Niki Caligiuri

Hello Trouble… Missed me?

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:16:03 -0500

Hello Trouble… Missed me?

Say “Hello” to my Son, Gavin

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:25:47 -0500

Say “Hello” to my Son, Gavin

Well done commercial by, and for, Facebook.

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:22:54 -0400

Well done commercial by, and for, Facebook.

Short Interview Set I did for The Rock’s 25th Anniversary...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:04:07 -0400

Short Interview Set I did for The Rock’s 25th Anniversary Service.

Meet Mr. Gavin Kington Caligiuri

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 11:52:40 -0400

Meet Mr. Gavin Kington Caligiuri

Brilliantly Intertwined Copy and Art Direction.

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:46:56 -0400

Brilliantly Intertwined Copy and Art Direction.

On set with the new Kessler Crane DSLR model. Very nice gear!

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 09:04:25 -0400

On set with the new Kessler Crane DSLR model. Very nice gear!

Film I just got done shooting and...

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:21:00 -0400

Film I just got done shooting and editing:

Risen

Writen/Directed by Hector Gonzalez
 Produced by The Rock of Gainesville 

Hector Gonzalez - Producer/Director
 Jim Deason - Director, 1AC
 Niki Caligiuri - DP, Editor
 Rick Chance - Acting 
Katelyn Hopkins - Music

Production Notes: 
Canon 5DmkII, 7D 
Zeiss 50mm f/1.4
 Zeiss 85mm f/1.8 
Rokinon 35mm f/1.4 
Sigma 20mm f/1.8 
Assembled in Adobe Premiere and After Effects CS5.5
 Graded in Magic Bullet Looks

Music: Katelyn Hopkins - Original Score

After shooting some B-Roll for a project I was working on last...

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:01:00 -0400

After shooting some B-Roll for a project I was working on last year I ended up not needing it. So before I set it all to be archived, I decided to put some of it together into a little short called SAFEHOUSE.

Note: The home in the video was occupied by about 150 people during a baby shower when a chimney from the 1st floor fireplace started to leak into the attic. Before anyone knew there was a fire the entire 2nd floor was engulfed in flames. Miraculously, no one was injured in the fire but everyone escaped unscathed.

Production Notes:
Canon 5DmkII
Zeiss 50mm f/1.4
Sigma 20mm f/1.8
Assembled in Adobe Premiere and After Effects CS5.5
Graded in Magic Bullet Looks

Music: Safe - Book of Eli Soundtrack

Select stills from the burned home walkthrough are available here listed in the “Aftermath” series:500px.com/nikicaligiuri

Shooting video with a Beachtek DXA-SLR I recently got a Beachtek...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:32:00 -0500

Beachtek DXA-SLR

Waveforms

Shooting video with a Beachtek DXA-SLR

I recently got a Beachtek DXA-SLR at my job to shoot in-camera audio with the Canon 7D and Canon 5DmkII. I took it our for a test drive with a Sennheiser EW100 wireless lav kit. Set the EW100 to output at unity and the input of the transmitter set to -10db to be safe to not over-modulate the input. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the preamps in the Beachtek. It seemed to have a good range of acceptable headroom without clipping. After I got the footage into the studio and started looking at the waveforms, I noticed that, while the monitoring of the Beachtek was clean, the Canon 7D’s AGC (Auto Gain Control) was still affecting the recorded audio. As any DSLR shooter knows there is a lot of ducking, compression and noticeable ”hiss” during quiet segments of your recordings. This is where the Beachtek’s “AGC Disable” feature comes into play. When enabled, it sends a 20khz (inaudible) tone out of the left channel of the Beachtek to the Camera, therefore keeping a constant level of audio feeding the Canon and not allowing the camera’s internal AGC to kick in. Now, with my Beachtek set to Stereo output, I had 20khz tone in the left channel and clean audio in the right. With a quick stereo filter in Adobe Premiere Pro (Fill Right) I now had great sounding in-camera recorded audio.

I noticed that when you set the Beachtek to mono output with the AGC DSBL Engaged you will end up with [the 20khz tone + PGM audio] in the left and [Clean PGM Audio] in the right. *See waveforms. As long as you are using the “Fill Right” filter trick, you can set the Beachtek to mono output. That way when you are monitoring the unit on set you get a nice clean mono send to both your headphones and not the mix and match effect you hear when it’s set to stereo.

Beachtek DXA-SLR Webpage

I watched this for the 1st time on the big screen and was...

