Landis Fields and his team of colleagues have shared with us this excellent production write-up on a piece featuring cyclist Pete Billington. If this video doesn’t get you pumped about cycling and cinematography you better check your pulse. Landis and his colleagues have been busy with a variety of projects including one they had submitted to “Story Beyond the Still” competition, Hangar 7. What strikes me about this piece is the high energy that is created with the ramping of overcrank material, lighting against black limbo, contrasty tones and saturated colors. This character piece is very flattering of Pete Billington and so if you’re ever charged with creating a character profile for any type of sport you would do well to learn from Landis and his colleagues.

Cyclist: Pete Billington
Credits: Landis Fields, Zac Wollons, Punn Wiantrakoon, and Brian Berringer
Music: A Perfect Circle – Outsider

Here is their write-up:

LANDIS FIELDS: Our artistic objective for “PUSH PULL” would be to capture the raw nature of not only the act of riding a bike itself, but the training that goes along with it. My wife was a runner in high school and she once told me that when you are running you are actually competing against yourself. I find this to be true in a lot of aspects of life and it is definitely the case with the star athlete (Pete Billington) of “PUSH PULL”. For example, we easily could have gone to the track and filmed him racing with other people who do what he does. In fact in a lot of ways this would have been easier on us to capture something “interesting”, however, I felt that this would have showcased the sport rather than focusing on the athlete. If you notice, the film only features Pete the entire time. We could have made a film about one man and still feature other people but I felt it would be more effective to isolate him. Most athletes will tell you that game day is a small part of what they do. Competing in any sport is not an event, it’s a lifestyle. This idea of “man against himself” was what ultimately shaped the entire short.

In the beginning we start out with the quote and Pete hunched over his bike. I wanted to show Pete visualizing what he has already done to get where he is now, and what he “has” to do to get where he wants to be. Back when I would train in the military I remember always going to this place in my mind where I would envision myself being defeated, winning, struggling, etc. The human mind can wander during repetition such as running on a treadmill or in this case riding a bike. For this reason I wanted to edit the film in a way that would emulate Pete imagining himself riding even while he was riding and then finally reflecting on that struggle at the end. To suggest this “reflection” I used flash cuts of what we (as the audience) have not only seen up to that point in the film but have also experienced along with him. In fact, the final “flash cut” is from the very beginning of the film. Showing this frame to the audience once again also aided in closure for the viewer (“book end” ending). It’s a small film but there truly was quite a bit of thought that went into it. I don’t know if all of our efforts shine through in this piece but I am sure that people “feel” the power of it. The most common response I get from people is that they are inspired to ride a bike after watching it. That to me is a success. I knew something was right about it while editing because I would find my heart racing as if I had just gotten in a fight every time I would scrub the timeline. It was really exhausting (laughs).

Last but not least, pacing. The goal was to have 3 acts emphasized by 3 different settings. Our original idea was to shoot Pete on the road (which we did), in the studio (which we did), and finally in an abandoned warehouse (didn’t happen). I was a little disappointed when we had all the footage in the can and we didn’t get a chance to make it out to the warehouse, but, when I got it all in the edit I was pleasantly surprised to find that the jump sequence felt as if it were a completely separate idea from him riding on the rollers which was actually shot on the same day! I think that the change in Pete’s character as well as a different costume had quite a bit to do with that but in the end I was just happy that we squeezed out that feeling of having an extra setting.

ZAC WOLLONS: Working on Push Pull was a crash course for me in DSLR cinematography. This was the first short I had worked on at the time and was just going on instinct. As one of the cameramen on this project I was immediately given challenges starting with shooting out the back of Jeep with no rigging or restraint. Keeping my body in the Jeep came second to trying to keep the camera stable and keep focus on Pete (our subject). The outdoor shooting made the studio session a pleasure for sure. Shooting in a studio environment was a great opportunity to have total control of lighting and composition with only minor limitations. Having Pete ride stationary allowed for some shots with extreme shallow focus and other shots that we would not have been able to capture with the limited tools we had. Overall this was a great experience, and opened my eyes to what can be done with a DSLR camera in regards to filmmaking.

BRIAN BERRINGER: Having this be our first film and a very rough idea of what shots we talked about having in the film, I was more of a grip than anything else on this film.
Day 1 (Mt Tam shoot): My duties were to make sure the film crew didn’t fall out of the back of the jeep while driving on some hairy terrain. Constantly calling out left turn, right turn, hold on BUMP! Making sure Pete was ok with the pace that we were taking the jeep was also important as I didn’t want him to burn out quickly (not that that’s possible). Everyone was shooting with between a 28mm and a 200mm. Fairly large range so we were also talking back and forth as to what distance away from Pete we should actually be. On the crazy uphill sections he was pumping hard and the car was basically idling, it was challenging at low speeds to keep the car moving at a constant pace as to not bother the camera men.
Day 2 (Studio): For me this shoot, prep and lighting were everything. Figuring out how we would dynamically light Pete was paramount. We talked about setup for a good hour or two before we starting shooting. One thing that the boys will forever give me shit about is the use of the fog machine. We were laughing so hard we were crying when using it saying how cheesy it looked. In the end however it made the final cut, even if the cheese factor was there…it worked.

