Shooting in Mexico

Through most of February into March I traveled to Mexico on a 20 day shoot for the U.S Soccer Federation.   I've been shooting for them for over 2 years now and most of the trips require the same kind of shooting routine.  I'm dealing with mostly natural light in terms of interview set ups and it's really just about placing the subject in a place where they are back lit and then exposing properly for the skin tones.  In post I can tone down the highlights and push up the mids to smooth things out but I've found that when shooting in an uncontrolled environment, back lighting the subject always looks the best.   I brought along my GoPro Hero 3 on this trip and it allowed me some time to experiment/play.  We had members of the Mexican police force escort us to and from games and practice every day so I was able to get some really interesting/dynamic angles by attaching my GoPro to the back of their motorcycles/vehicles (ABOVE LEFT).  I was able to control the camera via the wireless remote from the team bus.  I got some pretty unique shots as the police officers swerved in and out of traffic on the cobblestone streets. 

At training, I was able to get some really cool angles with the GoPro by attaching it to the bottom of one of the extra training poles that the players use to run in and out of during warm ups.  I was able to run along side players with the camera less than an inch off the ground and follow them through drills etc.  I got some really cool shots where I would spin the camera 360 degrees around a player from an extremely low angle (ABOVE LEFT).  I liked this a lot because the low angle and the wide lens really gave the players a "heroic" sort of feel.   Lens flares also add a lot to GoPro footage and after reviewing the footage I actually preferred the angles that were shot directly into the sun as apposed to away from it.  Having such a small, shockproof little camera on a pole really allows you to get unique angles and movements that you couldn't otherwise.  I taped the camera high inside the goal and got some cool perspectives on goalie's diving and balls hitting the back of the net (BELOW LEFT).  It was really interesting cutting together a highlight with a mix of GoPro footage and footage from the Sony ENG cam I was shooting with because after a while I was throwing out more and more ENG footage because it just seems so conventional. The GoPro footage always had more movement in terms of the operating and the shots were all much more dynamic and eye catching.  The super wide angle lens also makes for a distorted perspective of elements that come close to the camera like cleats or the soccer ball in my case.   Having the camera low to the ground on the end of the pole works really well for soccer because that's where all the action is.  Everything is about footwork and ball control and having that angle really puts you right there in the action. 

The camera always feel like an extension of my own body when I'm shooting, but I feel a lot less restricted and confined when it's a GoPro pole rig.  I feel much more free to experiment and just let my instincts take over when operating without having to worry about an expensive heavy cinema camera etc.   However,  I know the image isn't nearly as good and it took a lot of grading to get the GoPro footage to look acceptable.   It obviously just doesn't have a good dynamic range and sometimes the highlights go green a bit which is odd but for the piece I put together I just CC'd the footage to make it look super dirty and contrasty, letting the highlights go nuclear and crushing the blacks way below 0 IRE.  You can see from the stills that I went for a gritty, desaturated look and I think the team liked it.  Working with the GoPro so much really gave me a renewed appreciation for dynamic camera movement and how important hand held operating is to the look and feel of certain pieces.  I think a lot of good cinematography is about finding perspective and angles that are unique and appropriate to the subject matter or the message/feeling that a particular piece or scene is trying to convey.   Mexico was a fun shoot and I learned some pretty valuable lessons from just messing around with my GoPro.  Hopefully I can take these lessons and apply them to the next narrative piece I work on.

Beauty Lighting & A Lesson In Color

Throughout the months of December and January I worked as a DP for a company called Onyx.  I was responsible for shooting numerous video tutorials about various hair and make up styles as well as "get to know me" videos for different stylists and models.  I had done some beauty lighting in the past for a few promos but this was really my first big gig that I knew would want that soft, shadowless beauty look.  I lit mostly with Kino's through unbleached muslin.  I ended up putting the lights as close as I possibly could to the lens so that the source was as frontal as it could be, creating  little to no fall off.   Muslin really helps spread the light and give it that even, sourceless look.

