Motion Arts Pro Daily writer David Schonauer highlighted our short film, Shattered following the film’s success as one of the top 39 films at the AI-AP International Motion Art Awards. You can read the full article here.
Thanks David and Motion Arts Pro!
B&H Photo Video has posted my live Canon Speedlite workshop online. If you’re looking to hone your lighting techniques for sports and portraiture, here’s a free tutorial! With many thanks to Canon for sponsoring the event.
Click here to view the video.
Our pro-bono project in Ethiopia, Aster’s Story, was just posted on Dateline NBC’s website as a Web Exclusive. Check out the video here.
Aster Degaro suffered from a life-threatening tumor on her neck, one that had grown to enormous proportions and couldn’t be treated anywhere in East Africa. Ostracized by her peers, Aster couldn’t attend school, and dreamed of a life free from disease and house-bound exile.
The project was born from Dr. Jim Alpers’ work with the nonprofit Wide Horizons for Children, where he first met Aster Degaro in Ethiopia in 2010 on a medical mission. Tyler and Dr. Alpers have both adopted children from Ethiopia and have become active volunteers for Wide Horizons’ humanitarian-aid efforts there.
After three years of effort, Dr. Alpers helped bring Aster to New York City for surgery, where surgeons with the nonprofit Little Baby Face Foundation successfully removed the tumor.
We filmed with Aster last August in her home village of Bona, Ethiopia, just before she and her father made the long journey to New York for her surgery. Below are some behind the scenes images of the trip.
After a month in New York for the surgery and recovery, Aster was excited to return home. She has started school and has been welcomed into her new class.
Tyler Stableford Photography + Film produced pro bono videos for both Little Baby Face Foundation and Wide Horizons For Children to help with their fundraising efforts this year. With Dateline working on a feature about Little Baby Face Foundation, we were thrilled to share “Aster’s Story” on their website as a supporting video.
To learn more about the life-changing work that Little Baby Face Foundation and Wide Horizons For Children are doing, please visit their websites.
Hard to believe we are almost at the end of another year! You would think we would have seen this year’s end coming a bit quicker considering we’ve been filming holiday commercials since October! Along with the new Cabela’s “It’s In Your Nature” campaign, we also shot holiday spots for Cabela’s as well. See the two spots below:
“Winter Wonderland”
“Silent Night”
Shooting the holiday spots along side the “It’s In Your Nature” campaign added extra stress and shooting days to be sure. But it also allowed us to keep our workflow going with the same crew we were working with for weeks already. We were able to take advantage of already knowing how everyone on set functions and efficiently crafting additional spots for Cabela’s.
We’ve had a great year here at Tyler Stableford Photography + Film; we are excited to see what 2014 brings!
“Change is afoot in commercial photography. Depending on how one chooses to see it, the convergence of stills and video is either a new opportunity or a sign of the coming apocalypse. Photographer Tyler Stableford has chosen to embrace the change. It’s energizing his creativity and reinventing his business.”
So begins William Sawalich’s article in Digital Photo Pro about our transition from stills to video and shooting a national television brand campaign for Cabela’s. Our transition truly has energized our creativity- working in collaboration with creative directors and high level thinkers has forced us up our game. The result has been an incredible two year collaboration with Cabela’s.
Stay tuned for the It’s In Your Nature Anthem Part II. We shot over the course of five weeks this Fall in some of the most stunning locations across the United States. In a similar vein as last year, we were aiming to evoke the feeling of being in nature. The result? Well, we’ll just have to wait until the new year to see!
Read the full article below.
Have you ever read a book or seen a film about the circus- the people who travel around and set up a big top tent, or practice their art- trapeze flying, elephant riding, lion taming, or clown around- all for entertainment. Well, looking around on set over the past month, at a crew that has become like family, I couldn’t help but think that we are a modern traveling circus. I say this with the utmost respect for the people I work with.
Like a well oiled machine we roll in to town – our caravan of minivans taking over country roads from Kentucky to Washington – and set up shop hoping to create magic.
