Iron Man Project resumes in Arizona

Iron Nutz Florida Recap from Brad Kelly on Vimeo.

The Iron Nutz' quest to complete every Iron Man in the US in one year continues this weekend in Tempe, Arizona. It's my pleasure to get to document the journey. These three guys have heart and guts enough to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and then run a full marathon--all in one day! The remarkable thing is they're also regular guys with a generous spirit and a desire to help others less fortunate through their gruelling efforts.

I put together this little video with some of the footage from the Florida shoot three weeks ago. It's HD, shot to P2 cards on the Panasonic HVX200. A very handy and portable camera for situations like this, but still rendering a fantastic image and amazing color for its size.

On a side note, the camera that shot this is now "lost" somewhere within USAir's byzantine baggage handling system. Way to go USAir...

"Beneath The Surface," our latest short film, premiers tonight in Providence

Beneath The Surface, a New England ghost story

This past weekend, I shot a short film with team Playomatic for the Providence 48 Hour Film Project.

On Friday night, we initially drew "Road Movie" as our genre, but since we had secured a fantastic near-mansion in Manchester-by-the-Sea as our location, we didn't want to have to leave that behind and hit the road. So we took our chances with the wild card draw. As you can imagine, we were psyched when we drew "Ghost Movie," as it played right into the strengths of our location.

The required elements we ended up with were:

Genre: Ghost movie
Character: M. Chaney, hairdresser
Prop: Pear
Line of Dialog: "If you see him again, tell me."

All competing teams (some 50 or so--about half the number that competed in Boston in April) had to include those same elements; Character, Prop and Line of Dialog, into their film, regardless of what genre they drew.

(The 48 Hour run on pears probably raised a few produce manager eyebrows, too, and it's an Onion headline waiting to happen: "Mysterious Spike in New England Pear Sales Baffles American Fruit Council," but I digress.)

I'm proud of what we accomplished in a short two days.


"She swims at night. Only at night..."

Cinematographically (I don't think that's a word, actually) this one was a lot of fun! I used one of my still cameras to shoot some infrared portraits and timelapses, which we animated into the film. The infrared has a natively "otherworldly" look to it, and it was perfect for the ghostly feel we were after.


Ye Old Oak Tree and backyard swing

I even managed to shoot some ethereal underwater footage in the pool of Leigh in a vintage-looking gown for a drowning sequence.

We shot and edited in SD this time, in the interest of speed and simplicity, since we were editing on my laptop on the fly. But, we went tapeless, again, shooting to P2 cards.

It's great not to have to digitize tapes, especially under such time pressure. Shooting to tape just feels so ancient and creaky now, I really try to avoid it whenever possible. Of course, the hard drives I buy now are measured in terabytes not gigabytes, but that's progress for you.

A Visitation

Some see her. Others cannot.

"Beneath The Surface" premiers at 9pm tonight at the Columbus Theatre in Providence, RI.

Photos ©BradKelly 2008. Pool-side production photo courtesy Art Hennessey.
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URC at 303 Third Street: You don't have to be smart to live here, but it helps...

MIT President Emeritus Paul Gray

Want to live in sleek modern surroundings high above the intellectual buzz of Kendall Square?

Got your diploma?

I worked with the fine folks at inMotion Real Estate Media to shoot some interviews in High Definition to get the word out about the new 168 unit development called URC (University Residential Communities) at 303 Third Street in Kendall Square, Cambridge.

The only catch is, in order to be eligible to purchase there, you need to be affiliated with one of three venerable New England institutions; MIT, Harvard University or Mass General Hospital. (I visited a friend once, at Mass General, does that count?)

O. Robert Simha, long-time director of planning at MIT

The final product incorporates some motion graphics and animation as well as the HD video elements. You can view it here in the video gallery:

http://www.303third.net/media.php

HD Shoot for CCAS

Last month I worked as DP (Director of Photography) with Playomatic Media Group to shoot a high-definition product demonstration for Cross Country Automotive Services for one of their new high-tech automotive products (think OnStar on steroids).

A good part of the shoot was outdoors utilizing a jib (basically, a nifty sort of balanced arm with the camera mounted at the end for smooth Hollywood-style camera moves).

You always cross your fingers about the weather before an outdoor shoot, but we really weren't expecting snow before Thanksgiving. But, snow it did! This is New England after all.

With thousands of dollars on the line if we were we to lose the day, cast and crew soldiered on and it made for a really interesting process.

To avoid the large wet snowflakes, we rigged a series of umbrellas for everything from the camera and crew to our star talent Jennifer Wilson. Fur trim also seemed to help.

Some more of the CCAS team weathering the weather:






Fortunately, the weather wasn't crucial to the script and actually made for more atmospheric images. The low clouds and snow-filled sky casting a soft, even light and the late Fall New England leaves still providing some colorful pop.

Director Steven Stuart Baldwin signals Touchdown! on the Umbella-Cam (patent pending) jib shot.

Then we got to move indoors to for the warm, cozy part of the shoot:




























After a long day everyone felt celebratory.

Cast and Crew bid adieu...

Looking forward to shooting again with Playomatic and CCAS later this month. They're great people to work with!

(photos and text ©bradkelly2007)