One of the biggest challenges on this shoot was managing the location.  We shot in a bathroom that was pretty much a hall of mirrors.  It seemed like everywhere we put a camera or a lighting fixture, it could be seen in the reflection of a reflection of a reflection somewhere.  What really ended up saving us was that the tile in the bathroom was almost exactly the same color as unbleached muslin so we were able to cover some of the mirrors that were not in frame with that in order to eliminate some of the double reflections.  The reflections in the mirrors that we kept uncovered really added some depth to the frame. (ABOVE)  The A cam was a 5D MKII which I kept mostly at a 2.8-4.0 split.  The shallow depth of field really helped hide the fact that some of the background reflection was not actually tile, but unbleached muslin.  The B-cam, used for close ups was a Sony EX1.  We used an SFX1 filter on this cam to help soften the EX's sharper image and we were almost always on the tight end of the lens to help match the shallow depth of field of the 5D.  I also tweaked the picture profile settings to lift the blacks and create more of a low con image in camera.  It's a bit tough to match the two cameras as they have different sensors, lens characteristics etc. but we did the best we could in camera and the rest was tweaked in post.  Moving forward we will be shooting on two of the same cameras but because of the budget and last minute nature of this gig, I pooled the resources I had available and we made it work with two different cameras.

I learned a pretty big lesson on this shoot involving color.  We were shooting in the home of one of the stylists and we lit the scene very much the same way we had been lighting every other video but for some reason I wasn't liking the image.  I kept looking at it and wondering what was wrong.  It was lit well, no shadows, proper exposure, shallow depth of field etc.  I put the thought out of my mind and continued on to the next set up.  The next set up involved exactly the same actors doing basically the same action, but just in a different setting.  I lit it the same way and when we were ready to roll I looked at the image and thought, this looks great.  I stopped for a second to think about why this image looked so much better than the last.   I realized that the difference was in the color palette/tone.  The first set up had a beautiful stone fireplace with a wood mantel in the background.  The talent was African American women wearing jeans and a shirt of a darker tone.  It seems so obvious now what the problem was but at the time I didn't realize it.  I just saw a beautiful stone fireplace and wood mantel with great texture and thought, that will be a perfect backdrop.  There was no color contrast in the image at all.  Although the textures were great, everything in the frame was dark brown or black. The colors in the frame also did not portray the right message. We were trying to go for a bright, upbeat, happy tone with these pieces and none of the colors were reflecting that tone.  Although it was lit properly and exposed correctly, the colors in the frame were just all of varying darker tones.  The image still looked good, but it was that subtle difference in color tone/pallet that was the reason why I wasn't liking it as much as the second set up.   The second set up had a white background with some bright green vegetation that could be seen through some open windows in the background and the talent was wearing a bright pink shirt. (ABOVE LEFT)  It seems so obvious now but all those colors created a much more upbeat, bright feeling frame than the previous.  The white background also created separation through color contrast as the talent had a darker skin tone.   A subtle difference in wardrobe choice or set decoration can make a huge difference in the quality of your overall image.  The color of each item in the frame and it's relationship to the color of other items can be the difference between something that looks good, and something that looks great.  I'm really glad I was able to take this simple but immensely important  lesson away from this job.  I will take this with me and remember it always as I continue on my journey as a DP in this industry.   

Documentary: "Royalty Etc"

A few months ago I traveled to Minneapolis to start DPing a documentary called Royalty Etc.  The documentary follows the lives of two guys (Ty and Jon) as they grow up around the music scene in Minneapolis and eventually form a record label known as Royalty Etc.  There is a pretty amazing series of events that leads to the eventual formation of the label, which makes this story a great one to document.  It is still early in terms of shooting and the whole story has yet to unfold but I'm excited to see what comes next.   I'm shooting on an Sony EX3, which I like better than it's predecessor, the EX1 that I shot my first two doc. features on.  The image quality is the same but the changes that were made ergonomically really help.   I'm a fan of the eye piece/flip LCD and the built in "shoulder mount" that were added.   The shooting I have done so far has consisted of a bunch of sit down interviews as well as various b-roll around Minneapolis.  For exterior interviews I used as much of the fall foliage as I could as it looked great as a backdrop.  The story has a loose and relaxed feel so I opted to not lock the camera off completely for interviews.  I paned and tilted the camera slightly while riding the zoom a bit as if I was constantly searching for a frame.  I liked this look for talking heads, it's something I've never done before and I think it makes them feel a lot less rigid.

