Philip Bloom was kind enough to put together a write-up of his most recent personal project “Sea.” Many of you may be following Philip’s career with great interest. Philip has garnered the interest of some of Hollywood’s greats as well as those who are picking up a camera for the first time. He’s been a leader in the HDSLR movement and has always been willing to respond to a question or answer a post. I think this is one of the things that sets him apart as a D.O.P. One thing worth mentioning is while Philip works on a variety of different creative and commercial projects, most of the videos he posts for us to see are the ones he’s put together in his spare time for us. It will then be important to note that I believe film accomplishes primarily two purposes. First is to be a narrative, to tell the “story” the other is to evoke a certain emotion. In the case of the narrative hopefully both are being achieved, you’re telling a story and your audience feels something. Yet other films are intended to evoke a certain emotion or as Philip says, “mood.” Philip I believe is the master at evoking emotion through his beautiful imagery. I hope that you will feel the grandeur and beauty of the sea as you watch his video.

Philip Bloom’s Website

Also worth mentioning as does Philip in his write-up you can get 20% off of Magic Bullet Looks with code bloom20 from red giant software

Here is his write-up:

I had a new product that I wanted to try out, a Holophone Surround Sound Mic called Portamic Pro. So I took my 5DmkII down to Sutro Baths in San Francisco to see how the waves and water worked with the new microphone.

Originally it was just for a few test shots, there was no plan to make a short film out of it, but as soon as I saw the underground foaming water I knew I said some amazing images to base my film around.

Once I knew that I shot various different places around the baths, knowing I needed to make the short film around 3 minutes long. I was only filming down there for 2 hours.

I used a number of different lenses. The new 14mm F2.8L, 50mm F1.2, 100mm F2.8L macro, 90mm TS F2.8, 70-200mm F2.8L

The tilt shift lens was great, especially on my “alien people in cave type shot” as I call it. Gave it a very ethereal quality to it. I used the 100mm lens for most of the beginning shots, but not in macro mode as I wasn’t super close to it.

The lenses and camera got covered in mist which as soon as I could i wiped down with a soft cloth and water to avoid any corrosion.

The natural sound I got was great in most places, but I had a lot of chatter from people around me which took me away from the images. So i chose to just use music and keep the audio for a separate review of the microphone where perfect sound wasn’t important. I didn’t want to use sound effects to cover the voices so I just went mute.

Choosing the right music is always a tough one. This is a personal project, not a paid job so I tend to use copyrighted music in it as it’s not for financial gain for me. Very much a grey area but music labels are getting more relaxed about these things. I always credit the artist and put a link to buy the music on my blog. It took 6 hours to find the right track. I couldn’t find anything that was perfect. In the end I used a track i had used on an earlier short from around 2 years back and it worked well.

Easily my favourite parts of the film are the foam water beginning, straight out of the camera, no grading. Natural black and white. The rest was graded using Magic Bullet Looks. If anyone wants that software I highly recommend it and there is a 20% discount code at redgiantsoftware.com checkout using bloom20.

I saw “Sea” projected at the movie theatre at Skywalker Ranch where I am working right now and it look spectacular. This stuff holds up SO WELL on the big screen!

These are what i call my mood pieces, no narrative, but a story told through images. It’s my personal project stuff, things I like to do in my spare time…if I ever have any.

Philip Bloom

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