Very simple teaser

[Ethan Cooper]

I put together a very simple teaser for our France wedding. It's too short to be a trailer really, so that's why I'm calling it a teaser.

I'd planned on going with another song, but felt that it was too long and with the speed of the edit required for that song would reveal too much. Maybe I'll stay up late and finish it anyway since I'm not crazy about this one.

Maybe I should drop the titles until the final one since it's so short?

Your thoughts?

Guilloux Wedding Teaser on Vimeo

[John Moon]

Ethan...How cool is that. A wedding in France. i think it's fine the way you have it....leaves it open for more.

That opening shot looked a lot like my Brevis before I adjust it. Was that 35 adapter. If so, creative use....if not, you gave me an idea :)

Colors looked rich.

[Ethan Cooper]

Originally Posted by John Moon

That opening shot looked a lot like my Brevis before I adjust it.

That was the first thing I shot while there and yes, it was my Letus before I'd dialed it in. I was messing around setting up for the shot and zoomed out and really liked it so I went with it.

The first 2 shots only had the saturation boosted a bit, the third & fourth are untouched (gotta love good light), the fifth and sixth have been warmed a little, the seventh & eighth were heavily played with.

[Glen Elliott]

Hey Ethan, the visuals looked fantastic! Definitely like commercial material rather than a live, uncontrolled event shoot.

Curious- what cam(s) and 35mm adapter are you using?

See you at ReFrame next week?

[Travis Cossel]

Nice and short and sweet. I like a trailer that plays like a trailer. The only thing I didn't quite like were the end titles. I would have left the title on the left side, and then faded out and THEN brought in the "coming soon". It just felt "off" to me the way it was. Thanks for sharing!

[Ethan Cooper]

Originally Posted by Glen Elliott

Hey Ethan, the visuals looked fantastic! Definitely like commercial material rather than a live, uncontrolled event shoot.

Curious- what cam(s) and 35mm adapter are you using?

See you at ReFrame next week?

Thanks for the compliments. I attribute this wedding looking as great as it did to locations and lighting. Both were as good as anyone could ever ask for.

I use 2 FX7's, one flying on a stedicam, one with a wide angle and I strap a Letus Extreme to an HV20 (or is it the other way around?)

First 2 shots were the Letus, next 2 were FX7 on Merlin followed by another Letus, another FX7 on Merlin, Letus again for the last 2 shots.

I'm not heading to ReFrame. Wish I had a good excuse for you. I've never been a conference guy. Maybe I should break my anti-social habits someday.

[Ethan Cooper]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

Nice and short and sweet. I like a trailer that plays like a trailer. The only thing I didn't quite like were the end titles. I would have left the title on the left side, and then faded out and THEN brought in the "coming soon". It just felt "off" to me the way it was. Thanks for sharing!

It probably feels off cause there is more house than tree line and then the longer title goes on the house side making that half of the frame even heavier. I originally wanted to put a big fancy title in the open space in the middle but when I was mocking it up it felt a little too obvious.

I'm still struggling with song choice for the reprise/recap, whatever you want to call it. Any suggestions? Anything fresh and new out there or something you guys have used recently that I might not have heard before? I've been using a lot of Sigur Ros lately since I don't have to fight with the lyrics, of course I'm assuming none of my client speak Icelandic or whatever they sing in.

[Greg Boston]

Forgive me for the OT post Ethan, but I was wondering how the clean up from both storms is progressing in your area? Having been there myself to shoot the aftermath of Gustav, your town is no longer just a place on the map to me.

Hope your lives are getting back to normal down there!

regards,

-gb-

[Ethan Cooper]

Greg - Things are pretty much back to normal here in Houma, power is back & not flickering, sewer seems just fine, and we even have cable back. It was pretty amazing to me how quickly they got things back when you look at how hard the infrastructure was hit after Gustav. Those line crews & cleanup guys that truck in after a storm are beasts. Often times you'd be driving down the street and 2 guys would be setting up a pole and the 3rd guy would be sleeping in the cab of the truck cause they were pulling 12+ hour shifts working in the heat, sleep for a few hours and then hit it again. I have a new appreciation for the often thankless work those guys do.

A little further south of us things will be messed up for quite a while due to the flooding that Ike brought. I can't even imagine what 6+ feet of water would do to my home & business. Thanks for your concern.

[Matthew Ebenezer]

Hey Ethan,

Thanks for sharing this teaser. I liked it. Can't wait to see more from this wedding!

Cheers,

Matthew.

