eurosport advert

Its been a while and I promise I’ve been busy studying all sorts so much so that I have started to lose track of all the things I have been studying to catalogue it through this blog, so I will start from last week.

Last week we shot scenes for our Eurosport advert for the Tour de France. I think the last thing I spoke about the advert was how we had gone into the bike shop to ask them about shooting. Well we have moved on a fair bit since then. We shot in the bike shop and it went relatively well as seems to be too often the case, for my liking anyway we shot a lot of it on the fly that seemingly would be the way it’s done with students well at least the students on this course anyway. It makes for some interesting moments at least meaning I had to quickly react with lighting set ups and camera settings while we quickly shot a wide variety of shots most of the shots were long tracking shots on the handmade wooden rig the people I have been working with had made its good definitely for something handmade however it could stick a little meaning not all the shots were as smooth as I would have liked. The main issue we faced was the lack of lighting available to us. As mentioned earlier they had requested we didn’t drag big lights in with wires as they were concerned with customers tripping over wires or the wires getting in the way. This meant had to think very much on my feet and reposition some of the overhead lights they had available which were pointed at the walls, I repositioned them to light the front of the bike and cast one of the lights behind to cast on the wall just to add a little light to the back of the bike and on the wall to add a bit of definition to between it and the wall and opted to keep the light on the background as low as possible as we didn’t have a black background to cover the back up like we wanted to instead chose to keep it darkly lit and keep it shot on a low depth of field to keep the eye on the bike and background out of focus. We also had Kyles small LED light to bring a bit more colour and light out of the bike. The main thing I used it for was adding more shine of the metal and the paint to make the bike glow a little and to also just light it a little more due to the lack of light we had available. To be honest I think it worked rather well as I feel we lit the scene well. The main issues we had with it was that we had with shooting it was the lack of planned shots we had which meant there was some awkwardness in trying to achieve certain shots with the lighting which resulted in one shot hanging the slider rig with my camera upside down on our shoulders and then then we had issued with getting a shot the guys wanted which meant we had to change lenses to Andy’s wider lens which unfortunately only shoots at 2.8 aperture where ‘as the lens we was shooting on before that was 1.8 so not only had the focal length changed so had the lighting which meant the lighting became dark  with no real way of correcting with very little lighting available which also resulted in the background coming into focus more. This was a slight annoyance of mine as if the need for this shot would have explained to me before the shoot I could have at  least planned for something to improve this slightly however this didn’t prove a huge problem and I am still very happy with some of the shots we got.

                We then followed this shoot on with work in the studio the main shots we wanted to get was of somebody dressed in biking gear with a bike in shot. This job fell to Kyle’s brother who came in, in some wet suit gear which didn’t have the full effect of biking gear especially for people who know biking clothes. Then we had the issue of the bike being a mountain bike instead of a racing bike. This was something I wasn’t aware of until the day of the shoot as sometimes found it hard to find out what’s going on with the shoot I have written my own treatment originally for an idea for it which was rejected by the group for a studio looking shoot this is something that didn’t bother me as I felt the studio shoot would be simpler and more controlled however I had told the them how I had discussed the possibility of shooting with a group of amateur bike group I know who practise and race on a weekend who were more than willing to allow us to shoot with them. This is I felt we could have got some good shots with but after telling the group they asked if they could come to the studio to shoot and after telling them how they lived too far away and worked in the week it would only be feasible and fair to meet them where they practise and race to shoot them. This idea was rejected again in favour for the studio shoot which I had very little information on in terms of what they are trying to achieve in terms of style, look or concept. However they were both very confident in what they wanted to achieve and trusting in their knowledge and ability I was happy to go with it as they will gave a good idea of what they wanted for it. When we went into the studio I could see that they had plans for what they wanted for it. So the day before myself and Kyle set up the lights and dolly for the following days shoot as best we could without having the bike and actor in. The good thing was, by doing this meant that I could set up the right lighting for the actor and bike reasonably quickly the only issue was how tall the actor was but this wasn’t too much of a problem. I felt rather happy with the look of the lighting I achieved for the scene. I used a big 650w light with a bit of diffuser on it to take a little harshness of the shadows, and then the second light was also a 650w with heavier diffusion on it  and blue gels on it to try and take away some of the orange of light to make it whiter and cleaner to juxtapose against the black background and black bike which I was also not aware of. However I think the lighting and the shots we achieved with the crane and two tracks a curved track which we used to track around the bike and actor and then the straight track to move across the various points of the bike. I think the shots we achieved by using these we very professional looking  in my opinion. Again another problem I had was the changing of lenses from the 1.8 to 2.8 which meant lighting had to be changed for it again without my knowledge this wasn’t too much of a problem as I had enough available already to get some light from the less we had available due to the change in aperture. The main frustration really was the moving of the bike and actor to often without my consultation for the sake of trying to get a certain shot which meant that the lighting effects on the bike may have changed without my control as I was often have to reposition lights as the bike had been moved or lights knocked. However I felt from looking back on the footage that we got some very good shots that are very well lit and stylized.

The following is an early cut from the footage we got from the studio I have explained that I feel we need to tell the audience that the guy is not meant to represent an actual racer and rather somebody who aspires to be a racer but still loves the sport as I feel the current cut looks like it’s meant to say that the person in shot is meant to be a racer as this wouldn’t work due to the fact that it’s a mountain bike and he wasn’t in actual bike racing gear. This is something I hope will be achieved later through the rest of the edit. But as I don’t know entirely what they are trying to achieve with the final piece still this is something I can’t guarantee as I sometimes feel that my opinion is not being listened to as much as it was not my original idea, even though the original idea seems to have changed a lot in my eyes from its original inception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V9KilHXOCU