Commercial: Virgin Airlines

I recently shot a spec commercial that was picked up by Virgin Airlines.   It was shot on RED EPIC with super speed MKII lenses.  I was excited about shooting this piece because it involved shooting inside an airplane.  I knew the biggest challenge would be space constraints as the plane interior that we shot in was to scale.   I watched a bunch of movies that had scenes that took place inside an airplane to gather some lighting ideas.   One challenge with our particular plane was that due to time constraints we could not remove the roof, which was only about 6" above the talent's heads.   I had some experience working with VHO PRO LED LiteRibbon before and I loved how low profile they were while still having a fairly strong output.   I ran two strips of LiteRibbon down the length of the isle's ceiling, one on each side so that it created an even top light all the way through.   You can dial in the brightness as well as the Kelvin on the LiteRibbon so it's very controllable.

We gelled the windows on both sides of the plane with 216 and punched 1.2 HMI's through both sides.  This helped raise the ambience inside the plane and mixed with the top light from the LiteRibbon so that the source felt more even rather than all the light originating from above.   This filled in the talent's eyes/faces nicely.   The HMI's also created a nice back/edge light for all the passengers.  I shot around a F2.0 with the super speeds which I've found is a great stop on those lenses.   Once you start opening wider than that the image becomes too soft in my opinion.  At a F2.0, it just starts to feel a bit softer and milk slightly as opposed to being closed down more.  I think an F2.0 is a nice happy medium for super speeds, not too soft/milky but just a touch.  The highlights also bloom nicely which looked great on the 216 gels over the windows.   It was also nice that the HMI's played a bit cooler than the existing practicals in the plane as it created depth with a variance in color temperature.  Setting the EPIC at 5600 white balance, I dialed the Lite Ribbon in to a bit warmer than 5600k so that the faces read slightly warm but closer to white while the background elements that were lit from existing practicals read warmer on camera.

A 4' slider ended up working out great to add some movement to shots without being too cumbersome due to space constraints.  One of my favorite shots in the piece is the opening shot that slides forward down the isle, it's on a wide lens (18mm) and has a lot of depth, symmetry and interesting lines with the curvature of the airplane (TOP LEFT)  We did have to remove some of the seating on one side in order to get slider shots of passengers etc.   Overall I think the spot turned out great, it was exciting that Virgin liked it enough to pick it up, which rarely happens with specs.   I'm glad I chose to go with the LiteRibbon, really amazing tool that I will definitely be using again.

Commercial: DJI Phantom

Recently I worked as a camera operator on a commercial for the company DJI.  The purpose of the commercial was to showcase the unique angles and perspectives the DJI Phantom Drone can capture.  We shot on 2 RED EPICs from the ground while 7 Phantom Drones covered the action from the air. My main focus as an operator from the ground was to capture both the motocross rider and the Drone in the same frame as much as possible.  This was to connects the "product" to the action throughout as well as showcase the drones ability to keep up with the subject.

Before shooting the piece myself and fellow DP Matt Roe researched various motocross videos to see what angles would be most dynamic and what angles to avoid.  Some of the footage that looked the best was shot on wide angle lenses very close to the action.  This proved to be difficult to get while remaining safe, but I think we shot some really amazing footage.  I was positioned on a slider most of the day, and I often shot on a wide lens right from the dirt.  Being this close to the ground helped make the slider move read because the dirt served as a nice foreground element.  A key concept that was introduced on set by Matt while shooting was, "In order to shoot motocross well, don't shoot motocross."  In short, compose interesting and unique frames without focusing on the rider, and then let the rider enter these frames and become part of them.  Shooting with that concept in mind really helped the piece as a whole.

We also shot an interview with the rider in order to get his perspective on the drones ability to follow the action.  We used an 800w joker and some neg fill for the interview.  In order to bring the most out of the skies we made sure to dial in the polas as much as possible.  It was a long day of scrambling through the dirt and hoping on and off gators with heavy gear but watching the finished product made it all worth it.  I think the music and the sound design helped further differentiate the piece from other motocross videos.  Director/Editor Don Broida did an amazing job putting this one together.  If flows well and really pushes the product in a way that doesn't feel forced while keeping the piece exciting and up beat.

Music Video: Floodgates

I recently DP'd a music video for a song called "Floodgates" by the artist Bakes.  The concept, developed by director Jason Perlman, involved a narrative in which a deranged doctor kills 3 young women and subsequently combines pieces of their bodies to reconstruct a frankenstein like creature.  Most of the video is revealed to the audience through VHS tapes played back on the TV sets of the victim's parents.  We put the pieces of the story together alongside them as they witness the horrific acts of "the doctor" for the first time.  We shot the majority of the video on RED EPIC with  zeiss superspeed primes.  One of my favorite shots was of a father of one of the victims watching a VHS tape play back on his TV. (LEFT)  The room that we shot in had a bathroom door with this really amazing patterned glass.  I knew when I saw it that we had to incorporate that into our frame.  We ended up positioning the father very close to the TV set so that his key would actually come from the blue light emitted from the television.  We then put a 4x4 kino with tungsten bulbs just out of frame punching hard through the patterned glass and shot the subject profile with this illuminated glass in the background.   The kino was a perfect fixture to fill the glass completely and it really created an awesome background texture.  We also clamped a tweenie to the top of the glass door to create a hard rim/edge light around the subject which helped create some separation.  I balanced at 3200K so that the background lights would read white in contrast to the blue key coming from the TV screen.

