Another document delivery shoot

I wrote about Document Delivery in my last post. You can read about it here http://zachtijerina.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/32/

For the second video in the series, my office’s 3D animator had the idea of creating a dragon and placing him in the library courtyard. When he ran the idea around me I tried envisioning how we would make it possible. I mean a dragon… in the courtyard of a major university. Where the heck am I going to find a dragon!

Once our animator was through pitching the idea, I thought it was a fantastic idea. We fleshed the script out, scheduled talent and shots.

I shot on my 7D for this video. Most of our shots were done right at the service desk of the library. Our outside shots were shot in the back courtyard of the library. It would have been really cool if we could have gotten a shot from the front of the library, as it’s much more interesting, but it is also surrounded by trees, buildings, and students. The back was much more realistic for what we wanted to do.

We need to shoot the shots with the dragon and knight in frame on a green screen. Luckily, we have a greenscreen studio in our basement, so that was not too big of an issue.

At the end of our shooting day, I felt confident that we had everything we needed. I sent my edited video footage to our 3D and he worked his magic with his 3D modeling.

Document Deliver shoot

One of the departments my office markets at Texas Tech is Document Delivery. We know it simply as doc/del because when you are brainstorming and need to say something a few hundred thousand (not really) times, it helps to shorten words.
So we were approached by the doc/del office about a video series to run that would steer clear of normal “library videos”.
They wanted something fun and different!
Before I go on any further, let me tell you a little bit about doc/del. They are a library service that basically helps you find books. Books from all over. Deep within the creaky floors in the stacks of our library, or within another library. If you are looking for an article, or book, or dvd and Texas Tech doesn’t have it… but lets say.. oh I dunno, Georia’s Library does have it… Well Doc/Del calls Georgia and borrows the book from them so students at Tech can have the opportunity get their hands on whatever it might be. Pretty cool right?
So back to the video. After brainstorming, we wanted to use historical events, or mythological stories to help get the message across.
The message we were relaying is that doc/del can get you anything, and quickly.
Here is the final commercial spot.

Shooting this was pretty basic. I used a Canon 7D with a Sigma 30mm f1.4. Check out the bokeh I was able to get in a few shots!
The shoot was very smooth and simply. The library is a huge building with a lot of glass windows next to where we were shooting, so I was able to use natural lighting.
The problem with any DSLR shoot is the audio. That’s because the camera’s don’t have a darn headphone jack or REAL microphone! That is the only thing I miss about shooting on a real video camera. The audio was recorded in a separate field recorder, but as you can imagine, a library during peak hours at a university isn’t the best recording atmosphere. I think we had to wait regularly between shots for people to clear out or to leave the service desk we were using for the shoot. Overall, I think it came out good. We worked on another video that involves a dragon. I’ll post that later!

Intro: A little about me

My name is Zach Tijerina and this is my first blog at this site. It is not the first time I have ever blogged, but it will be the first time i’ve blogged for personal reasons.

I am a videographer, photographer, dad, husband. writer, designer, and social networker, and I intend on keeping this blog focused around all those topics.

I have five years experience as a paid videographer, photographer and writer and am employed at Texas Tech University as a Multimedia Coordinator but keep all my free time occupied by my love of production. I shoot with Canon products, currently using both the 7D and 5DmkII for both photos and video production. I edit in Final Cut Pro and/or Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I will write more about my production process throughout this blog.

While this will be a place to write down my thoughts here and there, it will largely be used as an area for me to re-blog stuff I find around the web. Hopefully, the site will remain easy enough to navigate through with the categories buttons and you will find the blog as interesting as I find it to keep up.

Thanks for following me and please feel free to leave comments and feedback.

Zach Tijerina