It was cloudy most of the time while shooting exterior interviews which was a negative and a positive in terms of image quality.  It was good as I didn't have to worry about trying to control highlights while maintaining proper exposure on the faces but at the same time the image always looks a bit flat when there is no sun.  I would rather have a slightly flatter image than an image with uncontrolled highlights so in the end I was happy with the way the exterior interview footage came out.  For interiors I had (2) 2' 4 bank kinos to work with.  It was nice to a have a fixture with both daylight/tungsten capabilities as I was in a lot of situations where I was dealing with existing daylight spill from windows etc.  One of my favorite set ups was an interview we shot in a basement (ABOVE LEFT).  The subject matter was pretty dark so I wanted the lighting to reflect this for that particular interview.  There was a bit of daylight spill coming in through a basement window in the background which looked nice but it was too much so I stopped down a bit and then keyed pretty sidey for a more contrasty look. I think this lighting set up really draws your eye into the subject's face without drawing attention to anything else in the background.   I mixed up the key angle and intensity for other interviews depending on how I wanted them to feel.  It's been a great shooting experience so far and I'm looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds as we continue to put the pieces together. 

Shooting In Japan

 I recently returned from a 30 day shoot in Japan for the U.S. Soccer Federation.   I have worked as a freelancer for them for a few years now and it has been a great opportunity to travel and shoot in places all over the world.   I shoot training session/games and interviews with players/coaches and any excursions the team may go on during off days.   On this trip I shot at the Hiroshima Memorial, the U.S Ambassador's residence and the Tsunami disaster zone in Sendai.   These were pretty eye opening experiences and it was great to be able to capture the teams reaction as they visited each site.  It's interesting to go back to the world of ENG style shooting when I'm with the U.S Soccer Federation as so much of what I normally shoot and work on in LA is with cinema camera systems.  I shoot on the Panasonic HPX250, which is cool because I can see how far Panasonic has come with this line as the very first HD camera I used back in 2004 was the HVX200.  They have way more inputs/outputs now, including HDMI and firewire 400 which I use for live capture.  It also has a waveform monitor built in and it's a lot easier/quicker to shoot variable frame rates.  The HPX250 also shoots in AVCINTRA which is a relatively new codec for Panasonic and it's been fun figuring out that post workflow.  

The other thing that's interesting about returning to the world of ENG style shooting is having to deal with harsh lighting conditions with no grip/electric equipment to shape/control light.  It's always important to chose the best location to place your subject based on the direction of the sun, but it makes it even more important when you have no way to control it or add any additional sources.  I found that the best thing to do for shooting interviews in harsh sunlight during mid day is to place the subject so that the sun is at their back, creating a hard edge on their shoulders and hair.  This way the sun is not creating harsh shadows under the eyes and the subject is not squinting into the sun during the course of the interview.  It's tough to control highlights with these cameras but I found that if you have to, you can let the back edge light blow out a bit in order to get proper exposure on the face and then with a little color correction you can bring the highlights down and push the mids up a bit.  This actually softens or "smooths" out the image and I found that it looks good when shooting women.  It definitely takes away some contrast when you do this, but if you bring the blacks down a bit after it helps add more.  Another challenge was that because in Japan the frequency of electric current is 50 hertz as opposed to 60 hertz like in the U.S, I could not shoot at a 1/60th shutter or else the lights would flicker really bad.  I chose to shoot at 1/100th as that was the best option that would put the shutter in sync with the 50 hrtz frequency.  It was a little annoying because then I needed to push the gain to compensate for the light loss with a sharper shutter but better that than giant strobing lines across the frame.  

Overall it was a solid trip and an exciting one as the team took home the gold medal.  It was fun to be a part of that and to be able to document their journey from beginning to end.







