How do you even describe what “Magnatron” was? Well the Official line is it’s a 10 story high “Skill Tester” (inspired by the arcade game) built on the lawn of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it’s the worlds largest “Skill Tester” game ever to be created! Magnatron uses a 30m high construction crane as it’s lifter, while a huge 18m High enclosure was built from truss to create the enormous scaled stage area! Acquiring its name from the large Electro Magnet used to pick up prizes inside the enclosure, the magnet weighed in at 750kg by itself so everything about this project was huge! Ultimately, 14 contestants got the chance to pit their “depth” perception skills in front of a live crowd during the middle of the AFL Grand Final (round1), using Magnatron! As far as I know, this was a world first! Using an enormous construction crane as a “game’s machine” was an incredible idea! That idea was born from the minds of two young gentlemen from Clemenger BBDO Melbourne – Luke Thompson & Seymour Pope who came up with the concept!

A year or so ago I took part in another grand Carlton United Brewery (CUB) project called “Drop the Bomb“. Like that project, Magnatron is a very large scale, publicly viewable media stunt that took place in realtime on the day. This type of production is very exciting but also very stressful because you only get one chance at it! So the build up of the filming of the event was filled with many technical issues. I was pretty keen to get a time lapse rig on to the project pretty early on. It was always going to take a while to physically construct the “Skill Tester” and I knew that production costs would be prohibitively expensive if we were to film the entire thing with crews etc. So I put in a call to a friend to enlist the help of Sydney based EONFX, who provided the semi permanent Time Lapse Rig installation. I wanted that camera to run 24 hours a day at 1 frame every 15 minutes, so that we could see the transitions from night to day and back again in quick succession. The position of the camera had to be placed so that we could not only clearly see the construction process but also make use of the giant icon in front – the MCG!

After several visits to the company constructing the Crane and the Magnet, the creatives and I made up a list of places where we wanted to position cameras to record the event. The list was extensive. As the pre production continued, it was clear that Channel 7 (a local TV network that was broadcasting nationally for the AFL) would come on board to assist the Production by committing some of their resources to the project. Channel 7 were now planing to do some live crosses to Magnatron during the course of their live telecast of the game. The benefits to us included access to their helicopter, a remote camera head mounted inside the enclosure of Magnatron and several roving cameras around the perimeter. One angle that was always planned was a view from the Magnet looking down onto the prizes (hopefully). Because the Magnet was so large my initial concern was the effects of Electromagnetic radiation effecting our cameras. We opted for a small camera to be mounted onto the magnet, which could record in a self contained fashion. Wayne Daisley, Channel 7′s Technical Manager, offered up his Gopro HD Hero for testing and to our surprise, the camera not only survived but performed flawlessly! So it was decided that a Gopro Camera would be mounted using a magic arm to the Magnet on the day!

For me, Magnatron is as much about the construction of the worlds biggest “Skill Tester” as it is using it! For that reason, I wanted to record the construction process in a similar fashion to those documentaries you see on Nat Geo or Discovery channel like “Mega Builders”, “The Worlds Toughest Fixes” and the like! They often punctuate the story line with sped up motion, time lapse and wide angle lenses to achieve a grand look! To be honest, I don’t know how else you could record such an event because the shear scale at which the construction took place pretty much dictated the wide angle lenses and time lapse photography anyway! So it wasn’t too hard to achieve that feel. initially I was toying with the idea of shooting with Shift and Tilt lenses to make the “Magnatron” look like a child’s toy but I felt this could work against the actual scale of the life sized project. So ultimately, I spent many early mornings playing with the construction crew at the MCG site, taking hours of Time Lapse footage. This was in addition to the Time Lapse rig we mounted permanently at the site on a tower.

