SHOW NOTES

Video Title: Candy Shots

Video length: 10:03

Video format/size: m4v/89MB

Host: Dawn Casey

Guest: Carl Weaver

Director, Editor, Cinematographer: Dawn Casey

Edited using: Final Cut

Intro/Outro Music: "Hot Rock"- Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons

Body Music: "Aitech" and "Cherry Blossom" (loop)- Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons

URLS mentioned in the video:

www.carlweaver.com

www.candyusa.com

candydishblog.com

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PRODUCTION NOTES

-all pictures are actual screenshots from the video-

What better post to have right before Valentines Day, than one about candy? But, better yet, since I talk about photography and video, how about a video all about someone who takes pictures of candy?

To quote myself, "Did you ever wonder how you get a job like that? And how do they do that?" Well, I asked Carl Weaver those exact questions in this video.

Carl does quite a few different things for the National Confectioners Association, in addition to being a photographer on his own. For this video, I met him in his basement studio and followed him around while he took some really nice pictures of the "models". Both of the photos he picked as 'the best' are featured within the video itself.

After doing the interview, Carl gave me candy. I ate it. I am bribable.

So! Now that the process is done, did I have problems? Oh... yes.

For starters, I've decided to never film myself doing the intro (screen shot above!) at eleven o'clock at night directly after filming the feature section. I was super tired and my hair had been in a ponytail. I actually cracked up laughing at my first attempt because in the playback, my hair was doing a perfect Alfalfa. After flattening my hair, I did it again. And again. I did it four times, actually. I say this every time: talking directly at a camera is a lot harder than it looks! That's my living room right there, and the plant's name is Howie.

The next day I uploaded all the video I'd taken. I had used two cameras, one as a hand-held, and one as a static wide-cam. Since I shoot with editing in mind, I almost never end up with mountains of video.

When reviewing my footage, I discovered something normal: a hum. Have a look at the screenshot of it being cleaned up:

I circled in red the offending "noise." You've heard the expression before: white noise. But what does that mean, exactly?

Well for starters, it's every where. You don't notice it because it's always there. It's the odd hum coming from your television, your refrigerator, your computer, and your LIGHTS.

Imagine the problem: I just shot a lot of video in a basement that was lit up with great big photography flood lights.

Ah.

The problem was basically fixed when I applied filters to get rid of the noise, specifically the AUMultiband Compressor and the expander/ noise gate. In English I pretty much just squashed all things that didn't sound like words. This usually works very well. Sometimes you can overdo it and it sounds like you're either talking through a tin can or you're having a conversation under water. Sound is something I take good care of (I run a live sound system almost weekly) and I try to never clip things like that.

A second huge problem was the lighting. Since there were big lights over the shooting table itself, the words "backlit" don't even cover how difficult it was to see in the resulting video. The wide angle shot was DARK. Very, very dark. This screenshot is a spot where I can be seen over the shooting table, and if you take a good look at the shot on the left you'll notice you can't even see Carl standing there. The shot on the right is the SAME screenshot, but with adjustments.

I also have a side-by-side of the interview with Carl, and as you can see, the different camera angles created a HUGE difference because of where the lights in the studio were placed. The second set of screenshots do NOT have any adjustments- that's how the shots looked from the different angles. In the video, I adjusted the dark clips to match the brighter ones.

My second camera also had a hard time focusing. Since it was essentially an unmanned camera, it was in auto-focus mode. Note to everyone with a camera like that: the camera gets confused by bright lights... sort of like a deer in headlights. The camera would be searching around frantically on something to focus on when there wasn't a person in the frame. Fortunately, I could fix the exposure in post. (I simulated the effect in the screenshots- you can tell this because the logo in the lower light of the top shots looks a bit bleached out. In the video, the logo is in a different layer and isn't affected like it is in this still.)