Shooting in Louisiana with a full crew. Picture: Producer, Danny Taff
What I’ve learned is magic takes a lot of work. Last year, we created the “It’s In Your Nature” Campaign for Cabela’s and while we knew we had something special in the consistent, consecutive, perfect sunrise and sunset scenes, we didn’t know how well our commercial film would be received and we couldn’t have dreamed that we’d be asked to recreate that magic again this year.
Working for Tyler Stableford I’ve seen behind the lucky streak and know all of the preparation it takes to pull off a successful outdoor commercial. Though on set we’ve joked that he has some sort of agreement with Mother Nature because on several occasions we’ve witnessed a hot pink sunset fall out of nowhere on an otherwise cloudy overcast shoot day, I know that he plans and plans and prepares for the backup to the backup.
Side note: If you are an outdoor photographer or filmmaker reading this get a sun seeking app; just do it. While you’re at it get every radar weather seeking app you can. It will be worth it for that 15 min break in the cloud cover on an important shoot day.
The biggest thing that he has taught me about professionalism is being prepared. As our ringleader, he’s assembled a hell of a team and a vision for what this Cabela’s It’s In Your Nature 2.0 commercial would be. Working with an incredibly bright and inspiring creative marketing team and Cabela’s, this years commercial evolved beyond what we did last year and what we’ve ever done as a production company. We brought in dogs, birds, fish, kids and a lot more on screen talent; at times it really did feel like a circus!
With more to direct, we always seemed to be fighting against the clock on our month long shoot. When time or weather weren’t on our side, Kent Harvey, our DP, was able to work with the gaffers and crew to buy us that much needed extra bit of light and like magic we had moonlight or sunlight once again!
Fall in Kentucky, full set running. Picture: Danny Taff
Much of our work here at Stableford Studios is done in a light and fast manner- with the type of outdoor adventure work we do it just has to be. However working with such a skilled crew over the course of the past two years on these Cabela’s commercials has been incredible. Watching everyone work together doing their part to create a beautiful scene- sometimes literally as is the case with Pam Chavez and our art department- is an inspiring reminder that creating magic takes a lot of work!
The commercial should air at the beginning of next year so stay tuned to see it and the behind the scenes videos.
Until next time!
-Kate
Hello Alaska! This Friday, November 22nd, I’ll be giving a Canon-sponsored talk with Stewart’s Photo at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. I’ll be going over my go-to tips for shooting adventure photography. It’s been a busy fall with traveling all over the country shooting and I’m excited to have this talk to fold in the lessons I’m still learning on set and on location. If you are in the Anchorage area, I hope to see you there!
For more on the event, click on the link below:
Since moving to the Canon 5D Mark III, we’ve been thrilled with how it has helped raise the production value of our work. since upgrading to the Mark III, we have come up with a few custom settings for the camera that has helped our workflow.
A couple years ago, we had a post going over our custom settings on the 5D Mark II, so here is the update for you on the custom settings on the Mark III as well!
Click here to download the new PDF. While some of the functions are similar to the Mark II, there are some upgrades that are unique to the Mark III; particularly in regards to video compression.
If you are interested in hearing more about how to using your DSLR as a creative video machine, or just want to improve yourself as a cinematographer, don’t miss out on Tyler’s talk, Mastering Video: Storytelling Essentials For Cinematography, at PDN’s PhotoPlus Expo in New York this Friday, October 25 from 1:30pm to 3:30pm presented by Canon. Hope to see you there!
It’s that time of the year again already! I’ll be speaking at PDN’s Photo Plus Expo in New York on Friday, October 25 from 1:30-3:30pm.
Sponsored by Canon, this year my talk is Mastering Video: Storytelling Essentials For Cinematography. At its heart, great cinematography is all about creating emotion. In this fast-paced seminar, I’ll reveal the essential elements of shooting compelling short films, commercials and social media videos. Light, framing, camera motions, storyline and interview techniques are critical components for building a story. I’ll be using detailed examples from some of our award-winning films and commercials to show how to use these techniques to truly connect with your audience. This seminar is designed for shooters of all levels including those making the transition from stills to video.
I hope to see you there! Check out the full schedule here.
