‘Winding Down’
// December 10th, 2011 // Video
A mini film about my Keystone K-4C Electric Eye.
Here’s a still of the title card from the video:
And here’s the video…
This is a short test piece I put together over the last few days. I have an amazing looking Keystone K-4C ‘Electric Eye’ 8mm film camera I bought as non-working a while back which I’d intended to use as a prop for a photo shoot but never got around to. It makes a good subject for a video test as there are lots of moving parts and it makes noises. It’s clockwork powered, you wind it up and it winds down.
I’ve been interested in film and video for a number of years. I’ve done lots of stills work on TV and films so I’ve seen the huge amount of work and skill that goes into production. As with everything else I get interested in and which seems challenging I want to have a go myself!
Planning is key for video so I storyboarded what I was going to shoot and then set up my single light source, a black background and various bounce cards, stands and tripods. I ended up shooting a lot more than I’d storyboarded, and some of what I’d wanted to do turned out to be impractical. The film is a lot longer than I’d intended, partly because it was easier to synch with the music that way, and also because I didn’t have time to make it shorter.
The music is by Jack Westmore, a local musician and composer who specialises in TV/film work. Having the music to work with really helped set the tone of the piece and a lot of the motion in the visuals flowed from that.
For those interested in kit I shot this with a Canon 5D Mark 2, 24-70 F2.8L and 100mm Macros lenses and lit it with this LED panel from Amazon. The LED light is cheap and it works but the build quality is poor and there seems to be a slight green tint to it.