Ice Cream Shenanigans
Patricia and Gabriel are the proud owners of the eccentric and bold Ice Cream Bar in Puerto Rico. When you open the doors you’ll immediately smell the sweet aroma of handmade waffles and be excited by the bold colors and 50s pop vibe. They have many options for combinations and they don’t skimp on the amount of ice cream they put in your cone. You can find an Ice Cream Bar in Hatillo and Aguadilla Puerto Rico. We met to discuss ideas in late March to start a project and interestingly we came up with an animatic instead of our usual storyboard to do one of our presentations. This animatic, as simple as it was, conveyed the idea closer to its final form.
A portion of pre-production is spent planning, it is probably the longest part of most projects I do now. The longest part isn’t the hardest but essential in making on-set creative problem-solving an easier road to navigate. Making an ice cream cone spin with so much mass away from its center of gravity was challenging. I needed something sturdy since there would be a considerable amount of weight on the top. I found some metal ends and some long thin bolts from the hardware store that would be suited for this job. MacGyver may have started before I was born but, watching that series gives you the superpower of using bubble gum, magnets, and rubber bands to save the day.
Below a few examples of my rigs:
If you are curious, I use a Rhino Arc 2 for a controlled dolly, a Sony FS700 for the high-speed footage, A6600 as a B Camera, and a ComXim turntable for the movement of the subject in this project.
During the process of filming, I learned some valuable lessons for future projects which included breaking three ice cream scoops. Xeroll ice cream scoops are by far the best and most durable scoop out there. As for needing to shoot whipped cream for long periods of time, make sure you stabilize it with gelatin. If that is not available, Cool Whip will be your best bet but, make sure you work fast, are able to lower the temperature in your room substantially and keep MacGyver close to your heart.
Despite the best attempts at stabilizing the ice cream cones with metal supports, the vibrations from the ComXim seemed to build up in some of the subjects and had to be fixed in post. Fortunately, this allows me to give a glimpse of the methods I used in Fusion.
Examples below:
The combination of a thorough conversation and feedback from the animatic strengthens the importance of pre-production work. I think offering this style of presentation will better showcase the ideas around a concept, giving an opportunity for more thorough feedback during the Pre-Production of some projects. I am barely a few months into using DaVinci Resolve and I have to say that the transition to this NLE from Adobe Premiere has been simpler than I anticipated. The community and resources are less abundant for Blackmagic’s software when compared to the Adobe suite but, I would say that the official documentation is so clear and structured that the only issues anybody will ever run into will be niche errors or crashes. Editing and filming two relatively complex productions was a challenge by itself and MacGyvering around problem-solving is much more than finding solutions. At its core, it is all about attitude, a state of mind we can all get to.
The very delicious looking results below:
This and other posts are meant for me to look back at my own process and improve my skills more thoughtfully moving forward. If you have any questions about this or other works don’t hesitate to ask; we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Please check out our Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram. Stay creative!