 

Short: "Snag"

Recently I shot a short called "Snag." It was a 4 day shoot that took place primarily in Hermosa Beach.  We shot on EPIC, which was really nice, especially after coming off a feature shot on 5D.  It was amazing to look at the waveform and not see it completely stretched on every shot.  I got so used to how the waveform looked when shooting with a 5D that I forgot what it was like to shoot with a camera that has some real dynamic range.  I remember one shot where we were shooting 3 subjects who were back lit by the setting sun with the ocean way off in the distance.  I looked at the image and thought there was no way we were going to retain the detail in the sky/water while still getting proper exposure on the faces.  All we brought in was an 8x8 ultra bounce and we were able to get good exposure on the faces while still retaining detail in the water/sky.  I looked at the waveform and there was nothing clipping at all, which was amazing.  There was no way that would have happened on a DSLR.  One of the main shooting locations was a laundry mat in Hermosa (ABOVE LEFT).  The scenes in the laundry mat had a ton of characters involved and blocking was heavy.  Lighting was a bit of a challenge as the entire place was lit with florescents that we were unable to switch out due to time constraints so we shut them off completely.  Although, there was a decent amount of natural daylight coming in on one side as it was completely glass.  This helped bring up the ambient level at least on one side.  For the few wide shots we had, we pretty much lined the opposing side of the laundry mat with Kinos to bring up the fill side and for tighter shots we tented various sections of the windows to create contrast and shape/control the natural light coming in while supplementing with Kinos for back-lights and fill.

One of the shooting locations that I thought came out really well was an awesome top floor apartment building overlooking the ocean.  On the scout I was really concerned about the high contrast and being able to retain the detail of the ocean out the windows while getting enough exposure on the talent inside.  We ended up gelling the windows with ND9 and then keying with kinos through light grid.  Everything looked great, you could see the beach and the ocean through the windows and we had nice exposure on the talent as well.  This was another scene I was really glad we had the EPIC for as its dynamic range really helped out.  We also shot a really cool bike chase scene from the back of a van and were able to catch some great sunset shots down at the beach.  Overall it was an ambitious shoot with a tough shooting schedule but it felt good that my regular crew was cool enough to come on board and make this happen with me.  As always, I'm excited for the next one.

Feature: "15 North"

Through the month of April into May I shot a feature called "A Way Around." The last feature I shot was a documentary, so I was pretty excited at the opportunity to once again return to the world of long form narrative. "A way Around" is a road trip movie that chronicles two characters as they travel from LA to Salt Lake City, Utah. The Cannon 5D, being the workhorse of the low budget indie wold, was the directors camera of choice and there was very little wiggle room in the budget for me to suggest otherwise.  I have had mixed feeling about DSLRs from the beginning of their rise around 2009 but I figured this was a good project for me to finally take the plunge and see what the 5D was capable (and not capable) of doing. My friend and fellow D.P Matt Roe had shot a feature previously on the 5D and was a solid resource as I prepped for this one.  I had shot small pieces on DSLRs in the past and was familiar with the 5D but it was still a bit nerve racking to dive right into shooting a feature on one. I knew the limited dynamic range would be one of the biggest issues I would be dealing with so choosing the right picture profile was really important. The good thing about jumping into the world of DSLRs late is that there are a TON of articles/screen tests/comparisons online that millions of other film makers have posted in regards to DSLR film techniques.  Matt had suggested using "Marvels" profile as that was what he used on his 5D feature. I looked at technicolor's profiles as well as "Flaat"and a few others but settled with "Marvels" as it seemed to be a good happy medium. Matt had warned me and I had also read to stay away from overly flat profiles because banding can occur when stretching the waveform while coloring, resulting in loss of information.  "Marvels" lifted the black values slightly without creating an overly flat image. I also used "highlight tone priority" on wide day exterior shots and select shots that I could not control all of the highlights properly. This setting helped retain more information in the highlights without significantly altering the mid tones. It worked well, but I used it sparingly in case it was degrading the image quality at some level.

