This film was shot over two days in Chicago, Illinois on the RED Epic & Canon 5D.

The first day Karen, Austin & I spent timelapsing at various locations around the city.

On the second day Joel, Karen, Austin, Eric & I filmed up and down Michigan Avenue (and a few other locations).

The narration was created by Karen Abad karenabad.com and voiced by Ruby Carr (MediaVoice, Nova Scotia, Canada).

Camera equipment provided by Eric Kessler kesslercrane.com.

Music Track licensed from The Music Bed themusicbed.com.
(The Candlepark Stars – We Give and We Get – Tucker and the Night Sky)

The featured dancer in the video was David Fishel, who runs a blog called Davey Dance Blog daveydanceblog.com. His project started while traveling Europe during Spring 2007. Armed only with an ipod and a Canon, Davey picks a location and a pop song.

Working with Sonicfire Pro 5

I have been using Sonicfire Pro 5 off and on now for about a year and am very happy with what they have to offer for royalty free music. If you haven’t checked them out yet, they are definitely worth a look! I am planning to do a tutorial on how to use Sonicfire Pro 5 so stay tuned. To view the article, click here.

About the Film

I recently spent a week in Montana with F9 Photo & Eric Hines shooting some content for Carson’s film, Snow Guardians.

‘Snow Guardians’ is an immensely visual documentary on the life and work of Ski Patrol at several Montana Ski Resorts as well as the Search and Rescue teams that respond to winter emergencies in the backcountry. Follow Ski Patrollers and backcountry search and rescue teams in the Rocky Mountains. The goal will be to capture the hard work and passion of Ski Patrol and snow science experts as they work in challenging, yet beautiful locations. Expanding interest in the backcountry has resulted in a growing number of adventurers seeking enjoyment outside a ski resort. The imperfect science of avalanche study and prediction may be the only thing standing in the way of life and death for a growing number of backcountry adventurers.

‘A Week In Montana’ was shot in various locations around Montana over a one week period. Eric Hines joined me for the later part of the week while shooting at the Yellowstone Club. Shooting this project was a lot of fun as there were no deadlines and no expectations outside of capturing the essence of Montana.

This film was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 14mm 2.8, Canon 50mm 1.2, Canon 70-200mm 2.8, Canon 24-105mm, Kessler Crane Cineslider, Shuttlepod, and Oracle Systems.

Music by: God is an Astronaut – Remembrance Day
Licensed through Rumblefish.

Technical Specifications

Date: January 27th, 2012
Location: Bozeman, Montana
Film By: Preston Kanak
Special Thanks: Eric Hines
Equipment: Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 14mm 2.8, Canon 50mm 1.2, Canon 70-200mm 2.8, Canon 24-105mm, Kessler Crane Cineslider, Kessler Crane Oracle.

Shout-outs

With ‘A Week in Montana’ closing in on 100K views, I thought I would share some links featuring the short.

Huffington Post – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/montana-time-lapse-week

The Gear Patrol – http://gearpatrol.com/blog/2012/02/03/viewfinder-a-week-in-montana/

The Goat – http://thegoat.backcountry.com/2012/02/07/short-film-a-week-in-montana/

Planet5D – http://cinema.planet5d.com/2012/02/a-week-in-montana/

Dtail – http://www.dtail.com/2012/02/a-week-in-montana/

Mnmal – http://mnmal.org/post/17129728159/a-week-in-montana-preston-kanaks-fantastic

Doobybrain – http://www.doobybrain.com/2012/02/03/a-week-in-montana/

Billings Gazette – http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/featured-video-montana-week-in-minutes/article_fd23a682-5979-11e1-9de0-0019bb2963f4.html?oCampaign=hottopics

Trendy Slave – http://www.trendyslave.com/2012/02/04/a-week-in-montana/

Guidebook America – http://www.guidebookamerica.com/plus/2012/02/a-week-in-montana/

