ALIVE | Canada 4K from Flo Nick on Vimeo.
We don't often loan out kits to unproven relationships, but with Flo reached out and told us what he wanted to do and where he wanted to do it, we put together a loaner kit for him to play with and let him roam! We didn't hear from him for a bit, but he popped back out of the wilderness and put together Alive - a Vimeo timelapse Staff Pick - pretty hard to do this days. We were impressed with his composition, storytelling, and love the last shot!
Brian: You are just coming out of school, so cash must be tight. Would you buy the spectrum run and gun kit that you used on the shoot?
Flo: This really depends on the jobs that clients will book me for in the future. If I would regularly get hired to do motion timelapse or similar camera work where the spectrum would come in useful, I could justify the costs for buying a kit. I totally fell in love with the spectrum but right now, it seems to be a little too much money to spend only for passion projects like 'ALIVE‘.
Brian: What was in your setup?
Flo:
Brian - How long did typical setups take you get going?
Flo - That’s really a matter of practice to quickly whip the gear out of your backpack, put the slider in the right position with your tripods and get the spectrum going. Depending on the “comfort“ of the location it took me about 3-5 min to set up the gear, however, an extra maybe 5 min if I extend the iFootage Shark slider, and up to 10 minutes to set the start and end point of the shot depending on the complexity of the desired timelapse motion.
Brian - How many locations, shots, etc
Flo - I counted approximately 50 different locations along my 6 week journey. And I shot 149 timelapse shots. Among these, 32 shots made it into the final film.
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Brian - What features / functions did you most use with the eMotimo?
Flo - I mostly used the normal SMS function in order to shoot moving timelapse. By doing so, I really enjoyed setting keyframes in between to get even more control of the shot. For this final shot, though, I made use of the full potential of the spectrum. I found out about the feature, where you can repeat a programmed movement with different speeds. That allowed me to record shots in different frame rates but still have the exact same movement. So I didn’t get the idea out of my head to combine a moving timelapse shot with a real time video with both shots having the very same camera movement. In the final shot with the person (me) raising the arms, I could do exactly that. Even though it took a lot of time perfectly masking out the person in post production, this shot probably wouldn’t have been possible without the spectrum and its great feature
Brian - How much video/vs. timelapse did you shoot?
Flo - I barely shot any video because I was aware of the immense quality of the RAW photo format all my timelapse were built of. The video quality of my camera simply couldn’t compete with the RAW timelapse. As I mentioned, the only video in the final film is the mask of me raising my arms in the final shot.
Brian - After using it for 2 months, what were some of your challenges?
Flo - There are four things that come to my mind:
eMotimo's responses to the tough stuff:
Brian - What did you love about the rig?
Flo -
eMotimo's responses:
Sweet!
Flo -
Overall, I’m absolutely in love with the spectrum!
A lot of people have reached out to me in the past few days asking what gear I used. That’s when I've proudly recommended the spectrum.
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