there are too many films to critique all of the entries, so instead i’m going to go over some thoughts on what you voted to be the top contenders.

danielle and jared of side by side video had another super strong entry, but like the last, i think the left a little bit on the table with their execution. i think i felt this was the strongest story of them all because it really pulled me in and hit me at the end. throughout all of their entries they are very talented at putting a narrative in each piece and really building off that into a strong ending. i felt the mixed lighting on the main character felt a little awkward. i certainly understand the demands of shooting in a public place, but being that the majority of the piece worked with that light, i would have tried to blend it better for more pleasant skin tones and more balance in the color. the biggest thing i struggled with in this piece was how the words were shot. to me, it felt like it should be a slider shot, revealing the words as the reader would move their eyes across them. the angle also felt very low to represent the girl reading her book, which disconnected me a bit in the first viewing. my guess is that they tried a higher angle but fond too much was in focus so they went to a lower angle to isolate specific words. how wonderful a tilt shift shot of the book would have been to simulate the selective focus you have when reading, and to also focus the viewer on the line of copy you want them to see.

dani and jet from kaiser films had some amazing cinematography, perhaps the best of all of the entries. they had some strong color grading, and the shots were all solid, but more than that, they used their lens choice and camera movement to really reinforce the story. the, what looked to be a 16-35 right in front of actors face as he ran, really gave it an immediacy and energy that a different lens and angle would have lost. the tight shots with so much happening in the frame really added to the intensity and really quickly pulled me into the piece. now i will probably get a lot of disagreement from others here, but i am not sure i felt that the copy added to the story. i understand what it meant and the symbolism of them being stepping on, grabbed at, etc but with such strong visuals it felt like it pulled me away from the story being told by the guy alone. with the epic soundtrack and such energy in the visuals, the ending here really left me hanging. i think a line of copy more about what infocus is, or what the experience can do, and relating that to the transformation the main character just had would have tied it all up so much better and left us with something.

brett’s (it was fate films) piece was a stunning mix of imagery and a wonderful application of the concept. being a self-promo it did feel like it suffered a bit from him having to shoot and be in the piece at the same time, but with that being said, it is quite remarkable how far he took it by himself. mixing in the go pro footage certainly provided some great visuals, but i always find that you need to really know your color to mix that in with EOS footage as it always feels so flat and dull in comparison. to me it felt like the strong point of this film was also it’s weakness. the diversity in the imagery was fun to watch, but it made connecting to an overarching narrative a little harder for me. i loved when the words were represented in the imagery (such as he children paired with inspiration), and i think my biggest suggestion would be to try and incorporate more of that. the white fence with the gate is obviously a strong tie to the theme and your message, but it felt like perhaps using it more symbolically would taken it a step further. there were lots of shots leaving and then returning home to the gateway but i think there are really three strong visuals that follow the story line you put forth; a tight of the latch being disengaged (representing you preparing to move forward), the actual gate opening and you walking through (representing the new direction or new beginning), and then the gate closing behind you with nobody there (representing what you left behind or where you came from). more than that felt like it watered down the impact of the others.

stephen’s (at first sight cinematography) entry was probably the one i was most conflicted about. the message, impact, and tie to the theme were all so well done. the interview was strong, well shot and the simple grey-toned background tied in very well. what i struggled with was the addition of the visuals over top of the narrative. while they were very well shot and such a smart representation of the story in a deeper way, there seemed to be a lot of camera shake, stutters in the slider moves or rack focuses, and other minor hiccups. i know stephen and his team love the feedback so i hope they don’t mind when i reference some specifics. at :38 there is a shot of the flowers in the rain. it ties in wonderfully to the story but the shot is shaky (possibly hand held) and the blown out sky in the top left immediately pulls my eye away from the focus, where as raising the camera and shooting on a bit more of an angle would have eliminated that all together. it felt like a lot of the nature shots were ungraded as well, and i think they really lent themselves to a vibrancy and richness i found missing. a couple other small things, and some may say i am nitpicking, but that make all the difference in a film, i think. the ‘order and design’ line felt like it would have been so well represented by the tree bark shot you showed in the next paragraph. lastly, some of the cuts from the interview to the visuals felt a tad, dare i say, lazy :) at :41-:43 he says ‘life is perpetual’ and then right before you cut he looks down and opens his mouth for the next line. those several frames, though they might seem small, certainly don’t add to the story, and for me that look and mouth opening with no audio just pulled me out just a little bit. then again at :53 the film waits for him to say ‘umm’ before the cut, which again is lost time.