I knew the other big issue with shooting 5D would be focus. Due to budget constraints, I had very little say as to lens choices and I knew it would be a disaster to pull focus on still lenses no matter what, but it would be even more of a disaster if we didn't choose stops wisely. Again, I spoke with Matt and did some research online and decided that whenever possible, I wouldn't open up the aperture wider than a 4.0.  I also hate the nauseatingly shallow depth of field that has become the trademark of so many indie DSLR shoots. I feel like depth of field is an artistic choice that can help tell the story or draw your attention to different aspects of a frame in varying ways. It seems like so many people out there just think the shallower the better and that seems like such a closed minded way of thinking about it. What's the point of having amazing locations if everything in that location is soft? You can't really create a great composition if the only element in focus is the talent (or 2 inches of the talent at times). AC Mark Rosen was up for the challenge of 1sting on this show, and he did an amazing job.  The B camera almost always wore the 24-105 zoom which we used mainly at the 50 and 85mm focal lengths to match A camera for dueling OTS's.   We shot all the day exteriors around a 4.0-5.6 but it proved to be quite a challenge to light night interiors and even day interiors to a 4.0 with the limited lighting/grip package we had. There were times where we were forced to shoot at a 2.8 due to the complexity of a shot or just the sheer amount of area that would be seen in a wide. I did however notice that with shot compositions that did not include a lot of depth (like two people sitting in bed 6" away from a wall) it made a huge difference to open up to a 2.8 rather than to stay at a 4.0.  Many people had said it was okay to push ISO on the 5D but I had seen some footage shot at ISO 800 and it didn't look so great. I never raised the ISO over 640 on this show.

We used our 1 ton lighting/grip package on "A Way Around".  On the lighting side, it basically included a bunch of Fresnels up to 2k, a few parcans, Lekos and some assorted Kinos. We really pulled off a pretty good looking film with an insanely small amount of lighting/grip gear. Jeff Marlowe came on board as gaffer on the show and he did a great job. We were really understaffed and "undergeared" and to pull off some of the shots that we did was pretty awesome. One of the biggest challenges of this feature was that director Aaron Fradkin wanted to double cover every scene due to the improvisational nature of the script. This made it extremely difficult to light as we had to light both sides of a conversation at the same time, meaning that almost no fixtures could be placed on the ground unless they were far enough away from the talent so that neither camera would pick them up. When we had the space, we keyed with a 2k Fresnel through 6x6 light grid so that the key could spread and reach both subjects at the same time. The problem was, it could not be wrapped properly on both subjects at the same time and it was difficult to place a fill light because it would be seen by one camera or the other. We almost always flew a back light way out high on a menace arm as to not be seen by either camera. The back light situation was a bit tough as well because it may look great on one subject from one direction, but it would spill unpleasantly onto the other subject in the opposite direction. We solved this by making the back lights a bit more toppy than I usually make them, in order to avoid spill on opposing subjects. In some cases we were forced to live with not so perfect lighting on both subjects but it was more important to Aaron to have double coverage for editing than to have lighting perfect so it was a sacrifice Jeff and I had to make. I was most proud of a night interior bar set up in which we had to light 5 people that were being double covered from opposing angles (An early version of the setup is ABOVE LEFT).  When finished, we ended up keying with a 44 kino on a menace arm swung way out high over the bar and filled with another low 44 kino under the bar. We also had (2) tweenies on baby off set arms on dimmers for backlights that played as flickering bar TV's. We punched a parcan into the ceiling in the background to raise the ambiance behind the subjects and then we had another tweenie raking across a bunch of glass bottles in the foreground. We did a lot of color temp mixing on each of the fixtures and it looked awesome. I still don't know how we were able to frame out the fixtures for double coverage but somehow we did and it looked pretty good.

          Overall I was happy with the result and I think "A Way Around" has a lot of potential. I'm curious to see how it's shaping up in the edit. We really pulled off something amazing. The locations were gorgeous and it was a small but awesome crew who I plan on working with more and more in the future. I learned a lot in the 18+ days of shooting and I would say my first true dive into DSLR shooting was a success. I came to the conclusion that the 5D is a great low budget option, it just takes a lot of hard work to bring everything within the constraints of it's limited dynamic range. If you have the right tools and the right amount of time to do this, you can make a 5D image look pretty similar to an image from one of the big guns.

