Blackmagic Cinema Camera

A Week With BMC from Jon Carr on Vimeo.

I was fortunate to get my hands on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera for a week and shot many of my favorite locations around Los Angeles. Thank you Vincent Laforet. I shot everything in RAW and processed in After Effects and Da Vinci Resolve.

For more information on my experience with the BMC, keep an eye on my blog. More to come soon.

To learn more about my post workflow in dealing with the RAW files, please visit:
blog.vincentlaforet.com/2012/09/10/blackmagic-camera-part-deux-bmcc-workflow/

Orange Sky by Alexi Murdoch is available on iTunes. Buy it, it's a beautiful song.

I want to give a shout out to the guys over at Blackmagic who have been great in answering my many questions. 
blackmagic-design.com

Ryan from Wooden Camera sent over their brand new BMC rig. It was incredibly helpful to mount an external battery to extend the power of the internal battery and make the camera much more functional. This will be a necessity for professional jobs. 
woodencamera.corecommerce.com

Finally, I’ve got to send a little love to the Kessler team. I used the Stealth slider which was ideal for some of the epic hikes I took to get to my remote locations. The Stealth is surprisingly lightweight!
kesslercrane.com

Estria Graffiti Battle

2011 Estria Graffiti Battle from Jon Carr on Vimeo.

Last fall Justin Hamilton, Tim Kotthoff and I grabbed a Red Epic and headed to downtown LA to film some highlights of the Estria graffiti battle. The Estria Invitational Graffiti Battle is a nationwide urban art competition that honors and advances creativity in the Hip Hop arts. This was the first time the event was held in Los Angeles and featured some of the LA's most talented graffiti artists. 

Special thanks to Matteo for giving us a little extra on his dance routine featured in the video. 

This turned out to be a great event to capture at higher frame rates on the Epic. We also used a variety of Ziess CP2 lenses throughout the day. 

Green Screen Tutorial

Green Screen from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

I just did a green screen tutorial for Vincent Laforet's blog and I thought I would post it here as well. We wanted to play around with dropping a character into a different environment, which turned out to be downtown Los Angeles. Check it out if you have a few minutes. 

Three Months of Möbius

Möbius is now out in the wild. The short film is the culmination of the last three months from many talented people. I was fortunate enough to work on this project from script to screen. November 3rd marks the release and it is the official date Canon throws it's hat in the ring of digital cinema. I have been starring at the imagery over the last month from iPod screen all the way to theater projection and I just can't say enough good things about the imagery out of this little camera. 

This was one of the most stressful experiences of my production life but I have to say that now we are done, it has been probably one of the most rewarding. I am very proud of this film and feel fortunate to have worked with many talented people on this project. 

Head over to Vincent Laforet's blog to check out he film and the behind the scenes making of.

Looking forward to all the news from this exciting day!

Thai Cookery

The Principles of Thai Cookery from Jon Carr on Vimeo.

I spent the last month in Thailand. While in the Bangkok area my girlfriend and I stayed with a Thai celebrity chef. He recently came out with a new cookbook and I put together this short video to plug his book. He was incredibly generous and the book is very well done. If you are interested, it is currently available at b&n.com in the US.

On a technical note, I tried something a little different at the end of this video. Because food is such a big aspect of Thai culture, I took a photo of each meal and incorporated that into a time lapse. It was a little challenging but I ran the photos through Lightroom and then exported a numerical JPEG sequence that could then be imported into After Effects. I played around with the timing and rendered it out for what you see in the final video. I like the effect and it was nice to do something a little different from a standard time lapse. 

19 Gear Essentials for World Travel

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am currently traveling around the world and shooting the experience with the 5D Mark 2. I have a travel blog located here, which has taken up the majority of my blogging efforts. I have been on the road for nearly five months traveling throughout Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia.

I was compelled to leave a lot of gear at home due to the long term nature of our trip. While not completely comprehensive, I have put together a list of gear that I feel is essential for such a trip.

1. Kessler Crane Pocket Dolly Travler - Great tool to add some simulated dolly movement to your shots. A little bulky to carry around but it is completely worth it when I break it out. Kessler was great about getting this to me when I was in Australia. They just came out with version 2, which looks even better.
2. Rode Video Mic - Great tool for getting high quality camera audio. The internal mic of the 5D Mark 2 isn't the best and this Rode Mic more than makes up for it. I also have the wind screen called the Dead Cat that comes in handy on windy days. I use this when I don't have time to mic someone up or am just looking for some good quality ambient sound. 
3. Zoom H4N - External recorder I use to capture all of my interview audio. I then sync it up to the video in post using Pluraleyes. Easy to use and the audio is of good quality. 
4. ND Filters - Essential for the 5D to achieve the shallow depth of field. I own a ND 400, which I believe is 10 stops and is wonderful for time lapses. I also have an 8x for all of my lenses which is three stops and they work great.

Click to read more ...

Malaysia Unmapped

Malaysia Unmapped from Jon Carr on Vimeo.

We spent three weeks traveling in Malaysia and this is the highlight video from our travels in Kaula Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, and Langkawi. The video is a combination of 5D footage and time lapse video. I used an old 24mm Nikon, 24-70mm L 2.8 canon, 50mm 1.4 canon. I also was able to utilize my Kessler Pocket Dolly and I love the product. Wish I would have been able to get the v2 but purchased a little early. I have a few others in the pipeline including Bali, Australia, and New Zealand and hope to roll them out when I have time to catch up.

Australian Time Lapse

Australia from Jon Carr on Vimeo.

Australia was the second stop in my extended travel trip. I spent five weeks covering the East Coast of Australia. I am very happy with the Blue Mountain intro to this video. The clouds have an amazingly surreal quality about them. Almost dreamlike. I shot this over a series of three days during sunrise. The first day was a bust because of exposure issues and I was too busy chatting with other photographers to notice. The next two days I was able to get what is in the video and I am happy with the results. I wish I could have gotten additional locations but just ran out of time. The music is from a very talented Aboriginal artist and I think goes well with the imagery. I will document the gear used in an upcoming article.