Shiv Kumar's Blogs - Fall over Wine

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Fall over Wine	1votes
March 06, 2008 02:39 AM	Views:78 Favorited:0 Comments:0

	Filed Under: Cinematography, Videography
Tags: Canon 40D, Canon HV20, Canon XHA1, Letus35 FE, Nikon 50mm f/1.2, Story Telling



Virginia has hundreds of wineries and Vineyards and during the fall one of the things my wife and a friend of ours like to do is visit wineries. I don’t drink but I go along for the ride. This one time I’d taken my Canon HV20 (this is a consumer level HD video camera) with me along with my Canon 40D. As is the case most times there was no intent of publishing a video of this event/trip but simply to practice since you can never have enough of that. So while my wife was tasting the wine I was moving around inside their bar shooting hand held. I wish now that I’d brought my Steadicam Merlin with me. We made two lovely friends there as a bonus. You see them both for a split second in the video at about 1:08 into the video. Elaine is in a red shawl with her back to the camera talking to Patty the blond whose face you can see partially (for a split second). At the time of the shot we hadn’t met them yet. Elaine was attracted to my perfume while Patty the photographer was attracted to my cameras. Gerhardt the owner (you see him towards the end of the video walking towards the camera (he’s wearing a cap), is pretty intrigued with me and my camera (the little HV20!), so after a while he comes over to me and asks me if I’m a professional. At this point I’m in two minds and I’m not sure how ot answer him. So I say “sort of” (what the heck do you mean by sort off? Are you or are you not?). Well, that’s the truth. Professionally, I’m a software engineer, photography, videography is side thing, but I wouldn’t go so far as call myself a professional. If you look at some of my friends or my favorites you’ll see the work of professionals. Anyway, after a bit of a chat it looks like he’d be interested in having someone make a video for his Winery. Hmm. Well, before we left we bought a few bottles of their wine (the glasses came with the tasting). No the wine is pretty good (so I’m told, what do I know). So on the way back home I’m thinking up all these shots we could do so I can present Gerhardt with a demo reel and see what comes of it. Let me tell you, thinking up shots is hard enough. Actually shooting these shots is harder still. It’s all a lot of fun mind you, plus I had two wine loving, enthusiastic assistants. We stopped at the store on the way home to buy some props. You know, the cheese, crackers, vegetables, fruits etc. you see in the video. Lighting and Wine Pouring Once home, we turned the dining room into a studio set. While the girls laid out the table with the props and wine I brought the lights out of the garage and started setting up the lights and camera. Lighting wine glasses is nowhere near as easy as you might think. I used two large soft boxes and a spot light precariously positioned so as to add some glint but not be seen. The camera had to be positioned so as not to be seen as well so some of the shots I imagined in the car had to be rethought so as to be workable. Rebecca (our friend) practiced the wine pouring while I was still getting the lighting set up. Yes, still. Just you try lighting a bunch of sparkling wine glasses and bottles with a highly reflective glass top dining table and then we’ll talk. Shooting Each shot had to be well thought out and choreographed. Since I was using the Letus35 FE with a Nikon 50mm f/1.2 I had to practice the camera moves (tilt and pan only) while simultaneously racking focus. No I don’t have a focus puller on the payroll. It’s not difficult, but you do need to practice. When you look at the video you’ll see the focus was pretty precise (even if I say so myself). I’ve had some people say the focusing was too abrupt. That is, I should have focused from one object to the next a bit more gradually (you live and learn I guess). To add to the degree of difficulty, I wasn’t using a large monitor either, just the tiny view finder of the camera. Once every move was practiced and the wine pourer, the breeze blower and cameraman were all synchronized, I called “action” and for the first of the studio wine shots you see, “next”, meaning instructing the wine pourer to stop pouring and move to the next glass while I racked focus onto it. After all glasses were filled the bottle had to be placed at a precise location on the table because I was going to focus on the bottle’s label almost as soon as it landed. We only repeated the shot once. I can’t remember why, but it meant pour all the wine back into the bottle (oh and we used some cheap wine for the shots but poured it out of the actual bottle for effect), wash and wipe each of the glasses and the glass table top. Then realign all the glasses in a perfect straight line. Having had experience in the advertisement films industry many years ago, this kind of thing was normal. “Pack shots” as they are known as in the ad film industry are one of the most tedious and painstaking aspects of ad films. I was just a production manager then. I wasn’t allowed closer than 7 feet to the 35mm film camera we used (I’m 6’ 3” tall plus 9” for good measure). I arranged for all the props, the sets and models and got the shot ready for the director and cameraman. I was totally smitten with the light man, cameraman and director and the unique skills they each possessed. That whole experience brought about my love of photography and today videography.