Sleep ∞ Over: Forever (Hippos in Tanks, LP)
Crackling hissing sexy ambienty pop… Brings to mind an amalgam of Depeche Mode, Cure, Kate Bush, Stephanie and maybe even Pet Shop Boys. Filtered through all the dirt under your bed. Imagine a girl with a 4-track under the covers, 2am trying to be quiet (not for the neighbourgs but for the mood) and outing all she has into it. That’s how it sounds to me but no doubt not how it happened!

U.S. Girls: U.S. Girls On Kraak (Kraak, LP)
Another that in a good way reminds me of Kate Bush! And I mean that as a real compliment! I’ve always liked the pop aspect of U.S. Girls and this is really taken to another level on Meg’s latest album. By the way is it a coincidence that the Island Song’s drum pattern is a slowed down version of Cloudbusting’s drums? In any case it’s worthy to do so! The album is not a one hit wonder either. Peotone is an amazing tune. Very AOR in a good way! I really wish I’ll see her live again soon! Order from Kraak Records.

Fricara Pacchu: Faces Faces Everywhere (Ikuisuus, cassette)
There’s around 40 tracks on this tape and they’re all amazing! Not that I would know which track to DJ though. It’s more like a wicked ride in the nightclub of your dreams. There’s loads of umbrellas on the drinks, especially on the beers. Spencer from Skaters is the master of the ceremony and the music is not too loud. Although Fricara is best served loud as hell!

Heatsick: Intersex (PAN LP)
Such a good album! Dance music for the future and the future is now! It’s quite amazing how versatile sounds one can get from just one instrument. This guy can definately master his Casio.

Gang Gang Dance: Eye Contact (4AD, Digital)
I love the voice and the absolutely microscopic attention to everything. It’s micromanaged to the last detail! Sounds like a room full of laser beamzzz! The album starts with the words “It’s everything time” and ends with “Live forever”. Can’t really outdo that… Kinda like reversed Pornography that starts with “Does it matter if we all die” and ends with “I must fight this sickness, find the cure”.

Love Cult: Nebulaes (Brave Mysteries, cassette)
I saw Love Cult play live in Tallinn and it was great vocal drones. The tape is much gentler and extremely well built. Just two tracks. Very patient music and masterfully crafted. Buy here: Brave Mysteries.

Of course I dig all the Fonal releases of 2011 Eleanoora Rosenholm and Tv-resistori both released their third albums and both in my opinion their best work that will stand the test of time. New great snippets from Paavoharju in digital ep form. Tuusanuuskat album and of course the new Ville Leinonen full lenght that holds magical moments inside. Some stuff that I really loved and got my hands on in 2011 but was made prior to 2011: Ignatz: Some Of Them Are Funny Songs (Bennifer Editions, cassette), Quilts: s/t (Hockey rawk, cassette).

So for 2012? Be brave, be bold, be amazing!

Love, Sami

Video for Steel Mammoth’s Nightmare Ad Nauseam from the LP Nuclear Rebirth. Available from Ektro Records.

Directed, edited and shot by Sami Sänpäkkilä
Lights by Alpo Nummelin
Actor Garfield Steel

Steel Mammoth’s music video was shot with my brand new Panasonic GH2 and Sony monitor. The Sony monitor turned out to be a big help in focusing and also in judging the skin tones as well as the exposure. I will write a full review of the GH2 in the upcoming months but I have to say I’m really impressed! I don’t see any colour banding or artefacts on the footage. It also handles color grading very well. My GH2 isn’t even hacked yet! The Vimeo compression actually looks quite bad compared to the original files!

Alpo Nummelin did the lights. We used a classic german reporter set-up with two Sachtler tungsten 150W lights. Alpo changed the lights to daylight (5600K) by adding a CTB gel. This was purely because we wanted the snakes light ball you see on the table to have a warmer color. It also turned the snakes tummy into a bright golden glow that looks awesome! We also used my SWAT led camera light to add some light on Garfield Steels face as he moves in between the lights and also when he pushes the pitchfork and hand towards the camera. The Swat led turned out to be a little green. I hadn’t noticed this before on other shoots. I definately wouldn’t have seen this problem unless it was for the 5″ Sony monitor. The genius that Alpo is he fixed it by adding a minus green gel in front of the led light! I gotta say I was impressed! He did some magic grip work too that he tried to explain to me over the phone, I should’ve written it down to remember.

The whole shoot took about 2 to 3 hours. Although it was an easy one shot set-up. We’re getting much quicker and efficient with Alpo. Practice does make you better! Oh! The pizza we had after the shoot… Amazing! Yummy! I’m finally over the fact that I got food poisoning from Restaurant Napoli in 2003. Recommended.

PS. Can you spot the Twin Peaks homage in the video? :D

The package contains a nice sun shade that doubles as a cover when not using it, two hot shoe mounts that tilts 90 degrees up and down and swivels left and right 360 degrees. Very handy! It comes with a HDMI cable but no batteries nor a charger so you will need to purchase those separately. One of the reasons for my purchase was that I already own two compatible batteries. One is a smaller and another one larger which I think will power the monitor for a really long time. I need to use my old Sony miniDV cam to charge them but I think this is actually the first time I can use old accessories on new equipment. Kudos to Sony for that!

One thing that had me confused with the GH2 for a while was that some menu items (Rec mode, Ex. Tele Conv, pixel magnification) are grayed out while using the HDMI, so this could be similar in other cameras. Although this is not a Sony monitor issue I wanted to mention this as it had me scratching my head for quite some time.

The functions! It’s got focus peaking in it but it’s much worse than on a pro camera like the Sony EX1. When you turn it on the image goes black and white with red lines on the parts that are in focus. Well, in theory. On my EX1 (and I presume on more expensive monitors) this worked really well, but not so on this Sony monitor. It only peaks at bright areas, so if you are shooting at a black object on a dark wooden table you won’t see any peaking going on. This feature is not perfect but for the price I didn’t expect it to be. On normal conditions with brighter images I think it might come in handy though! Especially when doing handheld shots and following subjects around. There’s a green lit button on the side that tells you battery power is on. It’s white when powered by AC. The light turns red when you’re low on power and starts to flash red when you’re out of power.