“The Tower of Power”

As all projects commence, there is usually some delay that causes things to be arranged at the last minute. This project was no different. Jason Byrne, Clemenger BBDO Melbourne’s Senior TV Producer pretty much dealt with constantly shifting sands and demands from the Creatives and yours truly! To his credit, he handled that job incredibly well. One of those demands was the “Tower of Power” as it became known – a 12 meter high tower which supported our semi permanent time lapse rig! Standby props man and all round good guy, Peter Blackwood was called in to help out in this department! Initially I had asked for a lighting pole to be placed into the ground at a given spot at the MCG. It soon became obvious that this was a very high profile location where everything we did had to conform to extreme safety rules, union conditions as well as MCC/MCG management rules etc. The whole backstory of the approval process would take up so much of this blog entry, that I’m going to give you only the brief version! We eventually were granted permission! However, we had to conform to a standard approved by an Engineer, all with only a day or so notice! Peter Blackwood managed to locate a construction company that had two sections of an industrial sized crane, with engineering approval tickets etc, which we could have delivered to the MCG site quickly! Jason and his team of guys at Clemenger handled the rushed approvals, while Greg Dunn and EONFX in Sydney rushed to prepare our time lapse camera! Greg and I coordinated the technical requirements and we opted for a Solar powered rig, with a mobile broadband modem installed – all controlled from EONFX’s proprietary system. The camera we ended up installing was a Canon 550D. Set at Aperture Priority in Jpeg mode, we uploaded every image to a custom website for backup. In addition, the files were stored inside the camera rig on two mirrored laptop drives! As the equipment made it’s way to the MCG site, the Magnatron construction crew were about to break ground. I arrived early on 6/9/2010 to film the fencing going up as Peter Blackwood began to dig holes in the ground for the foundation of our tower! The following day, the trucks started to arrive with our massive crane base! A totally massive overkill for our tiny package but it got the job done! It had the added benefit of being incredibly stable so the time lapse footage needed virtually no stabilisation at all! In addition it had easy access to the top with an inbuilt ladder and safety rails! Once all the sections had been craned into position, Peter built some hoarding at the base to be able to safely lock the public out. A high fence was also installed. He provided lifting ropes & pulleys to help replace the car sized batteries every so often, as well as places to store safety gear etc. It was a truly magnificent setup! Our only alien on the tower was a nesting Magpie, who insisted on flashing it’s ass at our cameras a few times! The irony is incredible if you want to read the tea leaves on any of this – Collingwood (commonly referred to as the Magpies) had made it into the Grand Final for the first time in decades. I took it as an omen of some sort?! Any case, that Magpie wouldn’t give up even when we installed some anti bird spikes onto of the camera!

Melbourne has had it’s wettest winter in many years, breaking a long running drought with plenty of rain! So much so that areas in country Victoria were heavily flooded for a week. Why am I telling you this, well our Time Lapse rig wasn’t connected to the power grid but rather it was self contained with 2 x 20W solar panels and two deep cycle 12v batteries! The inclement weather did stretch the friendship on a few occasions with the solar system and caused us to climb the “Tower of Power” to exchange the batteries with a spare set. A large metal dog box was lifted to the top of the tower which contained our spares and supplies. Lifting two heavy batteries to the top of the tower was made possible with a rope and pulley system and a zip up tool bag. The rest was hard muscle work to carefully lift the heavy weight 12m in the air! I did it several times as did our team members Tom Davies & Stu Heppell. I knew that the Power levels in the batteries would become an issue and to help me sleep at night, especially when I was sent to Sydney on another job for a couple of days, I decided to build an iPhone App to help maintain the system. The iPhone App was installed only on a few phones as a “Developer” and not put onto the App store but it basically allowed access to a Log file which recorded the Battery Voltage levels and the last recorded image. That way I could preempt when a battery change was necessary and also see that the last image had indeed been recorded and uploaded to the website! Not to big note myself as a guru programmer, but the App was incredibly useful and worked perfectly!

Testing day!

