Prime Focus London

Canon "Stretched"

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Here at PFL we have long admired director Ivan Bird - both as a DoP on seminal ads such as Jonathan Glazer’s “Surfer” spot for Guinness, and more recently as a director for top brands such as Renault, Sony and Mercedes Benz. So when Ivan requested a meeting with PFL to discuss the issues of shooting high-speed, we were more than happy to oblige. PFL have long been at the forefront of posting for the Phantom HD camera. With commercials credits including Hyundai “Fluid”, music promos such as KT Tunstall’s “Saving My Face” and the recent “Unsubscribe” campaign for Amnesty International under our belts, all of which were shot with the Phantom HD camera, we have all the experience required for working with the huge amounts of data the camera captures. The spot, for Canon’s sponsorship of Euro 2008, replays in slow-motion a crucial penalty kick in a big match. It's all about the emotion, tension and suspense of the game from various different points of view. When the penalty is taken, the player scores and the crowd goes wild. Ivan was originally considering shooting a mixture of the Phantom HD footage (at up to 1000fps) and 16mm, but eventually decided on a purely HD Phantom route to preserve a consistent look and feel. The footage, which was delivered from the shoot on a hard drive, was imported into Flame and layed out with timecode for the offline edit. The offline EDL was then used to conform the data in Flame, where there was also a fair amount of 'invisible' work completed, restoring highlight detail where the Phantom had burned out slightly. PFL’s Head of Flame Tim Davies handled all of the Flame work, also adding camera flashes in the backgrounds of some of the shots to give the feel of a large stadium. He also suggested the addition of the stadium reflection with camera flashes in the player’s eye for the first shot, setting the scene for the rest of the spot. It was then over to PFL’s George K to add the finishing touches with the final grade.

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