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Focus On Affordable HD: A Kick, Push

Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Craig Erpelding

From Fiasco to Full-rez

Roughly 10 years ago, Christopher Adams and Hana McDowell set out to send a shockwave throughout Chicago's production facilities when they founded Impakt Studio — targeting what they saw as a failure of the city's production community to provide professional visual presentation to Chicago's talented and versatile music scene. Since then, Adams, Impakt's CEO, chief animator, artist, director, and general business manager, and McDowell, chief editor, have used creativity inspired by works from Ansel Adams, Mamoru Oshii, and Mark Romanek to make significant strides for the scene. This has resulted in an amassed clientele of what they say are the “who's who” of Chicago's elite musicians — a client list that includes Grammy-nominated rap artist Lupe Fiasco.

In 2006, Impakt was commissioned to create a video for a track from the Best-Rap-Album-hopeful Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor titled “Kick, Push,” which was nominated for Grammy awards for both Best Rap Song and Best Rap Solo Performance. Along with the song's popularity came a large audience for the video, which garnered nearly 300,000 YouTube views in the first four months since going live. “Kick Push” went on to get airtime on MTV, MTV2, BET, FUSE, and IMF — added visibility that allowed Adams to purchase two HD cameras for Impakt Studio, both Panasonic AG-HVX200s.

“There were many reasons the HVX200 was a good fit,” Adams says. “First, it has a great picture, able to capture fine details even in dark areas. I love the look of the images the camera produces and I find myself doing less color correction in post. Second, the size. I didn't have to upgrade my [Panasonic AG-DVX100] support gear, and it's perfect for ‘run ‘n gun’ style shooting as we get a lot of ‘need to shoot now' types of jobs.”

Such jobs for Adams and his crew range from locations using only natural light to complex lighting situations requiring hours of setup, from lush lakefront parks to a dungeon-like industrial basement. “I believe the only thing we haven't shot — yet — is underwater,” Adams says. The small size of the HD-capable camcorders has also allowed him to construct rigs on a budget, mounting them in precarious situations such as on a fast-moving skateboard or bicycle.

Impakt has shot multiple videos for Fiasco using the HVX200, including “He Say She Say,” “Real,” and “The Instrumental,” as well as “I Tried” for Kanye West artist GLC. One specific trait of the camera proved invaluable to Adams when shooting the new Fiasco videos: Panasonic gave its HD handheld the capability to overcrank or undercrank 720p at 11 different frame rates — ranging from 12fps to 60fps, giving Adams another tool to create images that can stand up against those of bigger production facilities.

“One of the projects makes use of a greenscreen and a flying rig in which we had Lupe suspended about 4ft. off the ground,” Adams says. “The camera was perfect because we had Lupe perform to a sped up version of the song, which we captured at 60fps. So, when we slowed it down, it had a really dreamy 2001: A Space Odyssey look to it. Because we sped the song up on set, it synced up perfectly in post.”

All of the HVX200 footage for the Lupe Fiasco and GLC videos were shot DVCPRO HD, imported via DVFilm Raylight and Cineform Aspect HD into Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, and finished in After Effects. 3D graphics were created with NewTek LightWave 9. The videos were then rendered to uncompressed QuickTime files and transferred to a Digibeta at Chicago's Televersions.

The team's latest video, “I Tried,” which they shot and finished on a five-day timeline for GLC, premiered on MTV2 this month.

In the end, affordable HD technologies such as the HVX200 have ensured that Impakt Studio can provide crisp imagery and produce top-quality end products that at one time could only be made at larger studios. But Adams says he feels he's keeping those bigger-budget facilities honest.

“By upgrading to HD, [Impakt Studio is] now able to compete with companies that have greater budgets and resources than us. We can now put our reel up against others and ask, ‘Which project was a million dollars and which was a hundred grand?’” Adams says, confident — even cocky — that affordable HD has leveled the field.

“It now comes down to the creative use of the tools,” he says. “You can't pre-package creativity — you either have it or you don't.”

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.