As you know, we here at TSP+F are HUGE advocates of DSLR style filmmaking. Which is why we’re psyched to let you know about our friend Mitch Aunger over at planet5d.com is launching a DSLR filmmaking tutorial tour.
In Mitch’s words, “Our tour is called DSLR Dynamics Video Visuals Tour and we’re bringing in-depth tips, tricks, and insider knowledge to 30 major cities in the United States and Canada this fall. There are more details here: http://
The tour’s teachers, Mitch and Barry Anderson, have done exhaustive work on how to get the most out of DSLR cameras from every end of the spectrum. From single camera and lens run and gun work all the way up to full cinema style shooting. While we’ve been lucky enough to have posts about our workflows on planet5d, it’s more often that we are picking up tips and tricks from them to improve our movie making process. Check out the tour and have fun shooting!
Alright, Ben here again. Now that things have slowed down around here (gotta love Summer, it’s easy to stay busy!), I’m going to continue a look into the rig setups we like to employ here at Stableford Studios.
Before we went over the Monopod rig that we love to use for light and fast setups. We’re going to move up a bit footprint wise with our next setup, the shoulder rig. Shoulder rigs can do a wide variety of things for the look of the footage. They can be used to stabilize and function with the cameraman as a more mobile tripod system; they can work for a more polished handheld “floating” camera look; and they can even function for panning or tracking shots depending on the cameraman’s ability to move smoothly with the rig system in place on the shoulder. We work with Redrock Micro’s rig system a lot to create our shoulder rigs. I’m going to highlight two different style of shoulder rigs, both of which we use, depending on our needs.
First up is our very basic shoulder rig. This guys is made up of only 5 total Redrock pieces. We’ve used this rig all over the place. From shooting on oil rigs, to tracking ice climbers as they approach their objective on our short film Shattered. This is the most basic, yet stable shoulder rig system we’ve found. Combined with the Zacuto Z-finder, we’ve eliminated the need for an external monitor and are able to get the camera close to the body, an important factor in maintaining stability with the rig. With both hands on the front handles and the back handle hooked over the shoulder, we’re able to push against our shoulder with the front handles and allow the rig to move with our body. The tension created by the rig helps maintain stability and smoother motion. Mostly, with this system the simplicity is a major part of the appeal. This system is made up of only 5 Redrock Micro pieces. When broken down, the parts can fit in the crevices of just about any bag we’re traveling with and it weighs next to nothing. On our recent trip to Ethiopia, we had two of these shoulder rig systems that fit with the tripod in its protective bag. It was an easy toss-in that gave us even more shooting flexibility. In a place as far from home as eastern Africa, we’ll take it!
Redrock Micro Shoulder Rigs packed flat and strapped to our packs while shooting “Shattered” in the backcountry.
While the light shoulder rig system is great, the best part of these Redrock micro systems is how quick and easy it is to build out these shoulder rigs to make them both more robust, but more importantly, more useful. This is a short behind the scenes video showing Tyler using our weighted shoulder rig for our Snowmass Tourism work last winter.
This larger, more complex rig has its own set of advantages. The biggest difference is the addition of the Small HD monitor, the shoulder pad, and the back counter-weight. This type of shoulder rig is used for all-day shooting and when travel weight is less of an issue. The back counter-weight performs a variety of functions. While replacing the back handle “hook” to help control the movement of the rig, the weight itself actually helps the rig remain comfortable over a long day. With the addition of a monitor, batteries, plus the camera and lenses, the weight of the rig can be forward-heavy toward the hand grips; the shoulder pad and weight helps shift the rig’s weight to where you want it, right squarely on the shoulder.
