Matrix iPad Shoot Behind the Scenes

We just made a short behind the scenes video of the iPad shoot (it is also in the Video section of the blog).

Please know that this was completely experimental and we learned a lot.  Here are some of our takeaways:

1. If we had any sort of budget, we would have created a rig to hold all 100 iPads.  As it turned out, we had to use students to hold the iPads so we had to use 38 instead of 100. The rigs we designed that would have held the weight and the angle of the iPads would have cost too much money (I was willing to shell out $50 or so but our designs would have cost even more).

2. Using people to hold the iPads caused a huge variable of the angle of the view. Consistency was a huge issue.

3. The inability to change the focal length and with only one zoom option of the iPad camera, we could not “zoom” in enough to get rid of the background elements, especially the bodies of the encircled students.

4. With everything else being discussed in the planning and design phase, we were able to actually test the camera quality of these iPads and, as you see, they really struggle in low light.  If we redo this experiment, we will have to film outside with a lot of light and with a acceptable rig for all 100 iPads.