Michael O with Noonday Pictures recently shot a spot for a winery who stipulated no company can use their product in their reel. Don’t you just hate companies like that? Like it could ever hurt a company to show their product around. Brand standards! But you must follow the rules there.
Not to be deterred, since the spot turned out fabulous Michael decided to re-shoot it with another champagne brand. Anyone shooting liquid in slow motion knows it is no easy proposition.
We interviewed Michael about the details of this complicated Mobot shoot. Check out more about the Mobot.
AdChat DFW: Talk us through the subtle nuances and programming you had to get the underbelly of the glass.
Michael O: On that one shot where you’re looking up through the glass to get the shot of champagne I actually had to mount a flat optical glass under it. I split the champagne glass in half and put the optical glass under it so I could shoot up into the glass.
AdChat DFW: Did you go through a lot of glasses?
Michael O: I went through about a dozen before getting it right. These glasses would shatter each time I tried to cut them in half, so that was interesting, and one of the challenges.
AdChat DFW: Unlike traditional slow-motion liquid spots that keep the camera stationary, Mobot’s big advantage is that it moves while shooting at high speeds. Talk us through where that happened in the spot.
Michael O: Even though it’s subtle, I tried to add a little motion here and there. Usually everything is always locked off in normal slow motion, but I wanted to add motion when the big drop of champagne falls, you see overhead on the glass, I have the camera moving just as the drop falls over the top. So, on that part, the drop had to go through an infrared sensor that triggered off the Mobot and right when it got past the lense, the robot popped the lens over the top of the drop. It all happened in about 1/10th of a second.
AdChat DFW: Any others?
Michael O: When the drop lands in the glass and you see it crown up close, that has a tiny bit of movement too. I wanted to add motion where nobody ever adds motion. If I had actually hung on that shot longer in editorial you could see where I followed that drop down the glass. There’s another small yet important motion there. I really worked hard to get all the motion shots, but it really adds to the editorial flow.
Check out the spot and contact Noonday Pictures for your slow-motion project.
