Director of Photography: Rise and Shine: SOUTH AFRICA

___My latest job as D.P. has taken me to South Africa to shoot at the World Cup! It was an amazing trip and I captured some really good stuff. I was able to connect with a guide to take me through the township Soweto. We drove around looking for kids playing soccer in the streets and in open fields. We found some really great locations that really captured both the landscape and the people of South Africa. I shot a lot of footage at a high frame rate, as I wanted to really see the detail in the grass and dirt as the kids kicked up dust while playing. I got some really great moments that I’m glad I shot in Slow Mo, as they could have easily been missed at regular speed.

I also captured the sites and sounds of the city in the midst of the World Cup. There were fans everywhere sporting tons of gear in order to support their respective teams. It was a shame I couldn’t get nearer to the stadiums, as FIFA pretty much had those areas on lock down. I was able to get the massive crowds that gathered in the streets to watch the second South Africa game on a giant projection screen. It was fun yet hectic trying to run around interviewing fans from various clubs. They all had great things to say about the World Cup and soccer in general. I was also able to hop on board some safari trips and capture some of the wildlife as well. I got some really good close ups of Elephants and a few Lions at the Lion Park. Overall, I think I got more than enough footage to accurately portray the atmosphere in South Africa during this amazing event.

Director of Photography: Rise & Shine: LONDON SHOOT

____After returning to LA for a few weeks after my trip to Green Bay, I set out once again with the rest of the crew to London. We spent 10 days shooting all over London. We had about 8 interview setups scheduled throughout the course of the trip. The rest of the spare time was spent shooting various parts of the city and capturing as much B-roll as possible. It seems as though we were always pressed for time, but we got a ton of great footage. Some interviews I was able to take the time to light, but others were pretty much run and gun. I was also able to get some really artsy shots along the way as well. I played around with extreme contrast and rolled on a lot of silhouette shots. Overall it was a successful trip and we definitely added to the ever growing pile of raw footage.

Director of Photography: Rise and Shine: GREEN BAY SHOOT

____My latest job as Director of Photography has been on a documentary feature entitled, Rise and Shine: The Jay Demerit Story. It is the true story of a professional soccer player's struggle and eventual rise to stardom. It begins in a small Wisconsin town in which American football, not soccer, is more than just a game. Jay Demerit grew up here, a world away from the roaring streets of London that he would eventually find himself.

Our first part of the documentary consisted of shooting in Green Bay Wisconsin, Jay's home town. We spent 5 days shooting interviews with Jay's parents, friends, siblings, high school teachers and coaches. We also shot Jay's high school/middle school and numerous fields that he grew up playing soccer on. We got a chance to drive around and shoot the landscape as well. This was really awesome and I think these shots will really help capture the essence of Green Bay living.

We have some really great footage already and we have only completed one of the many trips we have scheduled for this entire documentary. Below is our shooting schedule for the rest of the documentary.

LONDON,ENGLAND: APRIL 20th-MAY 2nd
HARTFORD,CONNECTICUT: MAY 21st-26th
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: JUNE 7th-17th
CHICAGO: TBD

1st A.C.

_Last weekend I worked as a 1st A.C. on a pilot for an episodic called, The Room. We shot on the 5D with a few different cannon zoom lenses. The setups were relatively simple because the premise of the show is that each character is locked in a room while being recorded by a video camera behind a pane of glass. There is also one other "security" camera shooting each character in their respective rooms. The camera that was supposedly shooting through a pane of glass was obviously relatively simple because it was just locked off on sticks. The only time I really needed to pull focus was if a character leaned in close to the camera to draw attention to a certain line or to "examine" the camera.

The "security" camera setup was really a challenge to pull focus. The operator was snapping the zoom in and out randomly as I was whipping the focus in and out at the same time in order to create a mechanical feel. We didn't want the focus or the moves to look organic and smooth, we wanted them to seem as if they were machine operated, like a security camera would be in real life. It was a challenge to return to the right point of focus after purposely making the image soft on either side of the focal plane but I think the footage came out great. I hit my marks when I needed to and I did a pretty good job of adapting to random movements from actors on the fly.

I think The Room has a lot of potential and if it is cut right, it has a good chance at getting picked up. The crew was small but everyone really seemed to gel and things went relatively smooth on set. I hope we all get a chance to work with each other again in the future. Good times.

Shooting a Reality Show on Medical Marijuana

___I'm currently shooting a reality show pilot based out of one of the many Medical Marijuana shops in California. There are 5 total shoot days for the pilot and so far we have completed only one. We shot numerous interviews as well as some b-roll and I was pretty happy with how most of the footage looked. I only had a small lighting package to work with for the interviews but the director seemed happy with the look. I didn't want to use just ambient lighting even though it was a reality show but at the same time I didn't want it to look like a film. All in all I think the footage looks a bit more "filmic" than your every day reality show but I like it. We shot with two EX1's. I did most of the lighting and shot the tighter setups while the B-Camera operator covered the interviews wider and or profile. It was an interesting shoot to say the least. There will certainly be more than enough footage to cut together a 22 minute pilot. I'm interested to see what we are shooting throughout the next 4 days.

Christian Audigier's Tequila Shoot

Yesterday I worked as a videographer shooting behind the scenes footage of a photo-shoot to promote Christian Audigier's new Tequila, Paco Chicano. There were 3 main setups that the photographer chose for his shoot, all of which were in a high end bar called the "R-Lounge." He was shooting on the 7D and the pictures that I got to see looked really great. He used a lot of his lights to create lens flares in the background of his photos. It was something different and I liked that. All the setups were basically models posing around the bar showcasing the new Tequila. It was a long night but it turned out to be a pretty fun shoot.

1st A.C.

On Saturday I worked as a 1st A.C on a web-series called M.E.N. We shot it on the RED with Zeis lenses. The D.P. had a pretty cool and relatively inexpensive setup in terms of RED. He owned all his gear and his kit was much more manageable than than the massive kits I've seen with RED in the past. One thing I really liked was that he had a Red Rock mattebox that he customized with an Arri filter mount on the back. It was pretty cool because you could put rectangular filters in the front as well as circular filters in the back. A few shots outside we used ND in the front and a polarizer in the back. The polarizer was really cool, we could spin it around in the matte box to take glare off of certain parts of the image. There weren't too many difficult focus pulls but it's always good to get to work with lenses etc. I also got to really study the "false color" mode on the red, which this D.P. used a lot. It is a really interesting and different way to judge exposure and I like using it. It was a pretty laid back shoot and I learned a lot.