Fubiz – http://www.fubiz.net/2012/02/02/a-week-in-montana/

Paranoias – http://www.paranoias.org/2012/02/a-week-in-montana/

Hiking on the Moon – http://www.hikingonthemoon.com/webtv/home/video/a+week+in+montana

The Adventure Blog – http://theadventureblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/video-week-in-montana.html

Kessler University

I recently spent some time down in Plymouth Indiana and Austin Texas with the crew from Kessler Crane (KC) — first to help shoot the Kessler Doc and then second to help with Masters in Motion. On both occasions I was blown away by the generosity of Eric and his team. I was recently asked to take the lead with Kessler University (KU), the Kessler Crane Blog website. KU features original series content, tutorial videos, showcase videos, and a bunch of other content as well. I have also been asked to produce a series of videos showcasing the KC product line in action. I am very honored to be a part of the Kessler team.

What’s to Come

My initial focus with KU is re-tagging and re-organizing the content on the site as the content seems to get buried with the current navigation structure. In regards to the video content, I have completed two tutorial videos — The BASIC CONTROLLER video series FULL LENGTH | CONNECTING & CONTROLLING | TIMELAPSE ESTIMATOR, and the PUSH/PULL video series FULL LENGTH | QUICK START. Over the coming months, I hope to have a video produced for all the products.

Visiting Montana & Indiana

I am currently in Plymouth, Indiana hanging out at KC HQ. It is very cool to see everything in action and see what new products are in development. There are some VERY cool products in the pipeline! Before coming to Indiana, I spent a week in Montana with Carson Garner (F9Photo – Propic) & Eric Hines shooting in some pretty cool locations around Bozeman. We were shooting for Carson’s film, “Snow Guardians”, which is a Collaborative film comprised of many filmmakers donating their time and efforts for the film. From my time there, I will be posting ‘A Week in Montana’ showcasing some of the footage from the trip. For now, here is the first short from the trip .

Gallatin Valley

About the Film

For this video, I wanted to create an atmospheric piece. I decided to head down to the Gallatin Valley and shoot for about an hour.

Technical Specifications

Date: January 16th, 2012
Location: Bozeman, Montana
Film By: Preston Kanak
Equipment: Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 14mm 2.8, Canon 50mm 1.2, Canon 70-200mm 2.8, Canon 24-105mm, Kessler Crane Cineslider, Kessler Crane Oracle.

Shooting with a timeline

I was recently asked to shoot an impromptu short narrative piece. For the project, I was given a few notes in regards to the feel and style of the piece but no time for pre-production and no script to go off of. This project was shot over 2 hrs. I have included the notes below.

I think grabbing a two shot (wide) and running it as a whole piece to start would be great. I see the final edit being a combination of a lot of quick cuts, as well as just when we hold a bit too long on a moment we get out of it with cut aways of eyes, or hands, or phones, or coffee cups, etc.

The style will be very natural and real.

Collaboration is the key to success in virtually every situation. When I was asked to shoot this, I knew that there would be little pre-production and planning but trusted the people involved and knew we would be able to pull it off in a short period of time. However, no matter how unprepared you are, it is key that you have clear defined roles for everyone involved. We had four people involved with this piece. We had two actors, a sound guy, and myself. Luckily there was only one location. I was also given a brief breakdown of the plot points that they wanted to hit. See below.

“A conversation with Tat Maslany and Amy Matysio”

1. AMY sits alone. Mercury café. Window booth.

B-roll: coffee pouring, ripping sugar, playing with menu,
texting, looking around, bored,

2. We see TAT crossing the street. She arrives, comes in,
heads to the table.

B-roll: AMY giving a look to her phone. TAT is late.

3. Girls hug it out. (improv dialogue)

4. They sit. They get comfy. TAT apologizes for being late.

5. They chat: traffic, big city jokes, “some kind of city”,
“I think I could hang out here”, “for a week”, “oh yeah”,
max.

6. “You look good, what is up” “no” “YES, take the
compliment” “I quit sugar”, “quit sugar, quit sugar”, “I’ll
send you the link”, “woof”, “No it’s changed my life”, blah
blah eating discorder..blah blah blah…10 k….home for the
holidays.