[Ethan Cooper]

WARNING:
THE FOLLOWING POST IS LONG FOR NO APPARENT REASON AND IT RAMBLES, BUT BURIED IN THERE SOMEWHERE IS A LITTLE TRAVEL VIDEO. IF YOU WANT TO SAVE A FEW MINUTES, JUST SKIP DOWN TO THE LINK AND WATCH THE VIDEO.

I wanted to have more to show today but to be honest I'm struggling with the longer edit. I'm having a hard time making something that can live up to the potential of this footage. I'm sure I'm not the only guy who struggles with edits from time to time, but it really seems that the better the footage I've shot, the worse I tend to edit. Maybe I get all messed up cause I want it to be good so bad that it clouds my editing judgment? I don't know. I've always thought I'm a much better shooter than editor.

Maybe I should take an hour today and do as the old SNL skit suggests; sit in front of a mirror and say, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me". It worked for Jordan... think that'll help?

I got so frustrated with the edit yesterday that I put together a little travel video for my family. It's a little shakey, I'm adjusting focus constantly*, I didn't take the time to color correct or stabilize anything, and the stedicam shots were done with a wide angle on the camera and I didn't take the time to reconfigure my stedicam** so they're not the best I've ever done... but somehow I still like it. I thought the music would have made the thing a bit cheesy, but it really kinda works. Enjoy.

My France Travel Video on Vimeo

* I kept feeling that the footage from the adapter was soft so I was constantly messing with the focus trying to get it right. Now that I think about it, the worst focus problems came when I was outside and it was cause I set the camera up in Cine mode and in that mode I can't lock the shutter speed, so I think outside that the shutter speed was going too high and somehow that made the image soft. I know I was doing it wrong but I tried it anyway for this wedding and for the most part it worked.

** Honestly I don't know how to, I mean really, do you understand the Merlin balance thing well enough to balance your rig on the fly for a new configuration? If you do, can I fly out and have you teach me? Cause I don't. I mean there's a formula... and you have to find midpoints... and it takes more than 3 steps and I tend to lose focus after more than 2.

[Patrick Moreau]

Ethan,

I find the merlin takes a while to get comfortable with so that you can really dial in the balance quickly. If you come form a background of other stabilizers, it may come quicker, but more than other rigs I find the merlin really needs to be spot on to work well and that can take some time.

I enjoyed your clip. I really loved the look of the footage and the opening shot was very inventive. I thought the pace, length and song were ideal for a trailer/teaser. For me, I think I would have processed the footage a bit more. Some of it looks rather flat- which going back to your latest post and over thinking things because it has so much potential- I think that the processing would have taken it up a notch for sure. I would have also worked with the typeface a bit- to me it just didn't seem to fit right.

All the best,

P.

[Ethan Cooper]

Patrick - thanks for the critique. I respect your work at lot, so your opinion carries a good bit of weight for me.

When you say the images were a little "flat" are you referring to contrast, saturation, overall tone?

I agree about the typeface. I've never been good with picking fonts. I didn't ever love the font, but just wanted to get the teaser out of the way so I could move on to the thing I'm putting together for their reception. Maybe I'll heed your warning and think a little longer about a good typeface next time.

Keep the constructive comments coming guys, without them I'll just keep doing things my own way, which isn't always the best way to go about things.

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Ethan Cooper

** Honestly I don't know how to, I mean really, do you understand the Merlin balance thing well enough to balance your rig on the fly for a new configuration? If you do, can I fly out and have you teach me? Cause I don't. I mean there's a formula... and you have to find midpoints... and it takes more than 3 steps and I tend to lose focus after more than 2.

I can balance the Merlin quickly on the fly when I take it on and off. However, if you're adding or taking accessories off of it, then no, it's not quick and easy. This is exactly why I have my Merlin set up for basic operation, meaning it is balanced for a setup that does NOT have a light, or wide angle lens, or shotgun mic or anything else. There are times I would like to run the system with one of those accessories on, but I find that 95% of my Merlin shooting does not require those.

The trouble is that if you add a light it changes the entire balance of the system. You now have more weight, and the weight distribution is also changed. So you can just adjust the position of the sled. You may now have to add more weight to the Merlin, adjust the spread of the arm, etc. It's not a quick process.

You may be able to get a "preset" configuration figured out and have it written down, and maybe that's something I'll try out sometime. But like I said, 95% of what I shoot uses the same configuration so I'm not too worried about it.

[Ethan Cooper]

Travis - I usually have mine set up for the basic FX7 and large battery, and like you said it's easy to balance the rig when you always use it with the same camera/battery configuration, but I was talking about adding a wide angle to the front of the camera and then re-balancing. That's next to impossible in the field on the fly. I'm not even sure I could do it properly without the cookbook settings which is how I balanced my FX7 in the first place.