One of our favorite current bands, Broken Social Scene, is doing a show at Terminal 5 in NYC tonight and you can watch it live on youtube.
The band’s video for the track Forced To Love off their most recent album, Forgiveness Rock Record, was co-directed by none other than our good friend and soon-to-be Skylark Director of Photography, Alan Poon. The video employs cutting edge 3D rendering and looks like nothing you’ve seen before.
From Arts & Crafts’s video description:
“It’s an experimental 3D scanning technology that detects the displacement of a grid pattern of any object in front of it,” Poon explains. “The data is then used to rebuild the object in three dimensions. Each band member’s performance was scanned using this technique and manipulated in the computer to create the effect you see in the final video.”
Check it out here:
And here’s a little behind the scenes clip starring Alan, his collaborator on the project, Adam Makarenko, and the band.
-blake
I want to take a moment to share a beautiful clip that Alan sent us of Stevie Ray Vaughan performing with his brother Jimmie. Jimmie was three years older than Stevie and was his first big musical influence.
As you know, our film is about a musician who loses his older brother/bandmate in a tragic accident. Of course The Skylark is fiction, but the story of Stevie Ray Vaughan sadly is not. Jimmie’s younger brother overcame a drug and alcohol abuse problem only to die tragically in a helicopter crash in 1990. He was 35 years old.
Thanks for the clip, Alan.
-blake
Hi everyone, this is just a quick post to let you know that one of our favorite current bands, Arcade Fire, is performing their second show at Madison Square Garden tonight and the entire concert will be webcast live on youtube. What’s more is that the whole thing is directed by Terry Gilliam!
Check out this amazing ad for the show:
I was at the band’s gig last night, where I shot this short little video. They were amazing.
Tune in tonight and don’t forget to pick up Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburbs.
-blake
Last summer, as Keith and I were getting a little burnt out from rewriting our feature script, he had the idea of taking a small flashback and expanding it into a short film. Thus, our project SWEET NOTHING was born. Around that time, there were whisperings of an unexpected advancement in the HD camera world, unexpected because it started as a simple add-on to an “old technology” and evolved into a widely used tool in the industry.
This is a DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera), specifically the Canon 5D. Like any other professional Canon or Nikon camera, it shoots beautiful pictures. This model came out in 2005:
In comes the Canon 5D Mark ii, which arrived in late 2008 and changed everything:
Although the two cameras look the same, there is one enormous difference. Canon had received many requests from photojournalists to add a simple video record option to their pro-line of photo cameras so that one could capture the odd video in the field and post it online. Canon’s photo department obliged, and without collaborating with their video department, virtually slapped in an HD video feature. Little did they know they had created a camera under $3,000 capable of shooting more cinematic images than most cameras five to ten times its price. The reason? The camera is based on full 35mm frame photography (like a motion picture camera) instead of small chip television/video camera technology.
I don’t want to get too technical, because there are already loads of information out there from many great bloggers (links at the bottom), but when the 5D Mark ii first came out it was lacking many vital manual controls. While Keith and I were prepping to shoot SWEET NOTHING, some of the key issues had just been resolved via a firmware update and so it seemed like the perfect time to give HDSLRs a go. So, I sold this:
And bought my beloved, tiny 5D Mark ii:
Me and mine
Like most of my friends, I’m a bit of gadget freak. It’s an addiction that both pushes my career forward and in many ways holds me back. I’m sure a lot of you know what I mean. For those of you that don’t, well, what I’m about to say may be the geekiest sentence I ever written, but I’ll write it anyway… The first gadget that changed my life was a PowerMac G4 with Final Cut Pro. It enabled me to be a one-man post-production team, and Apple’s user-interface just made sense. That was 2001. Cut to 2009, eight years later, and you have the Canon 5D Mark ii, the second gadget that changed my life.
Keith and I were very lucky when we went into production on SWEET NOTHING because our good friend and cinematographer, Alan Poon, was living in NYC at the time and agreed to experiment with my new camera. He had his own set of Canon lenses, which we were planning to shoot with, but since we couldn’t find a follow-focus to rent, we were forced to rent a Nikon lens package with its own follow-focus. (A follow-focus is a necessity when shooting a narrative film. It enables someone other than the camera operator to make sure the actors are in focus as they move around.) One of the wonderful things about the Canon DSLRs is that they have a lens mount that allows you to put pretty much any old lens on it with an adapter. The old manual Nikons wound up being a great choice because they have a sharper, lower-contrast look than the Canons.