Pixel magnification is useful if you don’t have it in camera (or if connecting to HDMI disables it like on the GH2). All the functions are behind a rolling wheel that you press and turn. You need to push it, scroll down, choose what to do, push it to select. Same thing to turn it off again. It does remember your last action though so it goes back to the previous thing you selected. I’m sure in time once you get used to how it works it will be more intuitive. For checking focus on a still subject it does the trick though. There are markers 3:4 and 80% 16:9 as well, now what’s that for? I don’t think I’ll have much use for those personally. There’s audio monitoring if you can input audio via HDMI (the GH2 can’t do this unfortunately). You can adjust brightness, contrast, color tone, backlight and colour temp. I have all those set to default at the moment based on comparing stuff I shot from my computer screen (which I trust) and the Sony monitor. I do trust the Sony more for colors then I do the GH2 LCD.

The monitor is really light, it seems solid and I like the feel of it. When you compare the colors of the image after shooting I think they actually look pretty good on the Sony. The GH2 LCD seems to oversaturate the colors. I’ve only tested the monitor with my eye and haven’t shot any charts. That being said I wouldn’t trust the monitor with skin tones after I’ve used it extensively and gotten used to it. Shoot a little stuff and check it on your computer before making final decisions on white balance for example.

I also seem to underexpose a lot with the GH2 LCD. I’m exposing better with the Sony monitor so that to me is already made it worthwhile. It’s a 800×480 pixels resolution 5″ monitor so compared to a 3″ LCD on the GH2 it definitely will help you focus better, but it’s not the ultimate solution. It’s still worse than proper peaking or a proper HD resolution monitor.

I haven’t been able to find anything decent for under 500€ and that’s why I haven’t bought any monitors so far. It really does help on getting the focus right and as I’ve noticed getting your exposure on the mark a little bit more so I’d say for me it’s worth the money.

Jussi Lehtisalo is the founder of Circle and he runs the label Ektro Records. In addition he plays in groups such as Pharaoh Overlord, Ektroverde, Steel Mammoth and Rättö ja Lehtisalo just to name a few. Amongst others his labels has released music from finnish bands Kuusumun Profeetta, Keuhkot, Plainride and from international bands such as Acid Mothers Temple and Faust. Too many to mention as are his multiple labels.

ektrorecords.com

Shot with Panasonic GH13, Zoom H4n, Audio Technica Lav, Swit led light and DFocus v2. Edited in Sony Vegas Pro 10.

Watch previous episodes of A Day in the Mouth

I’ve had the Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai for couple of years now. I bought it from Philadelphia while on tour with Kemialliset Ystävät. It’s the best loop pedal I’ve had so far. I’ve tested quite a few and this one definitely suits my style of working. One thing that I’ve come to hate about it though are the footswitches. They are extremely loud. It’s annoyed me up to the point that I started looking for a new loop pedal. I’m sure for a guitar hero playing his screaming licks and looping an infinite dragons breath until 6am, they’re fine. But for a peace and love child like myself who mostly likes to burn candles on stage and record and loop the match that lights them, they are way too loud.

So I got to thinking that it can’t be that hard to change the footswitches to something quieter. But I found no answers for a long time. I called Tomas Regan from Haamuaudio for a little help. He was aware of the problem and had also changed a footswitch from one his Electro-Harmonix pedals. So he knew what to do immediately. Apparently the footswitches E-H use for as bypass switches are really hard to change and there are not any truly silent alternatives. Closest Tomas had come finding a silent one was a Fujisoku 3PDT (3xon-on) footswitch. And it really is pretty quiet compared to the stock footswitch Electro-Harmonix use in their pedals.

I had a little extra wish as well! In addition to changing the bypass switch and the tap/record switch we also added an output ack for an external footswitch! It works wonders and I can now use either an external footswitch while still controlling the Memory Man on the table with my hands or I can use the footswitch on the pedal if I don’t need two hands to play while I’m looping.

A big thank you to Tomas from Haamuaudio for doing the actual work! Check out this little video I made!

With this video I decided to tackle the vertical video challenge that I’ve been interested in for a while now. I’ve tried it before but never really got anywhere with it. I’ve seen a lot of bad examples and a few good ones. Not to say mine is a good example but I just wanted to do it because it was… well, a challenge. Most of the stuff I do is viewed online in a browser window or on portable tablets (yes, I mean iPads ;) or mobile phones (yep, iPhones…) so there’s more room to experiment when it comes to shape and size of the video. It’s more natural to view stuff in portrait mode nowadays.

For this shoot I was mainly inspired by posters and DVD covers. There’s things you just can’t do when shooting horizontally. I think it worked really well for the shots where you see Eleanoora looking down or up, waving her hands high in a prayer and reaching for the sky. Also the upward shooting airplanes are a particular favourite of mine. It gives you a feeling of vertigo and makes it more dramatic. We shot the whole thing in one day with Alpo Nummelin doing a great job with lighting once again. We wanted a really simple look. Some backlight in the 80′s style and some circling lights. We had four Robe AT250 SPOT lights that were doing sweeps. Arri 650w tungsten as the keylight and Arri 350w tungsten as backlight. On some shots we used the 650w as backlight and a small silver bouncer as the keylight that Alpo moved around to create some variation. We shot the video with my trusty hacked Panasonic GH13.

