#NokiaGulp day 3: The heart of the project – Nokia N8

 

With day 3 of #NokiaGulp now over, I managed to get a glimpse into the technical side of the project, and in particular, where the Nokia N8 comes into play.

Just as reminder, and for those who haven’t yet read my intro post yesterday: Nokia is attempting to produce a world’s largest stop-motion animation video, and it’s all being shot on the Nokia N8.

So in a way, the Nokia N8 is the heart of the #NokiaGulp project. As I wrote in my previous post, there are three N8’s (along with a digital cam used for visual feedback) inside a box that is mounted on top of the cranes (there are two of them!). All three N8 are taking shots of the beach below (the scene) at 12Mpix resolution. The shots would later be cropped to have a 16 to 9 aspect ratio, but maintaining the same width as the original, 12 Mpix shots. There are differences in the camera settings, however.

Since it wouldn’t be time effective to manually change the camera settings of the N8 mounted on top of a crane, the phones have the necessary settings already set up. Two of them are taking photos at -1 exposure setting, with the second N8 acting as a backup. This is the main camera setting used for the project. The third, the ‘lighting backup’ N8 is capturing the frames with -2 exposure, and is being used in case the default (-1) setting isn’t good enough.

The rest is quite simple, really. The N8 camera viewfinder signal of is being sent via cables over to a special van, where there are three monitors for each of the N8. Each shot is taken manually using the keyboard. It’s quite a work, in fact, but the default camera app is proven to be considerably more reliable than using a dedicated time-lapse app for shooting almost non-stop, all day long.

The expert on Nokia N8 camera, Damian Dinning himself has helped with setting up those N8’s, and prepare them for the challenging night time shots scheduled for Thursday night. Sadly he couldn’t personally be here so I’m instead looking forward talking with the director of photography of #NokiaGulp to learn additional info. But for now, here’s a little sneak-peak into the making of #NokiaGulp, also shot on a Nokia N8. Enjoy!

 

Category: Nokia, Nseries