Freelenser

The Standards - Where you go

2012-01-19T05:07:00.000-08:00

This is the third time I worked with The Standards but this time it was a slighly different task. The band wanted a music video that could reflect their band presence on stage. They came up with the ideas of mashing up footage from all their tour into one music video. While working on their footage I felt that the result would be stronger if I also shot some more footage.

I went to Cosmic Cafe in December for one of their gig and shoot a few takes with a Panasonic AG-AF 100. These shots are important as most cameramen couldn't come too close on the stage, while I could. Editing was a bit challenging due to the different level of quality of the footage given but I definitely learn a new approach as I had around 7 hours of footage to cut down to 3 minutes and 40 sec...

Visuals for Ladytron live in Bangkok

2012-01-07T12:39:00.000-08:00

Dudesweet, a Bangkok based party and event organizer contacted me in november 2011 to design and play visuals for the band Ladytron. They came to play at LED club, RCA on the 7th of December 2011. For this project, I teamed with the Wetcarpet studios, another VJ collective I work often with.

We decided that using the LED screen from the club was too bright and preferred to use projection instead. It was not an easy installation as we needed to install a screen behind the band with no budget.

We used my 12mx3m curtain that we fold 3 times and placed it right in front of the LED screen. We placed the projectors sideways and use a circle mask to hide the distortion from the projection.

From time to time we used the LED screen in the background, which could be seen as the curtain is semi-transparent. For the visuals we played a large array of mixed vintage videos with effects.

Vijaying for Delicate Decibel

2011-10-10T00:54:00.000-07:00

On the 8th of October 2011, I joined theWetCarpet studios for a VJ session for Delicate Decibel at Motorcycle Emptiness. Vijaying on different style of indie music, we set up a curtain to cover the stage and did a double projection on each side of the stage. We also set up 2 other projectors that we used as lightings on the performers. Similar to my previous music video, the semi-transparent fabric allows to receive lights and visuals as well as see through. This technique creates a strong sense of depth.

Most of our visuals that night were motion graphics, high contrast (with lots of blacks, allowing more transparency on the curtain) rather than my traditional selection of 60s-70s film, ads and scopitones.

Stylish Nonsense - Ninja

2011-09-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

For my final project for my MA in visual communication with Birmingham City University, I decided to move on to something more challenging. I explored the potential of using live concert and performance techniques to strengthen Music Video as an interactive media. Being a part-time Vijay in clubs and concert, I found it quite challenging to work on such approach as both music video and vijaying are giving a visual representation of music.

Being aware of the existing barrier between concert videos and music videos, I had to find a way to combine live visual elements such as projection and interactive visuals, with more classic music video techniques such as rhythmic editing, split screen and multi-camera cinematography, techniques I explored in the first 2 stages of my MA.

The final outcome of my project is a music video designed for the Thai indie band “Stylish Nonsense” using front projection on scrims and interactive lighting techniques.

Stylish Nonsense - Photos I took and compositedfor my pre-production

To get a more challenging result than a simple projection on background, I studied the use of scrims for front projection. Scrims are semi-transparent fabrics which depending where is the light source coming from, becomes transparent or opaque. Following the recommendation from Deyan, another fellow VJ (theWetCarpet), I decided to go for a dark grey fabric that I could set up in front of the 2 band members, allowing to see both visuals and the band in the same time. To achieve a better result, I also collaborated with Go Kun (Go Ueda), a japanese lighting sequencer who designed a set of interactive lights placed in different part of the stage.

We shot the video at Opposite, a venue own by the WTF franchise, sukhumwit soi 51

Interview on Slowreverse - Monster music video by a Day magazine

2011-05-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

I was interview last month by the famous thai hip/design "A day magazine" and the publish the article last week. I was interviewed on the process of the music video from concept to post-production. If you can read Thai, enjoy!

Open publication - Free publishing - More a day magazine

The Standards - It's Nothing

2011-03-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

Finally, it is done... the hardest work so far... Because of pressure from Birmingham City University to submit my work in time and difficulties for the band and Cedric Arnold the DOP to be available when needed, this project suffered from a considerable amount of flaws especially during preproduction. It was shot with a budget of 10.000 THB, mostly coming from the band and myself.

