The cool, and challenging part for us was the dolly move. The 30 second commercial is only one shot with a title card at the end, but it’s the dolly move around a 1/3 of the room that keeps things interesting. We followed our talent as he walked around a surgery in progress, and our movements allowed us to see the equipment, patient, surgeon, and nurses without  cutting away from our talent or making armature camera moves.

The dolly was a homemade one that one of our regular crew members TJ brought to the shoot. It’s a pretty normal “skateboard” dolly, except that the PVC track could be curved. The 10′ pipes attached with dowels and the wheels on the dolly can swivel, allowing the curve of the track to be adjusted. It gave us the perfect amount of track to go almost 180 degrees around the 24′x24′ room, although we didn’t end up using it all. You can catch a glimpse of the track in this short behind the scenes video… And below that is the final commercial that went to broadcast this week…

Final Commercial

You can see photos from the shoot on Eric’s website… ericelliottphotography.com

We use a half circle dolly track on one side of the room and had the talent walk on the other, with all the medical staff working in between us. It was a challenge to work in the small space, especially lighting that, but the spot turned out very well. Below is a short behind the scenes look at the setup with a small clip of the final spot. We’ll get the commercial online as soon as it goes to broadcast!

The thing I discovered quickly was that mounting all of the accessories and the 7D together was not as easy accessory manufactures made it sound. Also, getting the rig balanced well proved to be a challenge. I started out with the iKan Super Fly and it really did seem like a good idea, but it was terribly difficult to use handheld and really didn’t support many accessories. The RedRock shoulder mount was my next purchase and is very stable, but ridiculously heavy and unnecessary for mounting onto a tripod and can’t be used with our Kessler slider or jib.

So here is what I have come up with: A tripod/slider/jib and handheld-friendly, somewhat compact, rig on 9″ 15mm rails and a cheese plate. This portion of the rig has all the essentials: Camera body, follow focus, matte box, monitor, and audio recorder. This setup has handles on the back of it for going handheld easily. One the bottom is a quick release plate that can attach all that to the RedRock Micro shoulder mount. Within seconds I can mount the camera and all it’s accessories to the shoulder mount when we need it. Here are some photos of the two setups:

Another cool, and intentional, design of this custom rig is that the 7D itself is on a quick release as well so that it can be popped straight up out of all of these accessories to be used on it’s own. The top handle is attached to the hot shoe for this sole purpose… taking the 7D out of the rig to be used on it’s own without having to detach anything from the camera.

Here is a list of makes up this rig:

- Canon 7D
- RedRock Micro  DSLR Field Cinema Deluxe V2
- RedRock Micro Matte Box
- RedRock Micro Follow Focus
- RedRock Micro 9″ 15mm Rails
- iKan Super Fly (a highly modified version)
- Marshall 7″ HD Field Monitor with HDMI
- Zoom H4N (not pictured here)
- Manfrotto Quick Release Plate/Adapter

We specifically chose the Ziess Makro-Planar 50mm F2 for this and it was the only lens we used (on a Canon  7D body). We shot everything at 720p60 and slowed down some of the footage in post production. In some shots, the product actually rotates on a turntable, and others are dolly shots with the Kessler Crane Philip Bloom Pocket Dolly. Check out the final commercial below…

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Gear We Used
As you can see from the video above, we really put our 18′ Kessler Crane to work on this project. It wasn’t easy to move around out in the fields and in the woods, but it was totally worth it for the shots we were able to get. The other Kessler product we used was the Philip Bloom Signature Series Pocket Dolly, which we used to capture the opening scenes of the second commercial below. The big surprise of the project though were the GoPro Heroes. We utilized three of these tiny cameras and mounted them all over the vehicle. That’s how we were able to get some of the amazing shots like the underwater shot, scene of the wheel well, the driver’s POV, etc. We absolutely love these little cameras! The primary camera on the shoot was the Canon 7D with a Ziess 24mm ZE lens and we used the Panasonic HPX170 on the jib.

The Final Commercials

Gear used: Canon 7D, Canon 60D, Kessler Crane Philip Bloom Pocket Dolly, Red Rock Micro shoulder rig, and the onOne DSLR Remote app for iPad

One of my most trusted crew guys is Rusty, and he just ended up buying the Canon 60D for both photography and video use. So of course, since it’s brand new, we used it on a shoot today to see how it compares to the 7D. Rumor has it that the 60D shoots video that is pretty close to the quality of the 7D, so the natural question is: why spend the extra $500 or so on the 7D?

Here are my opinions on the 60D, as it compares to the higher priced 7D…

1. Buttons: The buttons feel cheaper on the 60D and are not nearly as responsive as the 7D. It was challenging to make adjustments without physically looking at the buttons to make sure I pushed the right one or that it registered my input.
2. LCD Screen: The swivel screen is phenomenal, very similar to my GH1. The additional resolution over the 7D screen is noticeable, but still doesn’t replace an external monitor for focus pulls. Only negative about the screen itself is that on the model we had today, the screen didn’t swing all the way out (it felt like it went 95% of the way) leaving it a little crooked, which made me think my shots weren’t straight.
3. No HD Out: Although it has a mini-HDMI out port, the image is scaled down to SD when you hit record. Again, a big bummer for pulling focus. Definitely usable, but HD out on the 7D while recording is a big feature of the higher end camera.
4. Accessing White Balance: I’ve said from day one that being able to quickly change white balance settings on the 7D is awesome and is a commonly overlooked feature. The 60D doesn’t have the quick access button like the 7D, and has to be accessed via the menus. Sounds small, but it’s not. Going through menus is a waste of time on set. (Update: After playing with it more this weekend, Rusty let me know that there IS a quick access button to get into these settings. Depending on how easy that is to access, this may not be an issue)
5. Build Quality: The 7D is definitely more rugged and clearly more weather resistant compared to the plastic body of the 60D. I’ve dropped my 7D, but held onto the 60D pretty tight today, fearing that a drop would be catastrophic for it.

Overall I really do like the 60D, especially it’s slightly smaller body, it records to SD cards, and it has manual audio controls (which we didn’t get to use today). We’ll probably use this camera a lot as a B camera on productions, especially now that we have easy access to one (thanks Rusty), but this list I’ve pointed out above really makes a difference to me and I’m still going to use the 7D as our primary camera for now. For professionals, the extra money is worth the additional features.

During our site visit last week, we stumbled upon this beautiful scene and knew that we needed to capture it on the day of the shoot. After we got it, we transitioned quickly to the green of hole 15 where the client and cast were waiting and we began setting up for the key shot of the day. The challenge of the shot was timing… the action of the 4×4, the actors reactions, and the jib move all had to be perfect. We ended up shooting it over and over and over again until we got it, but even though the cast weren’t professional actors, they did a FANTASTIC job and took direction very well.

After a few other quick shots, we put the “big camera” (can the 7D rig really be called the big camera?) away and pulled out the GoPro’s and headed down to a creek on the 18th hole. The objective was to put one GoPro under water, with another one attached to the front of the vehicle to get two angles of it crossing the water. The cameras were the perfect choice for the situation and the footage is awesome. A big thank you to Rusty for (1) allowing us to submerge his GoPro and (2) taking the lead and making the shot work.

The top performing gear of the day was the Canon 24-70 2.8L, the Kessler Crane Signature Series Pocket Dolly, and of course the GoPro Hero.