Roman Kuhn: Moving photography

Late last year a video started to circulate the internet showing the Mercedes-McLaren SLR in an internet film. Not surprising, but the amazing aspect of this 10-minute movie was that a large part of it was shot using still cameras - EOS-1D Mark II N and EOS-1D Mark III bodies. David Newton met up with Roman Kuhn, the man behind the idea, to find out where it came from and what was involved in the shoot.

Roman Kuhn didn’t start out as a photographer but as an art director in an agency producing print and concept work for advertising and brochures. Roman had always had a love of painting and drawing and later on he got involved in the 3-D graphics world working for the first ever German 3-D animation company as a creative director.

Roman Kuhn on location with his EOS shooting films.

“It was a lot of blue and green screen work and I worked as a director for several music videos before moving into films and TV work,” he says. “I always dabbled in photography, but never as a professional. It was the release of the EOS 20D that really brought me into the photography world and my animation background and experience with computers really convinced me that digital photography was the way forwards.”

While working with a friend (who was director of photography at the Bahrain F1 racetrack) the conversation turned to how he used his film camera for short sequences of details within the cars. On returning home, Roman took his EOS 20D and tested to see how it would work for longer sequences and wider shots. “I was looking for a method to allow me to jump in during filming and grab a few sequences and use them alongside the film production I was already doing.” That was in 2005, and although the idea was good, further testing identified that the EOS-1D Mark II N gave a faster frame rate and a much-increased buffer. “

The problem with the EOS 20D was that the buffer was not big enough to allow me to shoot longer sequences – I could only shoot a sequence of 60 or so images which was simply not long enough for what I needed. The camera would lock up and I’d have to start again. The EOS-1D Mark II N allowed much longer sequences to be filmed and was therefore the obvious choice for this kind of photography.”

A 60 second clip of the Mercedes-McLaren SLR roadster shot using movph techniques on location in Lanzarote.

The idea of shooting a series of images and creating a flick-book style image sequence movie is far from new, but the application and ability to turn this into a commercial product required someone with a certain background. Fortunately for Kuhn, he had the film and TV background and realised the commercial application of what he was doing in order to make full use of it.

He has called the technique ‘Movph’ – his abbreviation of the phrase 'moving photography'. His first tests for movph involved a model walking around to see how long the sequences he could create were and to work out how the post-production would work. From there, he contacted a few members of the music industry who had seen these early tests and moved on to shooting music videos as a series of still images. Roman’s current most well-known movph film is the aforementioned 10-minute movie produced for the Mercedes-McLaren SLR roadster.

It was filmed over the shoulder of the press photographers as they took their images for publication in Lanzarote. It has been used as a web movie for marketing and a DVD giveaway present for Mercedes-McLaren SLR buyers. Roman has also made an 11-and-a-half minute movie called 'The Illusive', starring Canon cameras and the Mercedes-McLaren SLR, which also utilises movph footage techniques.

When you're pushing the boundaries and trying to do something different, finding clients can prove difficult. Roman explains: “They don’t see creative issues. If it’s too expensive, they simply won’t do it. Big companies have strong finance management who control everything. If you show them an idea that looks great and saves them half the money, then they’re interested. Our production costs are lower because we don’t have all the people needed when compared to a film shoot. It’s also quicker and easier to shoot – lighter cameras, more flexibility and more mobility. The only concern then is whether they like the style – the stop motion effect – or not.”

An movph production is a lot like a film shoot but with fewer people required and less post-production. The cameras are set to shoot small jpeg, as that is more than big enough for the end use, especially when compared to the stills taken from a video camera. “This gives the longest sequences as the files are small and the buffer empties quickly,” says Roman.

“Obviously the cameras are set to high speed continuous shooting and we use AI Servo setup on the back button to allow us to track focus if we need to and also quickly shift focus from foreground to background which gives a nice effect.” He says that he often shoots in manual focus – a difficult skill to master when you’re shooting at a rate of 10fps!

The Roman Kuhn movie 'The Illusive' tells the story of a photographer's bid to shoot the new Mercedes-McLaren SLR car.

You’d think that producing a moving film using stills would need more assistants than a conventional stills shoot but, in reality, many studio photographers around the world employ more assistants. Roman explains: “For each camera you need three people to be safe – a photographer to take the pictures, an assistant to help with equipment and a loader to take control of the memory cards. You can do it with two people, but having three means one person has control of the cards to download the images to the computer as soon as the card is full.”