Noora did her own make up and by a total coincidence the gilded face returns that was used in my Islaja: Pimeyttä kohti music video. This time it was a logical continuum from the Eleanoora Rosenholm’s new album cover art. We shot Noora’s portion in one day and the overlayed stuff is public domain found footage that I’ve been collecting for a while now. Editing was actually quite easy since both the found footage and Noora’s material were really inspiring and most of the time I just tried out stuff on top of each other until it seemed to click into place. Already from the start this was meant to be a mood piece and as such there is no “storyline” in the video. A return to my old days and ways of making videos :)

Directed by Sami Sänpäkkilä

Light design, gaffer: Alpo Nummelin
Edit and cinematography: Sami Sänpäkkilä

Buy album: www.fonal.com/​shop

Directed by Sami Sänpäkkilä

Script: Sami Sänpäkkilä & Risto Ylihärsilä
Light designer, gaffer: Alpo Nummelin

Veijarit footage courtesy of Bronson Club.
Thank you to TTVO / Fogscreen company.
Copyright Fonal Records

Lyö song taken from the compilation album 167-761 (Ensimmäiset askeleet) available from fonal.com/​shop/​risto

To me the advantage of shooting with a follow focus is mainly erconomics and stability. When you are focusing using the follow focus the camera is less prown to move as you have a more stable grip. It’s also more intuitive compared to focusing directly from the barrel of the lens – I still forget which way is infinity and which is close focus!

With D|Focus it’s especially great that you can reverse the gear direction. It now works the way I feel is intuitive, when I turn the focus wheel towards myself (clockwise) the focus moves closer and when I roll it counterclockwise (away from myself) focus goes to infinity. If you do want to change the gear direction make sure the screw is tightening against the flat spot on the shaft! I didn’t realise that there is a flat spot and it kept slipping no matter how much tightened it. I destroyed the plastic threads because of this and had to drill a second hole on the opposite side of the plastic. A bit of DIY worked and it’s been fine ever since.

I’d never used a follow focus before this one so I can’t compare to other products. When you read reviews about follow focus units the reviewers usually focus on one thing especially and that’s how many millimeters of play there is. For practical use I feel that on this unit it’s so little that in real life it’s not going to effect your shooting. You know it’s there and can avoid it by taking it into account. It’s never been an issue to me.

I also later ordered the D|Crank but haven’t used it once. Maybe if you use a focus puller on some shots it might be cool to have. But I don’t think this is a very necessary accessory if you’re shooting alone.

The gears are alright, you can order them separately or in a package, I got three different size as all my Canon FD lenses are different size. For the Canon FD 85mm f1.2 L lens they’re the right size but for smaller lenses they’re quite bulky and big. In practice though this doesn’t really matter at all. It’s actually convinient that when you change the lens you don’t really have to adjust the D|Focus at all as the gear is always the same size. It takes a bit getting used to getting the gears straight but after a while it becomes a five second job to switch lenses.

I feel that for me the D|Focus does the job amazingly well, it should work with most cameras and lenses out there. Also you get fast responses and good info from David who makes them, which to me is the most important thing when buying equipment. The marking disc and reference pin are now standard with the V3 and it’s around 215USD with 3 lens gears included. D|Focus do not sell it directly from their site anymore (they do sell other accessories though) http://www.dfocussystem.com/ but have moved sales over to Jag35. It’s also sold in Europe by our very own Finnish HanGrip.com.

After a shoulder mount system this is propably the most important and used accessory for me.

Apflickorna is Lisa Aschan’s debut feature film. She asked me already maybe two years ago if I was interested in making music for her film. I heard the concept and gladly accepted. I’m really happy to say that the film turned out quite amazing. There’s a few old tracks from my previous albums plus some new music, it’s specifically made for the film and the scenes so I doubt it’s something that will be released on it’s own.

Most of the music I made on my usual instruments, my trusted Casio SK-5, electric guitar and a plethora of my trusted effects. I also bought a Arturia Analogue factory midi keyboard and have been downloading free soundfonts online as well. I’m not a big fan of the midi world and it’s a really new to me but I gotta say that when used sparsly and with a thought you can really get some amazing sounds. Hardest part is to go through all that trash it comes with and find the good stuff. Much easier with the Casios four useful sounds! (Vibraphone, chorus, organ and piano in case you were wondering.) I’ve been also using the SK-5 to sample the midi sounds to give them a bit more organic and lo-fi feel and this seems to work really well.

I’m sure there will be a trailer out soon so I will update this post as more info trickles out. I gotta say I’m super psyched to have my music in optical format! The film is shot on 35mm negative so the sound is printed right there alongside the image.

The domestic premier was at the Gothenburg International Film Festival (Dragon Award 2011 winner) and world premiere is at the Berlin International Film Festival.

—Update! There was a great review in Variety Magazine and we won special mention at the Berlinale in the Generation 14plus serie. Awesome!

Here’s a short interview with Lisa in Swedish with a few snippets from the movie!

—Another update 30.4.2011
Apflickorna wins The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca Film Festival!

The 10th Annual Tribeca Film Festival , co-founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, and presented by founding sponsor American Express, announced the winners of its competition categories at a ceremony hosted at the W Union Square in New York City. The top awards went to She Monkeys, Bombay Beach, The Journals of Musan, and Like Water.

Directed by Sami Sänpäkkilä

Cinematography, script and editing: Sami Sänpäkkilä
Trashman: Hendrik Dacquin
Dead Musicians: Jessica Galindo, Ernesto González, Gabriela González and Jochem Devens.
Catering: Jochem Devens
Assistant: Julie Vanopdenbosch
Runner: Casper Devens

From the album I Hate This City (Conspiracy, 2011)

samisanpakkila.com
ignatz.be
conspiracyrecords.com

Goodiepal: Morte Aux Vaches Extra Extra – Route 66 Exsperimentet (Fonal, 2011)

A Fonal release that I had no idea existed until I picked it up from the post office! Fonal catalogue is running at FR-75 at the moment but this one is cat no. FR-86. Apparently Goodiepal has done this release for every label who has ever asked him to do a release for them. I think I asked him three years ago in Belgium if I remember correctly. What’s even more disturbing is the 500 Danish crown bill (value of approx. 70 €) included in every copy, and this audio file: Goodiepal speech

Lauri Ainala: Unien savonlinna DVD

Although Lauri itself doesn’t like to call this DVD a documentary I think it’s an absolutely amazing example of just that: a documentary. Lauri has been shooting with various formats of low end digital cameras for over five years, in and around the city of Savonlinna where they consider the story of Paavoharju and other like minded bands to have their beginnings. Besides the amazing footage he has captured it’s extremely well edited and compiled to a cohesive story that holds all the way.I don’t think there is anyone better to tell this story then the man who is living it himself. In a way this reminds me of my favourite autobiography: Laterna Magica by Ingmar Bergman. Everyone’s life is worth documenting and holds a story. You just need talent to tell it.

