CYA music video

I recently shot a music video for Alice the g00n, called CYA. It was a studio shoot that was incredibly VFX heavy, which is always a concern on a moderate budget. In this case, I had to rely heavily upon very specific storyboards and framing to keep the amount of VFX work in check (framing shots to keep us off what would be a CG background as much as possible). Since she's both directing and editing the video, Alice had a very dialed in vision for exactly how the edit would work and what framing would be, so I have a lot less work picking shots than I'm used to. But at the end of the day, I'm there to deliver on the director's vision where keeping communication lines clear and working to the plan is very important so the VFX budget doesn't get blown up.

For the project, we shot on Atlas Orion anamorphic lenses on RED Komodo @ 6k. I didn't use any diffusion filtration to keep things as sharp as possible to help post with their background replacement. The director wanted a Lady Snowblood inspired look, which was fairly low contrast.

The Gordita Chronicles establishing shots

Wrote this up a while back and forgot to hit "publish." Oops, better late than never I guess.

A bit different from my normal shoots, this one was establishing shots from a jib. We hired a jib operator for this one, as that's a fairly specific skill set. No Ronin this time, which was a nice break from having to tech that piece of gear, leaving me more time to think about lighting the building (we had some nighttime shots) with very limited options for light placement.

Fortunately, the weather was pleasant and everything went off without a hitch. I got to put some of my new Amaran LED lights to use, which are very convenient for their low power draw relative to output, as well as having color temperature and output intensity options that can be controlled directly from an app.