By Kevin H. Martin

DP BEN DOLPHIN SHOOTS A HI-SPEED
HIGH-DEF PROJECT

Director/cinematographer Ben Dolphin recalls a DGA demo for HD that took place about ten years back, when the projection systems were still in their infancy. “They projected HD on a screen, and, well, it looked like TV on a big screen,” says Dolphin. “I said as much, and their response was, ‘Oh, no … you’re film-biased.’ To which I said, ‘No guys, I’m quality-biased.’”

His bias remains unchanged today, but the range of tools he employs has broadened as technology develops further. Dolphin’s cinematography skill sets include Steadicam and motion-control, but he is best known for work shooting liquids and high-speed, for which he’s developed very specific lighting schemes. Shooting film below 500 fps he may use a “1.5 to 1 ratio of HMI over Unilux,” he explains. “There is crystalline sharpness with the powerful Unilux strobes, while the HMI light introduces some degree of motion blur for appetite appeal and prevents the image from becoming medical-looking.”

While shooting a spot in Chicago for Black Cherry Vanilla Coke last year, Dolphin combined 35mm film elements with high-speed macro captured HD on a Vision Research Phantom camera. “There is an iconic look and feel to the Coke glass, so that had to be done with film,” he states. “But the high speed pours and many post elements turned out just fine using the Phantom. When shooting digitally, I can control the exposure time and therefore edge detail by adjusting a drop down menu on the camera. While capturing Golden Beer Bubbles in Prague with a Phantom camera, the material also wound up being re-employed as branding tools. After that, I started developing the idea of a project that would use high-speed shots that could be played back live.”

Since Dolphin’s first career was in dance and he later taught a class in choreography for camera at the NYU School of Arts while working his way up through the production ranks, he had feet firmly planted in both worlds, which inspired his original notion for an artistic high-speed presentation. “I thought of using Vision Research’s Phantom cameras for a live-action performance, collaborating with dancers choreographing nano-speed events while interacting

with an eight-foot wide waterfall and fire elements. The years spent as a high-speed and liquid specialist caused me to fall in love with the subtle surprises and revelations that emerge at high frame rates. I planned to capture with a pair of cameras, then immediately play the event back via rear projection behind the dancers. I figured on speed-ramping the action from fifteen to thirty seconds in length on playback. Then I’d stage another live-action nano-event and begin layering these in playback before the live audience.”

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By Pauline Rogers

THE STEADICAM – “THE BIGGEST THING SINCE TECHNICOLOR”

If we could listen in on the thoughts of most every cameraperson, we’d often hear, “There has to be a better way to do this.” Some people stop there. Others make half an attempt to create something and give up when something similar is in the airwaves—or, worse, a ‘trained engineer’ who says, “it can’t be done.” Others slog on to moderate success. Then there are a very few who go all the way. None, however, have had an impact the way Folk-singer/Volkswagen salesman/radio pitchman/award-winning

radio commercial creator Garrett Brown, who as The Washington Post once wrote, created “The Biggest Thing Since Technicolor.”

Once upon a time there was a cameraman/
director/editor that made films for programs like Sesame Street and commercials for various clients out of an old barn/studio in Gradyville, Pennsylvania. Since he’d learned filmmaking by reading books from the Philadelphia library (circa 1940), he thought he needed dollies and big lights and such. “I was obsessed with having a mike boom, the kind that could crank in and out,” laughs Brown. “When an old-time Philly filmmaker went bankrupt, I got a truckload of his stuff, which was all obsolete.”

The tools gave him a chance to create. And move. Sort of. “To get the results of a camera move that went from here to there that looked really good on screen, you had to put your little pin-head camera on a 600-pound contraption and lay rails for it,” he says. “My floor creaked on the studio, and it was not quite level—you constantly had to be leveling this thing while you drove it. It was a nightmare.”

That nightmare got Brown thinking that there must be a better way. With partner and good friend Warren Paul (as producer and sales rep in the New York office), The Moving & Talking Picture Company of Philadelphia, New York and Gradyville was into the invention business.

Enter the ‘Pole.’ A few lengths of plumbing pipe and lead ingots became a simple pole with weighted t-bar at the back. Brown bolted the camera to the front and he held it at the center-of-balance and ran around the Pennsylvania backwoods, recording the results on an Akai 1/4-inch reel-to-reel.

The question became: Would it work on a real shoot? If they could ever get one!

The answer came in the form of a call from hotshot director John Wilcox, who’d heard about the ‘Pole’ and thought it might work for a segment of ABC’s Monday Night Sports Special about jockey Robyn Smith (Fred Astaire’s future bride). Wilcox wanted a single, long, uncut tracking shot preceding Ms. Smith as she walked the 200-yard path from the ‘weighting room’ at Saratoga Springs to the paddock. Cameraman Urs Ferrar had heard about the ‘contraption’ and once they viewed Brown’s demo, both were sold. The problem was that it had to be 16mm.

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