For the performance shots, we rigged 19 degree lekos on speed rail high above the set and hit the talent hard from a distance.   We also hung 4 foot industrial fluorescent fixtures vertically from the ceiling and put them on variac dimmers in order to create a green fluorescent flicker effect.  We bounced some fresnels into moving mylar gels in order to make the light dance on the background walls for a kind of water effect.    For the tight performance shots we were on a jib and I could use the vertical flickering fluorescent as a nice foreground element to come off of.  (ABOVE LEFT)  We also created an awesome "operating room" set complete with torture tools/defibrillator etc. (BELOW LEFT)  The set looked so amazing I tried to shoot it as wide as possible looking straight down from the jib.  I top lit everything here with spotted fresnels to create patches of light on certain elements.  I didn't want to use broader sources in fear of washing out the small space.

There were other POV shots and cut ins that were shot later that really added to the story as well.  Looking back on the shoot and watching the final product now really puts into perspective how complex of concept this really was.  There are so many different elements/locations and characters that you really have to focus in order to follow the story that is woven throughout.  It all comes full circle in the end and it is really interesting to be there with the parents of the victims as they realize what has happened to their children.  The edit was really well cut and it keeps the viewer on his toes throughout the piece.  Jason Perlman is meticulous as always and as with many of our past collaborations I'm pleased with the result.

ESPN Piece: "Redefining Strength"

I was recently hired by ESPN to shoot a piece for SportsCenter called "Redefining Strength."  The piece focused on Jon Feinman, who founded a program called Innercity Weightlifting.  The program was designed to help guys get off the streets and present them with a positive opportunity to potentially turn their lives around.  Feinman's gym gives men of the streets hope that there may be a way out. "Redefining Weight" was an 8 day shoot with only a few days of prep.  We rented both the camera and the lighting/grip packages from Rule/Boston Camera in the city.   I used to intern there when I graduated college so it was really awesome to return and see some of the same people that I used to work with.  In terms of the shooting locations, I was able to see a few of them prior to rolling but because of the run and gun nature of this doc style shoot, most of the locations were still TBD.  I knew the piece would consist of interviews with Jon and a few of the key members of the gym as well as B-roll of the city and the gang terretories surrounding the complex.   Obviously a lot of our shooting time took place in the gym as well.

We rented an Arri Alexa package with Zeiss Superspeed primes for this gig.  I originally wanted to go with the Fujinon Cabrio 19-90 zoom as it would have suited the run and gun nature of the piece, but it was unavailable at the house we rented from.  The Superspeed kit ended up working out very well other than the fact that we had to stop for lens changes which can sometimes interrupt the flow while events are unfolding.  I loved how easily the superspeeds would flare and in so many varying ways depending on the angle/quality of light that was hitting the lens.  Sometimes it would be a hard flare with a complete white wash and/or circle pattern and other times the image would just have a subtle milky look.   The gym had a huge bank of windows on two sides that created a nice diffused ambience in the room.   I rarely ever shot facing away from the windows as they looked great as a background element against the darker tones of the gym and the people that lived in the space.  I used a mix of 1/4 and 1/2 pro mist depending on the subject matter and the elements in each frame to give a subtle bloom to the highlights for some shots. The pro mists also helps smooth out the skin tones a bit.

For the interview setups, we keyed mostly with an 800w Joker or used the diffused window light as a key and used the Joker as a way to fill in or wrap the key further around the face.   The director was not a fan of backlight so we went without an artificial edge/backlight source.  Sometimes the natural sunlight would bounce off the ground and create a subtle edge on the subjects face which we let fly.  We also used negative fill as a way to create contrast if we needed it.  In terms of the b-roll, we wanted all the shots of the actual city of Boston to feel pristine and beautiful so that they would contrast nicely with the rough feel of the the streets of Dorchester etc.  Almost everything we shot of the city was on a slider or jib to give that footage a clean/smooth look.   To contrast that, everything we shot in the streets of Dorchester was hand held and much more real/gritty.  Ninety percent of the gritty b-roll was shot out of our production van while driving around in gang territory.   It made for some close calls at points, but getting the footage was worth it.  The blue and red flashing lights of the various cop cars around town flared the lenses beautifully and a lot of that footage made the final cut.