What tools were used, rigging, lighting, etc.?

LANDIS FIELDS: We are just a small team of four guys that do this outside of our “real” jobs so our equipment is limited when compared to a professional shoot. That said we are lucky enough to have just enough to get the job done.

For cameras we used a couple of Canon 7D’s as well as a Canon 5D mark II. Since we planned to export our final comp in 720P we would use the 5D at 1080P for anything that we wanted to be able to “push” in on in comp by scaling up/down the plate. The large sensor of this camera really helped us in the studio since the lighting was very low. The 7D was used for shots that we planned on slowing down later on in comp since it is capable of being “over cranked” (shooting at a higher frame rate then what we are distributing it at). The timeline was set to 24 frames a second so when we bring in the 60 frames a second 7D footage we get smooth sloooow motion. I confess to sometimes milking out a few more frames that weren’t actually covered by the over cranking but it was pretty forgiving at that point.
Our rigs were pretty straightforward. We had one follow focus that I used for hand held shots within the studio but other than that it was pretty much just standard tripods and a monopod. We did bring along a “steady cam” to the outdoor shoot but with all the chaos of just trying to stay alive while hanging out of a jeep going downhill with our cameras in our hands it was a little hard to concentrate and keep the camera “steady”. To be honest most of the footage shot outdoors from inside the jeep was useless, although, one of the “shaky” shots worked really well once the momentum peeked towards the end.
For lighting we used a couple 1000 WATT lights with a soft box attached to diffuse the highlights within the studio and everything else used natural lighting since it was outdoors during the day.

PUNN WIANTRAKOON: On stage, we decided to light Pete really strong and mysterious. We did this with one really strong high key and a very soft fill versus the traditional three point light of studio portraits. On top of the ‘mysterious’ lighting, we decided to put him on black which adds to the mystery and make the viewers think that we could be ‘anywhere’.

What was your post production workflow?

LANDIS FIELDS: Our pipeline is a little different now than it was then. For “PUSH PULL” there was a lot of “shooting from the hip” when on set. While letting the creative juices flow is nice it does create an enormous amount of work in the edit. For example, we knew we wanted 3 acts and specific actions to be performed by Pete (the athlete) but what we didn’t know is how exactly those shots were going to transpire. What I am talking about is a shot list. We didn’t have one for “PUSH PULL”, but, this entire film was just supposed to be a fun test for us and our new video capable DSLR’s so we often had all 3 cameras rolling at once. This was great for continuity since in the edit we would have 3 different angles to choose from for the same action, however, this meant that I had to sift through 3 times as much footage to find that “perfect” shot needed to support the story at any given time. Now we plan out our projects more and believe it or not we usually only have one camera rolling while the other two are being prepped for the next shot/s (attach the appropriate lens and corresponding gear for the follow focus, mount it on the rig/dolly/tripod, etc.) . This new workflow allows us to concentrate on nailing a specific shot while we all observe through a field monitor. When it comes time to edit we all sit down and review the footage together to agree on which take was the most successful for each shot. This makes the edit a breeze. After the raw, untreated footage has been assembled in the edit and the story feels right we then move on to color grading.

What methods did you use in color grading to achieve the look you were going for.

LANDIS FIELDS: We color grade all of our films with Red Giant Software’s “Magic Bullet Looks”. We find that it gives gorilla filmmakers like ourselves the tools to compete (visually) with blockbuster films AND on an “indie” budget. For “PUSH PULL” we exported our edit from Premiere to After Effects for grading, however, the latest “Looks” allows you to grade right inside of premiere which means less hassle in the end. The goal to grading video DSLR footage (or any footage for that matter) is to avoid having to render out anything until the very end. You have to remember, the footage is already compressed (H264) right out of the camera so there isn’t a whole lot of room to play when it comes to color space. Our old method required us to redo some of the work that didn’t properly transfer from one package to the next where as grading inside of your editing suite saves time..lots of time.
The workflow for 1 of our next 3 films is going to have to adapt a bit to some exciting creative challenges that will be introducing. We plan to utilize cutting edge modifications made to our cameras by Precision Camera Repair to achieve a specific look which will require a few extra steps prior to grading. Pretty exciting. Our workflow will always change as the hardware evolves and as we learn from our mistakes.
I think that about sums it up. Take care and thank you very much for watching our little film. We hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did creating it.

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