In Time music video

This is another Alice the g00n music video, called In Time. 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.

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). The director had a very dialed in vision for exactly how the edit would work and what framing would be, so I had a lot less leeway for picking shots than I'm used to. But at the end of the day, I'm there to deliver on the director's vision, so it's a bit more of an execution of the shots kind of job.

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.