Starship: Apocalypse premiere

Last night was the premiere of the science fiction feature film Starship: Apocalypse, sequel to last year's Starship: Rising. Once again, it debuted at the Action On Film festival. It was interesting to watch this, as I shot the movie almost 3 years ago. I also enjoyed catching up with some of the cast and crew that I haven't seen in quite some time, some of them since we originally shot! Good times.

More Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter!

And here are a few more screengrabs from Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter.

Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter screengrabs

I've finally been told I can post some screengrabs from the feature I shot in March, called Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter. We shot some days on stage, some in the desert, and some in Malibu. The movie is currently being edited, with pickups to come in the future (pickups were pre-planned).

Joseph's Toiletries commercial released

The commercial I shot for Joseph's Toiletries last year has finally been released, so now I can share the final video with you. I love shooting in black and white, so this was a lot of fun for me. We shot on RED Epic Dragon and Canon C300 with Canon EF lenses.

The video can also be seen from their website splash page: https://www.josephs-toiletries.com/ edit: The video has played through its lifespan, so isn't on the splash page anymore.

At the Edge of Time: screengrabs pt. 4

Okay, here's the last batch of screengrabs that I managed to snag for At the Edge of Time. Hope you like them!

At the Edge of Time: screengrabs pt. 3

I got to review more of the footage from the feature I shot last November-December, At the Edge of Time. Here are a few more screengrabs that I wanted to share.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol principle photography wrap

Well, we wrapped on the first 3 episodes of Mystic Cosmic Patrol.  It was a lot of fun seeing the hilarious script brought to life by the actors.  On our final day, it was threatening to rain and we had some outdoor scenes to shoot, but the weather ended up working out and we got everything done.  There are still some miniatures to be shot, but principle photography is done and the footage is off to the editor.

Unfortunately, the last two Nobility pickup days overlapped with this project, so I missed out on that, but it sounds like they managed to get it handled fine.  Now I've got a little down time before my next feature begins towards the end of the month if all goes to plan.  So I'll leave you with another picture that doesn't really give anything away.

That's a wrap for the holidays!

After 4 weeks of shooting, we've wrapped for the holidays on At the Edge of Time, a science fiction time travel movie.  We got to shoot in a few cool locations and even though the weather threatened to rain, we managed to stay dry on our exterior days.  Once the holidays are over, it's back to work for me.

Special thanks to my 1st AC Nick Forte for the killer job he did despite the challenge of pulling focus on still photo lenses, which is tough in the best of cases and near impossible in some of the wide open, telephoto shots we did.  He was solid the whole time.  Below are some screengrabs from the .R3D files.

Space Command: Redemption in production

I've been busy the last couple weeks with prepping and shooting leg two of Space Command: Redemption.  We just wrapped day 4 and things are going well.  We're getting some really good footage.  The first leg we shot was fairly static, as it had a ton of visual effects and needed a more or less locked camera for the sake of not driving our VFX team insane.  So on this part, I've been taking advantage of us being on sets to add some movement and energy to the shots.  On our bridge set, I have the camera moving at all times, putting our Dana Dolly to good use.  Today we shot out a corridor of the ship and we brought in my Steadicam guy (and 2nd Unit DP), Scott Baker, who did a fantastic job.

It's been four long, hot days and we have six more days coming up,  five on set and one on location.  I'm tired and glad we have a 14 hour turnaround today, but I'm excited to see what else we shoot.  The shoot has been a challenge, but we are making our way through it and getting some great stuff.  Props to my fantastic G&E team.

Ed Tullett - Malignant music video

Flew out to Chicago this past week to shoot a music video for independent artist Ed Tullett.  The weather forecast wasn't too promising, but we ended up having good weather for our shoot.  It was a sunset and night shoot in the woods, with us packing in all our lighting and power from a distant parking lot, so keeping the gear to a minimum while still lighting up a forest was a challenge.

We ended up picking up a couple generators (giving us 4 20-amp circuits) and I lit primarily with 3 2K Junior Moles (backlight and forest background) and a 1K Baby Fresnel through some half white diffusion for our key light.  One of the two generators ended up giving us issues, running for 10-15 minutes at a time before shutting off (with a 5 minute turnaround before it would start up again).  We managed to work around the problem, though it added an hour or two to our day.

We shot on fast Canon EF glass (F1.3) to maximize the small amount of light we had.  Camera was a RED Epic Dragon and we shot 48 FPS 6K 2.37 Scope format at 800 ISO for the majority of the shoot.

Written, produced and directed by Daniel Sather. http://danielsather.com/

While We Can music video

You may be noticing a reoccurring theme: science fiction.  I seem to be shooting a lot of it these days.  Previously, I shot some elements for a music video for Jon Benton MacKinder's last music video.  So when he had another video coming up with a complex fight scene, he gave me a call.

We shot this on a Canon 5D MkII with Canon zooms.  I pretty much lived on the 24-70mm, as we had very limited time in our location and that lens gets me just about any focal length I could need.  Lighting was a very bare minimum (seems to be another reoccurring theme) and I had to black out the eight or so large bay windows that lined an entire wall of our location.  Fortunately, they had pre-built panels that allowed me to block out that whole wall fairly easily, as I had no gaffer or grips to help me.

The video is still in post and I was unavailable to shoot the other shoot days, so it will be interesting to see how it all comes together.  It's always enlightening to see how three different cinematographers shooting styles combine to make one video.  Here's a low resolution screengrab from the segment I shot.  Sorry for the low quality, as I didn't have a chance to grab anything from the shoot.