7. “what have you been doing?” “mikey’s ballet” laugh “Oh
that’s a thing”, laugh” “is he good”,,”how old is he?”
snicker.

8. SFX: TEXT. Audition improv.

9. “oh shit tape this” “what” “Degrassi thing” “chuck me on
the list” “let them decide” “TO local” student” “I see what
you’re saying “They want local” “really busy” “really busy”
“a lot of meeting” “success”

10. QC bit.

11. Collecting Articles for LA Green Card. “You should go to
LA”, “You are so LA” “Do people tell you you should be on
shows like 2Broke Girls” “Thank You”

12. Asking for TAT. LA wants Tat. Chris Nolan emailed me.
“Oh, what did he want” “who is he again” “Chris Nolan,
Batman” “Oh Chris O’Donnell Robin” No “Chris Nolan the
director of Dark Night have you seen that” “I have seen
that” “Inception” “You’ve seen that” “Oh yeah” Inception
bit…Ellen etc.

13. TAT puts QC away. TEXT from Budapest.

14. Budapest conversation. “How was that?” Tat “so good,
blah blah” “I played a nun” “That’s your hit for sure, super
sexually repressed”

15. Speaking of…”Can you sign this” Grown up Moviestar bit.
“make it out to?” “Just sign it” “Should I sell it?”

16. TEXT.

17a) New years. New Year. 2012. My year. Here’s a
question…why am I not on Broadway?

17b) A friend I’m doing a play with. “Oh a Play” Now see
that;s my hit” Right. Theatre!

18) Cause you live in Regina. “Why am I not on Broadway”
“cause you live in Regina”…Where do you live? Do you have a
house? Mortgage? On my back weight of the world. Nowhere. I
go where the work is. I am home for the holidays. “Right but
where did you come from? “where did you come from?
“Toronto”. Where do you get your mail? I get e-mail. Where
do you file your taxes? I don’t. You don’t? I do, but I
don’t.

19) Oh my god. Does your dada do your taxes? What?! Do you
live with your parents? Oh my god.

20) So good to see you. You too. When people ask I’m like
“she’s amazing, so talented, so beatuful, I’m just so proud
of you, you deserve everything coming your way” “Thank you.

21)”Is that what they say about me? blah blah.

22) Do you work at the gap?

END.

I have included a few frame grabs from the shoot below.

I found that in situation such as this that it is key to be open minded. The two actors had a clear vision coming into the project (although somewhat improvised) so it was key to understand what their vision was and know how to capture it on camera.

I am hoping to have a rough cut done by end of week and will be updating this post when I have it complete.

Part 1 – Emotion

It all starts with a feeling, right? Inspiration, from the music you just heard. Anger, at the person who betrayed you. Joy, for the joke you just cracked. Sadness, for the relationship you’ve lost. Guilt, for not finishing the script on time. Emotions are the start and end point when creating any work of art, for whatever purpose. But screenwriting quite often gets boxed into formal, point-of-fact stage directions, and the emotion is left to the dialogue — the province of actors. So as a writer, how do you best balance and convey emotion in the words at your disposal? As a filmmaker, how do you translate and imbue emotions into a short, feature, experimental or documentary film — something visual and aural and engaging… where to begin?

Expression. Getting that feeling out there, onto the page and screen. As writers we attempt to capture and/or evoke a particular emotion, or better yet, range of emotions. We are always feeling more than one thing at once, this is the nature of reality. The goal as a creator and filmmaker must be to make yourself, or your audience, feel an array of emotions through the words you choose to describe on a page and capture with a camera. A good exercise on the path to achieving this effect is to write visually. A screenwriter’s mantra is usually “actions speak louder than words.” Well, yes… but this isn’t necessarily what I’m talking about. Sometimes there is need (or desire) to go beyond the dialogue and the stage-action in order to truly write the visual you are imagining. It’s not always so easy as “show, don’t tell.” Sometimes you need to do both to properly express an emotion with words, to ignite a spark in the directorial mind. Sometimes you must go back to the prose — an exercise of hands-on storytelling.