The shots I was taking close up came out beautifully, though, as you can see. The candy looked amazing sitting on that glowing white background, and I put my camera in manual focus mode so that I could get really close to it. Those are Carl's fingers in the frame as he adjusted things.

After finishing the video, I went in and re-did something very specific: my logo. If you take a good look at all these screenshots, you'll notice the first one is different. Originally, my logo was just a white square sitting in the lower right corner, like you see in the candy close up screenshot.

However, I discovered that when the video was being watched, my eyes kept wanting to drag to the right and look at the logo. I realized that was because of the hard lines within the logo.

I opened my logo up into an editing program and removed the alpha channel, making it transparent. Then I replaced that layer within the video and was much more satisfied with how it looked.

Travel to location: 1 hour

Shooting: 1.5 hours

Upload: 3 hours

Rough-edit complete: 4 hours

Music edit: 1.5 hours

Final Edit complete: 12 hours

Export & conversion: 1 hour

Total time to make this video: 24 hours

Not a bad way to spend a day :) Please comment and ask questions about this video by clicking the link below!

Do you recognize these words: stop-motion, interval recording, acceleration?

What about these? Freeze-frame, time-lapse, speed?

They're all the same thing, essentially: they offer a way to quickly observe something that actually takes a significant amount of time to complete in reality.

I decided to do an exercise in these three types of video using this poor, sad, innocent stick of butter:

When it was suggested to me to do this (by my husband), I told him that watching butter melt was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Then I paused for a moment and decided that he was right because anyone can reproduce this exact experiment at home!

My goal was to take this stick of butter and (a) do something with stop motion (b) use an interval recording and (c) see how fast I could make video play.

For starters, this entire project (from setup, to editing video finish) took five hours-- I'm an extremely fast editor if I need to be. The video itself is nearly two minutes, but the part where the butter melts is only thirty seconds!

I began by setting up both my cameras in the kitchen. My big camera (the PDX) is on the tripod. It was set to record at intervals (more on that in a moment). The Tiny One (also called "The MetaCam" since I usually use it as my wide-angle camera) is propped up on a tiny tripod almost directly behind it on the counter.

You'll notice I don't have the shotgun mic attached to the big camera. I had no intention of using any sound captured, so I took it off.

Because the angles of the cameras are slightly different, the shots of the butter are slightly different, but you'd probably not notice that if I didn't tell you.

Before I started, I decided to do the stop-motion segment, which is actually called FREEZE FRAME video. Not all cameras have this feature, so have a look in your manual. If you do have it, it's extremely fun.

STOP MOTION ANIMATION

As I state in the video, stop motion is usually animation and it's usually with clay. You've seen dozens of movies using this: Wallace and Gromit, Nightmare Before Christmas, etc. It's usually used to simulate motion of inanimate objects.

For the purposes of my video, I took the wrapper off a stick of butter.

Fascinating.

Essentially, I unwrapped a bit of the butter, pressed my remote control, and then unwrapped more of it. I repeated the process until I was done. Approximately 6 frames of video were taken of each shot. However, you actually only see five of those frames, as one is used to crossfade into the next. Thirty frames of video = one second of watching.

To make it more interesting to watch, I inserted it as PIP (Picture-In-Picture) video. I even was cute and held my hand out like I was holding it up. When recording the speaking part, this makes you feel like an idiot.

INTERVAL RECORDING

Interval recording, better known as time-lapse video, is familiar to everyone: watch an entire house being built in under a minute, watch trees drop all their leaves, star trails, etc.

The basics are that your video camera takes a few seconds of video every few minutes. Most cameras do not have this feature, it's even more unusual than freeze frame capability. A good way to fake it is with using an actual camera. Simply take a picture of the same thing repeatedly and then play it like video.

In my case, I directed my video camera to take half a second of video every thirty seconds while the butter was melting. There are two parameters you can adjust with interval recording: the length of time in between shots, and the length of the shot itself. For example, I could have made it pause and wait for ten minutes and then shoot video for two minutes. However, since this was going to be something quick, the shorter the better.