This shoot reminded me again that as a DP, the sun is your best friend.   The sun can make or break a doc. shoot like this where you don't have a ton of tools to emulate a certain angle or quality of light.  It's direction and location were so important during this shoot as we wanted to capture sun rise and sunset at specific locations on certain days.  One of my favorite set ups involved a sequence in which a silhouetted, nondescript subject lifts a heavy weight bar symbolically over his head (LEFT). We had to wake up before sunrise to get the correct angle and quality of light entering the window for the shot to work correctly.  Shafts of light punched hard through the windows creating long shadows on the floor.  We smoked up the gym to give the light some shape and added a few other fixtures for specials and we were ready to rock.  I was very happy with the way that sequence looked.   For exterior b-roll shots, we did our best to track the sun but it somehow always seemed that we were chasing it.   Somedays we shot from sunrise to sunset through some of the longest days of the year.  We would drive around Boston and search for elements in the city that would be relevant to our story/message and then hop out of the van and shoot it.  Using the Artemis Directors Viewfinder App on my IPHONE really saved the day on this shoot.  I could hop out of the van and chose a focal length, lens height and angle without taking any of the gear out of the car.   That way we didn't waste time moving the camera once it was out of the van.

Overall, it was a great shoot and I was glad to have the opportunity to work back in my hometown area of Boston.  I was lucky to have fellow east coaster Austin Ahlborg on board as my AC who flew out from LA as well.  Sourcing crew and gear in the Boston area was a bit of a challenge, but it definitely put into perspective how lucky we are here in LA to have access to so many rental houses etc.  It's always tough watching the final twelve minute piece knowing how long we shot and how much footage ended up on the cutting room floor, but I think the shots that did make it in the cut where the right ones.  It was really great getting to see my work on national television on a network I grew up watching.  This piece has been getting some good feedback thus far so hopefully this is just the beginning of my collaboration with ESPN.

Here's the link to the final piece.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEtI6QCmS-4

Music Video: Rocket Ship

Recently I shot a music video for a song called "Rocketship."  When the artist was young, 6 of his friends committed suicide and this song was written in memory of those individuals.  The concept for the video involved finding families who had been affected by suicide in the local Los Angeles area.  The video would be a way for them to commemorate the ones they had lost to suicide.  It was an extremely emotional shoot as you would expect, but it made for some intensely powerful images.  The shooting process was definitely a challenging one as we wanted to capture the real raw emotions that these people had for their loved ones, but to get those emotions to come to the surface we needed to spend time and connect with them in order for them to feel comfortable enough to share their stories with us. The shooting process involved us visiting each individual at their house and then choosing a location within that house to shoot that would suit the mood of the piece and make for a powerful image.  It felt a bit like shooting an interview set up because we wanted to put the talent in a position where they could tell the story of their loved one to the artist who was just off camera and when they reached a point where they became emotional, we would start rolling the cameras and direct that individual from that point.  It was definitely a very tough thing to do to make these people pause in the middle of recalling such intense events in their lives, but it was worth it to capture the raw emotions that could only be brought out in this way.

I partnered with fellow DP Matt Roe on this project and we shot with two cameras, one with a wide lens on a slider at 24fps and another on a tight lens at 60fps.  I think this worked out really well and gave the editor plenty of options.  In terms of lighting, we wanted to go with hard sources, which I think worked really well for this piece.  It was definitely cool to break away from the soft source techniques that are so often used.  What's fun about music videos is that you can experiment with different lighting techniques and color contrast without having to justify it in a way that you would with a narrative piece.  Light doesn't necessarily need to be motivated or feel natural, with this piece we could make the shots feel as stylized as we wanted without worrying about remaining consistent or having it feel too created.  We tried to do something different with the light for every set up, whether it be with color contrast or key direction etc.  I think one of my favorite set ups was when we shot in a bed room and we covered the key light with a deep cyan gel. (ABOVE LEFT)  The cyan tone as well as a cooler white balance setting really gave the subjects face an eerily beautiful look.  We had a source 4 coming in hard through a window in the background that put a slash of warm light on the bed/pillow as well as edged the subjects face hard from the left.  I think the combination of the cyan key and the warm back edge really made for a great color combination.

Another set up that I really liked was with two subjects (mom and daughter) outside in a patio area. (ABOVE LEFT) We had been experimenting with using tungsten sources in a daylight environment prior to this shoot and this was a good one to implement that kind of technique.  I really liked having the subjects look warm in an otherwise cool environment.  It really made them pop and your eyes are immediately drawn to the center of the frame.  The soft edges helps with that as well obviously.  We used Vaseline on the lens for almost every wide shot.  I loved this technique as you could literally throw any item in the frame into hazy soft focus with a dab of your finger.  You could also swirl it around to make interesting patterns within the architecture of the existing frame.  Using all of these techniques combined really made for some unique and original shot compositions.

You can see the full video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO6fxLshdls

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.