Looking back, the interesting thing about our first shoot with the 5D Mark ii is that Alan and I were not yet ready to ditch our years of film training/brainwashing, and so we treated the camera like every old mammoth we were used to, thus erasing one of the great aspects of the 5D, its minimal size. We virtually never took it off the tripod or detached it from our two external monitors. Still, the camera performed amazingly well and we were ecstatic when we finally saw the footage on a big screen.
Alan with the 5D Mark ii on the set of SWEET NOTHING
Here is a little teaser I cut to give you an idea of the vibe and look of SWEET NOTHING:
Since that project, I’ve shot almost exclusively with the 5D Mark ii, and already a lot has changed. Canon has released three new HDSLRs, all of which have their positives and negatives and range in price from $800 to $5000. That’s right; you can buy a camera, the Canon Rebel t2i, for $800 capable of shooting video similar to the 5D Mark ii! And the body is even smaller! Professionals are using these cameras to shoot television shows, commercials, music videos, and feature films. When I shoot with mine now, I try to keep it as stripped down as possible – truly guerilla! And I’m not the only one. Many projects are being shot with several HDSLRs at a time since they can be had so cheaply. How you use it is up to you. Some people still attach every gadget imaginable to their HDSLR, some attach nothing, some mix and match.
Here you can see director Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, Spy Kids, Sin City) on the set of a music video with a souped up 5D Mark ii and then on the same set with a stripped down B-camera.
(images via philipbloom.net)
For my kit, after doing a bunch of research, I decided to invest in some old lenses instead of buying the far more expensive Canon pro-line L series lenses. Much of the old glass produces as good or better images and can be purchased cheaper. I decided to go with Contax Zeiss lenses, and managed to wing the deal of the century. I found someone selling a 28mm, 55mm macro (vivitar), 35-70mm macro, and a 135mm on craigslit for $600! Be jealous; I’ll probably never find a deal like that again… The Zeiss glass is amazing – a little cooler in tone, but tack sharp and with amazing bokeh (aesthetic quality of the blur). I bought an adapter to use these lenses from adorama for $28.
Two features sorely lacking from the 5D are a true viewfinder and professional audio controls/inputs. So I completed my kit with an LCDVF and a Zoom H4N. I recommend both of these devices without hesitation, but there are many other options out there. Putting your kit together is a very personal and, once again, addictive thing. Just keep in mind that if you go overboard, you’ll prevent yourself from enjoying the freedom of having such a small and simple device.
I carry my 5D Mark ii everywhere. It’s my photo camera, my home video camera, and my movie camera of choice. And now, I’m very happy to announce that Keith, Derrick, Alan, and I plan to shoot our first feature film THE SKYLARK with HDSLRs!
Feel free to ask me any questions. I could write a novel about my beloved Canon, but that would take time away from actually using it…
-blake
PS. My top 4 blogs on the subject:
One of our favorite artists of the last decade, Sufjan Stevens, was pretty much a recluse from 2005-2009. Then last year he released an instrumental soundtrack to his film The BQE, and toured once, but there had been no hint of a followup to his 2005 album Illinois. According to an interview with Exclaim’s Vish Khannam, after completing that masterpiece, Sufjan found himself in the middle of an existential crisis:
I definitely feel like ‘What is the point? What’s the point of making music anymore?’ I feel that the album no longer has a stronghold or has any real bearing anymore. The physical format itself is obsolete; the CD is obsolete and the LP is kinda nostalgic. So, I think the album is suffering and that’s how I’ve always created—I work with these conceptual albums in the long-form. And I’m wondering, what’s the value of my work once these forms are obsolete and everyone’s just downloading music?
Every once in a while, since 2005, I’ve hit google hoping to find news of Sufjan’s return to songwriting. Today, I got my wish. I discovered an article from Paste Magazine, which reveals that not only is Sufjan finally working on a new album, but he is collaborating with another band I love, The National.
Knowing nothing about The National, my wife and I caught their performance at the All Points West Festival last year and they blew us away. We picked up their album Boxer shortly after, which is an amazing record that grows on you with every listen.