Panasonic GH1

Year 2010 has really been a great one for young cinematographers and asprigin filmmakers like myself. In 2009 I shot a few music videos with my very expensive EX1+Letus combo. I sold it and got my self a Panasonic GH1 and later hacked it with the “GH13″ hack. You can read more about this in my GH1 user experiences blog. I’ve shot loads of paid gigs with this tiny handy very good quality camera and have done more with it then most previous years works combined. Best tool for me is the one that gets me out there to do it! There’s been loads of DSLR’s coming out to the market and now we’re finally starting to see affordable real cinema videocameras in the horizon.

Reduser.net

I’ve been religiously following news on the upcoming Red Scarlet and Epic cameras. The hype that the head of a massive camera company CEO creates by keeping in touch with end users which some but most even don’t own their products is absolutely amazing. Not to mention him offering $100.000 for the return of a customer’s stolen camera. Although I propably won’t have the money to buy any of their cameras right away, this is great news and it is quite possible that in a few years film makers will experience what we experienced with audio in the late 90′s. Everyone will soon have the tools to create professional cinema in their bedrooms.
www.reduser.net

iPhone apps

I’ve been using iPhone 3GS for a little over a year now and it is by far the most amazing geek gadget ever released. It’s interface still feels super futuristic. Trying out any other smart phones even after so many years of iPhone being out they make me feel like I’m trying out 10 years old technology. Besides the usual apps like Twitter, Facebook, Email, Skype and Calendar that I use daily here’s a few apps that I love and use all the time.

ShakeIt is one of the many Polaroid apps you can find from the app store. There’s something really special about this one though! The photos really really look like real Polaroids! So far I’ve been asked five times which Polaroid model do I use? Everyone is very surprised after I tell them it’s my iPhone! I’ve tried a few other Polaroid apps but I think they’re not as good as this one. There’s something quite real in this! http://shakeit.derail.co.nz/

8mm is basically a hipstamatic for video. You get a few options to mess with the picture. Best thing about this is that you can manipulate it in real time! The only down side is that the outcome is only 480×360 resolution. The same company has made an effects app that let’s you apply super8 effects to already shot video. But there’s really something to the fact that you can do cool things in real time. http://www.nexvio.com/

BeBot is a great musical instrument, I’ve already used it live and played on some new tracks I’ve been recording. What I enjoy about it is that the user interface is unlike any you normally use to create music, so what you get is unique sounds and melodies. Although it looks like a toy on the surface it’s actually extremly versatile and powerful. It’s got “4-finger multitouch polyphony, multiple synthesis modes, user-definable presets and scales, tweakable synth settings and effects”. http://www.normalware.com/

Vehical is an app that has been a timesaver and just plain useful. I need to monitor all my kilometers for accounting purposes when I drive and 2010 instead of pen and paper I’ve used Vehical app on my iPhone. You input the kilometers you’ve driven and other info required. A year ago this was the only one I could find for this. It’s lacking in features and it hasn’t been updated even once in the last year. it has done the job though! But I’m hoping to find a more up-to-date and feature packed app for myself for 2011. I don’t have many friends who need this sort of an app but let me know if you’re one who does and if you find a better app to do it!

Music of the year

I’ve been mostly listening to the The Index album at home this year. It’s from 1967-68 so not exactly the best of 2010 but I just discovered it this year! It’s really gritty stuff but the base is in melodies and songs. Reminds me a lot of Dead Moon which is one of my all time fave bands. Konono No. 1. I saw at the Flow Festival in Helsinki in August 2010 and that’s perhaps the best gig of the year that I remember. They use amplified fingerpianos and play long melodic drones with yelps and some singing on top of it all. I attended a fingerpiano playing course for two days in December and it’s really really hard to wrap your head and fingers around the beats and tempos. They are really far from western metronome like beats and really lively. I should also mention Kemialliset Ystävät: Ullakkopalo (Fonal, 2010) as one of my fave albums that came out this year. Although I put it out on my label it’s the first KY album in years that I don’t play in so I don’t feel as biased to mention it as normally.

The Emigrants and The New land

Best movies I’ve seen this year. I’m getting heavinly into storytelling and characters in movies. Very Ingmar Bergman. I wrote a little blurb on these on my previous blog post.

Ok thats it! I hope you all had a great 2010 and that 2011 will be even more amazing! But go on and tell me what’s your top stuff from 2010?

- Love, Sami

The Emigrants (Utvandrarna, 1971) depicts a familys strugle to make ends meet in Småland, Sweden. They decide to travel to America, Minnesota. The New Land (Nybyggarna, 1972) happens in USA and tells about the freshly arrived emigrants starting a new life. The story is simple but the characters are portrayed with exceptional talent. It’s Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman who play the lead roles but to me almost everyone stands out to their advantage. The story and the acting are what drives the films. It is a genuine and uncompromising portrayal of what life must have been like in the middle of the 19th century.

Here’s a weird summary of the first movie I found from Youtube. Just don’t watch all of it if. At least not past 6min mark as in the end the uploader spoils it with some of his own choice of music! But it gives you a good look and you hear some of the music that is pretty amazing as well. Reminds me of Bo Hansson. The music is made by Erik Nordgren who has also scored many Ingmar Bergman films.

I also found this great interview of Max von Sydow that is not particular to these movies but a nice watch.

Timo Kaukolampi is a musician and a producer living in Helsinki, Finland. His former bands include punk and garage oriented bands such as Amen, Dundelion and Larry and the Lefthanded. Now he is active with more electronic outfits Op:l Bastards and K-X-P. He works with the norwegian pop singer Annie and has made remixes for multitude of bands including Bob Hund and Human League.

www.kaukolampi.com

“A Day in the Mouth” is a series where I visit an organisation, a person or a place and have a little chat with the people involved and see what they’re up to.

