Californios short film

I recently shot a short western out at Paramount Ranch. This was a super low budget project and I was the DP, my own AC, gaffer and grip. Basically, the crew was myself and our sound mixer/boom operator, with a couple extra hands helping to carry things from the parking lot to the location, but since they weren't film crew, that was the extent of their assistance (other than setting up tents, tables, and crafty).

With this in mind, I shot on a RED V-Raptor XL [X], as the internal ND and wide dynamic range let me make fast changes while shooting under the blazing hot sun. I occasionally set up a floppy so I could operate in some shade, but basically just let the light brown ground act as my bounce fill with an occasional assist from an 8x8 ultrabounce. I certainly leaned into my documentary experience on this, working with the existing light and making the best of it. We at least planned out what direction we'd be shooting during the morning and afternoon to try to maximize the amount of backlight the sun was providing, though we couldn't avoid the dreaded "sun directly overhead" middle part of the day due to our shooting schedule, so I at least tried to do more of the wides during that time. I also shot at 6500K to give the town a little bit warmer feel. The client didn't like working with RED R3D files on the last project I shot for them, so I went with ProRes 4444 files this time around downscaled to 4K (from the sensor's native 8K).

For lenses, I paired the camera with a set of Canon CN-E primes for their clean look and controlled flares. Partly due to me having to pull my own focus and partly because I like classic cinema depth of field, I tried to shoot everything around a T4 and favored the 35mm and 50mm focal lengths, though I chose to shoot nearly wide open and telephoto for one specific character...the one that doesn't belong in this town.

We knocked out 10 pages in a single day and, while I was fairly pleased on location (I could only see the image so well in the glaring sun and relied a lot on false color and the traffic lights for exposure), I am quite happy with how it looks after pulling it into my computer at home and making just basic two point curve corrections: pulling down the shadows a bit and dialing in my higher mid-tones to get the contrast I wanted. The RED held onto highlight detail quite nicely and I'm impressed with how it looks, all things considered.

Though this wasn't necessarily my preferred method of working, as I like working with a crew where I'm not quite so rushed to do everything myself, it was a good challenge to see what I could do with the most minimal of help. I've wanted to shoot a western for years and was pleased to finally make it happen.

Here are some quick snapshots with <1 minute color grade tweaks.

I also gave the director some basic color grade starting point options with a few different LUTs I had sitting around that I thought worked well for this project. I personally like the Panavision DXL2 LUT I used on all the above images (and is the second panel below), but ultimately the director went with the warmer LUT seen in the fourth panel, which I admittedly also really like. The top panel is the LOG image, just for reference.

Devon Thompson - Pillory music video

 

I recently shot a low budget music video that just came out. The premise was simple: a Blair Witch style "found footage" video of a woman being chased through the woods. With that in mind, we utilized a mix of cameras, from a RED Komodo with Dulens Mini Primes (daytime) and a Sony ZV-E1 with G-Master primes on a gimbal (night), to a Sony Handycam for an especially low-fi look.

The whole crew was the director, myself, and a friend of the artist to help carry a few things. For the nighttime shots, I embraced that found footage aesthetic and primarily used a camera mounted light or car headlights (in the road shots). I had planned on using a couple sources to add some "moonlight" to the forest at night, but the director wanted it to fall off into darkness and, hey, my job is to give the director what they want and so that's exactly what I did.

You can see the music video here:

We also shot some late daytime stuff that was supposed to transition us into night, but it didn't make the edit. I think it was some of the better stuff we shot, but I guess they decided that part of the story didn't work once they got into post. Anyway, here are a few grabs from the unused footage.

Shifting Gears driving plates

A recent episode (season 2, episode 7) of Shifting Gears featured driving plates I worked on. We shot all the neighborhood backgrounds and exteriors of the car driving around, and then the neighborhood backgrounds were composited into the shots of the actors inside the car that had been previously filmed on a green screen set. It's always fun filming classic cars.

Process plates were shot using a Toyota FJ Cruiser with a custom build for mounting the Black Arm, Ronin 2 and RED Gemini. For lenses, we used Sigma Cine primes to keep the image clean.

Wizards Beyond Waverly Place school plates

The first half of season 1 of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place has dropped on Disney and Disney+ and I shot all the school exterior establishing shots. Sometimes we'll have a producer with us, but this one was off on our own, so I ended up figuring out a lot of the shots and directing the actors. Not that building exteriors are overly complex. We shot day, dusk and night shots just in case the main unit had any school scenes that take place at other times, but so far all of them have just been daytime.

We shot this on the RED Gemini, which is great for when night started to fall and we had super limited lighting options to light up an entire school building facade. For the daytime, we used an Angénieux Optimo 24-290 zoom for ease of focal length changes, but switched to Zeiss Super Speeds and Sigma Art Cine Primes for night due to their much faster T-stop. Nighttime lighting was primarily done with Aputure/Amaran LED sources since we had limited power and crew. Daytime lighting was provided courtesy of the giant nuclear furnace in the sky through a nice soft diffusion of airborne H2O.