with all of that being said, it’s time to pick the sm favorite and the grand prize winner of a spot to IN[FOCUS] 2011 as well as a 1-on-1 workshop with us. congratulations to stephen and the team at  ‘at first sight’. your film, to us, represented the best balance of editing, cinematography, storytelling, impact, as well as application to the concept.

the winner of the popular vote, which was determined by all of you, receives a $300 voucher to IN[FOCUS] 2011. the winner of the popular vote was also stephen’s team ‘at first sight’ but since they took the grand prize, the voucher goes to the second highest popular vote, which was dani and jet of jet kaiser films.

thanks to everybody involved for commenting, submitting your films, and voting. the original vision for this project was that it would go beyond creating fun shorts and also give us a place to focus on a shared project and all learn from that together. the next theme and date will be announced shortly.

i hope you will all come out and join us at IN[FOCUS] this january in new orleans. we will be a keynote speaker and also offering some hands on group training as well as one on one training.

P.

New Orleans is know for its music, its food, and its amalgamation of cultures. It was originally known as the “Gateway to the Americas” because of it’s strategic location as a port for trade between the United States and the Caribbean/Latin American countries. In the words of doctoral student Arthur Carpenter, “hemispheric trade was one of New Orleans’s strengths, a point from which to build.”

In the same way, establishing excellence in your wedding filmmaking studio is the Gateway, the “point from which to build” in growing your business, the “port” through which your other prospects will pass.

In striving to run the best wedding filmmaking business imaginable, you will cultivate Gateway skills that will serve you when the opportunities knock. From developing a brand, to selling one’s self, to establishing workflows and systems, maturing as a wedding studio prepares you to grow into markets, wedding and otherwise, that were once beyond the reaches of small producers.

At IN[FOCUS] 2011 in New Orleans, we invite you to “Come through the Gateway,” to be inspired by industry leaders who will share with you how to foster excellence in very specific ways. With a solid plan, eye-popping work, and universal visibility through the internet, the sky is truly the limit for you!

Click below to register today!

heather of sugar leaf films ‘a gateway to INFOCUS 2011′

stephen of at first sight cinematography ’speak of remarkable things’

maribeth ‘the filmmaker’

brett of it was fate films ‘the gateway’

danielle + jared of side by side video ‘the gateway’

margarite of nice stems inc. ’samba’

greg ‘few days are better, are worse’

paul and jordan from the sm team ‘the isolated . two’

jet of jet kaiser films ‘IN[FOCUS] 2011′

because jet used unlicensed music, we can’t host it on our blog (sorry jet). it is certainly worth your trouble to wander off to vimeo and check it out.here is a direct link to their film.

the four script options; fashionable, smart shutter technology, HD video, tilt/shift and fisheye features.

what is on the table:

- each member of the winning team receives a Canon EOS T21.

- the editor of the commercial wins a spot in either our sold out evo experience this november, or the ‘y’ experience next april.

the fine print:

- each team was composed of a director, camera A, camera B, and a grip/gaffer. stillmotion acted as art director and challenged their lens choices, composition, camera tools, and the look and feel they were achieving.

- every person in the team had the chance to edit their own version of the commercial. so each team could have up to four entries. the editor wins the workshop spot. the deadline was one week from the respective workshop.

- when you vote, please keep in mind who this camera would be targeted at and try to consider how effective it would be to that market. think about the lens choice, composition, camera movement, color, light, audio, and storytelling and how each was used to further the message being made.

we’ve selected our top 5, now it’s your turn to determine the winner!

head on over to the submissions page on the canon cinema caravan blog to vote for your favourite.

congrats to chris, jennifer, john, thomas, and tyler!