Directed, edited and filmed by Sami Sänpäkkilä

Watch previous episodes of A Day in the Mouth

This is the first video made to promote Islaja’s new album Keraaminen Pää that will be released on Fonal Records on September 14th 2010. It’s been a while since my previous video for Islaja but it is still one of my favourites. You can see Rohkaisulaulu in Youtube and it’s available for purchase on DVD from the Fonal Shop.

Download the free single and mobile version of the video for “Pimeyttä kohti”.

Making this video was a special occasion and I felt really really excited cause I got an opportunity to shoot with a Red One camera. I was contacted by Petri Teittinen who had read my blog and had recently purchased the Red One camera. He was offering us an opportunity to shoot a video with it for a minimal compensation. I jumped at the chance of course! We excahnged a few emails and phonecalls to discuss the reality of shooting with the Red One. My initial worries included low light capabilities since we couldn’t afford to rent that much lighting equipment, having enough battery life and hard drive space. On top of this I was not sure if I could manage the post processing of the Red One 4K RAW material. After all I was used to popping my freshly shot 1920×1080 material on an SD card into my laptop and start editing without creating proxies or using any intermediate formats.

Petri arrived at my place around 5pm while Alpo picked up a few lights. We started to experiment with the Red One. It’s a beast. It weighs as much as my 16mm handcrank Bolex. Quite different from what I’m used to operating lately – my tiny plastic Panasonic GH1. But the weight is always a big bonus to me. I love the look it gives to the footage. Even handheld it looks rather smooth. It’s a bummer to do long takes but I’ve always thought that it’s worth the pain. I let Petri do all the menu settings on the camera so I can’t comment much on that other than that it looked relatively simple. We got it setup done pretty quickly.

So while we were messing with the camera the girls were applying the golden glitter on Merja. it was pasted so that it covered her face totally and as soon as it started to dry up it started to hurt quite a bit and also it looked like her skin was made of paper. Not that good, more like something that you’d see on Ramblas in Barcelona. You know the human statues! We took most of the make up off and it ended up looking really cool. A totally unintended look but we decided to leave it as it looked like something rusted but was golden. A nice paradox. Merja was mainly walking and trying to lipsync to the very difficult song since it’s slow and doesn’t really give you a rhythm to follow. She did superb and for the final shot took a long dip in the lake. Big thumbs up!

We only had one 1.25KW HMI and a couple of 650W HMIs. We used one aggregator to power the lights and one super loud aggragate that was more like a lawn mover to power the smoke machine and charge the camera batteries. We had a really harsh light coming from the 1.25KW HMI and then a long stretch of black in to the lake that we wanted to be visible somewhat. We had smoke and pine trees with loads of detail. This would’ve killed most other cameras codecs but we were about to see the power of RAW. Alpo did an amazing job once again. He has a vision and I never give him enough time to see that vision through! I always promise him that next time I’ll let him fiddle with the lights as long as there’s need, well, here goes again, next time Alpo, promise! :)

We got home around 5am and while me and Alpo returned the lights Petri transferred the footage to my computer. I made him some tea and when we saw the first little snippets of the footage finally after the long night both our jaws dropped. The latitude was quite amazing. Merja’s forehead has is all gold glitter that was reflecting almost pure white light direct into the camera and the lake was totally dark but still we saw detail everywhere. We couldn’t see this detail in the monitor so luckily we went with the gut instinct that Red is awesome and it will come through. It did, big time! And mind you this is with the old sensor and has not been upgraded to the M-X sensor that has more latitude and is more sensitive. We transferred all the footage and Petri was feeling enough adrenaline to drive back home that same night… or morning actually! He’s a stand out guy with a t-shirt that reads “Joss Whedon is my master now”. What can I say! Geek friends for life! Thank you Petri! :)

Editing was quite easy. I dragged and dropped the 4K material into Sony Vegas Pro and was able to edit the footage right on the timeline. No proxies or anything. Albeit I had to keep the quality on draft to get 25fps preview. I did only a very little color correction so what you see is nearly exactly what we got. There was not much room for tweaking since we were at the both extreme ends of highlights and shadow detail. Rendering to 720p mp4 worked well and was suprisingly fast from the 4K material. The 4 minute video rendered in about an hour. I gotta say I’m mighty excited about the upcoming Scarlet and Epic cameras.

Directed by Sami Sänpäkkilä

Light designer, gaffer: Alpo Nummelin
RED Technician: Petri Teittinen
Make-up, still photography: Gabriela Gonzaléz
Shot on location in Tampere, Finland with Red One digital cinema camera. Special thank you to Petri Teittinen.
Produced by Fonal Records

islaja.com
fonal.com

For the second music video to be made off the new Disco Ensemble album the band asked once again a bunch of directors to submit scripts and ideas. I was pretty excited to hear that they liked my script enough to go ahead and shoot it. It was gonna be a big project that would require a lot of planning and preparation.

I asked Maiju Laitinen as our production manager. I knew it would help me immensly not having to organize everything alone. Working on the Bääbs music video with her she really made herself indispensable and made me realize how a good production manager can make a huge difference to the outcome of the project. Maiju ended up doing a lot of different things from gathering the crew together, keeping the crew up to date and making sure that we were prepared for everything from the most basic things to plastic bags to cover the gear if it starts raining.

Of course Alpo Nummelin came in to do the lights. I don’t think I could work without him anymore! Anu Kopra was a huge help and worked with Alpo all the way. We had a few test shoots, first to see how the GH1 codec stands smoke and as expected there was a lot of gradient banding. So in the end we couldn’t use as much smoke as I would’ve propably used if it wasn’t an issue. On the other hand it might be that less is more in this case as the smoke on the video now looks quite realistic. We ended up renting quite a lot of lights. As main lights we used two 1.2KW HMI’s and two 575W HMI’s. Actually basically all you see in the video is from those light sources. We did have Kino Flo’s but never used them. We had a lot of gear! We had two 650W tunsgtens hovering around to give some shots lens flares if we needed and there were five 300W tungstens in the forest to give some depth to the shots. This didnt work that well on the wide shots as the dept of field wasnt as shallow as in the close ups and we should’ve really moved these lights a little further on the wides. Alpo and Anu also made forest flags to give a little shape to the light.

