Bääbsational new music video! Zero budget!

[Sami S]

Direct link to Vimeo for HD quality: http://vimeo.com/8038206

Shot with Panasonic GH1 and Canon FD lenses.

Music video for Bääbs, alias Päivi Kankaro from Tv-resistori who is participating in the Finnish Eurovision Song Contest semifinals with You Don't Know Tomorrow. We shot this music video at an old local hotel, Tammer. Normally they don't allow people to shoot there but the manager apparently is a big fan of the eurovision contest!

There was about 20-25 people all working for free. Basically we didn't have any budget, all the gear was borrowed or our own. Everyone worked for free. On the second scene you see the fireworks, they were there for the Finnish independence day celebration. We were shooting another scene when one of us realised whats going on outside. We lit the balcony in 10 minutes, hurried the make up and costumers to finish the balcony scene's work in ten minutes, carried one 650W Arri Tungsten and lit the scene through a table on the balcony. We were ready the exact moment the fireworks begun. We had 6 scenes to shoot. All in all we had 12 hours to shoot the video. In hindsight I would've wanted to do more/better close up's but we were on a very tight schedule and we spent all our energies planning the master shots and the light design.

 

[David Kruta]

Holy production value, Batman! This video looks fantastic for zero-budget! Amazing job with using the fireworks, that right there alone made it look big budget.

My only thoughts would be to add some weight to that rig, as you get that I'm-using-a-super-light-camera shake a few times. Also, what shutter angle did you use? It looks like 360 shutter at times, making it look a little like video.

Otherwise, fantastic work. Would you mind explaining your post process a bit? Ingest, color correction, anything else. Thanks

 

[Sami S]

Thanks David! Yes we were extremely lucky to be there right in time for the fireworks! We were so psyched, it's not often you get that lucky!

The rig was pretty light indeed, a photo below that shows it a little. But after 12 hours of no breaks shooting and rehearsing it got very heavy, that and a real hurry is mostly to blame for the shaky feel

I had a good friend do the lights and we got a lot of our ideas from Blade Runner, you can see the red sweeps, the big kino flow close up to the subject in the first scene etc.

I shot with 1/50th shutter (Ive been told shooting 720 50p this is the best solution) and on the slow motion scene with 1/100th shutter.

We shot all in 720 50p, should've shot all but the slow mo scene in 1080 but Im afraid to use it since at times the GH1 AVCHD codec breaks nasty so I didnt want to risk it. After every scene I backed up the material (MTS files) to my laptop. I edited with Sony Vegas Pro 8. Color correction was done with Magic Bullet Looks and Vegas.

It's a really really simple workflow, works well and I love the speed and ease of working with the small camera and easy transfer of files and small file sizes.

Sami

 

[A. Clint Litton]

love the light dappling...

 

[David Kruta]

Cool rig, is that Canon L glass I see on there?

I guessed it was Magic Bullet after seeing some of your other videos, but this video had much more refined (read: better) color correction than that kids in the park, IMO.

Seems like a very similar process to the 7D. Keep it up, always great to see high quality work done with small budgets.

 

[Sami S]

Yeah Its 24mm 1.4L, amazing lens!

Yep the Waffle kiddos video is more made to have an old film feel, we went for more "pro" look with the Bääbs video, hopefully we'll get it on some tv shows too!