Part way thorough the shoot day, they asked me to find additional building shots that we hadn't approved ahead of time. I sent them the above shot from my phone as a potential angle/location, got approval, and then matched the shot with our RED. 

Here it is in the show. I think we lined it up really close to the reference I had sent them earlier.

It's always interesting to see how many different establishing shots I shoot and then how many and which ones they choose to use in the show. I try to make sure I get plenty of coverage for all sorts of scenarios, times, and shot variety so they always have the option to change things up a bit in future seasons as well.

iHeartRadio AMA - Alice the G00n

I recently shot a little AMA for iHeart Radio and Alice the G00n. We referenced the lighting for a particular scene in a movie (which, to play it safe, I won't name since it'll tie in to the next music video) which had a harder light, under-lit look. I started off with quite a bit softer light and the producer kept saying, "It's too soft!" so I obliged with a more direct lighting style because I like to make my clients happy. And it more closely matched the reference this way. 

Recently, I picked up a set of Dulens APO mini primes and I put them to use on this shoot. They have a little more vintage look, with some softness taking the edge off the digital sensor and leaning a little towards the warmer side. It was just a crew of the producer (who also ran audio), Alice and myself. Since the main camera, a RED Komodo, was a locked off wide, I brought my Sony ZV-E1 as well to operate as a medium tight B-cam so that they would have the ability to edit without having jump cuts. I often use my Sony as a B-Cam, mostly for slow-motion work, so this was my first time using it as a second angle. For being a "blogger" camera, it looks really nice. Side note, the ZV-E1 has the same full frame sensor as the very popular FX3.

In Time music video

This is another Alice the g00n music video, called In Time. Since Alice writes, directs, and edits her own music videos, it's a great collaboration as I only need to go to one source to answer most of my questions! Unlike the previous music video, which had a ton of green screen and post FX, this one was shot almost entirely on a stage with an LED wall, so the FX work was primarily done in camera. It was also an interesting one to shoot, as the entire video basically takes place inside a car, so that we had a lot of conversations about how to shoot it while spending a bunch of time in a tiny space.

Once again, I shot with the RED Komodo, as it packs a lot into a very tiny body, which is very helpful when space it tight. For glass, I went with the Sigma Cine primes as they fit the budget, are fast, and, again, are compact. I do find them a tad too sharp for the look I wanted, so I used Tokina Black Alchemy diffusion filters in the Bright Tangerine Atom matte box (again, nice and tiny).

We started the day shooting in the trunk of the car before moving on to some daylight shots, then the car moves into a 2001: A Space Odyssey style slit scan tunnel. I utilized the LED wall as much as possible as a light source, supplementing with a key light (Vortex through an 8x8 - size limited by the low ceilings in the stage) and an LED back light to create some hard "sunlight" coming in the window as well as filling in a bit of the interior.

For the tunnel, I relied mostly on Astera Titan tubes with colored pixel animations to create moving light as the car whizzes down the tunnel. I also lit the car interior with an additional solid Titan coming in through the sunroof, giving me a bit of ambience at all times.

My lighting diagram (for the daytime scenes) I drew from the location scout photos. This is pretty much exactly what we did on the day.

The lighting setup for the tunnel driving.

You can see the completed music video here:

Secret Gospel

Secret Gospel, a short horror/suspense film I shot last year, has debuted on Japanese streaming platform Samansa, which makes sense as the financiers behind it are Japanese. It was written and directed by Brandon Aumen, a friend I've known for many years and we've wanted to collaborate on a project, but never matched up until this one.

We shot this over the course of 4 days with two primary locations: the convent and the main character's home. Our camera rental budget was super tight and I needed fast lenses for the nighttime and dungeon scenes, so went with Sigma Cine primes. The Sigmas were a bit too sharp for my taste, so Tokina was nice enough to lend me a set of their Black Alchemy diffusion filters to try out (I bought some after using them on this shoot and liking them so much) and they helped to take the edge off the image. We shot with my RED Komodo 6K at a 1.9:1 aspect ratio, as we wanted a little wider than the 16:9 look but not quite an anamorphic 2.4:1, which would take a little too much off the top and bottom.

For lighting, we utilized mostly Aputure LEDs, such as the 300X, 600X, and B7C. For tubes, we went with the tried and true Astera Titan Tubes. I tried to utilize sunlight where possible, as I'm a fan of natural light. While this is a modern day film, I went for a little less saturated, slightly warmer color palette to give it a more timeless visual aspect. If it weren't for the laptop and car giving away the era, I feel like this could have taken place in the 70s.

So I'll just leave you with some non-spoiler screenshots from the film.