- the entire stillmotion crew.

a couple things we couldn’t add in due to time. you can also record a frame in video, then playback and use the indicator that shows you what is blown out by flashing, or ideally the histogram to check your exposure. this works on the 7D, MKIV, and MKII and is great when you don’t have a z-finder and you need to ensure your exposure is spot on.

thanks also to zacuto for providing the z-finders and tiffen for providing the ND filters.

P.

‘Your work is divine!!! We are such huge fans. We would be so happy if you all are able to answer a few questions of ours? Are the trailers you have on your website and blog just a sneak peek to the bride and groom’s actual wedding video? Do you provide full video coverage? Since my husband and I are starting out in this business what piece of equipment would you recommend for our next purchase? The equipment we currently have are the Canon 7D, EF 28-135 and EF 70-200. Your advice and guidance would greatly be appreciated.

Thank you-Erika’

‘Hi from France ! First of all, we love your work ! We have the same question as Erika and Joe : how long lasts the final wedding video ?
Bonjour chez vous !
Olivier & Anseaulme’

We would be so happy if you all are able to answer a few questions of ours?

sure. that one was easy.

Are the trailers you have on your website and blog just a sneak peek to the bride and groom’s actual wedding video? Do you provide full video coverage?

we offer different collections and they have three different portions. every collection comes with a ‘basic film’ which is a documentary edit of the speeches and ceremony. this gives us the creative freedom to make shorter features and to include only things that pertain to the story. the second part is the same day edit or highlights. we only offer one of the two with most collections. our larger collections then also include a feature which is generally 12-25 minutes, often ending up in the 15 minute range. we feel it is a more thorough story than an sde, but it is still has the same approach in terms of shot length, diversity, layering, etc.

most couples opt for a same day edit, the feature, and the basic film, and i feel that gives them a very well rounded interpretation of them and what their wedding is about (with something thrown in there for the parents as well, in the doc edits).

Since my husband and I are starting out in this business what piece of equipment would you recommend for our next purchase?

the first thing i would look into would be a couple nice primes. if the 50 f1.2 is our of your price range, look at grabbing the 50 f1.4 and the 28 f1.8. both are good stepping stones and more middle range glass that get you thinking in the world of primes, which inevitably make you a better cinematographer. being that the 7d has the 1.6 crop, i would start off with a 34 f1.4 if you can make the investment. it is a great all around lens that lets you get both wide and tight shots by manually zooming (ie walking).

let me explain the primes vs zooms a bit more. zooms have a tendency to make you lazy – as opposed to actually moving or thinking, you have the ability to just zoom in and out but a prime forces you to place yourself in the situation, think of what your trying to say and how you can best convey it through your viewpoint. we did this tutorial on vimeo about lens selection which should hopefully help as well.

http://vimeo.com/13140360

i hope that helps! if you have any questions you would like us to look at for an upcoming week, please leave them here in the comments. at this time our travel schedule keeps us much to busy to try and reply via email, but anything left here will definitely be seen and we will work our way through the list.

P.

‘isolation’ by jared and danielle of sidebyside video

‘Yaundis’ by steve and his team At First Sight Cinematography

‘into the wild’ by howie c

‘The Isolated’ by paul w. los and jordan presseault (of SM)

you have until august 30th to submit your short film with the theme ‘gateway’. we will have two prizes for the ‘gateway’ films. the first place prize will be determined solely by the sm family and first place receives a free seat at IN[FOCUS] 2011. second place will be determined by popular vote (the poll your used to) and the winner receives a $300 voucher towards a seat at IN[FOCUS]. from stillmotion, first place receives either two licenses from withetiquette, a $500 voucher towards anything on stillmotionexperience, or a 90 minute one-on-one consultation at IN[FOCUS]. the consultation can involve shooting in the field, business, branding, storytelling, philosophy, or anything else you would like to discuss.

we will be posting the entries as they come in, which is a change from the past, but voting won’t start until the 30th. if you have any question about IN[FOCUS] specifically, check out infocusvideoevent.com or email jones AT infocusvideoevent.com. please upload your entry to vimeo and send a link to shorts@stillmotion.ca to have it published here and on the IN[FOCUS] blog.

so get your ‘gateway’ films in by august 30th and win a free spot at IN[FOCUS] 2011 plus some great prizes from the sm team.

