Slowing Down the Beauty of Nature with the Most Flexible High Speed Camera Around As the creative director and owner of production company Friction Media, Belgium-based, Pasquale Baseotto, is no stranger to creative experimentation. Last year we spoke to him about his debut music video project with one of Belgium’s premier composers, Michel Biscegli. We were very excited to catch up with him again for this promotion video, Phantom 4 Elements, which he created to test the range of the Phantom v711camera. ‘Slowing down the beauty of nature makes it even more impressive, more powerful,’ he told us of the video, which captures the four elements. ‘It grabs the viewer’s attention within seconds, freezing time, a true escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.’ The Phantom camera is capable of recording up to 2,570 fps at 1920×1080, which Pasquale believes gives him the opportunity to push his creative boundaries to a higher level. Currently working on some client productions, and preparing for two music videos, we managed to catch up with Pascal for a chat: The Plus: What are the most important things to consider when creating a slow motion video? Pasquale Baseotto: Recording slow motion images requires a certain timing and precision. You must understand that a few seconds becomes minutes on disk. So pushing that record button on the right moment is crucial. TP: And how do you feel the camera added value to you filming? PB: Within our budget and timeframe, we definitely made the best of it. Thanks to the support of a group of helpful people and an inquisitive cinematographer, Ben Steensels, we got the camera fairly quickly mastered. The scenes were pretty rapidly finalized to the result we were hoping for. TP: What was the most difficult thing to achieve? PB: The underwater scenes. Unfortunately, we didn’t have an underwater housing for the expensive camera. But the cameraman came up with an ingenious homemade enclosure. TP: What is your favourite element of the four you captured? PB: The last part with the fire-spitter, Jem Burke. He is a trainer in Western martial arts, and he did a great job.
