Doritos spot

I'm not sure if this really qualifies as a low budget spot for most of us, but Film & Video has an interview with Director Eric Heimbold on a spec spot he did for Doritos that aired during the Super Bowl:

Director Eric Heimbold's spec ad for Doritos, "Power of the Crunch," didn't win the grand prize in the company's "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, but Doritos decided to air it during the game anyway, along with the eventual winner, "Free Doritos." That's a testament not only to the fan enthusiasm Heimbold was able to drum up for his irreverent spot online, but also to the production values apparent in the self-financed spot — which Heimbold shot on a single day in downtown L.A. with a donated Red camera, a tiny lighting package, and a dedicated, fast-moving crew working free or for peanuts as a favor. (It didn't hurt that Heimbold opened the spot with that vaudeville standby, the girl in the Velcro dress.) We got Heimbold on the phone to talk about working fast, fixing it in post, and bringing sexy back.

Slo-Mo

My friend Mark Wilson over at the tech blog Gizmodo has a nice basic primer explaining slow-motion, along with sample clips of various frame rates. Here's tip 1:

1. Use Lots of Light
When you shoot slow mo, you are taking pictures quickly. And when you take pictures quickly, light has less time to create an image in your camera. Shoot in plenty of light, or you will get dark and gloomy slow-mo.

In real terms, that means that super high-speed shooting might not work indoors. On the Casio EX-F1, for instance, you can shoot 300fps indoors, and maybe 600fps if you're near a window, but you can't pull off its 1200fps setting without adding bright light. For the same reason, night shooting may very well be out of the question, depending on your particular rig and just what you expect from the image in terms of detail—artsy stuff may be fine, but don't expect to film a hummingbird under the soft glow of the moon.