52 Week Anamorphic Cinematography Challenge Week 6: Artistic - Candy

Welcome back for another weekly installment in the 52 Week Anamorphic Cinematography Challenge! Six weeks down, 48 to go! So this week the assignment was candy.

I like candy. I like eating candy. I like the way candy makes me feel...makes me feel gooood! Well that escalated quickly! 

So anyways, for this assignment the instructions said that the motivation of the image should be something sweet and that it would be a good time to bust out a macro lens. So that's what I did. I got myself a couple bags of gummy bears and busted out my now trustee +2 FOTGA macro lens attachment. 

Without further ado, I give you the anamorphic candy! 

So I shot this on my BMPCC...again. It was filmed  in 1080 24P compressed CinemaDNG RAW, 400ASA, 180 degree shutter, with my vintage Kamero 35mm SLR lens at f11 with the adapted B&L 2X Anamorphic Projector lens attached. ​​

In order to get a close enough minimum focus distance I used my +2 FOTGA macro lens attachment (in case you weren't paying attention earlier when I said that). 

This shoot was a lot of fun to set up. I decided to keep things simple (yeah right) and set up right on my living room floor. For the camera motion I used my brand spanking new 32" ProMediaGear motorized slider (PMG-Duo slider).

Now all I'm going to say about the slider in this post is WOW...simply WOW. It is amazing. I'll be going into waaay more detail soon when I write up a full review of the slider with video. ​

For the crystal fixtures I used a Waterford Crystal bowl and a crystal whisky glass that I honestly don't know the brand of. It's cheap. I only specify the crystal branding because you can see the visual difference between the two. 

I was kind of hung up on whether or not to do camera motion or have the candy moving. In the end I decided to go with camera motion due to how I was staging the candy.

I tried at first simply manually moving the slider but couldn't consistently get a slow enough motion for my perfectionist ass. So I decided to go with the smart choice, motorized control! 

The biggest challenge that  I ran into with this entire shoot was distance. Distance between the two crystal fixtures and the distance to the backdrop. I ran into issues with the field of view from the anamorphic lens and having the edges of the backdrop popping into view. 

The other distance issue I had was the distance between the fixtures. I went through about three different stagings before finally finding the one that I liked. It created a nice subtle change in focus between the two different fixtures and the candy itself.

​This was difficult due to the depth of field from shooting at an f11. 

But in the end I was able to get a nice looking shot with some really cool flaring if I say so myself! But the best part of the whole shoot? Getting to eat the gummy bears at the end, duh! Can you say f**k yeah! 

So as always, please participate in a 52 week photography or cinematography challenge, and please share your images here in the comments! I would really love to see some other cinematographers out there joining in! ​