Filming this video was pretty easy and also pretty hard!
I chose the local coffee shop Cafe Rista, 14213 103 ave. in Edmonton because it was quiet during the day and also the owner Simon was super accommodating.
He even let me put marks on the floor so I could keep the chairs and table in the exact same spot for each interview.
I spent a day in the coffee shop shooting test videos with myself in the chairs. I used this time to build templates for stitching the images and also work on the code for KRpano.
For a camera I just used my Canon 5D Mark-II with the Canon 8-15mm fisheye lens at 8mm. I kept the table and chairs in the same position for every video and the stitched them together after.
I used a little slider thing from an old enlarger to offset my lens a bit so I would find the no-parallax point. This helped make stitching the images together easier.
It was very important that I clamped the camera in the exact same spot for all of the interviews and also that the tables and chairs were in the exact same spot every time.
Here’s me interviewing Premier Alison Redford. The wonderful and talented Journal reporter Trish Audette actually came up with all the smart questions that I asked
For sound I used my Sennheiser wireless lav mic and I had my trusty Olympus recorder as a backup. I used my LitePanels MicroPro as a fill light.
After interviewing each leader separately and in different chairs, I used Final Cut Pro to align all the video clips. I then batch exported all the video clips and used Quicktime Pro to extract the video files into image sequences.
Once all the video was converted into still images I used PTgui to create a template and then batch stitch all of the still images into panoramas.
I them recombined all the panoramas back into video files using Quicktime Pro and synced the audio back.
I explain the process a little better here though my workflow has vastly improved since then. It pretty much changes every time I do a 360-video.
I used the amazing KRpano for displaying the 360-degree video. The HTML and Flash panorama viewer is very powerful. Pretty much anything is possible.
In total there was 31 minutes and 50 seconds of video which works out to 45802 panoramas that I had to stitch together.
Needless to say I’ve been sitting in front of my computer way too much lately!
This has certainly been my most complicated video to date but also one of the most fun an innovative to create.
It’s not the holodeck… but we’re getting closer!
And here’s how it ran in the paper. I was sure that the caption explained that this was created from four separate images and it said “Photo Illustration by Ryan Jackson”
Posted by ryanjackson on Apr 29, 2010 in photos, video
Wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. Recruits learn to rappel from helicopters into the brush, find water sources and put out wildfires. Video by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Tim Denbok, left, and Alan Huber run water hose through the woods during a timed hose and pump exercise for wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Alan Huber runs water hose through the woods during a timed hose and pump exercise for wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Students wait to start their pump and hose exercises during wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Patrick O’Callaghan does pushups as punishment after making a mistake during rappelling exercises in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. Students practice on a tower used to simulate rappelling from a helicopter into a forest during wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Students wait to start their pump and hose exercises during wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
A student rappels from a helicopter during wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Students wait to start their pump and hose exercises during wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
A student rappels from a helicopter during wildland firefighting training at the Hinton Training Centre run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development in Hinton, Alta. on April 23, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
This was a really fun assignment and my first time using the 5D Mark-II in the field on a news assignment. The entire video was shot with the 5D Mark-II, 16-35L, 70-200 f2.8 and a 4-stop ND filter. For sound I placed an Olympus LS-10 in each person’s front pocket. I used the Final CutPro plug-in Plural Eyes to automatically sync the audio tracks. HUGE time saver.
Finally, the picture above of the guy doing push-ups as well as the fish-eye shot are both frame grabs from video. Can you tell?
And here’s how it ran in the paper. I was sure that the caption explained that this was created from four separate images and it said “Photo Illustration by Ryan Jackson”