If you’re not familiar with Sufjan’s work, I’m not sure how to describe it, but he once called it “high art meets low art.” It’s sort of pop/folk/classical… rrrr… just check it out:
And The National on Letterman:
And finally, Sufjan supporting The National for a performance of “Afraid of Everyone” off the band’s new album High Violet (released last month):
Sufjan, we can’t wait to hear what you and the boys are concocting…
-blake
As an avid Canon user, I thought I’d share this interesting bit of information:
“February 2, 2010 – Canon announced today the development of a new MPEG-2 Full HD recording codec. The codec uses 4:2:2 color sampling and it is expected to be implemented on yet unannounced file-based professional camcorders from Canon. The new codec will be capable of 50Mbps bitrate recording, can capture full 1920 x 1080 HD video, and offers two times the color data of the HDV compression system.”
The question is, will they release this codec on a camcorder with a full-frame (or close) sensor and an eos mount? Read the full article at www.camcorderinfo.com.
-blake
In a slight departure from the typical content of this blog, but with no less relevance, I want to share a lecture by Ken Robinson on the importance of teaching creativity to children. He argues that music and dance, for example, are as important in the classroom as math and language, and I couldn’t agree more.
I have many passionate teachers in my family, including my wife Julie, and while I’ve seen the difference one educator can make, I have also felt the heavy weight of what I consider to be a broken system.
I won’t say any more because Mr. Robinson expresses my sentiments beautifully and with a quick British wit.
Here is the violin performance by an 11-year-old girl named Sirena Huang, which Ken Robinson mentions in his lecture.
Be sure to go to www.ted.com to see more lectures from some of the world’s greatest minds.
-blake
If you read the previous post about our good friend Alan Poon, then you know he has been working with Adam Marenko on a stop-motion music video for the Canadian band Zeus. We’re pleased to present the finished product to you here, as well as a making-of video/interview. Enjoy!
By the way, for all you tech geeks out there, the interview below was shot on a Canon 7D, the amazing baby brother of the 5D Mark ii. I am still working on an extensive post about our experience with the 5D on Sweet Nothing.
Congrats to Alan and Adam on another stunning video!
-blake
Unfortunately, our project was not selected for the finals of the Ultimate Filmmaker Competition. We’re still very honored to have made it to the Top 25, and we want to congratulate the finalists. We also want to say, without any hesitation, that THE SKYLARK will be made and we are pursuing every possible path to bring it to the big screen.
Now that the UFC site is down, we decided to give our interview a second life and post it here in HD. I know we also promised to post some outtakes, but it seems a little self-indulgent at this point. Anyway, we want to put our time into pushing THE SKYLARK forward and blogging about things that inspire us.
Stay tuned.
-blake
Filed under: Canon 5d Mark ii, Combat Rock, Screenwriting, Skylark, Sweet Nothing, Uncategorized, Video
*UPDATE: Because distributing the video on vimeo can be considered broadcasting, we’ve been advised to pull it for music copyright reasons (we have acquired festival rights only). Therefore the film is still on the site, but has been password protected. If you would like to have access to the film for private use only, please email us @ info@thehamiltonbrothers.com.
Now that SWEET NOTHING (formerly titled COMBAT ROCK) has been made available at The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition website, we figured it’s time to present the film to you here in glorious HD! However, please continue to direct your traffic to the competition site to vote and support independent film.
While finishing the screenplay for our feature film, THE SKYLARK, Keith and I thought it would be fun to create a companion piece that tells a little bit of back story. THE SKYLARK is about a brilliant young musician struggling to survive after losing his older brother/band-mate in a tragic accident. This short film, SWEET NOTHING, which takes place 20 years earlier, is about that older brother discovering his love of music and buying his first record. The film is intended to feel like an extended flashback.
One of the most interesting facts about SWEET NOTHING is that we shot it entirely on my Canon 5d Mark ii Digital SLR. For those of you who don’t know what this means, the 5d is a small photo camera that has changed the world of independent film and certainly reinvigorated us. It looks like this…
…and shoots HD images like you wouldn’t believe. I will be writing a long post about the camera and our experience with it soon. In the meantime, I’d like to give a special thanks to our wonderful cast and crew, and to the parents of Evan, Dominic, and Tristan who play the three leads in the film.
Without further ado, may I present to you SWEET NOTHING! (Be sure to click the fullscreen button in the bottom right corner of the player.)
I hope you enjoyed it and are ready for more in the form of a feature film! :)
-blake
Here’s one election that doesn’t involve punditry, lobbying, or picking a party: The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition is ready for you to help choose their winner! They explain on their site, better than we can, the importance of this competition, so please go to www.ultimatefilmmakercompetition.com now and vote! Then tell all your friends to vote, and tell them to tell their friends.