P.

the fine print:

one // while the sm crew will be creating their films individually, you may create your entry with friends or your others from your studio. just let us know who was involved when you post it up.

two // we are only willing to feature content on our blog that features soundtracks which have been legally licensed. you may use soundtracks that you composed, music from any stock music site (such as triple scoop or with etiquette) or no soundtrack at all. if your film features music that is not properly licensed, it is still eligible to win and will be mentioned on the blog, but only a link will be posted (as opposed to embedding the film itself here)

three // we are asking the sm crew to spend three hours or less in producing and shooting their spots. they are free to spend additional time outside of work hours, and you’re free to spend as much or as little time as you would like.

four // entries are to be from thirty to sixty seconds in length, including any logos, watermarks, titles, etc.

five // feel free to incorporate your logo into your film however you would like.

six // while the theme for the period must be incorporated somehow into the film, you may make that interpretation as loose or as literal as you would like.

seven // the stillmotion gift certificate may be used for anything offered by sm, but it not valid for events in which sm is participating but is not hosting (such as the Canon Cinema Caravan, which is hosted by Canon). gift certificates (stillmotion or IN[FOCUS]) are not transferrable to a third party. if you choose the two free with etiquette licenses, you will be sent promotional codes that may be entered at time of checkout.

eight // the deadline for each entry is 1PM EST, the day that the period ends. entries must be uploaded by that point and an email sent to shorts@stillmotion.ca with a link, your name, studio name, and any other thoughts you wish to add. the entries will be posted as they arrive and voting will commence on august 30th.

“How do you back things up?
Back when I shot with AVCHD, I could backup just my FCP file and then the raw files off of the card.  In the future, if I ever needed to re-edit the footage, I could just open the FCP file and reconnect things by recapturing the raw files.  Basically, just a few clicks and let it process over night and you are back in business.  This worked great, because I would only need to back up maybe 50-75 GB per project as opposed to 250-400 GB per project.

Hopefully that made sense.  Any help please?
Thanks!
-Braden”

our post-production backup process is considerable but fairly straightforward. for all of our current or pending projects, we will back them up to two separate locations. one onsite drive (1.5TB desktop drives) and one offsite drive (750gb bus powered drives). this way we can store one copy at the studio and another in a different location just in case anything ever happens to either of them. by having two offsite drives for every onsite drive, the sizes match perfectly so onsite 1-1 always matched up with offsite 1-1 and 1-2. the project folders on each drive will be identical in size and will have all the raw audio, footage, converted footage (from an SDE), and anything else that  pertains to the project (ei: SDE files). the total backup usually run anywhere from 150-400 gb depending on the collection.

when we edit, nothing changes aside from their now being a third copy. ideally we edit of a raided drive for portection.

archiving completed projects follows relatively the same process. we usually store them on a new drives specifically for archiving which we will also have an onsite and offsite copy off. these are 1TB drives and we then have archive 1-1 and 1-2 which are identical. we store everything from the final edit though in the future we may implement the media manager function to just store what is used in the edit.

as you can see you will require several hard drives for this process but do to the importance of all this data, it is well worth the investment. right now we probably have 60 TB at least, on separate drives.

-Paul

with that being said, we still have 1 more EVO spot reseved!  it’s reserved for the winning caravan commercial contest editor.  voting begins real soon (after the san fran workshop, keep reading).  we’ll be sure to post the info here on where and how to vote.  for now, you can check out the already submitted entries here.

still want to get in to EVO for the full on 3.5 days of intense learning? visit us in san fran on our last canon caravan stop, soak up the 2 days of information, and then submit an amazing contest entry and you could win free admission (and the final spot!) for our EVO experience.

get your feet wet, then dive in!

- justin

P.