Such a cool shot
At some point, this time last year I had the chance to play around with a genuine Germany( maybe Canadian) crafted Leica R lens. With endless excitement and only the weekend to play around with it, to get an idea if I wanted to buy it, I set up an afternoon with Francisco to shoot some test footage.
Like anything I do, there's not an ounce of scientific reasoning for the things I do in the pretentious name of art, which includes A.) filming on active train tracks just because it seemed cool B.) Endangering an old ass lens that I don't own and whipping it around active train tracks & C.) Inching humanly possible to the edge of the tracks to film train whizzing by with 50% regard for safety, but this was never meant to be a technical lens test ( me technical, I laugh).
Proud of the way this framing came about
What I set out to discover about the Leica was its characteristics; the way it renders the world through the Olympus EM5 Mrk III, I wanted to test the kind of mood and atmosphere that can be achieved with this pairing.
Look at that pop in that stance
Creatively I wanted to do something loosely narrative with the test because at the end of the day we're making narratives, so all through this past December, I was toiling over the idea of how to make this test with a semblance of a story(this was a process having just filmed Wolves in The Wilderness and Holiday cheer creeping up). I eventually started listing to the track "Signals From The Noise" by BADBADNOTGOOD (an amazing fucking album you should listen to) and there were parts in the tracks that helped me visualize the mood I wanted to portray.
I started off building my timeline with the track and then this evolved into using audio clips from archived train videos from the '40s, and because I'm such a fan of Jessica Chastain in "The Tree of Life" this led to me using the beautiful monologue of Grace and Nature and bastardizing it for my nefarious purposes( Mwhhaaaa).
Look at that dumbo ear action
I want to say this was filmed at ISO 200 mainly to help cut the amount of daylight without an ND and hoping I wouldn't have to stop down, but that was a fool's game ( damn you sunlight). Looking back on it stopping down wasn't a horrible compromise, I think around F/4 or 5.6 was what we shot for the majority and the rendering looks stellar.
Overall this came out pretty well and this gets me excited to try my Leica R 35mm F2 because as good as the 2.8 is based on this test I couldn't deal with the weird Series VII filter thread situation.
• Olympus EM5 Mark II • Leica R 35mm f/2.8
Hope You Enjoy
-Andrew