He adds: “They can be right on your shoulder and tell you when you need to change card before you run out of space, potentially ruining a sequence. They can also check the images as they download them to make sure that everything is in focus, rather than moving on and finding a sequence is completely out when we get back”. This three-person team ensures there is no need to re-shoot scenes. Roman explains: “We shoot almost everything handheld so repeating a scene exactly is difficult.”

Since the end result is a film or movie, it makes sense to shoot in a more film-like manner using more than once camera at a time to create cutaways and detail shots. “It’s nice to have at least two photographers shooting at the same time – one shoots details with a long lens while the other shoots wider shots with a wider lens. Sometimes we change and the guy shooting wide goes long and the guy shooting long goes wide – we have ended up with almost the same shot.”

Roman Kuhn and assistant get to grips with his Canon equipment on location for the Mercedes-McLaren SLR film.

So, what equipment is used? Roman explains: “We usually use zoom lenses for the versatility. We only use fast fixed lenses when the light levels are low. Ideally a zoom lens should be an f/2.8 constant aperture, but I do use the EF28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS lens a lot because of the versatility it offers.” To be safe Roman explains: “We always have a backup camera or two as well, but don’t find we need to use them often. The kit bag always has four EOS-1D Mark II N bodies and our two newer EOS-1D Mark III bodies. These are worked hard.”

One of the key reasons Roman likes the Canon EOS-1D Mark II N is its durability. He recalls: “The Siemens shoot had us shooting 1.2million images in one week on three cameras and none of them failed. In fact, my oldest EOS-1D Mark II N has shot over one million images and is still working – the only breakage it’s had is the vertical grip shutter button because I used the camera as a brace on the road to stop me falling out of a moving car. To begin with we never expected the cameras to last so long, but now we’d be very surprised if we got a new model and it didn’t last as long. It has just become normal for us. It appears to me that the shutter life claims by Canon are simply very conservative.”

Once the photography is done, post-production starts. He explains: “Each sequence or scene of images is copied onto the computer in its own folder. These are opened in QuickTime using the ‘Open Image Sequence’ command. This allows us to select the folder of images. When you select the first image in the sequence and click open, a dialogue box appears asking you what frame rate you would like to put the images together with. This can be anything from 10 seconds per frame to 60 frames per second.”

Roman Kuhn in his studio.

Depending on the look he wants Roman usually works at around 10fps. He explains: “QuickTime software automatically opens all the images and creates a QuickTime movie file that we can then edit in Final Cut Studio, just like any video clip from an HD camera. This was a great advantage, as you don’t need to import each image individually into Final Cut to create a sequence. It speeds up the workflow - the assistant in charge of the cards on the shoot can do it during the shoot to make sure that all the sequences are looking correct.”

Roman always uses the full size files shot (the small JPEGs) to ensure as much resolution as possible to begin with. He says: “If we decide that we’d actually like a more zoomed in shot, we can go back to the original files and recreate the QuickTime movie sequence and then crop – even the small JPEG images are more than big enough to allow us to do that.”

Once the movie sequences are in Final Cut Studio Roman leaves video editing to an editor – for two reasons. He says: “First, they’re better at editing and secondly, they approach the film with fresh eyes. Sometimes they’ll be on the shoot with us, other times they’ll come in afterwards and I’ll explain the concept to them. It helps improve the results using someone who is specialised in that area.” After the video and sound-editing is put together, Roman can adjust the look of the film using Apple Color or Adobe After Effects to stylise the film as he wants it to look, and it’s then ready to be output. This is done to DVD, Betacam, the web or television.

The Mercedes-McLaren SLR about to meet the hero photographer in 'The Illusive'.

There are a number of advantages for Roman’s clients of making short films like this. They get a different-looking product and it costs about half of what a full film crew would cost a client. Roman adds: “We can also shoot a combination of stills and video at the same time – using the same cameras, we can quickly switch to shooting RAW to grab a few shots of the product that can be used as stand alone images. This doesn’t affect the importing to QuickTime either, as QuickTime cuts out any RAW files in the same folder as the JPEGs and only uses JPEGs for making the movies.”

So what’s next for Roman Kuhn? With some other big name clients in the bag, like BMW and Audi, it seems that movph is starting to catch on in a big way, especially within the motoring industry. And it’s all been made possible by the digital photography revolution and the faster frame rates and larger buffers that the EOS-1D Mark II N and EOS-1D Mark III offer.

Technical: Roman Kuhn’s equipment:

Cameras
2 x EOS-1D Mark III
4 x EOS-1D Mark II N

Lenses:
EF28-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM
EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM

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Roman Kuhn: Moving photography

Roman Kuhn

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