For some it was a full 12 months and for others only a month however, we all had finally made it to the testing day. Magnatron had completed it’s building phase but had to be tested before being made ready for the event! So a day of fun was organised for the CUB crew and many had a crack at trying to use Magnatron! It was definitely harder then everyone expected but possible! I could see a big difference on the construction crew, especially Darren Brink from Kennovations, who looked visibly more comfortable. He and his crew did a magnificent job of assembling the components that make up Magnatron, which included many fail safe systems like backup battery units and generators, should the main generator fail. This prevented the Magnet from “Letting go” of it’s payload, in the event of a power failure! Hopefully those guys will write up a blog entry on the construction but it was all pretty impressive stuff. 17 tonnes of heavily reinforced concrete had to be poured to stabilise the base of the Magnatron crane! All that concrete had to be removed directly after the event, leaving the surrounding parklands in an untouched state!

For me and my team, it was all about trying to recreate the day as best we could. All the prizes, $100,000AU in total, had been assembled into custom built cages and were now on the stage. So one by one we lifted them with the Crane and Magnet, recording each lift with my GoPro camera. It was also the first time we saw the major prize – a Toyota Hillux being lifted completely over the top of the 18m staging structure! Pretty amazing sight!

Our small team consisted of two other cameramen using DSLR cameras as capture units. They included Stu Heppell, who operated a 7D camera supplied by on set Editor Alister Robbie. Jaque Fisher operated another 5D MKII as did I, while we also enlisted the help of a P2 camera for a static wide angle view. That camera was left on it’s own mostly although Stu was responsible for keeping it safe. Tom Davies was our runner who resupplied us all with cards and batteries. Back behind the curtain was Alister Robbie. He had set himself up inside a hired van with his edit suite equipment and still donning a safety vest, he processed the footage and pre selected material for the the next days broadcast! Others on the day included our fearless leader Jason Byrne and his offsider Julian Costanzo. Both Luke and Seymour were also instrumental on the test day. Outside of our main team but still vitally important were the guys from Traffik in particularly Nick Harvey, Clemenger’s Mick McKeown and Sonia von Bibra, Darren Brink from Kennovations, “Dutch” the construction sites safety officer and many others. In all it was quite a large team.

The big day – 25th of September 2010!

After a huge build up towards “the day”, Saturday the 25th of September came around and everything was ready to go! The construction crew had completed all the testing successfully and we had recharged and downloaded our cameras in preparation for the stunt! My first job for the morning was to follow the induction of the contestants to the construction site and to place the last camera – another GoPro HD onto the scissor lift where the contestants were due to compete from. That camera would point directly at them as they looked up to witness the awe of Magnatron! It would also record their reaction as they became aware of their results, so it was pretty important! For the rest of the day, we ran around with our DSLR rigs and captured the joy’s and failure of the contestants one by one! All said and done, the production was a massive undertaking, requiring many hours of time-lapse, technical meetings and recci’s, and good old fashioned diplomacy! All up 100,016 people who attended the Grand Final saw the spectacle! 3.4 million watched it live on television! It’s been viewed Online in it’s countless forms many times! While not my normal kind of work, I think Magnatron was successful! There is a Youtube Video on CUB’s Channel here

Lately I have really fallen behind on the blog as we move quickly across the USA with the documentary project “Machete Maidens”. Arriving in New York, we were told of an impending snow storm that would arrive later that night. So on one of the only days we had to ourselves, Angelo Satore and myself headed out into the streets of New York with our cameras. We walked all over the Island of Manhattan, blasting away with our DSLR’s for fun. We even organised a rapid permit at Grand Central Station to take photos in the main hall legally! There I shot a few time lapse sequences using the 5DMKII & an intervelometer controller. Finally we ended up at B&H which has to be one of the best camera stores on the planet! I ended up buying a GoPro HD “Hero” video Camera with a mounting kit. It can be mounted to virtually anything like bikes, helmets, ski’s etc. Very cool!

That evening the entire crew went out to dinner with some of the members from Magnolia Films in New York. At dinner, the snow began to fall, gently and slowly blanketing Manhattan with 18″ of snow! By the morning, New York looked amazing. Apparently this was the first really descent fall for 6 years. Here are just a few shots of what became of New York. I will update these as I get time and Internet access! Enjoy!

