Lost Ollie train yard scene

With the new Netflix series Lost Ollie now out, I can finally share some BTS stuff I worked on as a camera operator. This has been a long wait as it's a very VFX heavy show, which takes a long time in post. As a native 4K pipeline, we used the Alexa Mini LF in open gate mode with Arri Signature Primes.

On this project, we shot several parts of the train yard scene, which takes place in episode 2, with the animated characters as they try to catch a ride on a train. We would shoot a pass with stand-in dolls for lighting reference (as seen in the photo below), and then shoot the scene without them so they could be added in post by Industrial Light and Magic.

With the characters only being about a foot tall, we sometimes had to get creative to get the camera low enough to be on their eye line, such as by digging a hole so the camera could get just a few inches lower.

From down in a hole, to up on the roof of our production cube, we got a lot of coverage.

We even put the camera on a truck that drives on the tracks to shoot a shot from "inside the train car" as the characters try to catch it. You'd think it would be pretty smooth, as rails look nice and level. It definitely was not!

We also did a bunch of train drive-by shots as well as dollying shots next to moving trains, where the CGI characters will be inserted running as they try to hop on the train.

This one was a lot of fun to operate, though it was an interesting challenge framing for character movement that we couldn't actually see and only had to imagine was happening. I also enjoyed helping to find shots for characters that were only a foot tall, as it's a little more unique perspective than I'm used to.

The Gray Man SDCC experience

The other week was San Diego Comic Con, which brings in a lot of the big television, movie and streaming studios. This year Netflix went big for their movie The Gray Man, with a giant set and interactive experience where attendees find their way out of a crashed train car, unlock secret briefcases, and end up running across the top of the train car to activate their final token. For the last part of the experience, with them running across the top of the train car, Netflix decided they wanted a camera to fly along with the person as they race along, which is where my job came in.

This gig came through my connection with Industry Sherpa, who has provided us with the Blackarm on most of our driving plate shoots, as well as the rear-mounted platform for the Hacks job earlier this year (and detailed in one of my recent posts). They had a wire-mounted camera system called the Eagle Eye. If you've ever watched an NFL game and seen the camera floating above the field on wires, that is the type of system we were using. We had a specialist from Germany and a Los Angeles based Eagle Eye operator running the wire-mounted system, while myself and one other camera operator were responsible for the payload attached to the Eagle Eye, namely the Mōvi Pro and Sony FX6.

We mounted the camera sideways, as Netflix wanted it social media friendly (aka, vertical video). The iris, focus and zoom were all adjusted through motors run off of the Mōvi and controlled through their console style controller. The Eagle Eye operators programmed in the moves and were responsible for throttling the speed the camera flew through the air while myself and the other operator (switching out for breaks, etc) would operate the camera off of the joystick, as operating was fully manual which required us to frame the shot each and every time, for hundreds of takes.

It wasn't too hard to operate, with the biggest challenge being the dance between the incredibly varied speeds people would traverse the train car top and the speed of the Eagle Eye moving through the air, with us camera operators repeating our moves with slight adjustments to compensate for variances between those two variables. I typically do narrative and commercial work, not live events, so this was an interesting departure from my usual, as there was no such thing as a second take! But it was a good time and definitely helped me sharpen my remote gimbal operating skills.

Fast Netflix turnaround

The other day I was 2nd Unit DP on this commercial for Netflix. We shot on a Friday and I happened to see the ad on Facebook the following Tuesday. A four day turnaround (over the weekend no less) is probably the fastest I've seen for a commercial. That's pretty crazy.

While I haven't seen Marie's show yet (or read her book), the internet let me know not to let her see my book collection. I might have a couple more than 30 books. As in, add a zero to the end of that number. She should also not see my movie collection, though I'm working on cutting down the movies that don't "spark joy" anymore. Okay, maybe she should just avoid ever seeing my entire place at all.

Making a Murderer credits

So, earlier this year I did some opening credits work that I couldn't reveal until now. Okay, I really didn't contribute much to the opening credits, as I shot three sequences but apparently two got cut from the edit. In the end, I only managed about a second and a half of screen time. Nothing to really get too excited over...but it's still cool to have contributed to a Netflix original. Here's a screengrab from the glorious second and a half that I shot!

My contribution: the police officer.

At least the next show that I shot opening credits elements for should feature a lot more stuff I did than this one. That show premieres in just under a month, so I'll be sure to share some screen grabs from it as well.