Today we visited the roof

Got up at 5 this morning... tired now. Before i pop off to bed i thought i better just write a little about what we were doing today. We both met at uni around 6:30 then proceeded to head to the roof of SHU, we got there everything was set up without any hitches until we discovered we had a faulty fire wire cable. Having a faulty wire however wasn't the end of the world, we could still use tapes, but knowing that wouldn't be the only thing to go wrong today the power cable came out of the camera so we missed the sun rise. However it isn't all doom and gloom we are all set for tomorrow morning.

Today we managed to get more than a few good shots around Sheffield so we have lots of footage to now be compiling for Fridays deadline/presentation. We also have some more time booked in with the high speed camera. Speaking of the high speed cam, I've compiled all the best bits of the footage we got and jazzed it up a bit to give an idea of what our finished piece may look like.

A little bit of time lapse

Last week me and Nick got up really early and headed for to to capture the sunrise in some areas of Sheffield, we settled for the train station. We set up our camera in two locations this morning both overlooking the same area but at entirely different angles. One view was a street level view looking towards park hill flats and the other was looking toward Sheffield college from the top floor of a building. We filmed for an hour in each place, i have used time stretch in After Effects to turn the speed up, i to give you an idea how sped up it is i set the time stretch from 100% to 1%.

This the the street view from the edge of the road looking towards the train station. (The city waking up). 

This is from the roof of the Harley located quite near to where we were filming from street level, however this is around an hour on. Apologies for the beginning, we were playing around with the camera setting to improve the shot.

Tomorrow we shall be filming we shall be filming from the roof of Sheffield Hallam which should make for some unique footage. Can't wait.

Using the High speed camera

We got our hands on the high speed camera yesterday, it was very productive. We did lots of little experiments that may end up in our finished piece. We used a glass fish tank for a large part of what we were doing, filling it with water, spraying the liquid from syringes into the water and also against the side of the fish tank. However one thing we did not know was that high speed cameras need an incredible amount of light in order to capture anything worth using, so we had to compromise with a slightly well lit area, however this didn't really effect the look we were going for.

These are just a few choice videos we shot the other day, I won't upload them all because there are rather a lot:

This splash lasted for less than a second but with a high speed camera lasts much longer and gives such a magical feel. 

This is the same idea as the last video but we mixed the glowing liquid into water based lubrication which added a bit more viscosity to the liquid.  

These are 2 colours that "UNITE", it creates a very surreal moment yet at the same time an extremely effective one. 

Headway

We have finally made some progress on all fronts, we have received an email back from Forgemasters Sheffield asking that they would like to talk with us about what and where we would like to film, while at the same we have now got a HD camera that can be hooked up to a computer and power supply so it can be left relatively unattended throughout the space of an entire day. It is also becoming more likely that we will get access to the roof of Sheffield Hallams main building to film part of out time lapsing.

This is the inside of forgemasters, this is the type of thing we would love to film and what is becoming more of a reality now, the camera we have access to is a tape camera but with a firewire connection it should be a breeze to extract footage from it. AWWWWW YEAH! The camera we have is a high end HD Sony FX7. 

First day back

Today we finally get our hands on a camera, this means we can now start our filming process. However today seems to be the most horrible day this year as the wind seems to be relentless and so does the rain, looks like today might turn out to be more conceptual that practical. Nevertheless we can still film higher quality versions of the experimentation's with the Florissant liquid which would give us a better understand of how the liquid would look in a higher definition also taking into account how well the camera films in pitch black. Before the Christmas holiday we also contacted 3 major steel companies which melt steel among other things, these companies are all based in Sheffield, so hopefully they will have gotten back to us with good news. If this isn't the case we may have access to some stock footage, even though this is not ideal it may well be our only choice. Some bad news, my Father was unable to get me and Nick into his workplace which was a rolling mill, this was due to the fact that the companies production secrets may be given away in what we would be filming, in other words they didn't really want us interfering in their everyday routine. So that sucks.

Plan for glowsticks

This is a drawn up storyboard to be followed when we are using the high speed camera in the research lab, it lists what experiments we will be conducting and also shows how long we want each chosen part of the scene to last.

 Hopefully when we get back we will get access to this equipment almost instantly then we can get on with finally filming and making what we envisage a reality.

List fun

We decided we needed to make a list of hings we may or may not need to achieve a good outcome in each area we plan to film. The lists also involve a description of things that may or may not go wrong while filming, i have listed opposite some suggestions that will limit the risks we will be taking.

Glow Sticks

Time Lapse

Steel Works