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[now screening] – Share. Old Skool Cafe

Posted in NEWS, SHARE by on May 14.



we started Share because we wanted to give back. we wanted to help illuminate some very valuable causes or projects that need to be seen by larger audiences. what we didn’t fully expect, was just how much we would gain from the experience. we’ve long said that the process of filmmaking is as valuable as the result itself, and nowhere is that more apparent than the creation of this film.

getting to know so many of the people that make up Old Skool showed us a world that few of us had ever experienced first hand. it was certainly my first time visiting the projects and you can immediately feel the environment as you enter.

as you’ll see in the film, what we were left with was such a warm portrait of these youth who put so much of who they are, and so much heart into making Old Skool a success. i can remember being in that age range, not quite 20 yet, and…

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A Game of Honor + stillmotion Wins Three Emmys!

Posted in WEDDINGS by on May 2.

what a night!!!

we decided to walk to the Emmys last night. it was a distance that, on a normal day in NY, you would cab. we wanted to have some time to take it all in before the show started. looking back just a couple years, a weekend in late April would probably see us off shooting a wedding somewhere and now we were hours away from receiving multiple Emmy’s for our work in A Game of Honor.

the view from inside the lincoln center as we mingled before the show began

stillmotion was nominated for 8 Emmy’s, which we couldn’t help but get excited about, but we went in trying to keep our expectations down. this was out first time at the show and there are a lot of strong entries across all of the categories.

one of the first categories we were nominated in was Outstanding Promo, for the trailer to A Game of Honor. for each category, like most award shows, they announce all the nominees and play a brief clip of each. that’s followed by the winner being revealed from a white envelope. sitting there, waiting for announcement, you’d almost start saying ‘A Game of Honor’ to yourself almost as if hearing it would make it real. and then it happened. they called…

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A Game of Honor + stillmotion Wins Three Emmys!

Posted in NEWS by on May 1.

what a night!!!

we decided to walk to the Emmys last night. it was a distance that, on a normal day in NY, you would cab. we wanted to have some time to take it all in before the show started. looking back just a couple years, a weekend in late April would probably see us off shooting a wedding somewhere and now we were hours away from receiving multiple Emmy’s for our work in A Game of Honor.

the view from inside the lincoln center as we mingled before the show began

stillmotion was nominated for 8 Emmy’s, which we couldn’t help but get excited about, but we went in trying to keep our expectations down. this was out first time at the show and there are a lot of strong entries across all of the categories.

one of the first categories we were nominated in was Outstanding Promo, for the trailer to A Game of Honor. for each category, like most award shows, they announce all the nominees and play a brief clip of each. that’s followed by the winner being revealed from a white envelope. sitting there, waiting for announcement, you’d almost start saying ‘A Game of Honor’ to yourself almost as if hearing it would make it real. and then it happened. they called…

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[SMAPP] – almost here!

Posted in EDUCATION, SMAPP by on May 1.

we are close, oh so close. there are a lot of moving parts involved in getting SMAPP to you, from the refinement of the tools, the design, the development, and then approval of any changes from Apple. as we make SMAPP an easier tool to use and a stronger tool for you, that then ripples through all of the other stages of design, development, approval – which takes time.

our biggest challenge is that we have so much that we want SMAPP to be, but every addition means more time to get it ready. i think our developers are probably starting to fear our phone calls as each one comes with a handful of news ideas we want to add, all of which need to be done right away for launch :)

with all that being said, here is where we are at…

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[Q of Week] – shooting solo

Posted in QUESTION OF THE WEEK by on Apr 26.

shooting solo on the morning of Mel and Joel’s wedding

“how do you film when you have no one to help you? how do you achieve multiple shots other than station couple camera?“

shooting solo is definitely a daunting task, but it is far from impossible. it takes a special sort of person and outlook to try and tackle a shoot often needing 2-3 people with only one. that doesn’t mean that makes it is a bad idea, it means you need to be prepared to put in a little more. some of our best work has come from weddings shot with one person or shoots on A Game of Honor where only one person was there. sometimes it takes a little luck, but shooting solo will really push you to know what you want out of a scene and will push you to be a better storyteller.

simplify

one of the best examples of a wedding that was shot solo by us would be JC and Esther. at over 200k views on vimeo it became our most viewed wedding film to date. with most of our weddings shot with 2-3 people and dozens of lenses, i learned a lot in approaching a story with one person and needing to really simplify things. the first thing to go was…

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[NOW SCREENING] – A Cisco Spot

Posted in BEHIND THE SCENES, COMMERCIAL by on Apr 16.

this was a pretty exciting shoot to be a part of. we got to go inside one of Cisco’s data center and spend the day looking for interesting shots and compositions. Matt had some rough boards and shot ideas for us, but most of the visuals were inspired by what we all saw there. it was fun shooting for something that would be so heavily covered in animation and text in post. it meant we had to think in a new way and make sure the shots were long, slow, and composed in a way that fit what would be added in post without knowing exactly what would go where.