I really wanted to shoot this video on a camera that could handle all the intricate details like smoke and get as much latitude to get lots of shadow details as I wanted some shots to be really dark. I called a few friends of mine who had worked with Red One and 35mm film and we did some calculations and discussed what the workflow would entail. In the end we just didn’t have a budget for anything that would’ve made a significant improvement in the picture quality and still make the video in the timeframe that we were supposed to. I’m very happy with the outcome and there are only a few shots that I had trouble with in the post. It’s possible that the color correction would’ve been a little more heavy if the footage had allowed that. I tried to shoot with a tweaked picture profile on the GH1 to get as close to the end results as I could right off the bat. There’s still slightly too much saturation on the red colours although it’s the least I managed after a lot of tests.

After driving around Tampere a lot we decided to shoot the music video on the base of Pyynikin näkötorni. It’s the highest sightseeing tower in Tampere and they serve the best donuts in the world! We rented the space for one night so that we could use the Näkötorni’s facilities for the crew, use their toilets, electricity and 30 donuts were included in the deal!

We got the cars for the shoot from Valto Koivula OY. The man himself Valto was a very helpful man managing the junkyard and helped us out a great deal. He even let us shoot a few pickup shots the following week at this junkyard. There’s new wrecked cars brought to the junkyard everyday so I had to go in a few times before we found a pair that worked for us. A red Nissan and a grey Toyota, not too new but not too old either. Those junkyards are a fantastic place!

The Möhkö helmet was made by Topias Hirvonen. We were all really excited about it and Alpo got two meters of LED striplight to put inside it. It ended up looking exactly as we imagined it and that is rare! We got a really nice actor to wear the Möhkö, Teija Vaittinen. Although the role itself wasn’t that demanding we wanted to have someone who knows what being on a shoot entails and Teija was indeed great. It’s all waiting, standing still, moving an inch to the left and waiting more – especially when you can’t see at all where you’re moving you need a lot of patience.

It’s amazing the amount of work that is needed when you do things professionally. This was the first shoot I’ve ever done where we needed permits to shoot on location. It’s not very difficult to do all this but it takes a lot of research and time. After two weeks of phonecalls and trips to countless places the day of the shoot came and everything looked pretty good for the shoot to begin at 20.00… I woke up and had breakfast and checked all my gear. Around noon Alpo called me and asked me how I was doing, I replied I was feeling strangely calm actually. “Well, sit down cause that’s about to change…”, he said after a slight pause and a laugh. What had happened was that the night before another film crew had been shooting at that exact same location and they had managed to harm the power outlet that was next door to where we were going to get our electricity from. The owner of our source of electricity was of course extremely worried that we’d do something wrong as well and apparently the day after our shoot was one of the busyest days of the year for their business. He wasn’t suddenly happy about our shoot at all and was freaking out about us possibly ruining his business somehow. We were in a right pinch. We considered changing locations, we rented a generator so if we did change locations we’d at least have power. It was a situation where even if you have a contract you really can’t do much. I’m sure if it was Hollywood lawyers phones would’ve been ringing but no one really wanted anything like that to happen. After a few hours between Maiju, Alpo myself and the owner of the business we were getting the electricity from we managed to agree on the terms of the shoot and got the permit to use the electricity at the location if we needed to. It took a while to recover from the setback and many hours reserved for other preparations were wasted having to deal with this issue.

We got to the location and I was really happy to see the prop cars were there and in perfect condition. Unbeknownst to us they had stickered the rear windows with their own Valto Koivula OY stickers! It was pretty sweet and hilarious.

We started setting up lights around 20.00 and when the sun finally set at 22.00 we noticed that the generator we had rented didn’t work properly. The 1.2Kw HMI’s that it was feeding power were flickering because of it. We had to run the power from the main building and this going back and forth with the source of the power set us back an hour or so. We rolled camera around 23.00. A few first shots went great and the footage was already looking really good on the viewfinder so I began to relax a little. A little panic set in at around 1am as I realised that we had around 3 hours of darkness left and we had done only about a forth of the shots. We really needed to pick up the pace so instead of calling in the actors we tried to have everyone on hold all the time and instead of moving lights we moved props.

I really admire the Disco Ensemble guys and their work morale, it started snowing and they had to lie down on the cold street and on broken glass, Jussi had fever, Mikko got a cut from the glass and it was getting colder and colder. No-one complained, including the crew, everyone was working full on and the best they could. As we were closing in on the final shots it began snowing. This caused some major problems that we couldn’t do anything about in post so there’s some shots that really don’t cut that well together, we missed a few close up shots and it also cut down our shooting time by another hour so I knew immeadiately we needed to have another night for pick up shots. We did those the following week in front of Valto Koivula junkyard, they were extremely kind to provide us with yet another car we could destroy. We did the pick up shots with just me and Alpo. One of my favourite shots, the smoking cassette player was done on this day. For that shot we actually had to return to Pyynikki where we shot the principal shoot because the street lights at that location were a very special green colour. We couldn’t find any other place with that kind of bulbs and to shoot under a different light it would’ve looked totally out of place. We could’ve used gels maybe but best bet was just to go out and shoot at the same location. The second day of shooting was even longer then the principal shoot.

It’s really something to be able to work with dedicated people who are really making an effort. So my heartfelt thank you to the band, the crew and Timo Häkli from Tampere City Intracenter who provided us with the traffic lights and to Valto Koivula of Valto Koivula OY. Always a slight anti-climax that after you really put everything into the shoot we were all dead tired. Forget about going for drinks after! Well, at 7am I doubt we would’ve found any bars open anyways!

