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.