Film De Liberte honcho and Bare Films uber-talent Joakim Eliasson recently completed a fantastic campaign for WWF Earth hour with an incredibly limited budget, and nothing more than a Canon Stills Camera.Eliason told us:
“When Film de Liberté in Stockholm won the project to shoot a global Earth Hour campaign through WWF in Stockholm they quickly decided to shoot it with the new Canon 5D Mark II.”
“Although we are used to working with 35 mm cameras plus a huge lighting department and grip team behind our back, we realized that if we wanted to do this spot we needed to rethink and go back to basics again.”
However the decision to use the camera was not one of the easiest roads that the team could have taken. As Eliason soon found the Canon sales staff to be slightly on the unhelpful side when extracting any tips on how to get the best out of the gear:
“(We were) banging our heads against the Canon Sales Department wall trying to explain what we needed but received no help or support whatsoever. We had to turn to the mighty internet to learn how the camera worked.”
To make matters worse, time was of the essence for the small team working on the shoot.
“Getting the camera two days before the shoot meant that we spent the nights making tests and sending clips to our posthouse The Syndicate. They really helped us get the best out from the test material. We sent them QT files on the FTP and they posted the material back in minutes with corrections. We were quick learners.”
Travelling to five continents within 20 days coupled with a minimal budget for the project meant that the team were experimenting with new ways to work all the time.
The only ‘crew’ available were friends that helped (in any way that they could) and all scenes ended up being shot with the lights that existed at the location.
“We used somebody’s friends shop, an aunt’s children, and a best buddies home, who we ended up having dinner with after the shoot. Needless to say, we have a lot of new Facebook friends”
Alongside Joakim, Producer Christer Kildén and DOP Ulf Brantås, were able to get closer to the people they were filming and with this hands on approach were able find locations that would otherwise have been missed.
“Since we wanted to shoot real locations for maximum authenticity we were constantly looking for new locations to shoot on the way. And when we found them Christer would could have a coffee with the shop owner trying to explain our mission. By the time they had finished their coffee Joakim and Ulf had already shot the scene and we were out from there and on our way to the next place.”
Unfortunately, small budget innovations does have its drawbacks, as Joakim went on:
“The only problem we have now is to get our accountant to approve the bag of handwritten receipts in 8 different languages…and trying to explain to the next client why we need a proper budget!”
Six of The Best.
1. Why the Canon camera?
We knew we had to travel, and being a small crew (director, DOP, Producer), we could be as quick, flexible and spontaneous as possible as well as being able to use locations and people that we found along the way.
Therefore the first thing we had to do was to minimize the technical equipment and at the same time, make sure the end result looked good.
We looked into RED but the material didn’t look great when shooting at night with little lighting.....and we did not want to shoot on ordinary HD cameras because I’m generally not happy with how it looks.
We stumbled upon a Test film on Vimeo made with the Mark II and it got us really excited and we started the chase for the camera. Amazingly enough, Canon themselves refused to help even for our test and that was even after WWF explained the whole campaign!
Luckily, we talked to our friends and were able to sneak in front of the pre -order line.
Two days before the shoot, when we had done our tests we saw that the camera was very light sensitive and the new large sensor gave the images the short depth of field that gives it that 35mm feel that we really like. During those two nights testing and giving the camera a hard time we were sure that they could do the things we wanted.
Our DOP Ulf Brantås came up with homemade inventions that we added to make the camera work better. He is also the king of handheld camera. After shooting Generation Kill and his BBC projects, he had found the problems that we didn’t think of - and solved them along the way.
2. Was it intentional that you used no lights for an ‘Earth Hour’ spot – or was it a happy accident?
It always produces mixed feelings travelling around "white spots" on the production map and knowing that there is no production service in that particular area so you have to arrange most things yourself when you get there. And we also didn’t have the budget !
Travelling to 6 different countries in less than 20 days we pre-booked some small lights on each place to be prepared for the worst but in the end we realized very early on that we did not need any additional lights at all. Being able to work without the light gave us the flexibility we were aiming for. It soon became a theme. What can be better than shoot an Earth Hour film without lights?
3. Do you think that you can ever substitute for a larger format camera and lighting rig for the limited equipment that you took on the shoot?
Not yet. If there is a proper budget I will still go for 35mm and RED in a studio situation where you can control things. But if there is a project that is interesting but with a limited budget I will definitely use it again, with our tricks and improvements that we used for this project despite Canon’s lack of input and support.
But everyone knows that there are still issues. It only shoots 30fps and there is a limit on how long you can roll on each take. The DOP has to handle the focus himself etc. And the editing is still a bit tricky. But if you know that and only look at the images it produces, it’s really amazing.
4. Do you think you got better reactions from the people – because of the less intrusive size of the camera?
In some locations where we literally just ran in and out I am sure it helped us. We had two cameras. My DOP made the wider shots and I took the pick ups of faces, details etc. We asked the people to do it twice. In between we took another angle and after 5 minutes we were out of there and had at a minimum four angles.
Christer (Producer) would chat up the location owners and by the time they had agreed, we were already done with the shooting. Lots of coffee and lots of laughs.
5. Would you do it again the same way if you had a bigger budget? If no – what would you change?
For this project I would not change one thing about the shooting process. In post I would have it a different way. More time for one! And also be able to change the offline process. It was fun to present the material for the online guys, and see their reaction. We did some tests during the online where we tried to get as much info out of a 35 mm and our material and we came up with some funny things...
6. Have you got any exciting projects that you are working on and that you can tell us at the Reel about!?!? (don’t worry if you cant!)
We are in pre production for a web project with interactive clips that will be inspired by David Lynch. We are going to shoot 3 music videos for some major Swedish artists. We are also about to shoot an ad that is going out in cinemas only.
All this will be shot on the Canon 5D Mark II. We are very interested to see what the images look like on the big screen. We are keeping our fingers crossed.
And we are pitching another job with a lot of different locations, not much time, lots of natural light, slightly limited budget...hmm lets see, perhaps we will use the Canon for that project as well!
Thanks to Joakim for the short notice Interview and to Frankie at Bare Films for the super quick turnaround!
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