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:14:00 -0400

I watched this for the 1st time on the big screen and was impressed. Watching it again now on a YouTube window certainly does not disappoint. The creative use of 60fps pulled down to 24 is a nice pairing with Emily Browning’s rendition of “Sweet Dreams.” I’m sure Larry Fong, the DP, took several notes from Frank Miller’s comics and the end result includes some amazing compositions lifted straight from a comic page. The bleached color grade is also noteworthy and reminds me of what Stu Maschwitz did with “The Spirit.”

Here’s a link to an interview with Mr. Fong

Amazing EF.com Commercials

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:19:00 -0400

These are some great commercial created for for EF International Language Centers.

Gustav Johansson does an amazing job directing these spots to tell the story and culture of each of these locations in just 2:00.

D.P: Niklas Johansson, fsf niklasjohansson.com
Typography: Albin Holmqvist albinholmqvist.com
Music: Magnus Lidehäll twitter.com/magnusthemagnus
Produced at Camp David campdavidfilm.com
Campaign site: ef.com/livethelanguage

Audio

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:08:25 -0400

Someone Like You

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:13:24 -0400

Someone Like You

BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixelsby françois vautierAn...

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:45:00 -0400

BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels
by françois vautier

An experimental film in homage to Ridley Scott’s legendary futuristic film “Blade Runner” (1982).
Created by extracting 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’s final cut version, then assembling all these images to obtain one gigantic image of colossal dimensions : a square of approximately 60,000 pixels on one side alone, 3.5 gigapixels. A virtual camera was then placed above this big picture which creates an illusion, because contrary to appearances, there is only one image. It is in fact the relative movement of the virtual camera flying over this massive image that creates the animated film, a kind of ”zootrope effect”, like a film in front of a projector.
The whole concept echoes one of the signature scenes from the film where “Deckard” (Harrison Ford) analyzes a photograph via voice recognition software.

Part of the WORLD EXPO Shanghai 2010, presented by “OPEN THIS END”

source : Blade Runner de Ridley Scott (the final cut)
durée : 1h51mn52s19i > 167819 frames »
one picture / format psb : 60 000 X 60 000 : 3 540 250 000 pixels » 3,5 gigapixels
sound > from the original score by Vangelis
compositing> logiciel : Combustion. Mac pro 2X 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon.

Click the image to see some test shots form a project I’m...

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 12:57:00 -0400

Click the image to see some test shots form a project I’m currently working on.

I shot the JEA Tower the other day. Quite striking!

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:24:00 -0400

I shot the JEA Tower the other day. Quite striking!

FinalCut Pro: End of life status...

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:29:23 -0400

I’ve been locked in the studio for the past 2 days with 2 goals in mind: 1) learn Adobe Premiere Pro and 2) working on a :30 min informational video for The Rock. We are condensing the 3 day “New believers class” to a 30min DVD. I guess emersion is the best way to learn.

So about the new FCPX… I downloaded it on Tuesday of last week expecting a fancy new & fast FCP7 with add ons but I got a new version of iMovie called ‘FCPX.’ The few things FCPX does, it does them well, but the laundry list of things that it does not do would deforest the remainder of the amazon. I always thought that my needs from FCP7 were average… Nothing to crazy and not ‘entry level editing,’ but after using FCPX for 3h I realized that I could not do about 50% of my regular weekly workflow!

By this time I was rather frustrated at the whole situation and went on to some other tasks, by the time I came home and opened my twitter feed, EVERYONE was up in arms over the situation. I was reading about all these top end editors who were bailing from the FCP platform for Premiere and Avid.

Now my ‘just continue to use FCP7’ notion was squashed as soon as I read that Apple will no longer be supporting or selling any more FCP7. As if that was not shocking enough… Apple also noted that Apple Color and Soundtrack are at an ‘end of life status.’ BAD NEWS ABOUT COLOR… that program rocked!!!

After reading several editor’s blogs, etc I tried out Premiere CS5 and in :10min I was hooked. Same workflow I use plus lot of nice enhancements like native DSLR .264, Sony DPX, and Red file editing without any transcode needed.

So for the past 2 days I’ve logged about 16h sitting in front of Premiere for the 1st time in about 8 years and have not had a single problem!

I just received an email from apple saying they will refund my purchase of FCPX within 5 days… So I say FInalCut Pro is at an ‘end of life status’ for me.

AMAZING time-lapse video that took 3 months to edit. Can’t...

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 18:08:00 -0400

AMAZING time-lapse video that took 3 months to edit. Can’t even imagine how much excedrin was needed in production!

New postings to my Flickr images HERE

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:04:47 -0400

New postings to my Flickr images HERE