Who doesn't want to take a vacation at the beach? Greenroom has been a fan of the property management company practically since their inception. Greenroom has told the story of many properties that the property company has managed. Most have been an in-depth telling of the experience you get at the various locations. Before they offered the chance to produce a piece for the resort, Greenroom had always done work for this clinet with the locals and without paid talent.
With their total rebrand of the resort in the a neighboring state, they organized a collaboration of two production companies to capture the experience of staying or living at the resort. Such a beautiful location with so much to do there really demanded special attention.
Both production crews filmed on RED Cinema cameras in stunning raw 4K. Of the Greenroom crew, Zak Ciotti and Rex Ballard were the camera operators on the ground or using a crane. In the other crew, there was a drone operator who took the low arial shots and their primary camera operator who also personally filmed from a helicopter. Once we shared footage, each crew developed a story about the experience at the resort from varying points of view. "Differentiating the stories and collaborating was key to the project's success," says Ciotti. "The care and concern for the project was meticulously combed until we all achieved an outstanding outcome." Ciotti, who takes the lead with Visual Effects in post as well, was also convinced of the need for more 4K options due to the experience on this shoot.
"Differentiating the stories and collaborating was key to the project's success."
Retouching an already Gorgeous Shot
Not every day (not yet, at least) do you see a drone powerful enough to cary expensive camera equipment fly around your neighborhood. With permission and awareness, the other crew that worked along side Greenroom took flight in both drone and helicopter to get a better view of the environment. Ciotti described editing with their aerial footage as "...something I could never complain about, because who doesn't dream of flying? But sometimes certain shots placed in the right order can blow your socks off." But with the collection of footage from different cameras and a sun moving quickly across the horizon, matching color was one thing, but matching time of day was completely different. "That's why we added morning fog, healed a dark patch of grass, gave the sky some life, and let the sun peek up over the trees on the horizon," Ciotti explained. "It matched the surrounding footage we chose to insert in the edit."
Maybe when you're walking around on it, or focused on your tee time, you might not notice little variations in the grass overall. From the sky, that's a different story. It's the little things that can distract the most. In this case, a large body of grass is being interrupted by the lines drawn in it by golf carts. Something like the patch of grass in the previous example takes a certain shape and color correction to hide it without taking too much time away from the rest of the project. "A criss-cross pattern with a wide-angle lens takes a little more than just color-correction," says Ciotti
Another example, a scene captured by the other crew who brought on talent/models for their shoot, was perfectly fit for the sequence of clips in the edit. However, "the continuity was was completely off because either the sun had just gotten obscured by the clouds, because you can see it's reflection on the water and sand, or it was shot at a different exposure than the others we were using in the edit," says Ciotti, who had a collection of beautiful sunrise shots to work with. "The concern was brought up by one of the marketing directors that it looked like an evening scene compared to the other sun-lit, lens flare shots" Ciotti continues, "Of course we want to make it consistent, but we would have been sacrificing one of the best scenes here." By using the Luma channel, using color correction and focusing the highlights in the sweet spot, the skill outweighed the work. "Just by knowing the nature of the image, I skipped what may have been a dozen steps to accomplish the goal."
"Of course we want to make it consistent, but we would have been sacrificing one of the best scenes here."
A special request came following the VFX already displayed when one last little fault was caught in the rough cut. "With two field producers and with all my focus on hefting around the RED Epic, which is like a hunk of iron with a lens on it, we still couldn't avoid picking up some of the behind the scenes of the kitchen that added just a little too much grunge to the scene," said Ciotti, "It was a a fix that increased the aesthetic of the shot and gave a pristine, clean look, to the place where all our food comes from." While working with the Chef of the resort, both crews had to work under the most strenuous (sarcasm) circumstances. "We literally had a taste of everything on their new menus from morning until afternoon. It was terrible," Ciotti said with a smile. Sometimes you've got to take one for the team.
"It was a a fix that increased the aesthetic of the shot and gave a pristine, clean look..."
A special request came following the VFX already displayed when one last little fault was caught in the rough cut. "With two field producers and with all my focus on hefting around the RED Epic, which is like a hunk of iron with a lens on it, we still couldn't avoid picking up some of the behind the scenes of the kitchen that added just a little too much grunge to the scene," said Ciotti, "It was a a fix that increased the aesthetic of the shot and gave a pristine, clean look, to the place where all our food comes from." While working with the Chef of the resort, both crews had to work under the most strenuous (sarcasm) circumstances. "We literally had a taste of everything on their new menus from morning until afternoon. It was terrible," Ciotti said with a smile. Sometimes you've got to take one for the team.
"It was a a fix that increased the aesthetic of the shot and gave a pristine, clean look..."
Props to the other crew and their mad skills! We should collaborate again.
We delved into the origin of the new logo for the resort as well. This project was on a much smaller scale, but I though it would be worth mentioning.