Extreme high-speed commercial for Big Brother

I recently collaborated with international director (Malaysia, Australia, France) Jack Wung to lens extreme slow motion imagery for a Big Brother commercial.
Jack drew visual inspiration from the gorgeous slow motion work of the Schweppes Burst commercial directed by Garth Davis. We researched, tested and viewed demo reels from every type of slow motion camera out there, but couldn't find samples as poetic as the Schweppes Burst spot. So Jack tracked down the spot's DP Greig Fraser in London, and he introduced us to the Photron Ultima APX-RS camera that he used.

Big Brother was a very ambitious commercial considering its schedule and technical challenges.

Some of the challenges, or should we call them opportunities, we faced were as follows:

• 23 storyboarded setups for a one-day exterior shoot.
• Multiple format cameras: Photron, 35mm Arriflex 435.
• 20 minutes of download time required for only a few seconds of high-speed footage captured on the Photron.
• Shooting at 2,500fps up to 10,000fps requires a massive amount of lighting. In some setups I had to beat the intensity of even the sun's exposure by 2 stops.
• The Photron requires power to run, so we were relying on electricians to run power for lighting and every camera position.
• 12 shots required rain. Rain towers require additional setup time as you need to set the rain intensity and positions correctly, additional lights to backlight rain, camera protection and of course wardrobe and makeup concerns with talent in the rain.

To ensure we completed our one-day schedule I requested two Photron cameras. Once Jack liked a take, I was able to then have the Photron technician take the Photron camera off the dolly and download the take to his harddrive, while the second Photron allowed us to continue shooting.

The few shots that didn't require extreme high speed I was able to shoot at 150fps on a 35mm Arriflex 435. The Photron is rated at 400ASA, while I had both 200ASA and 500ASA Kodak Vision for the 35mm shots. To keep me on my toes I had to remember to expose each camera according to its capabilities. When shooting on the Photron video camera I was erring on image underexposure to ensure I contained all the highlight information. Jack had spoken to colorist Edel Rafferty in Australia who color-corrected the Schweppes Burst spot. He mentioned that underexposing was the way to go to avoid nasty videoish highlights, and he said he was really surprised how much he was able to pull up from the darkness really easily. When I switched over to film shots I was intentially overexposing to ensure I had a thick negative. My directly opposed approach to each format ensured we captured the most information possible to take advantage of the nine power windows on the Davinci color corrector in telecine.

As far as the lighting approach, I didn't want to risk flicker problems even with electronic ballists. As a result I decided to use 24-bulb dino lights to amass exposure onto the actors for the high-speed shots. I used Zenon lights to backlight the rain, figuring that if the zenons flickered during our irregular, high-speed shots, it would not be noticeable on falling water.

The opening shot of the commercial required us to film drops of spray paint squirting straight into the lens at 10,000fps. I had clear glass protecting the lens as the spray can was squirting from only 10 inches away. At 10,000fps you lose almost 9 stops of exposure. I was lighting the shot to a T-stop of 64T with the zenons and dinos. The camera felt as though it was almost on fire, I couldn't believe how well it held up.

I used a 5-foot slider to do moves as fast as I could slide the camera through space, yet slowed down they looked like gentle moves.

The ending shot, which we shot at magic light, required a 50-foot technocrane. This was our only shot filmed at normal 24fps speed on 35mm Arriflex 435.