VerveCast

We’ve been working with the Milwaukee Wave since 2005, and in that time we’ve both grown quite a bit, and while this weekend will see them headed to the MISL Championship for the second year in a row (and going for their 6th championship since they started) we decided to look back and some of the video work we’ve created for them over the years…

It’s pretty crazy to think we started doing the game intros with a MiniDV camera in our old photo studio in 2005, and now we’re doing the intros with a RED ONE Digital Cinema Camera in our photo studio (which is now over 3 times larger.)

Enjoy the video, and hey, while you’re at it, let’s root for a win tonight and on Sunday, to make our Milwaukee Wave the MISL Champions once again!

You may have seen this tweet come through last week and wondered (as you often do) what the heck we were talking about…

The video is still in progress, but since we’ve got some of the shooting done, I thought I should share some of the stills we have so far.

Now that you’ve seen the hammer (and the arm that’s swinging it) along with a tiny piece of glass, you’ll probably assume we’re smashing tiny pieces of glass with a hammer.

Well, you’re half correct. I’d tell you more, but I really don’t want to give away the ending yet. :)

You may remember seeing the Milwaukee Wave “UNITE” video we shot last year. It was for the 2010/2011 MISL season, which, the Wave just happened to win. I’m sure much of their success was due to the video. (Just kidding!)

But seriously… we love these larger video shoots, and now that Joe and I got a chance to edit all the behind the scenes footage, you can catch a glimpse of what the 12+ hour day was like for us. (Also, it was about 95 degrees that day.)

One of the things people ask about shooting with the RED ONE is, “Why do you need all that resolution, especially if you’re going to finish at HD resolution!?”

Here’s one reason, and it’s the same reason you might shoot with a still camera that creates 24-Megapixel images, every now and then, you may want to crop something.

For documentary style interviews, you usually have a few choices on how you shoot. You can use two (or more) cameras at different angles and/or with different crops. For instance, one camera might be tight on the person’s face, while the other shows their whole upper-body.

With multiple cameras you will need to deal with at least twice as much footage, and deal with syncing as well. Here’s another idea…

First, here’s our visual to compare the size of HD footage to 4k footage from the RED ONE:

The full size of the graphic represents a frame of 4k footage from the RED, while the smaller rectangle in the upper-left corner represents the size of 1080p HD video.

So let’s suppose we frame our shot like this:

We’ve got the classic sitting person, with the upper half of their body in frame.

You could size this 4k footage down to HD resolution and be done, but with all the extra resolution, we can crop in on it and create what may appear to be additional cameras.

Same camera, same footage, tighter crop… And we can even go further:

A tighter shot is often used in an interview situation when you want to emphasize what the person is saying. Using this trick is one more way to get some use out of that extra resolution you might have otherwise not used.

Here’s the video we produced for the Milwaukee Wave’s 2010-2011 Season. It was shot on our RED ONE Digital Cinema Camera. You can also see this video on YouTube.