Hangrip sells accessories and they also sell pre-built rigs. I got the V8 rig that can be used to hold your camera with two handles on the sides or on top of the camera for low ground sweeping shots. There’s loads of parts that you can basically set up anyway you like. Its very modular and things fit together in any which way you wish to attach them. It’s like legos :) For example you can attach the handles to any part of the rails as they have holes running along all it’s length and every second hole is threaded. It’s all standard 1/4″ threads that’s found for example in all cameras bottoms. So you can even attach a handle directly to your camera if need be! This is awesome in my opinion as way too often you just have millions of pieces that require adapters of all sorts.

The build quality seems good. For the job at hand at the time I needed a shoulder support rig so we actually came up with a different use for all the V8 parts. I built a small jib out of the frame and my old boom pole! You can see it hanging right at the end of the boom pole there. I was quite surpised how well the rails of the V8 frame held up, they look slim but even when fit with my heaviest lens setup it didn’t flex at all.

Below is a video from Hangrip Vimeo page that shows a little bit of the V8 in action. You can find more info from the Hangrip website.

FedEx dropped off the Glidetrack SD a few days ago. Took less than a week from the moment I made the order online to arrive to Finland from UK, fast service! I bought it specially for a music video I’m shooting end of April where I wanted to have very slow moving shots.

The glidetrack SD has little rubber feet so it stays put easily. You can attach it to a tripod like in the pictures and for my Manfrotto tripod at least it’s no feat to keep it steady all the way from one edge to the other. There’s an ever so slight noise when you slide the camera so if you want it to be quieter and slightly smoother I was recommended to using a silicon lubricant spray.

I’m using an old tripod head that I’ve had lying around for years. It’s a little fiddly and I’m sure a better head would add a lot of ease to doing tilts and pans while gliding but it works so for the moment I’m not going to invest in a new one.

I’m quite amazed at how well the Glidetrack works. It’s really easy to get steady slow smooth glides. It’s easy to take along with you. The mood it brings to shots is vastly different from anything you can achieve with a tripod or other means. You can get those really fantastic slow moving shots that you see in movies that are just impossible without a dolly. It’s gives the shots almost an unearthly feel and it can help even mundane shots rise to new dimensions. But of course it can be overused easily. Think for example Aki Kaurismäki’s movie Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö (The Match Factory Girl) where a dolly is used in only one shot. It truly makes it powerful.

-EDIT 6th January 2011-
What I learned in the past months using the Glidetrack is that if it rains or snows the Glidetrack can get stuck. You gotta keep it clean and wipe it properly if you’re shooting outdoors. So when you go outdoors make sure you keep it dry and that you have paper or some kitchen towels handy. I think I need to also try out the silicon lubricant spray that I’ve yet to try out!
-/EDIT-

You can find more info from glidetrack.com/. It’s one of the most exciting accessories I’ve bought for a while and after trying it out the price tag doesn’t feel too much either.

All photos on this page by Gabriela González.

This is a rare one and quite hard to find. I’d never heard of it and was lucky to see it at a festival called Offscreen in Brussels, Belgium. One of the themes of the festival was apocalyptic movies. I saw about eight movies about the end of the world that week! My kinda fest! Threads was projected from an original 35mm print which added to the mood. It really takes you by surprise. Towards the end of the first half it get’s into a mood that is devastatingly sad and dark. At the end you just can’t even talk anymore. Im not sure if I can watch it again.

Stalker

This is such an amazing film. I haven’t watched it in ages. I have it on DVD though so maybe it is time. To me Tarkovsky is one of the all time greatest film makers along with Bergman and Kubrick. There are a lot of great film makers but to have such a strong body of work. A little known fact that I just learned last weekend is that Tarkovsky shot this movie twice! The first time they shot it at a desert in Russia but all of the film was ruined in a laboratory accident. So the entire film was shot again with a different cinematographer and apparently all the scenes are different from the first shoot.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Almost all Ghibli studio movies are amazing but especially Hayao Miyazakis movies are close to my heart. This is just such a beautiful film. It ends my top three list with a hopeful ending!

Here’s a handy list from wikipedia if you’re thinking of an apocalyptic movie marathon weekend ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_and_post-apocalyptic_fiction#Film

And a quite interesting read if you want to get deeper into the academics of the subject: http://www.westga.edu/~psydept/dodson/postapoc.html

Movies that require a honorary mention for being super entertaining or otherwise quite good: 28 Days later, A Boy and His Dog, Children of Men, Day of the Dead, Escape From New York, The Happening, I am Legend, Mad Max, The Road, Terminator, Terminator 2.

Sometimes, not often by all means, people ask me what does Es mean? The letter S has been prominent in my life, hence my name :D When I first started recording on a four-track around 1991 I used to position all my equipment on a on a soft round carpet I had. I remember the best way to get into the mood was to put on my woolly socks and dim the lights. These woolly socks were knit by my grandma and they sported the initials E.S. on the side. I didn’t think about it until later I realised these must have been my grandfathers woolly socks. My grandmother had made them for him and unknowingly I had inherited them.

After some years I finally got to the moment where I realised that I needed a band name. I didn’t want to use my real name though. All those years sitting down with my legs crossed with a guitar on my lap staring down at my woolly socks I thought that maybe I’ll call myself… woolly socks! Heheh, just kiddin’! I’d call myself Es. I think for the first gig poster I wrote the title with a lower case “e” and a capital “S”. Although I quickly changed it to Es I still see it written like that sometimes. Funny how things stick. In 2002 I released some experimental loops on a compilation and those were titled Experimental Songcycles #1-5. David Keenan from the Wire understood that this was the meaning behind Es and wrote this in the Wire. Since then a lot of people have used that and so have I. It suits the music well. But the true meaning is that it’s my grandpa ;) Last christmas, my mom made me woolly socks with my initials on them. I hope my kids won’t name their band after my initials though :)

A picture of the rig I used on a recent music video shoot.