Our film THE SKYLARK is listed under KEITH AND BLAKE HAMILTON. Click on our names and you’ll find an interview with us, our bio, and a sample of our work including SWEET NOTHING in its entirety! And as promised, keep checking back here for out-takes from our interview.
Thanks for sticking with us. The time has come!
-blake and keith
To me there is always something wonderfully melancholy about the holiday season and I think the best Christmas music reflects that. What could be better than several generations together in one house, drunk on eggnog, singing along to the same song, and reminiscing about simpler times?
Here’s what I’ll be listening to this week:
Something New
Sufjan Stevens, one of my favorite artists of the last decade, made a quadruple album of Christmas music a few years back. It includes original tracks, like the one below, and covers of all your favorite holiday tunes.
A Classic Made New
Fiona Apple sings Frosty The Snowman – need I say more? This is off an album called Hotel Cafe Presents Winter Songs. It’s a compilation of tracks performed by famous ladies such as Fiona, KT Tunstall, Priscilla Ahn, and Ingrid Michaelson.
Something Timeless
I’m a sucker for Judy. What can I say.
Have a joyously reflective holiday.
-blake
Filed under: Combat Rock, Music, Photos, Screenwriting, Skylark, Sweet Nothing, Video
We have loads of news, but first I’d like to thank you all for sticking with this blog the last two weeks. Keith and I were slacking on the posts, but for good reason; we spent the last month finishing our screenplay and other submission content for the Ultimate Filmmaker Competition. I’m very excited to report that WE ARE DONE! The receipt of the materials was confirmed by the Filmmaker’s Alliance, and now we just have to try to wait patiently.
Keith and I spent many long days rewriting THE SKYLARK line by line, as we reported in previous posts. Overall, we trimmed a lot of fat and worked to heighten conflict where the pace felt slow. Along the way we received vital feedback from our friend Alan Poon and our wonderful ladies Julie and Sarah. We are all extremely excited by the finished product. I think it reads great, and as a director I can now SEE the film, which is when I know it’s working.
After completing the screenplay, we still had to submit three essay questions, plus a 7 minute video interview and a sample of our work. In my opinion, The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition earns it’s name by pushing it’s entrants to think through every aspect of their project and document it. The experience has been invaluable.
We decided to shoot our video interview in Central Park and cut it as a mini-documentary. This meant a lot of editing in a very brief amount of time. Alan shot some beautiful footage and we lucked out with a picturesque rainy day.
I decided to hold off on editing the interview until after we finished our screenplay, which only gave me about three days. I put in more than 40 hours in one weekend, cutting in music, photographs, old home-videos, and other b-roll.
For the work sample, Keith and I decided to submit the trailer for our first collaboration, UNFURL, along with our newest short film in its entirety. Now, here’s the not so great news:
COMBAT ROCK is now SWEET NOTHING
We managed to acquire the rights to music from The Velvet Underground, Depeche Mode, and Nina Simone for our small project, but ran into some resistance from The Clash. Such is life. Therefore, we have changed the name of the movie to SWEET NOTHING after the Velvet Underground song Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ which starts and ends the film.
I’m very excited that you’ll all finally be able to see some of the fruits of our labor in the coming weeks as the Filmmaker’s Alliance posts our work on their site. Get ready to vote and keep on checking back here. We’ll be posting outtakes from our interview and a lot of other content.
And finally, to celebrate the delivery of our work, here’s something beautiful in Central Park:
And another weeping ukulele to brighten your day:
Thanks again for the support!
-blake
Filed under: Uncategorized
When The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition asked us to start a Twitter account, I thought I’d need therapy. The good people at The Filmmaker’s Alliance explained, “it’s one of those things that every filmmaker should be doing for self promotion and building your audience”. Well now that Keith and I are on Twitter (follow us here), I can definitely see the value of this 140-character medium, mostly because I discovered my old friend and collaborator Dave Hayman’s feed.
Dave produced my two most important student films, Becoming Mighty and Unfurl, before transitioning into Music Supervision at Vapor Music. It was eight long years before we worked together again, but he was in the perfect position to help us acquire the music for COMBAT ROCK. Dave was always a music fanatic, obsessed with Neil Young and The Tragically Hip as I remember, and now his Twitter feed is one of the best sources of new music I’ve found. He has almost 2000 followers already. We’ve embedded his feed along with ours on the left side of this site, and you can follow him here.
