Hoodman Saves my Butt at the Long Beach Grand Prix - Easy on the Eyes while Shooting with HDSLR

As I mentioned in the prior post, there is a company by the name of Hoodman. And they have a kit. A kit named Cinema Kit Pro.

Hoodman makes all kinds of really neat stuff that allows us cinematographers to see even in the worst of bright sunlight conditions. As you all know, looking at the LCD screen of any camera in bright light is an exercise of futility.

Exciting film project about to happen - really!

So there I was shooting for 12 hours at the Long Beach Grand Prix in California last Friday when I got a unique phone call. A friend of mine out of the blue called and asked if I wanted to be DP for a potential new show. At first I thought, he is pulling my leg as a birthday joke. But this was not the case. It actually is turning and moving very quickly into something pretty darn real. How do I know this? Well, assuming all goes well, I will once again be hitting the road next Tuesday to start this new project. So I ended up filming a race car driver a.k.a. the "Steering Wheel Guy" on Saturday in the OC of CA, drove back Sunday early, shot some stuff on the way too.. got back to Tucson about 2:30pm, took a quick power nap and then off into the editing bay. Here is the preview of what's to come and what we will be doing for the next couple of weeks.. Talk about "run and gun".

If all goes well, we will be putting up "dailies" and blogging about the whole event as we go. So stay tuned. :)

Update 04/22/11 - 6:00pm: It' ain't happening! At least my part. The sponsor decided to NOT go ahead with the project. I wish I would have known that sooner, then I would have enjoyed shooting stock at the beach instead of wasting time on this. I suppose the upside is I did make a pretty cool friendship with Ed Dellis. So it wasn't all a loss. :)
Update 04/25/11 - 8:00am: It may yet still happen. Sports marketing - go figure. :)
Update 04/25/11 - 2:00pm: It isn't going to happen. This leads to what will be a whole new blog entry about sports marketing, or should I say marketing in general.

Lie to Me? - Not just a TV show...

Perhaps you have seen that television show called Lie to Me (opens a new window) with Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth)? Amazingly enough, there is a real science behind this whole thingamabob. Actually, it is very accurate as well. You see, your face, your eyes, your lips and even your forehead all talk very clearly even when you are not. You could just simply be sitting there, not uttering a word and yet, you like everyone else is an open book.

So why am I writing about this? Well... as I am always on the quest for new challenges in regards to shooting b-roll or stock footage, I made this exact science my new challenge. Sort of. I actually had been doing this for quite a while, but never really thought about it this way. The challenge; take a face, and get that face in umpteen various moods, emotions, feelings, reactions and every other Human Emotional Verb (HEV - a new acronym that I just made up.) you can think of. I like that acronym - don't knock it! It actually has real meaning. Now to get those meanings on film... hmmm..
Challenging, but not unrealistic. See for yourself:



Or simply click here and look at the entire collection of this specific and cool concept.