all done in post with basic scaling motion in Final Cut Pro. It is very hard to zoom like that with the setup I am using!
Tom
Total awesomeness. I love it. I think all the shots came out great, and I am glad you included the dolly shot from the South Boston Waterfront, even though it wasn’t what we had originally wanted. It still came out very good. Great post processing and great shots!
How do you mount your EX1 to that Celestron head? I really like that idea.
Mr. Tom Guilmette.com,
I have been enjoying your work for a little over a year now. In fact it was through you that I found and have enjoyed the shorts by Mr. Bloom. I have always been captivated by your creativity and shooting style. This piece is simply beautiful and inspiring. It’s inspiring because it makes me want to go out and shoot like you. So thank you. Thank you for sharing, just wonderful work.
Tom, Nice stuff! The tight shot of the toddler playing in the fountain was stunning. The camera motion in the time lapse really adds to the film.
Is it really that warm in Boston? Nice!
Amazing shots!
Hi, very nice shots as always. I smiled when i saw your shot of the sun’s reflect in the rive, orange light because about 1 week ago, i take a picture like that: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8308914@N05/3467156493/
Maybe i’m in the good way to became a great camera operator like you are ?!
I’ll upload a new video soon and post the link in the forum to have comments.
Thanks for the pleasure that i took to watch your film.
(Sorry for my bad english)
Nathan, from Belgium.
My Flickr photo bud Craig had a link to this video on his very early sunrise shot of Boston and I’m glad that I let this entire video load because it totally rocks (the images and music!)! Very nice job capturing shots of your beautiful city!
@Craig Stevens: Thanks man, I could not have done it without your help.
@Aaron Pinto: I ripped the telescope off and used a L-shaped bracket to mount the camera plate right to the metal tilt gear on the motorized head. Very simple.
@Paul Reynolds: Get out and shoot. I quickly learned that the internet is my way to show the world my style.
@Scott Karlins: Yea it was close to 90 that day! Now it is cold again… I liked the tight stuff, but I really had way too much weight on the Vision 3 tripod. Time to upgrade to a larger Vinten head. Plus the windy conditions later that afternoon did not help.
@Helio Yoshida: Thanks!
@Nathan: Thanks for the comments. Great shot.
Hey Tom — I moved into my new place in Brighton and I don’t have internet yet (I’m at the library on NU’s campus right now). Glad to see the video’s getting a ton of hits. We’ll do it again soon!
Great job! I liked the idea. I am curious on a couple things; did you have to get a permit to shoot on these locations, besides the park? Also, how does this compare to using just a 2/3 chip at wide with ND? It would be cool to do a side by side with a high end camera and a letus setup and see how the images compare.
Any Clienst grabbing for this as a shoot setup?
Thanks again for the share, I hope to get the chance to rent one here on the west coast soon.
Bonjour Tom,
Long time no talk! I see that you have been immensely busy since we last talked (it was about a year ago and you were asking me if you could publish my questions related to the EX1). Meanwhile I bought one and I am so glad I listened to you.
Question: I have been using the 720 30p in over crank mode and I love it. BUT, if you shoot normal footage 1080 30p and want to get the same nice & smooth slow mo, would Twixtor help you do that?
I am looking for a way to get a really nice slow mo out of regular progressive footage.
Thanks for your help and BRAVO on your Boston time lapse. It is very excellent and my jaw dropped (many times) but especially with the shot from the round fountain! Oh la vache! (holy cow in French!)
Raphael
Just watched this video. This is amazing. Excellent work.
@florian: you only have to get permission if you are shooting on private property. shooting on and around the city is no problem. i got written permission to shoot in the park (the long lens people shots). I have a few new clients who found me because of this new setup and my old clients love this stuff!
@Raphael: Twixtor is a great software plugin. It interpolates the footage and adds “extra frames” of video to make the stuff look like it was shot in overcrank. BUT… it only works with limited movement. Cutting the wedding cake would look great, a tight shot of a womans face smiling looks even better. It does not work well with sports like a fast paced basketball highlight or a shot where the information in the frame is constantly changing. Watch, “Chatham Light” on this site, I shot all of that at 60FPS and then slowed it down with Twixtor 4.5.
@Amar: Thanks for watching!
Great video (+superb audio)!
If Boston ever applies for hosting the Olympics, the organisers should consider giving Tom Guilmette a call.
What’s next – aerial shots?
This is an impressive video! Great work! The Letus Ultimate does a wonderful job.
what jesse are you? they guy who sits next a rose in the dead of winter hockey season inside a white box? or someone else?
Well shot, now I’m all homesick! Of course the fact that I have only seen the sun once in the past 3 weeks probably adds to it, but this is a wonderful postcard from home.. thank you!
The time-lapse images were great – I have a Celestron 114 myself, and have done some astrophotography using it as a base, but hadn’t though of using its motor for doing slowpans.
You also really caught some amazing candid moments with the people in the park, that really reminded me what the “face of Boston” looks like.
thanks kerri! boston is a great city and i enjoy working and spending time there.