Along with several friends, two Canon 7D cameras were used by Derick to create the proposal—one on the ground, one from a hotel room looking out across the scene—with the ground camera using a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Dragon Stop Motion was used to superimpose the light writing image over the live view from the ground camera, with the video shown a few days later to the happy Emily. [Derick and Emily proposal via Neatorama]
The most common question so far about the proposal video is “How did you do it?” The technique is most commonly known as ‘light writing.’ A light source is moved (in this case, a 3 million candlepower spotlight) while the shutter of a DSLR camera is left open, creating a streak of light in the final exposure.Here’s the story of this particular video.
I knew I wanted to find a very special way to propose to a very special woman. I liked the look of light writing, but I wanted to do something on a much larger scale. To my knowledge, a light writing of this size had never been done before. I had the idea of placing a camera at the top of a tall building and mapping out the words “Emily, will you marry me?” over part of the city. I used Google Earth to check out the views from several large buildings in downtown Raleigh, N.C.
Since none of the letters could fall on areas that were inaccessible by foot, the requirements for the vantage point were very specific. I finally found the perfect spot - the top of the Clarion hotel. Luckily, the Clarion has a restaurant that is open to the public on the top floor. I went up one afternoon and snapped some pics for reference.
On Wednesday night, Dec. 16th, I rented a room on the 10th floor to do some test exposures. I set the camera up and walked around outside with a spotlight. The test helped me narrow down the exact camera settings I wanted to use for the final exposure.
Thursday.
I booked the room I would use for the final exposures, room 1812. Jamie Ripple, Matt Cooper, and Carl Miller showed up around 7:30. We ordered some pizza and ate while I explained the details of the project. I set up the camera, tripod, computer, laser, and other equipment. We went outside and Erik Burckart joined us to do a final test before we began. Jamie stayed in the hotel room to co-ordinate. With the camera hooked up to the computer, we could see the text I created in photoshop overlaid on top of the area we were shooting. Jamie could then reference the screen point the laser at each corner of the letters. We started with the ‘M’ in ‘Me’. It was slow going at first. On a flat surface, a capital ‘M’ has 5 points to mark with the laser; but because this ‘M’ intersected a brick wall in several places, there were 10 points we had to mark. For points on pavement and brick we used sidewalk chalk, for points on dirt or grass we used small sports cones. Our basic procedure would be to mark each letter of a word, then shoot a letter or two, then go back up to the room to review. Shooting entailed me walking from point to point with the spotlight pointed at the ground while Jamie took consecutive 10-second exposures. The first night we got “Emily, Marry, and Me?” done, but I deemed the first attempt at ‘Emily’ unsatisfactory. I had pointed the spotlight directly at the camera for most of the exposures, causing severe lens flares which made the letters hard to read. With only about an hour of darkness left, we had yet to do the ‘will you.’ Having only rented the room for one night, we decided to try the last two words by hand, without marking them first. At this point I was beginning to feel that the whole thing might not work. We went up to the room to review what we had shot so far and I was very dissatisfied with the “Emily, will you.” By this point I decided that we had put way too much time and effort into this to call it finished as it was. I booked the room again for the next night, then went to work.
Friday.
I ordered pizza again for myself, Jamie, and Justin Pearce. Jamie resumed his role as co-ordinator and Justin was my ground cameraman, co-marker, and traffic scout. Having learned a lot from the previous night we marked and shot letters in record time more quickly, but we had to deal with near-freezing rain all night. We marked and shot the ‘Y’, then the ‘OU’, then the “WILL” in reverse order, then finally each letter of “Emily” individually. We finished shooting the last letter just as the sun was starting to come up.
Saturday.
I caught a few hours of sleep on Saturday morning, packed up the gear in the hotel room, checked out, and went to pick up the ring at Diamonds Direct.
Sunday-Tuesday.
Edited.
Wednesday.
Edited. Exported final video. Emily and I had the day off so we decided to have a movie date and watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We kind of got bored with it about 3/4th of the way through and decided to watch it later. I had my MacBook Pro with me and I asked her if she wanted to see something I had been working on. I showed her the video, and when the words “Emily, will you marry me?” came up at the end I was down on one knee with the ring in hand.
(I seem to recall her answer being yes; but you’d have to ask her to confirm)
The Technical nitty gritty:
Shooting:
Both the exposure from the hotel and the video from the ground were shot with Canon 7Ds. The ground camera had a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens, a must for shooting in such low light conditions. I used Dragon Stop Motion to overlay the image of the text over the live view from the camera. I used the Canon EOS Utility for remote shooting.
Putting it together:
Since the letters were shot as a series of 10 second exposures, I had the option of either presenting them sequentially, as a time lapse:
Or, since light is additive, I could present them with each exposure layered on top of the others:
Here’s a view of the I from the ground. The Y on the church. Part of an M.
A very special thanks to Jamie Ripple, Carl Miller, Matt Cooper, Justin Pearce, and Erik Burkart for their help with logistics and shooting; Kevin Wild at Drawbridge Media for use of his Camera; The helpful folks at Southeastern Camera; and last but not least: Charles, Nick, Adam, Andy, Roger and the rest of my brain trust at Centerline.
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