Hey all,

Long time no posts but I was hoping you could help me with a new shoot I am currently putting into pre-production... Any advice would be very very welcome indeed.

First, the film opens with a coin being flipped. What is the best way of shooting it mid-air? Slow motion, 200fps? Maybe just spin it on the table but that is a bit of a cop out. I have a Z5 - is this up to the task?

Second: I need to shoot a POV shot looking up at a ceiling with glow in the dark stars, erm, glowing in the dark. These are the sort of thing:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Stars-and-Moon-Glow-In-The-Dark_W0QQitemZ140356913917QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Home_Garden_Decorative_Accents_LE?hash=item20adec8afd

How would I go about this? Perhaps lighting with a UV / blacklight? The idea is the room being entirely dark with only the stars in view.

Third, and here is the real ball-breaker, the climax is of a young boy putting a lot of aspirin into a tropical fish tank to murder his fish in a bubbly jacuzzi. I, as yet, have no idea how to do this without actually killing a lot of fish. I was thinking about perhaps putting a second tank with only water in front of the first and shooting from front on but this may pose certain problems. Please help!

If anyone would like to see a copy of the script (only 4 pages, entitled THE DAY MY FISH DIED, please just ask).

Thanks ever so much in advance.

Adam

Personally, I would...

1) a Z5 will not get you a sexy crisp slo-mo spinning coin in mid-air. You could try an Exilim http://www.exilim.com/intl/ex_f1/features2.html which are very impressive, (although with a correspondingly smaller framesize), or just accept you won't get the shot you're dreaming of!

2) Yep, get a real UV lamp in there, and/or charge them up well with a couple of redheads beforehand. Lock the camera position and focus in the light, turn the lights off, open the aperture wiiiiide, gain to +18db, you may just get the effect you're after. Again, you're really stretching the camera's abilities.

3) Yay! An easy one! Have a secondary tank you use to replace the original - once it's bubbling wildly with a few plastic fish/shaped carrots in, no-one will tell Establish the shot with the real tank, cutaway to the face of the guilty party, then back to the frothing tank. For frothing, you can make your own 'aspirins' very cheaply - baking soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) and Citric Acid (both cooking ingredients, try a pharmacy or winemaking suppliers for the citric acid if you're having trouble), mix them up and when you add water it'll go bonkers fizzy. You could add a squirt of Fairy/washing-up liquid to the tank too, so the foam stays and builds and looks more dramatic.

My 2p

Thank you pdrg. As always, you have been a great help. Apologies for the delay in my reply, but I have been busy wracking my brain with other issues this film will ensue.

But, to the point. We have decided to spin the coin on a table and slowly dolly in. I have been experimenting with various coin spin techniques intermittently over the last few days, and I am confident we can make it work. Unfortunately, we are only renting the Z5, but we will purchase a few extra days prior to the shoot to test out this shot, specifically the lighting, what with the exorbitant shutter speeds we will have to use to get anything exposed. The dream shot it may not be, but compromising is proving successful.

The stars. We have decided that the shot shouldn't be completely dark anyway, making it easier on the camera (I hope). It was your gentle suggestion that this is pushing the boat a bit that made us decide that. Still, it should give us more scope to play with the colours on that shot, so it is for the best.

As for the tank, our money shot was seeing the aspirin dissolve around the fish before any sort of cutaway. This is, of course, problematic. It was always my fallback to cutaway sooner, but we will keep experimenting. On a brighter note, we weren't completely sure exactly how we would make the water foam, so thank you kindly for the bonus bubbly advice, it is very much appreciated.

Now if you will excuse me, I have coins to spin

Thanks again

Thank you for your kind words! I'm pleased I was helpful, and hope it goes well for you If you do get the Z5 for a tech test on the coin, maybe also try one on the stars - it may be that your original shot will work, but without a tech test you won't know for sure until it is too late!

Good luck with the fish... for what it's worth, slices of carrot can look a lot like goldfish if it's a passing shot?

For the fish: go to a pet store, or even a big store like WalMart that might sell fish but puts little effort into keeping them alive, and ask them for their dead fish -- or maybe even offer to buy them. How often do you walk past a tank of fish in a store like that and see a floater or two? I would guess a real pet store, with dozens of tanks, would have a good supply of dead fish every day (especially when they receive new deliveries of fish).

Offer to buy similar live fish (similar type and color of fish) and see if they'll keep a day or two's worth of dead fish for you to pick up for your movie. (I don't know -- maybe you could refrigerate them or even freeze them until you're ready to shoot?)

That way, you can have shots of real live fish followed by shots of real dead fish, without any guilt about being responsible.

Also, check at the same pet store to see if they have any fish medications that come in tablet form and bubble or fizz like you want. I was thinking that some fish meds come in tablet form just like an aspirin, so maybe some of them bubble or dissolve really fast (and shouldn't hurt the live fish). Fish get parasites or fungii or something that you treat by treating the water in the tank, so this should be safe to drop into the tank with live fish.

Tim L

Edit: For the coin, maybe glue a coin (on edge) on top of a dowel or turntable, or hanging from a thread, in front of a greenscreen. Film it with the camera sideways while turning or spinning the coin, then mask it and composite it into your shot. (I've never tried this myself, but it might be worth a try...)