Scripts are a funny thing because they, in and of themselves, are not necessarily the end product to your vision. But if we focus on those situations where we can take the chance to be the producing force behind a particular project, it’s extremely beneficial when you and those on your team treat a script not as a stepping stone on the road to a finished film, but as an integral and related piece of work.

Let’s use a recent example that received a lot of attention this past year: Terrence Malick’s infamous THE TREE OF LIFE “script.” I put script in quotations because it is in fact more of a document of visuals, emotions, and subtexts than numbered scenes with carefully structured plot points.

Actress Jessica Chastain, on the experience of reading the script:

The way the script is written is that it was more about ideas than just “this has to happen.” I talk about this a lot, but the scene where I am dancing in the air was an accident, and that wasn’t written in the script. There are moments in the script that talk about the lightness and grace the mother has… I’m sure in the editing room, when going through the script and trying to find different examples of what he’s written, he’s able to place that as an example of her.

Many people have said that only Malick could get away with this style of screenplay, and that the unconventional nature of the document contributed to the long and difficult journey of finally getting the film into production and released. While this may be true in Hollywood, when it’s just you – the independent writer/director – sitting in front of your keyboard with the desire to create a short, holding a camera that is begging to shoot something, this unconventional type of writing can be a worthwhile exercise in both written and directorial storytelling. So why not try it? Screenwriters are always taught that the director, the DOP, the production designer, etc are responsible for the visuals of your script. But that’s only one purpose of screenwriting and only one type of filmmaking. Write a script which can serve as a guide and inspiration for your shots, and go out and capture shots which can reinforce and interpret the emotional ideas in your script. Each can co-exist and even enhance the other.

Let’s look at a few examples from THE TREE OF LIFE. The first – an excerpt which describes a son’s perceptions of the grace of (and perhaps Malick’s owns feelings toward) Chastain’s character of the mother, Mrs. O’Brien:

BABY’S POVS – MOTHER’S SMILE, HANDS, ETC

His mother’s smile: the first thing he perceives. It covers him with light. She is goodness, peace, the fountain of life: hers is the very breath of paradise. Wordlessly, she speaks with his soul. He cannot tell where she leaves off and he begins. From the beginning she ignores her interests and convenience to serve his.

Or later in life (and the script):

Later, they watch from another room as she dances by herself to some music on the radio.

Jack remembers a dream he once had of his mother lying, like Snow White, in a glass coffin. Her beautiful red cheeks, her hair black as the night. How would he face the world without her? He cannot bear the thought that he might have a separate destiny.

A final except from the script, describing the mother’s grief over the loss of her son:

We are aboard a train, plunging through the countryside; the locomotive far ahead, barely visible. A blind, overwhelming force.

The rails weave in and out beneath the wheels. The steel lines of fate. It runs along its way, defies all other paths, all walls, crashes through every obstacle.

She cannot be persuaded to turn or look. She sits with her face averted, staring at the ground.

Each day she finds it harder to beat. She cannot read, or sleep. The dawn light coming in though the window is ghastly to her. It is as though he had died again. And yet she would not be surprised if he were to walk into the room.

Children play. Spring comes. The crocus raise their heads. The redbuds blaze. They return.

A door through which one fears to look. A path one shrinks from taking. Empty parks. A vast, neglected garden. A gate. The past consuming all.

She remembers when the sun shone about her, when it seemed that she would die in her nest.

Not only have numerous scenes and locations and characters come and gone within the prose, but there are only a few visual cues for the director to work from… some are very specific (dawn light coming through a window), others are extremely vague (a blind, overwhelming force). How exactly do you roll camera on the “unbearable thought that he might have a separate destiny” from his mother, or “the past consuming all?” Therein lies the challenge (and the fun)!