ACCELERATED VIDEO

Almost all video programs will allow you to change the speed of a video (I use Final Cut). It can be sped up (accelerated) or slowed down (decelerated, or "slo-mo"). After recording something normally, you instruct the program to adjust the speed to play faster or slower- that's it.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that if you're trying to do something special.

In my case, my interval recording was thirty seconds long, so, I had to make my accelerated video thirty seconds long as well.

Apparently it takes nearly fifteen minutes to completely melt a stick of butter.

When I forced my video clip to fit into a thirty second time space, I actually had to speed it up to over two thousand times its normal speed. The actual speed change to the clip was +2664%! WOW!!!

FILMING THE VIDEO

Originally, I had the stick of butter standing straight up on the plate, as seen in the first photo. I had the plate sitting on the stove, and even though the plate clearly says "don't put this on the stove! That means you! YES, YOU!", I put it on the burner and turned it on low.

Just in case the plate shattered I made sure to use one I thought was sort of ugly in the first place.

After two minutes, the stick of butter flopped over. In the interval recording, it looks like it's standing one moment and laying down the next. Since I didn't like the way it looked, in the final video I started the clips where the butter is already horizontally on the plate.

After fifteen minutes of watching butter melt (and hoping I didn't catch anything on fire), it was a nice puddle and that particular part of the filming was finished.

I then did my "stand up" portion of the video, where I faced the camera and talked to the audience. If you've never done this, it's a lot harder than it looks. I had to do it three times before I got it right, and, I made a mistake: I said I would show the video "side by side" for the comparison but in reality it looked a lot better to have it top and bottom.

EDITING THE VIDEO

My end video actually has five layers of video within it to make it look as cool as it does. Some of the layers are text, some are video, and one is my cute little logo that sits in the corner.

For the "butter melting comparison" I put the interval recording on the top half of the screen, and the accelerated video on the bottom half of the screen. (I originally planned to have the video side by side, which is what I actually say in the standup.)

It took me half an hour to line up what I called "the plop point", where the butter finally disappears completely and all that's showing is the puddle.

Since that on its own isn't very interesting, I used a music piece called "Cut Trance" by Kevin MacLeod, my favorite royalty free music guy. (All the sound effects and music I use are his. My intro music is "Hot Rock.")

Originally, the thought of recording butter melting and actually making something out of it struck me as ridiculous. Once I finished my project, however, I am quite pleased with it!

Feel free to comment by clicking the "add a comment" link below!

In preparation for shooting "Cat in a Hat" I probably should have given my cat magic sleepy potion, since she jumped and hopped around like a maniac. (You can read about the shoot here.) However, I immediately saw the speed potential, and by that, I realized how comical it would look in fast motion.

For the shoot, I really had two things going on: I was acting as photographer (of the cat) and videographer (filming it). My problem: how do I document that?

Well, I own a second smaller video camera, and I used it to film myself filming myself.

The screenshot to the left is the smaller camera's view. I am talking into my main camera and standing in front of a painting in my living room. (You can see any screenshot in full size by right/control clicking it.) The screenshot on the right is the same view as seen via the main camera.

My goal in this shoot and video is to show how to set up a basic photoshoot for a cat, dog, or even a person using things you can pretty much find in your house. To that end, I kept the video running the entire time I set the shoot up to show how I did it.

Since I was running around the entire time, I did not use a handheld microphone and instead opted to have my shotgun mic pick up all the sound in the room. Later when editing the video, I used all the sound from my main camera and muted all the sound in the secondary camera.

Because I knew I'd be syncing up the sound on a second camera, it was imperative to keep both cameras running the entire time. That way, I could sync up one spot (I clapped my hands before I started) and know with certianty that my lips would be moving in time with my voice regardless of which angle I was showing at the time.

Although I had mapped out where the cameras were going to be before the shoot began, I discovered that the room wasn't quite as wide as I thought and so I wouldn't be able to get the view I wanted unless I moved it somewhere else.

