Trail Running and Arc'teryx
“Popular brands like Arc'teryx get pitched by independent filmmakers all the time. So when you are doing a concept ad like this one, you go into it knowing there may not be a payday. Kaily's idea was this parallel universe between being in a studio putting on their gear, and then suddenly being outdoors using their gear. The other twist to the concept was to visually shoot every scene in a different format, from anamorphic to Open Gate 6K, and even Super 16. And so for a cinematographer, this idea of being on location and then in the studio shooting on different formats, had me hooked from the-get-go.”
“After Scott and Kaily storyboarded the shot list they pitched Arc'teryx's marketing department, as well as the local Arc'teryx store. Although Arc'teryx were happy to chat about the idea, the creative direction and timing didn't really work for them at that time. And so just when we were thinking about changing apparel brands, the local Arc'teryx store came through with thousands of dollars worth of gear for us to loan!”
“And so the three of us decided to push ahead and see what we could achieve with zero budget. Scott is a great trail runner, but in the end he decided to help Kaily with her running technique. Given Kaily was the director on this commercial, so having her as the talent suddenly freed Scott and myself to shoot the spot. Scott is an outstanding editor and so now all we need to do was shoot enough footage to make the idea work.”
“The opening scene I loved for a number of reasons. I had tried to do this sort of setup with S.35 cameras before and the crop factor just never gave me what I was looking for. I have a bunch of beautiful vintage Leica R lenses, so I knew the 28mm would work with the right camera and sensor. In preparation for this commercial, I decided to buy a Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K because it has a 3:2 open gate sensor. This was the first time I had shot on this camera, and it just popped, having never seen my Leica's behave this way before. All that extra field of view worked amazingly for this sort of 'through-the-window' car shot. The other thing I loved about this scene was the color. What you see is exactly what it looked like with no added saturation. A bit of ND, and this shot was suddenly perfect.”
“The other scene I really enjoyed shooting was the night scene with Kaily coming out of the darkness wearing the headlamp. What I wanted with this scene was something shot at blue hour that had an ethereal feel to it. But I knew, that if this was shot when it was dark outside, then the headlamp would have overpowered everything. There would have been no chance of seeing her or the mountains in the background. So the trick was to essentially throw a ton of NDs on the camera until it looked like blue hour. I shot this at about 6pm while there was still plenty of light. You can actually see the sun back there, just hidden by the cloud cover.”
“So that her headlamp was not overpowering her face, I threw the ISO way down so I could get more steps in my shadows just to make it look more like night. If I had shot it at night, then obviously, it would just have been completely dark and I would have lost those beautiful gradients in the clouds. Because this commercial was all about different formats, we decided the headlamp should have an anamorphic flare as well.”
“And so my anamorphic trickery for this shot was to use the Aivascope Amber Flare adapter on my Leica 35mm lens. These adapters work great with full frame lenses, giving you a 1.5X squeeze. With a 6K 3:2 sensor, I had plenty of resolution for this aspect ratio. And the great thing about the anamorphic look is it feels like you get more depth to the shot. And with the amber lens flare the whole scene just pops!”
“We decided to shoot the whole commercial handheld instead of on a gimbal. We wanted a little more freedom to find the best angles fast, and handheld seems to give you this ability. But for this scene, we did use sticks for the camera. We hadn't planned for this particular shot, but Scott really insisted that we needed it to carry the concept. This is the scene where Kaily is looking over the camera dripping in sweat!”
“It was a super fast setup, maybe 10 minutes to do. We just put a sheet of plexiglass in front of the matte box and smeared glycerine over the glass to give you that 'soaked in sweat' look. For this shot, I used the DZOFilm VESPID 12mm because of its super wide field of view on a full frame sensor. I also had a light tube on one side and a negative fill on the other side, just to give some nice controlled light on her face. The trees are all sort of pointing in that direction, so you're really looking directly at her face. We did shoot it a few times at different frame rates. But in the end, the first take was the best!”
“I love the way the water drops fall onto the plexiglass as it gives even more depth to the image. It just looks amazing for how easy it is to do this sort of shot. The only thing I wish I had done was to give her a little more light on her eyes. And that was about the only thing I would do differently.”
“However, the scene that is my favorite is the swimming in the lake shots. The crazy thing about this scene is it's a one-time deal with the sunrise. The angle of the morning sun through the handrail was so tight that everything had to be co-ordinated with exact precision, or we would have lost the light.”
“We wanted was for the sunrise to give this shot extra interest, so we needed the perfect moment. We couldn't move the camera forward or backward, or even tilt it. So we waited for the sun to be at the perfect angle, which happened to be at 5.30am! And then as the sun popped through the handrail, I said 'Kaily, go' just as I pushed the hydration vest so that it would swing a little. The water was freezing at that hour and Kaily just ran straight off the dock with a perfect bomb into the lake. It was just brilliant. First take and perfect!”
“We then tried a bunch of different angles and a bunch of different lenses with Kaily repeatedly diving into the freezing water. But nothing was as good as that first take. We were able to submerge the camera using a waterproof bag for a DSLR. They are not that easy to use, but having the monitor on the back of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera meant that I could get the right framing first go.”
“The original plan for the commercial was to shoot the studio scenes as well, which didn't happen in the end. Scott was going to handle the edit, but he had a bunch of commercial jobs come in, so I picked up that task. I rewrote the concept based on all the scenes we had shot. I bounced some of the rough edits off Scott and Kaily, until we were all happy with the new direction.”
“The toughest part with this commercial was actually trying to make the footage from the Sony work. The Sony footage was so friggin' hard to grade, I thought about converting it to black and white. I just couldn't get the color to be what I wanted it to be. It was so far off where it should have been, it took me hours and hours for just that short scene. But after all the effort that went into setting up the zipline and camera control, I was committed to getting that footage into the edit.”
“Although Arc'teryx didn't pick the spot up and run it commercially, I do feel it was on brand and did a great job of positioning their trail running apparel. The final edit did changed in direction from Kaily's original vision, but I still think it's a great spot.”