Click on the frame grabs below to see the effect of using the Letus.

After one of our DP’s, Brett Eichenberger, shared with me his recent short film, ‘The Cowboy Way’, I was curious to repurpose the look he achieved for a corporate client (see the film below). ALPHA has done many corporate communication videos over the years and I have been looking for ways to elevate our approach and production of authentic storytelling in this area. Brett used the Letus35 lens adapter. This allows you to shoot with your fixed lens digital video camera with interchangeable SLR 35mm lenses. The challenge is one stop or 1/2 stop of light loss. But you get the added flexibility and visual advantages of 35mm depth of field control. We really enjoyed the final results from using the Letus. This is a great option to have available in our style choices when appropriate. I know the RED does a good job at this as well but that is a whole other story.

Brett has been our DP on several productions over the last year. We met while doing volunteer video production for Oregon 150’s tease campaign featuring sightings of Sasquatch around Portland and other areas outside of Oregon. He’s a great guy to work with—talented, creative, hardworking, and collaborative. The recent spot he produced to sell his ‘05 Jetta is one of my favorites. Check out his clips on Vimeo.

We recently produced a series of designer and developer interviews to highlight Nike’s timeline of innovations and introduce their latest running shoe, LunarGlide+. ALPHA produced a diverse body of videos from concept to post and delivered in Blu-ray, HD, and web optimized formats.

The technology focus of the LunarGlide+ series included interviews with designers and engineers to illustrate how this innovative product would serve the athlete. ALPHA added hi-speed videography and 3-D animation to better bring the concept to life for the press audience. The series was assembled with branded titles and graphics to integrate with additional press materials such as a take-away USB drive with extensive content, a live launch event, and Nikemedia.com.

For the LunarGlide+ press event at the Boston Marathon, ALPHA added to the production a series of interviews highlighting key Nike technology innovations starting with the Waffle sole and up to the breakthroughs seen at the Beijing Olympics. ALPHA also produced a series of dramatic male and female ‘runner silhouettes’ to play on vertical displays throughout the event.

::Production Notes::
The designers and product managers we interviewed were all very passionate about the LunarGlide+ and the technology behind it. That is a very fortunate position to be in from a production standpoint. For the interviews we had nothing scripted except questions and conversation points. We had originally planed on one or two videos but were able to break up the series into additional segments because of the quality and breath of content we collected from our interviews.

All interviews, b-roll and high speed imagery were shot on a Panasonic Varicam HPX2700. We have grown very fond this camera and it’s capabilities and it’s operator, Peter Richardson. Both excellent additions to the ALPHA team. In fact, Panasonic caught wind of what we were doing with the camera and asked if they could include footage to display at their booth at NAB.

We also added a Steadicam aspect to the shoot to capture some very dynamic and energetic models using the product. We chose Cathedral Park in the St. John’s neighborhood of Portland for it’s multiple backdrops and dramatic bridge setting. A good choice all around.

As we worked through the project, it became clear that we would have to animate the technology because what was so innovative about it was happening behind internally on the shoe. ALPHA worked closely with Oregon based, Deep Sky Studios, to model the specific elements of the shoe for our editorial purposes.

Credits
Mike Lepis | Producer/Director
James Allen | Post Production Manager/Editor
Peter Richardson | Videographer
Animation | Jared Hobbs
Sal Collura | Steadicam
Travis Widner | Production Assistant

Seems like the same production company does them all. Throw in a little motion graphics and CGI or attractive couple, or dancing hamster… Nothing worth writing about.

Check out this great piece of storytelling from Audi. Now, I’m not exactly their target market (you probably aren’t either). Great build up, beautiful composition of the car’s point of view and a fun payoff. Not sure if I’m going to see too many of these around Portland but the treatment was worth sharing.

Runner Silhouettes from Mike Lepis.

All spots were delivered on Blu-ray DVD and truly delivered a striking display. The runner silhouettes seen here were shown on wide format vertical displays through the environment. The images received a bit of post work in After Effects to create the orange trails around the shoe. The Panasonic Varicam did an amazing job with slow motion and the low light direction of the shot.

Check ‘em out, NY Times, Meta Critic.com, Ebert, they are all digging this film. 1980’s suburban Stockholm? In winter? Lot’s of tight jeans and turtlenecks. And did you see 30 Days of Night? Vampires and snow are the new peanut butter and chocolate.

One interesting design back story—while working on the business card layout we were at a client meeting and about to swap cards. The client handed over their card and apologized about a mis-print. The CEO and the President’s card were printed on the same card, back to back. Joe and I thought that was a great idea/mistake and ran with it. Our cards are printed with Joe’s info on one side and my info on the other. We didn’t get the client but did get a cool idea from them. Ties in nicely with the web/video and brother/brother aspects of our business. Oh, and it’s green too.

Thanks to Brown Printing up the road for the great print job on the cards and thanks to PDQ Signs for the doors.

WebDesignerWall, PSDFAN, Lee Munroe, Specky Boy, Web Creme, CSS WOW, Web design Library, cssimpress, SCREENALICIOUS.US, we6design

The ALPHA website and blog have been popping up over over internet land in design inspiration galleries and coding sites alike and we are thankful and honored to be experiencing such positive feedback.

We’ve recently expanded our crew to include a very talented director of photography, Peter Richardson. Peter and I originally spoke about shooting on a RED One but decided on a Panasonic HD Varicam. Workflow for the RED was going to be too much of a hassle. To date, we have finished 8 pieces with the Varicam and I have been very pleased with both the quality and ease of workflow.  We added a second camera to all our interviews (Panasonic P2) and kept it framed on product our subjects were speaking to during the interview. Both cameras were shooting 720P 24fps. And now we are in production on a second series of interviews.

Post production was done in partnership with ALPHA’s long time collaborator, James Allen from Visual Aid. ALPHA and Visual Aid were able to swap rough cuts back and forth by managing assets so we both had duplicates of footage. We were able to swap back and forth the small Final Cut Pro file to review edits. Occasionally, we would have to include a new asset here and there but since the footage was duped everything could be traded via email. Client reviews were handled on ALPHA’s Extranet (Basecamp).

We can’t talk in detail about the client at this time. The primary audience for the video series is the press. After the videos are made available to press I’ll post a few clips. In the meantime, I’ll post framegrabs to show the interview set ups and great quality of shooting on the Varicam.

Varicam frame grab

Varicam frame grab

And sorry about the long delay in blog posts. I was married a couple of weeks ago and have been exhausted by the efforts it took to get someone so incredible, beautiful, and talented to marry me. You can see a few pics from the wedding here.

Joe and I are talking about doing another event down the road. Our idea is that Joe will host an open house and demo of web technology and I’ll host one on a video topic. Any ideas? Shoot them our way. Thanks.

If you have not seen the amazing and inspirational work of Crush + Lovely you are missing something. Just one question is all they ask to people on the street. Then they edit with beautiful music, just enough overlap and transition between the diverse subjects, emotional, humorous. Near perfection if you ask me.

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn from Crush + Lovely on Vimeo.