Matt and P. getting the Epic in place for of our first shots of the day

the Epic rig built with a Zacuto baseplate and…

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the stillmotion 5D MK3 Review

Posted in COMMERCIAL, EDUCATION by on Apr 9.

sorry we are a little late to the review party, we wanted to make sure we had shot several pieces with the camera and really put it through the paces. before we start, i do want to say that we aren’t going to be posting noise samples, sharpness comparisons, or other such pixel peeping. not that that information isn’t important to know about or to consider when choosing any camera, it just wasn’t what we or our clients are looking at when we chose this camera.

Ray and P. filming Trombone Shorty with 5D MK3 for the Final Four Open [photo - Tyler Kaufman / CBS]

what we’ve done thus far with the 5D MK3

this review is based on how the 5D Mark3 has performed in the field and for the types of shoots we have been on lately. thus far we’ve shot several pieces for CBS with the MK3. the first was an 8 min feature on the Chardon High School shooting called ‘One Heartbeat‘ that aired Saturday night before the Final Four games. we also helped shoot both the Saturday and Monday night opens – Monday’s which aired on CBS to about 15 million people. Through these three pieces, the MK3 footage has been cut in with Varicam, Epic, Alexa, and broadcast footage. while assisting on the edit on the backlot at the Superdome, several producers walked through and saw the pieces we were working on. one commented on the Saturday open in particular (the Trombone Shorty piece) and asked how the footage was treated as it looked so good. at that point, it was still straight out of the camera. while working on the Monday night open the look of the MK3 was so preferred over broadcast that several broadcast shots were actually rotoscoped and the backgrounds softened to try and get them to be a closer match. in short, the image we have gotten out of the MK3 has been very well received and has already aired in handful of pieces for CBS with no complaints – aside from us not always holding the shot long enough :)

why we choose DSLR for our films and our issues with them

let’s rewind a bit and look at A Game of Honor, which was shot almost entirely on the Canon 1D MKIV, and why we chose that camera as well as the challenges we had. first and foremost, we love DSLR technology because of the intimacy it brings. we can be closer to our characters, move faster than ever before and…

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[SMAPP] – basic interview lighting tutorial

Posted in EDUCATION, SMAPP by on Apr 3.

we are one week closer to the launch of SMAPP and as our update of the week we wanted to share a tutorial on interview lighting.

there are so many different ways you can light an interview and while story is always important, interviews more than anything else often come with the constraints of time, space, and gear. traveling for A Game of Honor we had to be able to light an interview with whatever we could fit into one 70lb suitcase (which inspired a whole separate tutorial on what’s in that suitcase). if you’ve done your share of interviews…

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[NOW SCREENING] – MY FAVORITE ADVENTURES

Posted in COMMERCIAL by on Apr 2.

‘I like to life my life to the fullest’ was how Anna lured us in for what would be a crazy day in trying to tell as much of their story as possible. we were in Hawaii for another shoot and after that had wrapped we found ourselves with an extra day to relax and hit the beach. we reached out to Anna about hanging out but she’d have none of that – why just hang out when…

a screengrab from the Red Epic of a surfer at North Shore

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Final Four in New Orleans

Posted in BEHIND THE SCENES, NEWS by on Mar 30.

tune into CBS this weekend for three exciting pieces we have been working on.

Saturday, right before the first game, tune into CBS for the Final Four open we shot in New Orleans.


(big thanks from Tyler Kaufman / CBS for these images!)

we’ve also been working with the The Game of Honor crew on a feature that touches on two unfortunate tragedies;  the school shooting in Chardon, OH and the tornado in Harrisburg IL. the piece is about the healing power of sports. Saturday has a shorter feature and Sunday will have a 22min piece, both of these on CBS Sports Network.

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