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It's a Long Shot

A phone grab of the set in progress last week from the longest possible view within the room.
A proper wider angle lens is needed to capture it correctly.

It was a rare splash-out day to be able to hire my friend Kyelynn for several hours to help me continue to build the main set. We've now installed the sheer sky fabric layer and rigged the perimeter of the set with cardboard flaps, which are being built up with packaging paper in loose bags for topography and masking tape securing them down. All the fill-in landscape won't need to hold any tie-downs or animation; it's strictly for filling in the frame with a sense of surrounding forested land.

I just ordered a used wide-angle lens to get this Halfland establishing shot better than my 50mm can. I read briefly what I needed and why then looked for something that could give me about 114° angle to get the tree's height and foreground when shooting a 16:9 landscape. I landed on Venus Optics Laowa 14mm f/4 FF RL Lens for Leica L (because the S5 camera is an L mount. Hopefully, thinking ahead, I also grabbed a circular polarizing lens filter to help minimize glare when I get down to shooting.)

This new lens is said to also work as close as 10.6" so I could potentially capture a middle set detail with it before needing to swap into my wildly macro shallow DOF lens combo. Please stay tuned for tests when they arrive.

It would be great for the live-action beach shoot as well, temptingly, but I'm hoping to leave my actual shooting gear at home and use less costly stuff that can get beat up by sand and wet in the sea for that scene.

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  1. Els2:20 PM

    Soooo much work, and "only" preparation . . . I had no idea how big it all is . . . until I saw a person, hahaha !

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    1. Shelley8:53 PM

      Ha! Seriously, Els. The main set used to be even larger, if you can believe it. This is the second set set-up as I moved homes back in 2012. Used to look like this: https://notesfromhalfland.blogspot.com/2008/07/colossal-mess.html

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  2. Anonymous8:31 PM

    Lost my GoPro to the Malibu gods and am looking at the new model. GoPros are great for the beach. With the slomo feature, things look pretty dreamy.

    https://gopro.com/en/us/shop/cameras/learn/hero13black/CHDHX-131-master.html

    ~Yuji

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    Replies
    1. Shelley1:03 AM

      Oh noooo!, Yuji, not the GoPro gone to the surf! You were making such great short films with it. I'm so bummed. I bought a knock off GoPro, off Amazon, super cheapie for the underwater mermaid tail shots. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HGM33HG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 If the footage looks useable--it's yours as a back up for the Malibu gods.

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    2. Anonymous9:54 AM

      Oh that looks nice! If it doesn't have a slomo feature you can always borrow the GoPro. Or maybe you won't need the slomo feature.

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    3. Shelley11:55 AM

      Oooo, such a great idea for those shots to use slomo, sold! I expect the footage to be poor quality or low resolution but the way I'm processingmy shots even that won't matter. I'm striving to get a moving illustration effect. I'll see whether the Akaso footage can be slowed down in editing and still accomplish it. Thanks, Yuji!

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