#NokiaGulp Day 4: it’s getting windy

The  fourth day of shooting the world largest stop-motion animation with the N8 – #NokiaGulp proved to be immensely challenging due to the increasingly hostile weather. As I write this post (Friday 1 am-ish) there’s an insane gale wreaking havoc outside. And it’s cold.

Altough the deadlines were met for the day, the scheduled night shoot- the most technically demanding aspect of the project – had to be postponed until next week due to the weather. I did mange to take an intriguing shot at the night-time practice shooting on late Wednesday:

But here’s the good news – during day 4, I managed to catch director of photography on my Nokia N8’s viewfinder for a quick tour of the setup that makes this project possible (sorry in advance about the wind guys!):

Other facts about #NokiaGulp  you might find interesting:

*Many people here are volunteers (30+ people) – students who came over from nearby university. Few of them said they are missing out on their graduation ceremony. They stay overnight on the site in tents.

*The idea is not just promote the N8 (that is an awesome cameraphone on it’s own!), but to show what crazy, interesting stuff you can do with using Nokia technology. Of course, setting a world record is a great way to communicate to a wider audience.

*The video feed of the Nokia N8 viewfinder is actually taken via a 3.5 mm headset jack (480p  I think!). The microUSB connector is used to keep watch on the photos as they are saved onto the built-in memory of N8, and to keep the phones charged. The actual photos, however, are copied from the N8’s at the end of the day.

* Exploring the  connectivity possibilities of the N8: a bluetooth mouse and keyboard (3x, for each N8) are used to control the N8 camera shutter from the ground. This is quite impressive given how high the cherry picker lifts the N8’s.

*The stop motion animation: to preserve shooting time, there are 6 moves per second (not quite the same as 6 fps) and each move is represented by 4 frames (Nokia camera shots), and so each frame is 25th of a second in the video. So we get 24 frames per second in total.

*To create the world’s largest animation a large canvas was necessary. That’s how it came to choosing working with sand and the beach. The biggest canvas size is said to be 46×24 m.  The size varied depending on the scene, look closely at this pic:

I liked the #NokiaGulp themed background on the Nseries blog so I asked the guys if we could get the pics (shot on the N8) as wallpapers for My Nokia Blog community (thanks!):

Category: Nokia, Nseries