Now that we are on to Shoot day 6, we seem to be in a rhythm. The Production team back in Australia have been lining up the contestants very efficiently and today, we are actually interviewing 9 people!!? Normally I have to say this is too much but given that we have little time left in LA, we really don’t have any choice. As a result, the Crew have been working pretty hard and when we had any downtime, it was spent in the back of a car traveling for miles. Yesterday, we drove all the way out to Palm Springs to Interview a former James Bond Girl, Trina Parks. Racing across the desert in pouring rain, we  glimpsed snow capped peaks as we headed for another interview at the Joshua Tree. There we interviewed a real “Machete Maiden”, Leigh Christian, who shared some pretty interesting stories. As a result there aren’t too many photos of anything! We simply haven’t had any time!

The previous day, we had driven to an interview with R. Lee Ermey, an hour out of LA. That interview was legendary in our minds, especially when Jock, our sound recordist, looked out the window of the van and noticed the Drill Sergeant from Full Metal Jacket storming towards us! He was extremely gracious and awarded us all a personal commemorative medal with his name on it and autographed photographs for us.

We landed back at the hotel quite late that night! All in all, LA has been tight for time. Mark has had to work on his research after hours also so I think everyone is showing signs of sleep deprivation. Tomorrow is our last day in LA. It’s reasonably full with more interviews before we fly out late evening to New York. Until then, Adios

]]> http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/02/08/machete-maiden-stories/feed/ 0 http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/02/05/filming-on-the-old-warners-lot-in-la/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/02/05/filming-on-the-old-warners-lot-in-la/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:25:20 +0000 Karl von Moller http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/?p=2818

The location for today was inside the the Writers Building on the old Warners Lot in LA. The place is so steeped in history it was really cool to think that possibly Mel Blanc roamed the corridors here once?!

The days have been pretty full on, interviewing as many contributors to the Machete Maidens Project as we can get. Today (day 3) we filmed another five Interviews including Joe Dante, Dick Miller, Allan Arkush & John Davison. One of them was actually a double interview which made up the 5th set. Mark Hartley is pretty happy with what he got I think. The frank and open nature of the interviews was not only fascinating but incredibly funny at times. I wish I could explain the content of their discussions but you will just have to see the film when it’s done! Needless to say, I learned a great deal on their careers, Roger Corman and shooting in the Philippines!

Another bonus of today was to take a quick tour of Howard Hugh’s Building in LA. This occurred because our local LA Production Coordinator, Dan Hooker took us to a Producer friend of his who happened to have his office in the original Howard Hughs building. Amazingly, many of the sealed vaults haven’t been opened since the days of Hugh’s departure. It’s filled with oddities like escape routes, underground train lines, 18 or so Vaults, 26″ thick concrete walls, Steel doors and even bunker style apartments. It’s all very odd but wonderful at the same time. The art deco style is everywhere and is completely original. A true honour to be able to visit this place!

Currently the Howard Hugh’s building is serving as a Film Archival facility which was in itself amazing to see.

Tomorrow is a bit of a big one with 8 interviews now scheduled!! I might not be able to update on that until my eyelids recover but we’ll see!

Arriving in Los Angeles, the Machete Maiden’s team went through the usual immigration procedure and processed our Carney before catching yet another flight to Las Vegas. I’m not sure what I was expecting for our accommodation, after all Las Vegas is famous for it’s huge Luxor Casino Pyramid, New York New York Casino complete with a section of downtown New York city etc etc. However when I caught sight of our accommodation the Excalibur Casino Hotel, I had to laugh! It was Disneyland for Adults! Mark was heard saying in the car “Someone booking this place was wired into my brain”! Completely tacky but fun I guess?

Angelo & myself took some time around sunset to play with our cameras by walking around the main drag in Vegas. The photo’s you see here are as a result of this. Later we gathered ourselves together, despite being absolutely exhausted and had a steak inside the New York New York Casino.