Here is the trailer for my first collaboration with Dave in 2000.
We look forward to collaborating with Mr. Hayman on our first feature film, THE SKYLARK!
- blake
The amazing Alan Poon became a New Yorker in a puff of smoke last spring, and today he will hop on his winged moose and head back to Canada. His name is all over this blog, and for good reason. Not only is he an amazing filmmaker, but he is one of my dearest friends.
Alan and I were freshman roommates at York University in 1997. One year later, he transferred to Ryerson, but those nine months we shared in the same dry prison (dormitory) solidified our friendship. He went on to become a Cinematographer and Director who has collaborated with Keith and I on our last three films. Most recently, he was the Director of Photography on our short film COMBAT ROCK, and is now helping us finish our screenplay for THE SKYLARK, which he will also shoot.
Last year, Alan directed a music video for The Bowerbirds, which was honored by Spin Magazine as one of the top 20 videos of the year. I could go on and on about Alan’s work, but I’ll let it speak for itself.
I’m also excited to share that I have the inside scoop on Alan’s newest project. He’s in mid-production on a stop-motion music video for the song “Marching Through Your Head” by Zeus , which he is co-directing with photographer and miniature-set-builder, Adam Makarenko. Here are some never-before-seen photos from this amazing project.
More on this video to come, so stay tuned.
Alan Poon, coming to a city near you… if you live in Ontario. 
-blake
One of our favorite albums from 2006 is Midlake’s The Trials of Van Occupanther. I was thrilled to hear that they finally announced a release date for their follow-up album and tour. Here’s a snippet from an interview last year with Stereogum.
“We didn’t know exactly what we wanted, but we know we didn’t want to make the same album as last time. We could have made 10 albums with the amount of time we’ve spent, but that doesn’t mean they’d be saying anything great,” says McKenzie Smith.
So, what sort of music can you expect from a Midlake record? Perhaps the new album cover will give you a hint.
Midlake’s last album was, for lack of a better term, Classic Rock Revival at its best. Their lead singer Tim Smith, says he was listening to a lot of Neil Young, America, Joni Mitchell, and Fleetwood Mac while he wrote it. Here’s an interesting quote I found of Tim’s, this one from early in the band’s career.
“We don’t want to get called a Radiohead rip-off band. I think Radiohead is a lot closer to my natural tendencies as a songwriter than a band like, um, Jethro Tull. I listen to way more Jethro Tull than I do Radiohead these days, but I could write 10 Radiohead songs before I could write one Jethro Tull song. I want to sound more like Jethro Tull, but I just can’t. That’s a big struggle.”
I doubt anyone but Radiohead can write 10 Radiohead songs, but I’ll give Tim the benefit of the doubt. If any of Midlake’s influences peak your interest, check out this music video for one of my favorite songs off their last album.
While surfing the internet today, I also stumbled across this low-fi EPK (Electronic Press Kit). It was especially cool to find because Keith and I wrote an EPK into THE SKYLARK to establish our fictional band of the same name. We use it as a storytelling device similar to the newsreel in Citizen Kane or Pixar’s UP. (That’s right, I just compared our film to Citizen Kane and Up.)
There’s some inspiring reference material in here, but be patient; there’s a 30 second countdown at the top.
Midlake’s The Courage of Others will be released February 2, 2010. I’m ready.
-blake
The shoot went great, despite some terrible weather. In fact, although the rain forced us to change locations a few times, ultimately it (and Alan’s crazy skills) made the footage look spectacular. We started out in Strawberry Fields and then moved to a few other locations around the park. Along the way, we saw a couple who had just become engaged, two Russian men sparring in the rain, and a holy cross on John Lennon’s Memorial… And no religion too?
A few pics:
-blake
Tomorrow Keith and I will head into Manhattan to do a video interview for the semifinals of The Ultimate Filmmaker Competition. The interview, along with a sample of our work, will be available online next month. Our friend and collaborator Alan Poon agreed to shoot the interview, and so the three of us met last night in Williamsburg to discuss the style of the piece. We’re going to approach it as a mini-documentary and shoot in and around Central Park (an integral location to our film). This will be the most screen time I will have had since my dad bought his first video camera in the mid-80s, when my brothers and I had mullets, so I’m a little nervous.
-blake
John Lennon Memorial in Central Park
