Home > DSLRs in the movies: 'Hellbent' the ten best action films of 2011
Happy Mother's Day! Happy Father's Day! Happy Graduation! Photo.net has great photography gift ideas for the Mom, Dad, or Grad in your life. Shop for camera bags, lenses, DSLRs, and more...
Bob Atkins previews Sony's newest NEX body the F3
Editor's note: This excerpt first appeared in photographer and author Harold Davis' recent Focal Press book, Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Photography with Harold Davis. The closer you...
In my early to mid 20’s, I paid my bills as an “extreme” sports photographer. Mostly BMX bikes along with a little snowboarding, skateboarding, and wakeboarding. I went to a pile of xgames and contests and got my first taste of really being a working pro. I can still remember the feeling I got the first time I walked into a news stand and opened up a magazine to see my published photos. It was a fun job for sure, but I eventually moved onto other more stable (and lucrative) work. Anyone who is interested can read a bit more about that time in my life in this “featured member” article here.
While my primary output was still images, I also ended up doing some video work. Mostly because the effort to carry a second camera wasn’t that big of a deal and since we were already out shooting, I could “double dip” as it were and make some extra cash. Plus, I have to admit, it was a lot of fun and a new challenge to learn how to deal with moving pictures rather than just finding the single “moment” as with still photography. In any case, I had footage in a couple different “video magazines” and a few, what were for the time, big-budget sponsor videos. It never became much more than a neat change of pace and an extra paycheck for me, but I enjoyed it immensely just the same.
At the time, everyone was using 3-CCD miniDV cameras like the Sony VX1000 or the Canon GL2. We mostly all had Century fisheye lenses screwed onto the front and some sort of low-angle carry-handle setup to give everything that “extreme” look. Depth of field? Almost infinite. Selective focus? Never heard of it. High definition 1080p video? Still a decade away for the average person. High frame-rate for smooth slow motion shots? Nope. You either dealt with the jerkiness or got real familiar with time-warping plugins for After Effects. Little did we know that in a few short years, the consumer/prosumer “video camera” market would be all but wiped out by the most unlikeliest of products, the DSLR. Nowadays, we all expect 1080p video coming out of our DSLRs. But in 2001 the idea was pretty far fetched. But the future becomes the present and here we are ten years later with DSLR video being used in everything from journalism to Hollywood.
Which brings me back to extreme sports video. Aside from the photojournalists who quickly jumped on the possibility of making two paychecks with one camera, almost no group of users was faster to accept and use the new video functions of the DSLR than extreme sports photographers/filmers. Here was a device that you probably already owned anyway, if you were a professional. And not only did it give you stunning video quality via a sensor size unmatched in anything that didn’t have a five figure pricetag, but it used the lenses you already owned and allowed you a completely new tool that previously had been the sole province of the “big boys”. That tool? A shallow depth of field. Previous cameras like the VX1000 or GL2 had tiny 1/4" sensors and thus, had huge depth of field when used with standard focal lengths. Only at the extreme telephoto end of the zoom could you get any sort of a semblance of a shallow depth of field, and then you were zoomed in so far that you’d have to be standing on the other end of a football field to make your shot. The DSLR video revolution changed all that and gave the filmmaker with a Canon 5D MkII the same depth of field options as the guy holding a Panaflex Millennium XL2. With a high end computer and a rack of RAID drives, the low end filmmaker was given a gift from heaven with the advent of DSLR video.
So what has been the result of that gift? The fact that almost every extreme sports video out there today has footage from a DSLR camera. Yes, you will still see a few HD video cameras, but those are dying out fast. And yes, you will see some high end digital solutions like the RED camera systems (and even some 35mm film cameras) on the big budget movies from Nike or Red Bull. But even those high end movies virtually all use some amount of footage from DSLR’s.
Don’t believe me? Check this out. Hitachi’s G-Technology division makes RAID solutions and hard drives aimed at these types of filmmakers. They, along with the amazing production powerhouse Brain Farm Digital Cinema, put together “Hellbent: the 10 best action sports films of 2011”. These range from (comparatively) small budget films like ‘Battle Los Angeles’ from Mutiny Bikes to the $400,000 filmed-across-5-continents masterpiece ‘All.I.Can’ from Sherpas Cinema. While one had the budget to include footage from some high end digital video solutions and the other was completely filmed on the DSLRs, both used footage from Canon 5D and 7D cameras and both films are wonderful to watch. The same can be said for almost all of the 10 films listed.
All in all, I can think of nothing in recent years that has done more to advance the cause of high end low-budget filmmaking than the advent of DSLR video capabilities. It is something that we, as still photographers, should not ignore. Both for the professional possibilities and the simply joy of learning something new. Video has always been a fun diversion from photography, something to let you see the world in a slightly different way through a viewfinder. But now, it can be a “fun diversion” that has amazing image quality and uses the gear that you already own. Get yourself a decently fast computer, a couple drives or a RAID array (I’m sure Hitachi would love it if you checked out their G-Technology line), and find a basic HD video editing program for whatever operating system you have chosen. Then get out there and see what life is like when you have more than just one single “moment” to capture.
Here is the ‘Battle Los Angeles’ film from Mutiny Bikes as an example of something filmed entirely with DSLRs. There is a bit of swearing, drunkiness, and gross pranks. It’s very mild overall, but maybe don’t play it at work if you are in a sensitive workplace.