Next day we setup for the first interview. The process had begun. For about two hours we enjoyed some pretty amazing stories of Genre Filmmaking in the Philippines! Definitely a good start! Completing the interview, we rushed the packup so that we could checkout, make our way to the airport and catch our flight to LA.

I’m writing this from our new abode, the Magic Castle Hotel Suits in LA. Hungry now, so I’m off to eat dinner. More soon

Here is the Making Of, kindly supplied by Dentsu Beijing. A quick note, this Making Of is one of the most watched “Making’s Of” for a television commercial in China!

]]> http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/01/18/canon-smart-choice-making-of/feed/ 1 http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/01/04/new-years-eve-in-hong-kong/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/2010/01/04/new-years-eve-in-hong-kong/#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:12:44 +0000 Karl von Moller http://www.karlvonmoller.com/blog/?p=2633

On boxing day 2009, I boarded a flight to Hong Kong, headed towards a new Television Commercial project. 2009 was one of those strange years for me that hummed along quietly & occasionly faulted! What I mean by that is work simply stopped! So my motivation to rip myself away from my family & go directly back to work so soon after Christmas was fuelled by my desire to start the new decade off with a bang! We actually shot the commercial two days later which is amazing! With two horses, a famous Hong Kong TV star & a day of pretending we were out on the badlands of the wild west, we filmed action sequences that looked pretty cool! More on that in a future blog entry!

Regional Group EP Shooting Gallery Asia - Freddy Kee

Because my Post Production started four days later in Singapore, I decide to stay in Hong Kong for New Years Eve rather then face 16 hours of flying to and from Australia! Having no idea where to go for New Years Eve in Hong Kong, I decided that the harbour area would surely have a fireworks display and a countdown?! Google didn’t really offer to many clues where and Hong Kong Harbour is pretty big! Any case, I ended up down at Causeway Bay and walked along the shoreline towards Central. Amazingly I arrived at the Exhibition Centre, just at the mouth of the bay at Central to find the perfect position. By 11pm, the place was so full of people that you couldn’t move around. Somehow I lucked it in and found the perfect position. There, I watched an amazing countdown and fireworks display to herald the new decade!

TV Producer for Shooting Gallery Asia - Leollyne Teng

I’m now in Singapore Post Producing the TVC. This will take about a week, departing Singapore on the 10th of January. A crazy schedule will follow a short stay in Melbourne though. I have just signed up for another massive road trip that will take a small crew round the globe! This will commence on February the 1st and end on the 1st of March!

Despite recent economic woes, the Warbird scene in Australia has continued along mostly unaffected, according to Warbird owner and Restorer Judy Pay. Today, James Carter and myself traveled down to Judy’s base at Tyabb, the Old Aeroplane Company, and interviewed her on camera for our documentary, tentatively entitled “Broken Wings”. She gave us some amazing insight into her life’s work which has culminated in some pretty amazing stories, legendary flying experiences and some even more amazing aircraft sitting in her hanger. One of which is the recently completed Curtiss P-40F “Warhawk” Kittyhawk. It’s the only airworthy example of it’s kind in the world today and can only be described as a magnificent restoration success.

Getting away at the crack of dawn, James and I drove about an hour from Melbourne or so to Tyabb. Meeting up with aircraft mechanic Andrew Harvey, we were taken around the Old Aeroplane Companies Hanger for a quick survey. The interior was stuffed full of the most amazing aircraft. Among the list of fully restored aircraft were two Harvard trainers, a Tiger Moth, a CAC built Mustang, a north American T-28 Trojan, and the Curtiss P-40F Kittyhawk. Several other aircraft were in various stages of restoration. The most notable was a German WWII fiesler Storch (Stork) which was back to it’s bare skeletal state. Locating a suitable spot in front of the P-40F, we set up some track and dolly and an EX1 camera. Additional footage was shot on a 5DMKII which will be used as overlays later in the edit stage. It’s been a while since we have been able to film content for the documentary but it’s amazing how quickly everything comes back to mind. Judy’s recount of the P40′s recovery/restoration process, her opinions on the “buried” Spitfire Aircraft in Queensland and general look into the business of Warbirds was fascinating. James and I would like to thank Judy Pay and her Crew for making themselves available to the documentary. They welcomed us with open arms.