The Standards - It's Nothing from Gabriel Camelin (Freelenser) on Vimeo.

Concept and Direction: Cedric Arnold and Gabriel Camelin

Photography: Cedric Arnold
Post-production: Gabriel Camelin

2011
Bar sequence shot at Wong's place
more infos:
27/3 Soi Sribamphen, Rama 4 Road, Yannawa
Bangkok, Thailand, 10120
Sam Wong: +6681.901.0235

VW Minivan from Phatthi Buntawanit's family

For more information about the standards:
www.thestandards.tk

Happy New Year 2011

2011-01-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

I did this timelapse video in Bangkok as a test for the newcoming Standards music video I am working on with Cedric Arnold. I used a Nikon D700 with a remote control in different places in Bangkok.

Timelapse test for the Standards MV from Gabriel Camelin (Freelenser) on Vimeo.

Showreel 2011

2010-12-24T23:20:00.000-08:00

After a lot of research on showreels, I decided to do my own. Here is my work:

Showreel 2011: Gabriel Camelin from Gabriel Camelin (Freelenser) on Vimeo.

This showreel combined my work from previous music videos, post-production work and VJ work.

Featuring:
- Slowreverse - Monster (Thailand, 2010)
Direction and Post-Production
http://vimeo.com/11068636

- Winterplay - Touche mon amour (Korea, 2010)
Post-Production
http://vimeo.com/15601670

- Pop Shuvit - Oh Sizuka (Malaysia, 2009)
Post-Production
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eH9jQaA6y8

- Project E.A.R - South East A (Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, 2009)
Post-Production
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOjuloMvFlQ

- The Robot Disaster - Guitars are overrated (UK, 2008)
Direction and Post-Production
http://vimeo.com/16078581

- The Standards - The Proposition (Thailand, 2008)
Post-production

Soundtrack for the Showreel: Jean-David Caillouet
www.myspace.com/jdmozaic

Sketchbook on Reflective Practice

2010-12-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

This sketchbook was design for the module reflective practice 2, for my MA in Visual Communication with Birmingham City University. The goal was to explore how to create a good showreel, explore the use of DSLR video shooting for music videos and color correction techniques.

Open publication - Free publishing - More music video

Butoh, 550D camera and color grading test

2010-12-15T23:35:00.000-08:00

As I never used DSLR Camera before for video purpose, I needed to test the advantage and inconvenient of such a tool. I also wanted to test color grading with a Color finesse. This is part of my thesis project.

This Butoh performance took place at Boka Photography and Fine-Art Gallery, Bangkok for the opening of the photographic exhibition called Butoh III 2010 on Friday 3rd of December 2010.

The video was shot with a 550D canon and a 28mm 1.8 lens

Slowreverse band photographic Portfolio

2010-05-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

Here is what I submitted to Birmingham City University as some experiments of photography for Bands. You can see all the process below in other articles I wrote.

Open publication - Free publishing - More portfolio

Slowreverse Band Shoot

2010-05-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

Finally here are my pictures i took for the thai Band Slowreverse at Bangsue Station on Monday 3rd of April. We went there early in the morning hoping for the sun... He was there, but clouds were here too. I could shoot for 2 hours until the monsoon took over. I think I have enough photos for promo purposes, but the light issue makes my editing more complicated...

Here is the making of:

Location Scouting for Slowreverse

2010-05-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

I spent a bit of time these two last days around Bang Sue train station. I chose this place for its unique combination of urban and nature, which I think fits with the band. I did some tests of chronophotography, as it is a technique I never tried before, I am planning to use it in my shooting.

First and Second Experiment

2010-04-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here are my first and second experiment using camera glued on pencil and a dozen of students. I am still considering working or improving the second experiment which in my opinion looks quite good however maybe lack of narrative or a stronger line of concept.

My first experiment:

Music Writing experiment from Freelenser on Vimeo.

My Second Experiment:

Slowreverse - Monster from Freelenser on Vimeo.