Music Video: Jason Mraz "I Won't Give Up

___In January, I gaffed a music video for Jason Mraz called, "I wont Give Up." I worked closely once again with Director/D.P Matt Roe (http://matroe.com/). We have worked together on numerous projects in the past but the stakes were raised a bit on this one as it was our first collaboration under the direction of Mark Pellington (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0671210/). Mark has directed some amazing projects in the past and I was excited for the chance to finally work with him. We scouted two main locations that would be used for both performance and "story" takes. I use the term "story" loosely because the concept for the video doesn't involve a true narrative element, but rather a combination of powerful images for the viewer to interpret/see/digest/feel. I like this concept a lot because it allows people to watch the video and then develop their own individual interpretation of it based on how the images make them feel.

The first location was a very old house and it's surrounding property. I could tell on the scout that it had a ton of cinematic potential. It featured rusty old furniture, broken down cars, overgrown trees and bushes that twisted into tunnel like semi circles. I knew the location had a ton of history and I felt like I was walking around on egg shells the whole time because I didn't want to disturb any memories that had been created and preserved there for so long. I think I whispered the entire time for that same reason. It's hard to pin point exactly how it made you feel to walk around there, but for me I think it was mostly a feeling of wonder. I wondered about who lived there and the experiences they had. I wondered what their story was. As soon as I saw the people who had been cast and the faces that would be placed in that environment I knew it was going to make for some powerful images. Each face had so such character. I wondered about the people that were cast the same way I wondered about the house and the property.

The shots we got in that location looked amazing and were perfect for the song in my opinion. To me the song is about perseverance. It's about staying strong and fighting for what/who you want or believe in no matter what. I think all of the faces were perfect because you look at them and you can tell that they have been through a lot. You immediately connect the themes of the song to those faces and you start to imagine a story for each of them. They have all undoubtedly been through a lot and they "didn't give up." They are still here and "it was worth it." I also liked the way the little boy and the baby were incorporated into the cut because they bring a sense of time and depth to the piece. It's an amazing contrast to go from the boy's innocent/unsure and exploitative look to the confident/proud weathered look of the older people.


___The second location was a giant rock quarry where we focused on more people/faces and the performance. I think this location worked well because the towering piles of loose gravel rocks and dusty atmosphere reinforced the themes of hard work/persistence and staying strong. One image that made the cut and really sticks out for me in this location is the wide shot of a policemen on top of a gravel pile looking down at a slightly wrinkled American flag. We used an Ageeba (powerful smoke machine) to create billows of smoke that curled up and over the rock piles. (ABOVE LEFT) We also used it in the first location in the early morning and it looked amazing because it gave shape to the rays of sun that were spilling in through the tree branches. (ABOVE RIGHT) We shot the performance takes at the rock quarry with a ton of smoke at sunset which gave the smoke an orange/pink hue that was further enhanced in the color grade.

I learned a lot on this shoot, not from a technical standpoint but more from an emotional one. The fact that I have written this entire post without mentioning a single technical aspect of the shoot on either the camera or lighting/grip side is shocking. Watching Mark and Matt work really opened my eyes to a different kind of shooting. Both of those guys shoot heavily based on instinct and emotion and they like to shoot what feels right immediately. This was a shooting environment unlike any I have ever experienced and although overwhelming at first, it really was amazing. Mark is all about connecting with the actors to get the performances he needs. There were even some takes where he would be operating the camera with one hand while holding the actors hand with the other. That's pretty amazing. Mark doesn't really like lighting and grip equipment (I'm assuming because he feels limited and confined by it) and it definitely clashes with his shooting style. I learned on this shoot that sometimes it's less about making every shot aesthetically pleasing and more about capturing the right emotion. There is definitely a delicate balance there. Matt shared with me a piece of advice Mark gave him once a while back which was, "Shoot more with your heart and less with your head." I'll be remembering that from now on.