Adding the Small HD DP6 monitor allows helps in a number of ways. In addition to making it easier to frame up shots with the larger monitor screen, the external monitor allows us to pull focus easier (made even easier with the DP6′s focus assist and peaking options) and when shooting run and gun, finding focus is one of the biggest challenges we face. The DP6 also has a battery plate that works with the Canon LP-E6 batteries, the same as our 5D Mark III camera bodies run off of. This allows us to carry only one battery type with us on set, simplifying the packing and on set process. With the addition of the monitor, an HDMI cable from the camera to the monitor is necessary. Cable management then becomes a factor and for that you’ll notice the handle added on the rig works behind the camera as a cable wrap holder, keeping the cable out of the shooters way. This handle also creates another point where the shooter can stabilize the camera from. Holding onto this handle and pressing down against the shoulder can allow the shooter to pull focus with their other hand. Because the rig is balanced over the shoulder, pressing the rig down onto the shoulder still maintains stability of the rig even without any hands gripping the front handles. The additional top handle also allows the option of low angle shooting with the rig (as seen in the Snowmass video). This turns the shoulder rig into a functional, pseudo-underslung rig, opening up low angle shots, particularly helpful when shooting boot product videos for clients like Timberland or Ariat.
These are just two of the infinite ways a shoulder rig can be configured. One of the best aspects of these rigs is the flexibility they give you both before you leave your studio and once you are on set.
Photography workshops are a great way to advance your photography and just set some time aside to get out into nature with your camera and have some fun! One of the biggest benefits of joining a workshop is you get hands on help from a professional but you also get time out doing what you love with like minded people.
If you’ve been considering taking one of the Canon EOL Destination Workshops with Tyler but don’t know what to expect take a look at this video from one of our previous workshops. Click here.
Please sign up soon for the Aspen Workshop as we have already SOLD OUT of the Acadia Workshop. Hope to see you soon!
Hello everyone, Ben here again. Since I have been working here for the past year, I’ve been thrown into the world of commercial photography and filmmaking. While the photography side of this business has been interesting to learn, my personal interest still lies mostly on the motion side of our business. As an editor, I see a lot of footage, a lot of raw footage. It’s usually up to me to decide what is the best shot for a specific point in a specific piece of work. What I want to talk about is how do we get that right shot. While there are a lot of factors that go into getting the shot, one of the earliest decisions we have to make is what is the camera doing? Is it tracking, panning, locked-off, zooming, or any combination of these things? I’ll be writing about our 3 primary camera rig setups and why we use each one. We obviously use more than 3 camera rigs, but these are our most flexible and most used setups. These are our tried and true, go-to rigs.
Monopod Rig (click to enlarge)
The first rig I want to talk about is our monopod rig. Last summer we shot a three part short film series for Snowmass Tourism. We highlighted three Snowmass locals that helped illustrate and show off the beauty and appeal of Snowmass, CO. Out of these three films, we were especially excited for the opportunity to shoot with Jeff Groom, a Snowmass native who has been ranching in the Roaring Fork Valley all his life. This was our chance to create our version of the iconic American Cowboy. As we dove into pre-production for this short film, we went over how we wanted the piece to feel. Jeff manages Snowmass Creek Outfitters and one of their specialties is taking visitors on horse pack trips. We loved the direct connection to the land that Jeff and his business had and we knew that we wanted the section of the film highlighting Jeff’s connection to the area to feel grounded and steady. We decided to avoid shoulder mounts or hand-held cameras to avoid any shakiness. Shoulder mounts would still give too much float to the camera, letting focus drift too much and would give off a feeling of unease, the opposite of what Jeff feels when he is at home in the mountains. We didn’t want to use any cranes or sliders for camera movement as it would be too active. We wanted the viewer to feel rooted in their position watching Jeff in his element.
We settled on our favorite light and fast setup of a Manfrotto 561BHDV Monopod mounted with a Canon 5D Mark III. On the 5DIII we have a Zacuto Z-Finder Pro 2.5x mounted on the rear LCD and a Sennheiser MKE 400 shotgun microphone mounted on the hot shoe of the camera.
Tyler working with our monopod rig for “The Cowboy”
This has been our mainstay light and fast system. The monopod allows us to work in a number of different ways. We can be steady with it, almost like being lock off on a tripod; we can float around a bit similar to a shoulder rig; and we can pan and tilt when action is pulled away from our set location. For the rodeo scenes of “The Cowboy,” we were running around the rodeo grounds with this same rig. The telescoping function allowed us to get high up to be eye level with the horses or up at the perspective of the riders, but also work low down on the ground for low angle hero shots of Jeff on his horse. The stationary position of the monopod gives the viewer the same grounded feel that Jeff has living in Snowmass but with its pan and tilt ability, the viewer can also feel immersed in the location while still maintaining that grounded place in the scene.