I actually propped the main camera halfway up on my coffee table and put it behind me while I took some shots. The perspective is actually great: you can see me behind my still camera snapping away while my assistant, Jenny, played with the (annoyed) cat.

Because I decided to go "funny", I listened to quite a lot of Kevin MacLeod's music before deciding on one of his Silent Movie Scores, Plucky Daisy. It fit perfectly with my cat's antics.

Speed can be used effectively in movies, usually for the dramatic effect: the hero dives for the girl (slow motion); the bad guy gets blown up (sped up); the main character sees his dog about to eat his slippers (slow motion with added slow sound as he says "noooooo!"); special effects science fiction movies (slow motion as the hero dodges bullets).

Most of the time, you really shouldn't notice how the speed of the film is changing. The effect should be subtle yet compelling for whatever reason it is being used.

However, there is always an exception. In my case, I sped it up so much we're flapping around like clowns... which, of course, was what I had in mind.

When adjusting speed you can either chop your video into pieces and then adjust it one piece at a time (the speed will just suddenly JUMP) or you can keyframe a section to have it slowly decelerate/accelerate.

Since I was going for comedy, I used the first option.

In the sections where Jenny and I are setting up the table and the cats are jumping all over the sheet we were trying to hang, I put it at 400%.

You read that correctly: four hundred percent. The result is an obvious zipping, bouncing, and ridiculous looking section.  You can see this done quite a bit in video where you can see, say, houses being built or flowers growing. (They'd be sped up way more, actually!)

The remaining sections of video are only at 200%, which is obviously "fast" but in a choppy dumb looking way that fits the music and makes the cat look even funnier. I used one regular speed section to match the music for about four seconds, and then ZIP! off it goes again.

Since this was essentially documenting a photoshoot, I also included some of the pictures I took (all of which can be seen on my Flickr stream here). The problem with going from moving video to stills is that it's.... still. It's jarring if you leave it like that.

Therefore, I used an obvious transition (the turning cube) and then actually moved across the image itself á la the Ken Burns Effect. In iMovie, there is a nifty built in feature where you just click and tell it where to zoom in and out, but in Final Cut it's not quite so easy. I keyframed each image to adjust the scale and center position, and ta-dah! same thing in about the same amount of time. Keyframing individual parameters on video is something that really makes me wish I had a screen the size of Texas to play with.

When it was all done I had a four minute, twenty-nine second video. I exported it from the program into .m4v, which is a small file type that looks really good. Since standard definition video can look really terrible when compressed (the interlacing and scaling is the culprit) I am quite pleased with this format in general.

Because I made this video for my own person project, I did NOT include production credits at the end, as I do most of my pieces. Since I was acting as producer, director, cinematographer, editor, and host, I figured eyes might cross trying to read it all :)

However, I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to Jenny Arcenas, for all her hard work trying to get my cat to be even more cute.

ENJOY!

While out with a friend at the Amish Market in Maryland, I bought some decadent looking chocolate-dipped strawberries. They were so pretty I didn't really want to have them eaten until I could take pictures of them!

I don't carry my "big camera" around with me all the time, and so I was preparing to take my smaller camera out of my purse when my friend offered to let me borrow her camera.

She owns a Canon Rebel XTi, and so I said "sure!" I've never shot with a Rebel and it's a camera I've been considering as my secondary camera for a while (although I want to buy the Rebel T1i- click to see).

Her camera was sporting the stock 18-55mm stock lens, and since I didn't want to mess with any of her personal settings, I just put the camera on the little green square, aka "point and shoot" mode.

I moved a stool to the middle of her kitchen, opposite the window so that I could get the best light. The camera (since it was in PaS mode) decided I really, really should use the flash- and that would subsequently overblow any photos I would take.

