Field Notes III: Movement x Colour
Camera movement, meet colour.
This video has been a long time coming. I did my first Movement and Colour tests just a couple of weeks after posting Field Notes 2. But the beauty of this series was also one of its biggest challenges: zero expectation, zero priority.
Before I got the chance to push forward with the creative process, some incredibly high expectation, high priority opportunities came in. One of which, was a DLC commercial that allowed me to scratch the “playing with Movement/Colour” itch for a while:
After wrapping these nationwide commercials, I started budgeting out my dream Field Notes video. Big lights, big crew, big ideas, big expectations. But before I could add up all the zeros, another huge opportunity landed on my plate – a fantastic series that took me across Canada for one hell of a summer vacation.
If the DLC commercial had me dreaming of excess, Beyond the Arc had me thinking of efficiency. If a small team carrying everything on their backs can make great TV, then maybe you don’t need a crazy set-up when your goal is experimentation.
Cross Canada travel also helped Field Notes by putting me in contact with Jonathan Mason. Based in Vancouver, he was moving to Ontario to join the Stratford Festival at the end of the summer. And when you have access to a trained actor you of course, let them do their favorite monologue.
Everything was done in-camera, one take, with three people in total: no extra crew, no extra rentals, no extra rehearsals. I added wheels to the camera for a subtle push. I had my friend (the actor’s girlfriend… aka the real reason he was convinced to stop in Toronto), cue my Phillips hue lights live, as he performed a piece from Macbeth.
Check out the result:
Camera nerd takeaways:
- …I should have cleaned my living room.
- always double check all the batteries are fully charged.
- pushing the tripod/gimbal combo straight was harder than it would seem, especially using a spinning camera monitor as a guide. Dolly grips are real pros.
|| Check out more of Steven’s Field Notes HERE ||