Using a small CCTV camera glued on a pencil, a dozen of my students skills in drawing or dancing on paper, 2 more cameras... here we go!

Finding a way for a visual representation of the track

2010-04-07T22:24:00.000-07:00

To facilitate my editing and also bring creative solution, I completed a few weeks ago a song map. This is rather simple:
I asked in December the musician to give me separate tracks for each elements he used in his song. I did this in case I was planning to synchronize some visual elements to some specific instruments (the singer voice for instance could interact by vibrating or scaling up and down some visuals through its intensity). The interesting part I noticed about it when i opened the tracks in Logic Pro is that they also have blanks, making noticeable for instance, where the guitar is playing and where it is not.
The idea of the map appears during production, when i was struggling about seeing where are the key moments of the song. I felt that track soundwave was uninspiring and left only a few noticeable spots. Therefore I opted for a system where every instruments could be displayed, facilitating the visualization of the track.
I didn't want to do a simple screenshot of my timeline in Logic, as the quality would be too low for printing in big size, i looked on internet for an application that could export the soundwave visual into vector. After a few minutes, i found an obscure application named Praat, an application for phonetics... but with a great magical option nowhere to be seen: exporting the sounwave into an eps file!
From that I could work in Adobe Ilustrator, change the colors remove the unnecessary attributes given by Praat and combining all into one file! Voila!

This greatly helped me during my editing mostly, where i could visualize the lyrics in its context, also to decide when to change from shot to shot.
I also did a video version of the file. So i could visualize directly in Premiere pro or after effects how the music is changing. To create the animated bars, i created an expression in after affects to link the size of each bar to the intensity of each instrument.

Slowreverse Track analysis from Freelenser on Vimeo.

Example of pre-production
Originally uploaded by Gabriel Camelin

On the right side is one of my first draft of visual representation. I constantly needed to listen the music to place the main elements on the soundwave. I realize i could work much faster with each elements separated...

Reflective visual Journal...

2010-04-04T02:13:00.000-07:00

Here is my RVJ... I am quite new with Issuu, and I see they have a magazine function, so i plan to reupload my RVJ very soon so it's more easy to read.

Micro-Project 3: Band Photography/building band Identity

2010-03-22T00:33:00.000-07:00

These are some of my previous photos I took during promo shooting or my own time. It is not the first time that I take pictures for bands but it is the first time that I will do a planned shooting for promotional purposes...

Pop Shuvit! - Oh! Sizuka

2009-11-28T05:10:00.000-08:00

This music video use the theme of "film within the film" and the concept was to try to surprise Malay audience by giving them a feeling that they are watching an old 80s program until they realise at the end of the music video that the "real" band members are actually directing a music video.

This complex music video was directed in August and finished in october. I collaborate again with Nam Il Cho who directed the music video. I essentially worked on the visual effects, the compositing and supervised the 2D animation part (done by 2 of my beloved students...). Most of the effects and the compositing was done in After Effects and almost all the motion graphics were decided after shooting... after some long discussions. The animation part at the end was first shot on greenscreen and then rotoscoped frame by frame by Pussaya

Project EAR - South East A.

2009-11-28T04:12:00.000-08:00

This is one of the two music videos I have been working in during august to october. The music video feature several hip hop stars from south East Asia grouped into a collective named E.A.R. (East Asian Revolution) Shot in one day, it took several weeks of post-production as I had to work on it part-time due to my full-time teaching at Silpakorn University International College.

I have been involved in all the visual effects and compositing. I mostly followed the concept of the director (Nam Il Cho) who wanted to create a design of animated boxes. We planned first to shoot the boxes using LED, but for budget and aesthetics reason, shooting using standard lights was easier.

Basically, the inside frame and its color changed was done during the shooting while I had to work on the outside frame in After Effects. Every members of the band were shot separately and brought back together using layers and compositing. Some parts were shot in greenscreen and later added. Some shots in the music video sometimes combined up to 180 layers and were all combined using. All the boxes animation were design in photoshop before hand using pixel animation technique and later use in after effects as a color mask, thus allowing to create an impression that the light change like a huge LED screen.