Why would I change to a less professional camera? It’s all about what kind of stuff you shoot and what kind of tools you need for that. The money I saved in exchanging from EX1 to GH1 was substantial and it allowed me to buy a lot of accessories as well as save up. I shoot DIY documentaries, art films and music videos which I deliver mainly to the web. I use Sony Vegas Pro 8 to edit and that has so far handled any format I’ve thrown at it very well. It’s one of the least frustrating programs I’ve ever used and works without much fuss with the not-so-good-for-editing AVCHD format the GH1 records.

Image Quality

The picture quality of the GH1 is amazing and in my view when delivering to web in HD it’s totally comparable to for example the EX1. Heres a few shots taken with both cams from the same situation. Left is GH1 and right is EX1 with Letus Extreme.

You can see that the EX1 with Letus there is more noise/grain in the images and that creates an illusion of more shades of color. For me this is actually preferable. I know most wouldn’t prefer it but I do. So for all the videos I’ve shot with the GH1 I have added a little (or a lot!) grain with Magic Bullet Looks plugin. To me looking at the images like these they are at least on par with each other and maybe the GH1 takes the win even. In 720p you shoot 50 frames per second so choosing a shutter speed of 1/100th second (as opposed to normal 1/50th) you can get nice slow motion as well.

The kit lens is alright but to be honest I haven’t shot one shot with it that would’ve ended up in any production. It’s f3.5 so it’s a no go in low light situations. So far I haven’t done any outdoor jobs with the GH1 yet but I am hoping that it will be a good choice for outdoor wide shots. Sample footage online seems to promise it will be great! My lenses consist of Canon FD series 24mm f1.4 L, 50 mm f1.4, 85mm 1.2 L and 135mm f2. They’re fitted with ciecio7 adapter I bought from eBay (it’s called ciecio7 because that’s the username of the person who sells the adapters on eBay). I also use the Fader ND a lot, very recommended!

The real differences are under the hood so to speak. The GH1 codec is something that you really need to watch out for. I’ve ended up mainly shooting in 1280×720 resoution instead of full HD 1920×1080 because of the issues with jello and the codec breaking down. If you shoot on a tripod, don’t do fast pans and if you aren’t shooting high detail pictures such as forests it’s not a problem. But I like to shoot handheld, run in the forest and move the camera around fast so it’s an issue for me.

After about nine months, ten videos later and after hacking my GH1 with the GH13 hack I’ve started using Full HD mode exclusively. It is still not as robust as you’d hope for but it’s very good. I’m using the “C settings” so instead of 17MB bitrate it’s about 60MB.

You also gotta take care not to underexpose with the GH1 or you will get some banding – especially on red colors. It’s funny though, a lot of people shooting test shots at home end up with bad footage with banding. When you go out to do some real shooting with lights and you take care your exposure is nailed you get very good results. Here’s a few shots from home tests and real world shooting situations.

It’s really difficult to portray with still images but what I see when watching the videos is that in the forest scenes the blacks are black and there is no banding to speak of as opposed to pictures with the girl which are both underexposed and there is too little light and the banding starts appearing. So in essence if you underexpose and have too dark image you will get banding. If you have very little light but you nail the exposure you get better images. So this would mean that you get better images shooting at 400 asa with exposure just right then you do with 100 asa underexposed. Yeah, Im having a hard time trying to explain this, hope I made a little sense! :D

Here’s two videos I’ve done so you can compare the picture quality for yourself. First video is done with the EX1 and the second is shot with the GH1. Both with a Canon FD 24mm 1.4 L.

Shot with the Sony EX1 and Letus Extreme.

Shot with Panasonic GH1.

GH1 for Photographs

I’ve tried to take some photos with the GH1 and to me it’s just not up to the task. Especially in low light you can’t really get decent results no matter what. Compared to the higher end DSLR’s it’s no match. Although I can heartily recommend the GH1 for video if you are looking for a camera mainly to do photography with I would stay away from it. You can get decent results with it and I’m ok to take it on a holiday with me, even do product photography when you have proper lights or you are outdoors. But other then that unfortunately it’s not quite up to the task.

Audio

Another major handicap for some is that there is no pro audio inputs. The GH1 mic is not bad at all for DIY stuff in controlled enviroments. Doing documentaries is not out of the question. With a little investment in the audio side you can get truly professional results. I got a wireless Audio-Technica Lavalier mic, a Rode shotgun and Zoom H4n recorder. This gives an excellent audio quality for interviews. The Zoom H4n is also perfect for recording live gigs. I love having all these little gadget that become multipurpose. Now when I take all this stuff with me I’m ready to record live gigs. Do documentaries or shoot music videos. And it all fits in a small bag!

So far I’ve done two short documentaries with the GH1. The short documentary on a Belgian label Kraak records was done with nothing but the GH1 microphone. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality I got. We tried to control the audio by choosing rooms that were quiet and had a nice echo. I tried to stay close the people I interviewed. I think the results are totally usable for this kind of DIY aesthetics. I had to EQ it some but you can understand the people talking which is the most important thing with these types of videos. The second documentary on Jan Anderzén is recorded to the Zoom H4n with the wireless LAV and Rode shotgun mic. I ended up using mostly the wireless LAV and added some GH1 stereo audio for ambience.

Conclusion

Some people say that they wouldn’t dare show up at a clients door with a small size camera. I’ve done paying job’s with the GH1 and so far the only thing I’ve seen is excitement that the tools are getting so affordable and small in size but the image quality is so amazing. You are selling yourself with the latest footage after all. I would be scared to work for a client that only wanted to know what equipment I use and wasn’t interested in seeing what i’ve actually done with them so far.

To me the best camera is the camera that get’s me excited about shooting and makes things less complicated and fun. In a sentence a camera that I can pick up, get up and shoot with! The small size, cheap SDHC cards, being able to use a vast choise of old cheap prime lenses and the relative ease of use are the main advantages shooting with the GH1. Overall I find myself taking the GH1 everywhere with me and using it all the time. For the price it’s an amazing camera and gives a lot of people what they have wanted for a long time.