First up, don’t book a studio and an interstate flight on the same afternoon – oh boy was I a scatter brain. Thankfully, I was lucky to have the support of Eve and Judrina for the ‘petri dish’ shoot.
Everything was captured on a 5DMiii with a Macro 100mm lens, shot in a controlled studio space. The lighting set up was a modified 3-point rig with the camera/tripod at a 180˚ horizontal plane. The ‘petri dish’ was a clear plastic plate suspended on a C-stand to allow light to illuminate from underneath.
The light stands and petri dish had limited height, so the camera set up was above eye level. This made for a tight set and obstructed the camera’s viewfinder/diopter, which hindered the ability to focus. I synced my laptop to the Mark iii so we could mirror the viewfinder and with Eve’s eye on the compressed laptop image and mine on the limited view of the camera, together we did our best to gain focus. Unfortunately using a macro lens, the focus only had to be a millimetre out and it would make all the difference! Catching focus was also tricky as the opening frames were flat surfaces with no definition e.g
If there is ever a next time for this kind of shoot, I would float a piece of paper on the surface as a focus marker. Something like this:
Another valuable learning curve was responding to what was in front of me. The first few petri dish reactions were my attempts at replicating my references but no matter the combination (or type) of dye, paint, oil or milk it just wouldn’t produce the same effect. In the end we stopped forcing it and focused on the unique reactions that were happening in front of us, which in the end created my favourite results. The amazing chocolate explosion reaction was Eve’s creation and we should have had her doing the mixing from the get go!
Half the footage was shot at 1920 x 1080 25p and the other at 1280 x 720 50p. I was nervous to commit 100% to the 50 frames incase it failed. Although I had to sacrifice a higher resolution quality, the captivating effect of the 50p slowed down in post was worth it!
Finally, the results of this shoot help reflect my project’s objective
…explore the audience’s ability to connect the dots and create meaning. Or in short, test how we interpret what we see on screen.
And in the studio this was already happening! Judrina pointed out the shape of a flamingo, Eve noticed blood clots/internal organs and I spotted galaxies/planets.
What do you see?