Personally I have eternally wondered about the flash. Whenever they go off, the people in the photos look like they've been nuked! So, I puckered my head up for a moment, since my friend didn't have any sort of diffuser. But, she DID have paper towels! I took a white paper towel and held it in front of the flash and voila! Instant diffusion. I had enough light, and all the pictures didn't look all shadowed and unnaturally lit.

My friend obligingly grabbed a bottle of wine off the top of the refrigerator and set it next to the strawberries, which I'd plopped into a bowl.

I'd like you to notice that all these pictures were done completely spontaneously, without studio lighting, and they were propped up on top of a stool in the middle of the kitchen... and they look great! It's not difficult to take nice photos like these, even with a point-and-shoot (which I was simulating with the mode the camera was in).

All the strawberries were shot with the Rebel XTi, on PaS mode, with a paper towel in front of the flash. Nice, huh? I didn't remove the background or add extra blur or anything crazy like that- that's how they looked when I took them.

I was then inspired. Once I got home, I decided I'd take more pictures of food I had in the kitchen.

When an artist is first beginning to draw, the first thing they do is the still life, since fruit and things will sit politely for hours while you sketch it. I've never actually taken pictures of random fruits and vegetables before, and so I pulled out my lightbox and put it on my dining room table.

This particular lightbox is a small 24"x24" cube with two lamps. You can get this same very inexpensive set up from Amazon (click here!). It comes with a white background, a blue background, a black background, and a green background (for chroma keying).

I took a houselamp and pointed it down at the top so that the box would be nice and lit up for this picture. The house light is yellow... the side lamps are blue. If you don't understand what I mean, all visible light has color. Click here to read about it. Essentially, for a setup like this, you wouldn't want to use both sets of lights while you were actually taking the photo because you've got two different shades of "white" going on (bad!).

Quite a lot of people use a light box like this one (or a smaller one) to get those nifty photos you see on Ebay or Etsy. I have stuffed my cat into the box before (he fit) but this was the first time I'd decided to take photos of fruit. (You can see any of the photos in a larger size by clicking on the photo itself.)

I posed the pears in a variety of ways. I did one, three, and then all six in a wire frame basket.

I realized that fruit is pretty dinked up and not-as-pristine as you normally see it in photos, and decided I liked all the imperfections.

As you can see, the lightbox created the neat "seamless" background you frequently see in photos like this.

I elected to use my longer zoom lens, the 70-255mm because my intention was to zoom tightly into some things.

This required me to stand back about twelve feet, however, because any closer and I couldn't focus. You can't exactly use macro mode with a lens like that :)

This interesting thing isn't quite your normal apple. You may have heard of a Grapple (pronounced "Gray-pple") which is essentially an apple that's been infused with grape juice. It's like a crunchy grape. Pretty interesting!!

Since I was back about ten feet, zooming in to the stem, the background completely disappears and creates that awesome glowy look that everyone tries to photoshop in later.

I didn't in fact photoshop anything. The only adjustments to these photos I did in Aperture 2, and mostly I was cropping things or adjusting the luminance- that was it.

Lastly I decided I wanted to zoom into things that most people never take a good look at. I took close ups of quinoa, oats, coffee beans, coffee grounds, nuts, and pretzels.

The pretzel and other tiny things were a challenge. I finally ended up inverting a small white bowl and putting a clear glass tea plate on top of that. Then I put the pretzel or bean in the center and snapped away. When I was done, I did have to crop the photos, but the effect was of "floating pretzel," which I thought was cool.

It was a bit frustrating at times (the light reflecting off the dimpling in an avocado prevented me from getting a good shot of it close up) but overall I was quite satisfied with my first attempt at "A Still Life".... particularly the part where I got to eat what I was shooting.

If you'd like to have a look at a thumbnail group of all the shots I took during the session (and all the chocolate-dipped strawberry shots), please have a look at my Flickr results here. Clicking on any of the thumbnails will take you to a larger view.

Feel free to add to the conversation or ask questions in the comments section by clicking on "add new comment" below!