Commercial for Alice Hyde Medical Center

This was a fun spot to make for one of my oldest clients, Alice Hyde Medical Center in Malone, NY! The little boy in it is the son of a woman who works with my wife. They were over one day at our place and when he saw all my gear and learned what I did he said "I want to be in a TV commercial!" Usually its difficult in a local TV spot to have "non-actors" try to "act", but he had such an outgoing personality I knew he would do just fine! My niece was home from college for the holidays so while a little young for the part, was excited to give it a try as well.

We decided to do a more generic feel good spot for the hospital rather then one on any particular branch of it. The script practically wrote itself and I think they all did a great job!

SUNY Plattsburgh Men's Soccer

Here is a highlite video I made for the Cardinal Classic Soccer Tournament 2011! It had a very dramatic overtime win. I enjoy editing sports videos and at the college level, there is some great action to capture!

Jill and Derek-Coming Soon!

This is the coming soon preview for the wedding of Jill and Derek in Lake Placid, NY on 10/1/11. They were such a fun and happy couple and couldn't stop smiling all day! The music is "Chevaliers de Sangreal" from the DaVinci Code soundtrack by Hans Zimmer. He's one of my favorite composers and this song is available on iTunes!

View on ExposureRoom

My most personal film yet!

"Return to Moose Pond"

I usually do non-narrative short films. This one is different! My wife, son and I love to go wilderness camping. Where you canoe in with a tent, food and all you need to a remote site. The last several years we have not found the time to go, however our son is getting older and soon won't be able to go with us, so we made sure to get away this summer.

It was a special trip and one that I felt needed some narration to explain how I was feeling about it all. This is ultimately about spending as much quality time as possible with your kids while you can! Most of the music is by a friend of mine, Scott B. Adams from the CD "Listening to the Adirondacks". Check him out on iTunes!

I hope you enjoy what is surely my most personal film to date.

On the technical side, I used a SONY EX1 and a Canon 7D along with a Konova slider. Only had room in the canoe for a real junky tripod, hence not much panning or titling! I shot the 7D footage with the Technicolor cinestyle preset and graded with Magic Bullet Looks.

Let me know what you think of this departure from my normal videos.

Technicolor Dreams

View on ExposureRoom

This is a video I made to test the Technicolor Cinestyle preset for my Canon 7D. It basically is a free download for Canon DSLRs that greatly opens up the shadow areas of the image. The picture as shot will look very washed out, (MANY examples of uncorrected technicolor cine footage on VIMEO) so it needs to be color corrected in post production to dial in the correct black and white and color saturation settings. But once you do.....WOW! It adds more dynamic range to the image, and it doesn't have that DSLR, super contrasted look as much. I also feel the moire is reduced quite a bit!

To really test things out, I shot what I consider a contrast range torture test! A mountain stream on a bright sunny day, with lots of dappled light. Bright, bright highlights and deep, dark shadows!

I then transcoded all the footage into ProRes LT, imported and edited in Final Cut Pro and then used Magic Bullet Looks to color grade all the shots. Basically I used lift/gamma/gain and then color saturation. I did not use curves as I found it crushed the blacks and blew out the whites a bit too much. Actually I had issues getting the LUT (Look up table) Technicolor supplies to load into Magic Bullet Look Up Buddy (I think my system- a G5 PPC-is too old to properly use it!). I felt using Lift/gamma/gain gave me the best tonal gradations anyway, especially for nature subjects where a real cine tone isn't as needed.

I mostly used my Tamron lenses. My trusty 17-55 F2.8 and the super zoom 18-270 F3.5-6.3. Kept shutter speed at 60 at all times, using ND filters when needed to expose properly.

Remember, this is shot using Technicolor cinestyle, but then color corrected in post. Your footage MUST be worked on after you shoot it, it does not look like this out of the camera. It amounts to alot more work in post production, is it worth it? I think so! I found this to make the 7D footage look quite stunning, especially considering what I usually get shooting such a contrasty subject.

Music is from Stock20.com, an excellent source for buyout music.

Enjoy!

Arrival of Winter

Finally had the chance to make a new scenic video with the few shots I was able to get this past fall! I've been real busy (a good thing!) doing paying gigs and thus have not had the chance to shoot much new scenic video. I chose a song from a great movie called "Road to Perdition", if you haven't seen it you should, it's a great gangster movie but told much differently then most.

Arrival of Winter from Paul Frederick on Vimeo.

TV Commercial I was DP on

Here is a spot I shot (DP- Director of Photography) for Adworkshop. They are the marketing agency for Canton Potsdam Hospital. Its a great concept that was a fun time to shoot. Kari Hoffman was Producer and Anne Rast was the Director/Art Director. They did a great job of finding all the 1950's props and also in hiring the 2 kid actors. Anne also made those cool looking baseball cards of regular people to look like 1950's baseball cards!