FS100 training video

I was on location in beautiful Trenta shooting for Red Bull when I received an email from James at Hangman Studios if I would be interested in appearing on the FS100 training BluRay for Sony Europe that will be available to the camera owners. They also had a few other people participating. Den Lennie, Philip BloomJames Miller, Sam Morgan Moore, Frank Glencairn and James Tonkin himself .
He said: “We’ve been identifying leading FS100 users commentators in Europe and from looking at work on your site we’d love to involve you in this project as you’ve clearly embraced using this camera on interesting and beautifully shot jobs.”

They would come to Slovenia to shoot an interview and then record some b-roll of me sharing a tip/trick or some insights into using the FS100. Of course I was flabbergasted (I never thought I would ever use this word). They wanted to come to Slovenia to shoot an interview with me and put it on BluRay together with Phillip Bloom, Sam Morgan Moore (I have his Half Inch Rails S2 Run ‘n’ Gun rig) and Den Lennie (from F-Stop Academy). I didn’t know the rest of them, but have later found out that I once saw a great movie from James Miller about adjusting a 8mm projector to digitalize an analog film (The Projector – 8 mm direct to 5D MkII) and that I was using Frank Glencairn’s picture profiles for FS100.

I quickly arranged for a day off at work. I told them what I need it for, but they thought I was joking.

I booked a hotel for Den and James with a beautiful view over Ljubljana so that they could also shoot some time lapses from the room.

And so it came the day they arrived from Germany where they were interviewing Frank Glencairn. We went to dinner and on a quick tour around my home town Ljubljana as we discussed the next day shoot.

I was so nervous the next morning as I never was before. They came to my apartment with heaps of equipment. Two FS100s with lenses (they did the interview with Canon 24mm f1.4 and SLR Magic HyperPrime 50mm T0.95), a slider, tripods, a set of Dedo lights, steadycam and more. My living room quickly changed to a full blown studio. When Den started to interview me my stage fright quickly disappeared and I think that the interview turned out quite o.k.

Then we needed to film a tips and trick section. As my speciality on the BluRay were to be car rigs we went to some beautiful location near Ljubljana to record me rigging the camera to a car. This took place in the vicinity of a lake Rakitna. There they used the steadycam for some of the shots. I really wasn’t nervous at this point. I was in my element and was enjoying it. At the time I hadn’t got a proper car rig as I have now, so many mounting points on the camera really helped with stabilization of the camera. The shots turned out great. I would just like to add that using a optical stabilizer on the lens sure helps a lot (also keeping the weight of the whole rig with a camera down) but sometimes you can see strange moves of the image when the road is not straight and there are a lot of turns. Stabilization tries to correct the beginning of the turn but than realises that this is not possible and than ends the stabilization so you can see some strange sideways movement.

My part was finished and all they need to shot is some B-roll footage of the city where I live. They liked the scenery so much that they used most of it for the trailer. I was their guide through the city and James let me use his SLR Magic 35mm f/1.7 and HyperPrime 50mm T0.95 lens (which I also used to shoot the photos below). I fell in love in both lenses and have since bought both of them. Meeting and hanging out with the guys was great. Especially being part of what they do on the internet. Den also shot a part for his F-Stop academy lectures in my living room.
As it turned out Sony was very pleased with my part as they offered me to test their new camera NEX-FS700 a few months later and they send a pre production model to me in Slovenia to shot some footage for the promotion of the camera. You can see the finished trailer at the end of this post.

Photos: © 2011 Peter Prevec, Dino Schreilechner