Director of Photography: Short Film- Blackstone (Day 2)

___The second day of production took place at a private residence that we used for a total of 5 different locations in the film. In the interior of the house, we used a bedroom and a living room (more affectionately coined the "murder room") and the exteriors took place in the front yard, a storage shed and a small alleyway at the side of the house.

The scene I was most proud of on Day 2 was the "murder room" (ABOVE). When we did the original location scout, I saw that the room had a fireplace and immediately wanted to incorporate that into the scene. I knew that it would be a great motivation to use some creative lighting techniques. One of the main goals I had with this production from a lighting standpoint was to mix color temperatures. I had done very little of this in prior projects and it was something that I really wanted to explore. In the scene, a mother and father are tied back to back on the ground by numerous "assailants" who circle them ominously before going in for the kill. We shot the scene day for night so all the windows and doors were tented to eliminate any sunlight spill. We left a small portion of a window uncovered in order to key with a 1.2 HMI through 216 diffusion from outside the house. We gelled this with 1/2 CTB so that it would play as moonlight. We added an additional 1K Open Face with full CTB as well to bring out some more detail in the book cases. Then we hid a flicker box with a 650w fresnel gelled with 1/2 CTO on the ground behind the two subjects. This was our motivating fire light. It provided a nice flickering hard edge. Our last light added was a pepper shooting up from the floor also gelled with 1/2 CTO to fill in the mother's face with a soft orange glow that was also motivated from the fire.

The set dressing was amazing and the Christmas lights added a nice touch to the background elements. Overall, the scene came out almost exactly the way I had envisioned it in my head, which is great. I loved the way the blue moonlight looked mixed with an orange flickering edge as well as a soft orange fill. We ended up having to open up all the way to 1.3 on an 80mm lens at the end of the scene in order to save time. I was extremely lucky to have 1st A.C Austin Ahlborg there pulling focus as the depth of field was insanely shallow and he nailed it all the way. Camera Operator Garret Williams also did great work as well as Gaffer Stephen Chang who quickly became the other half of my brain on set.



Director George Tunis commanded the whole operation and did a great job despite the tremendous amount of pressure that must have been on him to complete a 15 page short with "name talent" in 2 days. Producers Eric Goldrich, Ian Wallace and Adam Kuyt also worked extremely hard getting everything organized. I don't think Eric slept for the entire week prior to shooting. 1st A.D Jon Melick and 2nd A.D Brianne Richards did a great job keeping us as close to on schedule as humanly possible. Everyone on the crew was amazing and there are too many names to mention but as I said before, I was extremely lucky to be able to work with everyone and hopefully "Blackstone" is just the beginning of our collaboration together.

Director of Photography: Short Film- Blackstone (Day 1)

____I recently shot a short film entitled, "Blackstone" starring JK Simmons (Spiderman, Juno, The Closer) and Sasha Grey (Entourage, The Girlfriend Experience). We shot on the RED MX with Zeiss superspeed primes. The budget was around $30,000 so we were able to get a great camera package, lighting/grip package and hire a great crew. It has been a long time since I have had the luxury of working on a project in which I was given both an amazing camera and lighting/grip team to work along side of. I was especially proud of the amount of pre-production that went into this project. There is a great feeling of confidence when you can walk onto set knowing that you are as prepared as you possibly can be for the whirlwind of activity and "organized chaos" that is about to consume your life for the remainder of the production.

I met with director George Tunis numerous times to discuss overall visual style and to create overheads of every scene that outlined the blocking as well as the coverage/camera position. I was also able to do a walk through of each location with Gaffer Stephen Chang and Key Grip Jeff Marlowe to discuss exactly where/what kind of lights would be needed for each scene. Stephen and I then sat down together and added these specific fixtures to the overheads so they could be handed out to the rest of the grip team. This way while we were shooting in one location, another location could be prepped at the same time. Without the overheads this would not have been possible. I live and die by those on set, they are more important to me than the shot list or script.

One of the setups I was most proud of on Day 1 was a scene in which J.K Simmon's character confronts Raven (Sasha Grey) in a small "interrogation room." (TOP RIGHT) One of the concerns I had early on about numerous locations in the film were the abundance of WHITE WALLS. I hate white walls. In order to break up the walls, Stephen and I discussed creating a subtle striped pattern on them by shooting a 1k through a single net that was taped off with black gaff. Mixing color temperatures also helped break up the walls as well. We discussed creating a sodium vapor look as if a street light were shining into the room through a barred window. We also had a skirted Kino mounted to the ceiling that provided a top-light as well as a key as it bounced off the silver table in between the actors. We gave Raven an edge light using a 650w fresnel that was gelled with the same color combination as the 1k. We then gave J.K an edge light from another Kino to help keep him and his black suit from blending into the surrounding darkness.

Gaffer: Short Film- Dogs of War

___At the beginning of March I worked as a gaffer on a short called "Dogs of War." It was about a motorcycle gang and it featured some pretty cool locations. Day 1 we were at a night exterior location downtown near some abandoned railroad tracks. The location featured some cool brick buildings with some nice texture and it was surprisingly well lit with practicals. We used a 1.2 hmi through a full sick as a back light for the 3 main characters that walk down this back Ally. As they settle and stop to converse, there key comes from a diva light that I rigged to an 8 foot chain link fence. We also had a 1x1 LED panel that was held and moved with the subjects as they walked to provide a constant fill. There was also a very strong practical that was reading very warm in comparison to the lights we brought in, which actually made for an interesting color temp combination.

Another location that was really great was a metal scrap yard in the middle of nowhere. I don't even remember where it was, but it was cool. The main lighting set up there was in an "abandoned gang meeting house." It was basically a half finished small room with the wall frames exposed on the inside. It featured a few dirty windows which we half boarded up. These provided a great way to bring in a hard sunlight source. We punched 2 1.2HMIs with wide lenses straight in through both windows. This back lit 3 subjects and served as a key for the 4th that was tied to a chair in the center of the room. We also had a 400w joker that I rigged to the ceiling to provide a hard back light for the actor sitting in the chair. There was another "skinny man" Kino that we hid to provide more overall ambient light. There was one other "worklight" tungsten practical that would play as part of the scene. With a little bit of smoke added, the beams from the HMI's really popped and gave the scene a pretty cool look.

Camera Operator: U.S. Soccer Federation- Guatemala City, Guatemala

Through the end of March and into the first week in April I worked on an 18 day shoot as a camera operator at the U20MNT World Cup Qualifying Tournament in Guatemala. I was responsible for creating an episodic series entitled "20 Under 20" that followed the team as it prepared for and played in the tournament. The series relied heavily on interviews with the coaching staff. These were simple talking head setups that I lit with a small tungsten fresnel Arri Kit and a Rifa light. I used the Rifa as a key and wrapped it a bit frontal to spill onto the fill side. Then I used a 300w fresnel as an edge light opposite key side and one more 300w fresnel to put a slash on the background curtain. The rest of the footage consisted of b-roll from training, recovery sessions, meetings, video analysis and anything else the team may have done together while on the road.