The way each of us perceives these phrases, these bits and pieces of emotion and expression of those emotions, is where we can begin to find our own visual voice. So next time you sit down to write something… don’t be afraid to get a little non-traditional in the prose. Write something that you, or some other director, has to ponder and construct visually. Something the DOP has to draw on his/her own emotions in order to represent. Express, and see where the visual leads you and your story.

About the Film

In this film, I explore an abandoned grain elevator in Saskatchewan, Canada. I also showcase four different ways in which you can accomplish push/pull moves without seeing the track in the shot when using Kessler Crane Gear. Below is a 3 Minute Short I shot utilizing some of these methods. I have also included the quick start guide video at the bottom of the post.

***NOTE: I only showcase a few different methods in which you can accomplish these moves as there are many configuration options.

Positively No Smoking

Introduction

There are a variety of configurations in which you are able to accomplish push or pull moves using Kessler Crane Gear. These can be accomplished by one of four methods; Angles, Tighter Lenses, Height, or Length. In this post, I will show you a few ways in which you can configure your gear to accomplish these moves without seeing the track in your shots.

Using Angles

There are two ways in which you can use angles to keep the track out of the shot. You can either slightly tilt the camera up to frame the camera out or have your track on an angle. To do this, lower the front of the track and raise the back of the track. This method is effective no matter the length of your track.

Using Tighter Lenses

A simple way in which to keep the track out of the shot is by using a tighter lens. However, if you are wanting to shoot with a wider lens and want to keep the camera parallel with the horizon, you will have to use either the angle or length options.

Using Height

Raising the camera off of the track will give you more flexibility when framing your shot. As a point of reference, if shooting with a 3 foot Cineslider with your camera raised up one foot, you can use a 24mm lens on a full frame camera and not see the track when your camera is pointed straight forward.

This method depends on the length of your track. If you are shooting with a longer track and want to have the camera parallel with the horizon, you will either have to use the angle or length options.

Using Length Extensions

Using length extensions is the most versatile option. In situations where you are wanting to push into something, such as a car window, this method allows you to do this. One thing to be cautious of however is that if there is a wind, movement may become present so keep an eye on your camera so there is no undesired movement.

Quick Start Guide Video

Various Configurations

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On Location Shots

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Introduction

Okay, let me clarify. This isn’t Nikon’s first DSLR camera to have video but it IS the 1st that actually looks like it may be good at shooting video! Now, I don’t want to comment at this point about the camera until I shoot with it but I can say I am very excited!

About the Camera

Multi-area Mode Full HD D-movie with three image area options.

A dedicated movie-record button has been positioned near the shutter-release button for smooth starting and stopping of movie recording with a feel similar to that of still-image shooting. Full-HD movie recording at a frame size of 1920 × 1080 and frame rate of 30 fps is supported, and the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression method has been adopted. Movies up to 29 minutes 59 seconds can be recorded. Image sensor sensitivity begins at ISO 200 and can be expanded to ISO 204800 equivalent possible with still-image shooting.

Full-HD movies can be recorded with the D4 using one of three image areas: FX-based movie format, DX-based movie format, or 1920 × 1080 crop; all available at 30 fps/ 25 fps or 24 fps. FX-based movie format makes full use of the large image sensor, enabling movies with an emphasis on pleasing blur characteristics. When a DX lens is attached, DX-based format is automatically selected. This format is useful for creating an extension to the focal length of an existing lens. For an even stronger telephoto effect, the 1920 × 1080 crop format brings an approximately 2.7x crop of the picture angle while delivering outstanding video quality and detail, obtaining 1080p Full HD. By choosing the movie format appropriate for the particular scene, the three image area options available with a single camera enable more flexible imaging expression through collaboration with the entire NIKKOR lens lineup, including DX lenses.

The D4 is equipped with a connector for external microphones that enables stereo recording. The camera also offers a headphone connector that supports stereo headphones, convenient for checking sound recorded with movies. What’s more, a new sound level indicator also allows for microphone sensitivity adjustment, even during recording, with a visual indicator of sound levels.