@NinoLeitner said: “Alright you’re in”. And this is how it all began…
I got invited as assistant for the Mallorca HDSLR/AF101 Masterclass 2011 hosted by Nino Leitner, Sebastian Wiegärtner and Philip Bloom. Wow!!!! I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.
It all started with a lovely dinner the 9th of june at the Colonia de Sant Jordi Club . The first night was just to meet each other I was so excited about it. Finally after several months following them and their work I was about to meet my HDSLR idols in person. I can not count all the hours I spent eating pizza while I was watching their videos in front of my computer and they were just in front of me. I had so many questions, I wanted to say so many things, that the first day I said none.
At the dinner I was lucky (again) to sit next to Coco Van Oppens. An amazing woman from South Africa who actually is a Photographer and a BTS (Behind the scenes) film maker. If you don’t know her you should. Take you time to visit her site. I specially love her “Freedom Fighters” work (look in the “other projects” section).
After dinner we went to the lobby bar to have a drink. It was where I really met everybody. It was fascinating to met so many people with similar interests to mine. The most of them where really professionals, others were just interested on HDSLRs as a hobby (like me). Everybody told me the same: “You can never say it’s just a hobby, you never know” and that’s probably true. The more I get involved, the deeper I want to get involved.
And so 10th of june arrived, the first day of the masterclass. First things first. Everybody had to introduce a bit of themselves. I was surprised on the variety of the backgrounds of the atendands: Photography, I.T., Software developores, Graphic designers,… After the brief introduction the real masters started a bit of theory on HDSLRs. Most of the people buy a camera, they take it and just shoot. Then they do mistakes because most of the people really don’t know how HDSLR work. They don’t know their camera limitations, the good points of video shooting with them, and not so good ones. It was very helpful to everybody to know and see examples of the most common problems and their workarounds.
That day in the afternoon we all went to a lovely place on the Colonia de Sant Jordi coast. The Timelapse-master (aka Philip Bloom) was about to show us the magic behind a time-lapse video: Pocket dollys, intervalometer values, camera settings, HDR,… Just amazing!
The second they of the masterclass was more about actually shooting a short film. Every group of six people had to film a short film. Nino, Sebastian and Philip took in consideration that each group had at least one experienced camera man, and one experienced video editor so they could work without any problems. It was great to see so much creativity around. I really believe there was many talented people there. They created a really great videos in a really short time. You can see all the videos at vimeo.
The third and last they of the masterclass was planned to do the final editions to the short films the attendants shoot the day before, supervised by Philip, Nino and Sebastian (great work!).
On that third day there was also time for a draw of $5000 prizes! The masterclass sponsors donated equipment to our hosts so they can give it away to participants.
- The first prize was a brand new $4000 worth Cam-dolly (a full-size dolly rig).
- The second one was a Pocket dolly by Kessler.
- The third was a Zacuto DSLR baseplate.
Really great toys to play with. You can’t imagine how a I wished to take them and run away hehehe.
The Bonus track: Shooting a short film with Philip Bloom.
On the monday the 13th of june we went back to Colonia de Sant Jordi. Only few people remained there after the masterclass. Philip wanted to shoot a short film. Hold on a second: “Philip wanted to shoot a short film”. Do you think I was about to miss such an oportunity to see the master at work? NO WAY!
One of the masterclass attendats (Nina, a.k.a Nino the Georgian) had good performance skills so Philip decided to take her as main character. All film was shooted in about 6 hours of non-stop magic. Just amazing to see how Philip had all the film in his mind, he knew exactly how he wanted it to look like. The most exciting part of it was the last scene, because we were fighting against time (we were running out of light).
For that shooting Philip used a Sony F3 camera. I must say that I was reading about that camera just 3 days before. The images out of it are just stunning. The bad point (for me) is that it’s a bit expensive, but if you’re a video professional as they are it worth the inversion. Here’s the result:
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