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.

3D Shoot

The other day I worked on my first 3D camera project. The camera operator from "Mother's Little Helpers" was shooting test footage for a documentary that will be pitched to Gatorade and he invited me to come with. It was a pretty guerrilla style shoot, no permits. The Sony 3D rig was set up inside a van which served as our portable video village as well. We spent the night following bikers around the city streets of L.A shooting first out the back of the van and then out the sliding side door. The rig was so big and complex it took us about 45 minutes to move it from one shooting position to the other. The rig itself was made up of two identical cameras, one that shot straight out like normal and another that shot straight down into a mirror that was attached to the bottom of the matte box. This allows both camera to shoot basically the same image at the same time. In video village, the DIT could adjust the "ocular distance" of the two cameras remotely. This adjustment changes how close or far away the two image beams intersect and become one. Any object that is in front of the image intersection will pop forward on the screen and anything behind it will fade into the background. The DIT can control exactly what elements in the frame will pop out.

I learned a lot about 3D but there is sill a ton that I don't understand. Hopefully if Gatorade likes the test footage, the project will get a green light and I will get a chance to work with the 3D rig again.

Day Trippin

Over the weekend I shot a pilot for a television series called, "Day Trippin." It's a documentary style show that follows a female host around as she visits various attractions in California. On saturday we shot in a spa, at the beach, at a wine tasting venue, and then a roller derby. Santa Barbara is a pretty beautiful place. There were a ton of people surfing on the beach, I want to try it so bad. Once I start making a little more money surfing is the first thing on my list of things to try.

Sunday I got to shoot out of a helicopter, it was insane. They took the door off so I could basically hang out and shoot straight down. I got some really cool footage. I wish I had a better mount but I got some pretty steady shots for just being hand held. The biggest challenge was the difference in exposure between the inside and outside of the helicopter. Every time the host wanted to be on camera or talk to the pilot I had to quickly readjust exposure/ND level for the inside of the helicopter and vice versa for when I wanted to shoot the landscape. Overall it was an awesome weekend and the client seemed happy with what myself and the other camera operators had captured. They will sure have plenty of footage to sort through in the edit. I'm excited to see how the final 30 minute show comes together in post.