Both James and myself can’t wait to share it with you. Already, we have edited some of the footage into an existing sequence of our 40 minute edit and it really ads to the story. If you would like to learn more about “Broken Wings” please visit our official website at www.brokenwings.com.au or follow @spitfiresearch on twitter. Hopefully we will be traveling back down to Tyabb to film aerial footage of the P-40 flying. Until then …

On January 22nd, we began the production of the Canon “Grass Ski” Television Commercial, at the foothills of Mt Hutt, New Zealand. While I did blogabout the trip I couldn’t go into any details at the time. Shooting Gallery Asia had flown us all to New Zealand the day before. A quick location survey, a meeting with the property owner, farmer Ben and we were off! Situated at the foothills of Mt Hutt, the landscape surrounding us was unbelievable beautiful. The last traces of snow/ice were still present in the shadowy areas of the mountains. In the foreground, we had selected a green paddock to serve as the site for our “Grass Tobogganing” location. Local Kiwi Cinematographer and part time line producer, Rolland Carati organised the location in conjunction with Freddie Kee. The farmer had also made available an ATV (4×4 bike) and a farmhand named Collin. Collin was absolutely fantastic assistance and pretty much acted as the Grip on the shoot. I think he really enjoyed himself during the course of the shoot, driving the ATV and a 4×4 Ute for us.

Traveling from Singapore was Freddie Kee, Leollyne Teng, Sham – Stills, Raman – props, Eiren the focus puller and the Client/Agency team. I had been in Singapore the day before also for the final preproduction but had flown home to Melbourne for the day before landing in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was a lot of flying! The Cast were all from New Zealand and consisted of Japanese Immigrants to New Zealand. They were great I have to say. The beginning of the shoot day was not good for weather. The sky was completely blanketed in high level cloud. It looked dire and while I tried to remain optimistic about our chances, it didn’t look good. The Cast entertained themselves and we waited! During this time, we tested the Toboggan’s and the ATV Camera rig. Suddenly by midday, the Sun revealed itself.

Shooting began in ernest. Using Shooting Galleries Arri III, we shot all the components needed for post involving the Toboggan race in profile first. This meant that the poor crew, Raman and Freddie had to run up and down the mountainside many times assisting the Toboggan’s with towropes! After several takes, Rolland and Collin took over as Freddie and Raman collapsed in exhaustion. Where possible, we changed to the ATV, using it to pull the toboggan’s down the hill in a controlled manner. The rig that Raman had built on the back was fantastic and allowed me to achieve a very low angle shot from the front of the Tobogganer’s.

After a big day that ended with us all roasting in 32 degrees C in the Sun, we filmed the final shots. These were originally scheduled as Morning silhouette shots but through fate became stunning end of day shots looking out over the valley. The scene really looks magical.   Overnighting in Methven, a ski tourist town about 20 minutes away from the farm, the crew, shattered and exhausted from running up and down the hills all day, enjoyed a quite dinner. The next day the Singaporean crew flew back home for Chinese New Year. I chose to stay on for a couple more days.   A few days later, I flew from Melbourne Australia back to Singapore, where we began the offline. VHQ handled the post in Singapore and my Offline editor, Caryne put together a lovely edit that was fun to watch. Abishek Nair was VHQ’s post supervisor and handled the 3D and Online process beautifully. It’s to his credit for staying on top of all our demands and keeping the show on track because the TVC looks great! The Online editor Ian managed to remove wires and rigs, multiple cows, subtract Cows, while putting in clouds in the background etc. The Audio work was conducted at AMX Singapore and Engineer Mun Wai placed sound effects and music to help amplify the “Fun” aspect of the TVC.   After a final presentation to the Agency and Client, it was time to say goodbye. They love it. The TVC is naive and fun. Hope you enjoy it also. Cheers