My buddy, Ian Youvan, is starting up a clothing brand called String Through Attire and the first step is to have an 'wicked awesome' skateboarder wear your shirt while he 'tears it up' at the skatepark. Austin, our wicked awesome skateboarder that we call Krooks, is more than talented enough to become professional someday. We made a video advertising the brand and the skater at the same time so evey one wins! I went to bed around 4 in the morn the day before so when Ian called and woke me up around 8, I was obviously more than excited to get right into action. This is the quick video we made that will be posted on String's fan page on facebook. you can find it here. Enjoy!
love,
roylan
P.S. Ian is sort of a strange guy and he sat in while i edited the video so the japanese text and the fade to purple was his idea.
Just like a couple of excited little kids at christmas time, Clinton the intern and I almost peed ourselves when the new 7D came in the mail last friday. The Canon 7D is a perfect addition to our family because we finally have a camera that matches the footage of our 5D mrk 2 AND can also shoot 60 frames per second. Of course we wanted to test out the 60p capabilities so the rest of our weekend went as follows.
Friday:
3:00pm - 4:00pm... Dance around in joy
4:10pm - 6:00pm... Prepare for senior session and get familiar with the camera
7:15pm - 8:30pm... Shot our first multiple HDSLR senior session
Saturday:
12:00pm - 6:00pm... Shot photography wedding
8:00pm - 10:30pm... storyboard/argue about shots we want in our test video
11:00pm - 12:00am... FIFA Soccer '09 break on the Xbox
12:30am - 4:00am... finish arguing about film concepts and theory whilst storyboarding the rest of the shots.
image taken from my phone of what clinton the intern wanted one of the shots to look like
Sunday:
3:00pm... wake up
5:00pm - 8:00pm... Clean the garage at the studio and set up lights for particular shots
8:00pm - 8:45pm... inhale amazing steaks that Annie made
9:00pm - 1:45am... shot video
2:00am... caffeine break
2:30am - 5:00am... finish shooting
6:00am... walk into my house just in time to say good morning to my mom who had just woken up
staying according to script
jib shot.. the dolly shots were accomplished by standing on a longboard and being pushed by a second person
Originally we had just planned on doing a few simple test shots but of course one thing lead to another and we couldn't keep it simple. Special thanks to Ian Youvan who came out to annoy us by shooting darts all over the place while we were trying to work and special thanks to Kurt Herron for being my stunt double when we needed two guys to operate the camera. Enjoy!
Yesterday, Annie yelled to me from down stairs "Roylan! Mike wants you to get your camera, a tripod and the in.. tra.. vlo.. lom.. ator". Clearly we were both really confused. Mike walked back inside and said "Dude, the clouds are blowing up outside. get your timelapse equipment" we grabbed a 5D, a tripod and our intervalometer. The first clip is in the front yard taking one picture every seven seconds. With a 2GB card it came out to a total of 331 JPG's. For the second shot, we popped in a 4GB card and took one picture every five seconds equaling 528 pictures. As the second shot goes on, you can see the storm abrewin' to the north that caused all the wind to hammer Pittsburg just in time for Kylie the intern's engagement session. I have a thing for clouds and if you don't think this is pretty then you can leave.
I decided that courier is my new favorite font so i'm going to start posting in courier. Last week before we shot the studio portion of Morgan's senior session, Miguel had an awesome vision in his head of taking pictures that sort of followed the theme of Morgan loving to write. About an hour before we had to start her session Mike was out the door and headin to walmart to get some supplies. He came back with about 5 packs of notebook paper and filled us in with what we were doing. I could ramble on about what happened but who wants to read all that? Just hit play and see for yourself.
So this photographer Sean Stiegemeier got a little tired of looking at the bad photos of the unpronounceable volcano erupting in Iceland. He apparently had some time off from work and decided to head over there on his own dime to create this STUNNING video of the eruption. This sort of thing shows the extreme power of the Canon 5D Mark II everyone has been raving about since it came out on the market. Make this one full-screen and make sure the HD is on.
The soundtrack is by the lead-singer for the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. They've got some hauntingly beautiful music worth checking out too.
It all started when Mike took the whole week off to go to sea world but had to cancel. With the whole week open for anything, I logged onto facebook around 2 in the morn and saw that he had posted a new event that invited any area photographer to come out for a free work shop with ice cream. My first thought was obviously "geez how lame and lonely do you have to be to bribe people with ice cream to come hang out with you?" But it still sounded like a fun idea. He posted that invite on Sunday, I think, and the workshop was on Wednesday. You wouldn't think that we would have a good turnout because of such short notice but it was a very successful night. Mike didn't hold anything back when it came to answering questions. He pretty much revealed every trick and secret that we have so now I wouldn't be surprised if we went bankrupt within the next few months due to everyone putting us out of business. At the end of the day, I think it's safe to say that everyone learned AT LEAST one thing that they didn't know. Hell I work here and I still learned something. I think it's also safe to say that everyone that attended won't eat ice cream again for a while (sadly i'm still working on the left overs).
Two days after the work shop, Kristina and I were asked to come speak at Meadowlark Elementary School to a few classes of 4th and 5th graders for a career fair. Various professionals came in to talk about what they did; like a pilot, a fireman, a lawyer, etc. I have to admit some of these kids had some better questions than the photogs that came to the workshop. Never in our lives have either of us been asked "how do you use math and reading skills in your everyday job?" Kris was also at a loss of words when she was asked what her favorite picture she has ever taken was. That's a tough question if you've ever taken more than 1 picture in your life. It was a good experience for both of us and it really made my day when I heard some little over enthused chubby kid say "YOU GUYS ARE MY FAVORITE WE'VE SEEN TODAY!!"... thank you little over enthused chubby kid.. you're my favorite.
After watching this footage, I realize why we stay out at the studio until one or two in the morning. Clearly we're incapable of staying concentrated on one thing at a time. This is about 5 hours of our day at the studio "editing videos". Lately i've been looking at time lapses made with still images online. I thought they were pretty sweet so I decided to try it on my own. This was shot on the 5D mrk2 with the 16-35 2.8. We plugged in an old intervalometer that Miguel had laying around and set it to take one picture every ten seconds. I'm currently working on a video made entirely of time lapses that i'll post when it's completed. enjoy!
Admittedly this will only be funny to some of the hard-core photogs on this site. I think it's funny as hell. Give it a go and let me know what you think. Zack Arias is one of my favorite photographers. You should definitely give his work a look. Enjoy!
Roylan is one of our Videotards at the studio. Those of you unfamiliar with that term might not find it in any dictionary. It's a term that was coined just for Mason and Roylan. Together they make up the video production team at FX. They are behind all of the filming, editing, and planning that goes into nearly every video you see that makes it to the blog or facebook. We plucked Roylan out of the comfort of high school what seems like forever ago. It's amazing to see how far he's come. Check out the video and let us know what you think!