We have had luck using this system for behind the scenes as well. For our behind the scenes series of our short film Shattered for Canon’s Digital Learning center, we used this monopod setup as well. We even shot parts of Shattered itself with this system (when Tyler wasn’t hanging off the ice of course).
Tyler and Draper shooting Steve House for “Shattered”
Kate shooting Behind the Scenes for “Shattered” near Bridal Veil Falls, Telluride, CO
We go back to this system time and time again. It gives us a great professional look and, more importantly, with the right application, it gives the scene we are shooting the right look as well. Next up, our go-to shoulder mount system.
After testing Canon’s 1D-C, we wanted to look deeper into Canon’s Cinema options. We were lucky enough to get the Canon CN-E 50mm T1.3 L F Cine Lens loaned out to us to do some comparison tests. We put the Cine lens directly up against it’s L Series cousin to see if it was worth the extra cash.
Right off the bat, the size of the Cine Lenses jumped out at us. These are not run and gun, quick change, single camera bag sized lenses. With the 114mm diameter opening, none of our screw on filters would work with these lenses. That meant for filters, we’d need a matte box. The next thing we noticed was the large, geared rings for both focus and aperture. This allows for follow focus wheels to lock in to the focus and aperture rings for smooth racks. The aperture ring communicates with the 1D-C to electronically keep track of the shift, but it remains a fully manual system, the camera body itself has no control on changing the t/stop. The focus ring runs a lot smoother than our L Series lenses and the Cine Lens focus ring has stopping points for both minimal and infinite focus. The L Series lenses spin on forever, even after you pass the minimum focus point and infinite focus point; the Cine Lenses are much easier to work with for focus pulls with a follow focus ring. But enough of how the lens looks on the outside! What kind of image was made from the inside?
The major difference between the L Series Lens and the Cine Lens is the bokeh, the blur of the lens. The L Series 50mm lens has sharper lines in its bokeh, while the Cine lens is far more spherical, nearly a perfect circle in the center of the lens. This is particularly apparent when the foreground subject is in focus, and the background lights remain as tighter bokeh. In the freeze frame, you can see the cleaner bokeh of the Cine lens. This look is what has typically separated cinema and higher quality lenses from stills and lower cost lenses. Other than that however, we didn’t see much difference in the image quality. Both 50mm lenses had the same slight distortion on the edges of the frame. The bokeh circles on the edges become slightly squished, but it looks like they distort in the same way on both the L Series and the Cine Lens.
Looking at the side by side footage, you can see the extra time it takes to pull focus from minimum to infinity on the Cine Lens compared to the L Series. While the Cine Lens has stops for minimum and infinite points, the focus ring has a much longer rack than its L Series cousin. To do a long rack, a motorized focus wheel is needed to maintain smooth and quick pulls. However, having a larger focus ring to work within can help make smaller racks, such as a profile conversation between two characters in a car, easier to pull between.
The Cine Lenses look great. Depending on the job, there might be a need for the nicer Cine Lenses with the 11 Blade Iris vs the 8 Blade Iris of the L Series Lenses (hence the nicer Bokeh). Whether or not the nicer blur is worth losing the ability to work quickly or use variable ND filters is tough to say particularly along with having to add a matte box and rails and the extra cost to rent the lens. But for commercial cinematography, the nicer glass may be necessary; it all depends on the job.
Alright, Ben here again with some help from our retoucher Draper White talking about pulling stills from 4K video on the Canon 1D-C.
Pulling stills from video is becoming more and more popular and we have started seeing requests from clients to do so. With video resolution catching up with the frame sizes of most cameras smaller than medium format, this is finally an option with 4K Cameras like the Red Epic and Scarlet, Arri Alexa, or, in our case, the Canon 1D-C.
Lightroom Settings for Motion to Still Capture
