Comedy - Ninja Frisbee

DESCRIPTION:

The Random Ninja is on the hunt as he tries for his second attempt on beloved Karate hero, "Sensei Bob". The Martial Arts Master and his pupil, "Punching Bag Wang" play frisbee at the beach. Wang fumbles, dropping one of the mighty frisbee tosses, resulting in Bob refusing to continue playing. Bag figures he'll try to attack Bob from behind to test his masters true ability. Little does he know a random Ninja has hidden himself within the frisbee.

Original Title - Random Ninja Attacks From A Frisbee
Production Date - September 2009.

CREDITS:

Shot, Cut & Directed By Ryan Golding
Music By Jason Fyfe
Produced By Amrit Singh, Kyle Strohack, Ryan Dhanraj & Ryan Golding
Special Thanks To Dalewood Productions

This video is uploaded in Ninjavision "High Definition" "HD".

Video filmed with the Canon 5D Mark II camera.

Jay's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/crazycat1984

BLOG NOTES:

This video was filmed the same day as our other beach related videos. It was the third video we had shot that day, and by this time it was boiling outside. We decided a month earlier to wait it out until September before going to the beach. We figured people would be back to work, kids would be back to school, and it wouldn't be as hot. It did not turn out quite as we thought, as there were still quite a few people on the beach, and it was possibly the hottest day of the year. It was especially hot for Bob and Ninja as they were dressed completely in black. A group of old folk were watching us from a distance as we filmed this one. They seemed very interested, I guess it's not everyday you see ninjas on a beach.

We had to move down the beach where there were less people around for the actual fight scene sequence. Therefore, the area seen during the frisbee game, is completely different then the area we used for the fighting. This was the only real fight scene we had to film that day, so we needed the extra room. If you watch closely you can clearly see that the location changes, as earlier there is a vast stretch of beach behind Punching Bag, and later on as he's watching the ninja attack Bob, there is a fence and the beach ends behind him.

There were no real blunders here. It was quite difficult to get shots of the frisbee flying up in the sky from a low angle, and was especially hard to get Amrit (Black Ninja Death Warrior) spinning and turning up above the camera. Thankfully we had access to a picnic table, which he used to jump off of. There was always that chance of him landing on me, the cameraman, but he was skilled enough to get by. Dhanraj's wipe out after the ninja chopped him down was probably the highlight of the day. None of us were expecting such a tumble, but he never fails to deliver. The sand was hot, we were all sweaty and horrible, but the stunts were all perfect!

I found myself worried about the camera for the whole day, as it gets hot from the LCD monitor being on for an extended length of time. Combined with the heat from the blazing sun, and sand flying around everywhere, things could have gone bad. We didn't have a telephoto lens with us, so everything was standard and wide, meaning the camera was always quite close to the action. It came out clean and in perfect working order though, so that's good.

Once again, music in this video was provided by Jason Fyfe. The use of dramatic Japanese drums greatly pushed the pace of the action as the ninja attacked. This video, unlike many of the others we've done, was kept clean in the filtering process. We tend to give a grindhouse, old drive-in film kind of look to these projects, but I would have felt guilty doing that on this one. The footage came out very sharp, the colours very deep. The only real manipulations going on here were with the trick editing for the ninja coming out of the frisbee. Originally I was thinking some kind of morph, but it was much funnier to simply do hard cuts, flips, flops and mirroring of the picture. The frisbee itself was reflective, and so the basic mirror filter, which duplicates and flips one side of the shot, made sense here.

As for pointing out technical problems, the 180 degree rule was broken several times during the frisbee game itself, and the fight scene. I've always felt that in high action sequences, where characters have been clearly established in wides, this works just fine. One of the main reasons for the changes in sides though was due to the filming conditions. It was at a point in the day where the sun was just about to be above, then was above, and then just a little to the other side.

Filming against the sun gives hard silhouettes, and while this can work well in clear wides with little background detail, it certainly doesn't work nicely with facial expression shots. So I found myself flipping from side to side mostly due to lighting. We did have a reflector on us, but since everyone there was in the video itself, there was never really anyone to hold it patiently. As always, things tend to be rushed when trying to fit everything into one day. None the less I was very happy with how this one turned out.

Ophion Digital
http://www.youtube.com/ophiondigital