Lyric video and This Is Living With Cancer documentary

I recently worked on a simple music lyric video that we shot in a couple hours. The concept was pretty simple and we only had a couple lights, so I used my Kino Select 30 to light the white cyc and a 1x1 bi-color LED for lighting the talent. The stage's blue LED lights in the ceiling added some accent light. This was shot in 4K ProRes 422 HQ on the RED Epic-W with Sigma Art zooms.

This past summer, I also worked on a documentary/ad campaign for Pfizer and their new app. The project is called This Is Living With Cancer. While I was not the primary DP on the project, I did shoot second unit/additional photography unit work for a couple of the spots. Below is one that I helped shoot, with my footage constituting about half of the spot. This was on an Alexa Mini with Master Anamorphics in 2.8K Anamorphic, ProRes 4444.

Time is flying by!

Whew, been a busy year so far and I've had fun shooting a bunch of things. First and foremost is that we wrapped principal photography on the documentary about human trafficking that I started last year. I returned to Florida to finish the shoot and I think we got some compelling stuff. There may be a pickup day or two coming up, but I'm proud to have finished my first feature length documentary. It was an interesting change from the narrative features I normally shoot and I learned some great stuff along the way.

As with last time on this documentary, we shot Epic-W at a 2:1 aspect ratio on Sigma Art zoom lenses. The sit-down interviews (not pictured here) utilized a Kino Select 30 and a couple 1x1 bi-color LED panels. We had a lot more walk and talk this time around, so I had an Easy Rig Vario 5 to help with the camera weight.

Smile!

It may look peaceful, but there's danger lurking in the depths.

Interview on the beach

Some tilt shift fun with my Lensbaby Composer 50mm.

Recently, I shot another music video with long-time collaborator Emii. This was a no-budget lyric video, so we mostly used what we had available. Shot on the Epic-W and Sigma Art zooms, and lit primarily with some China balls wrapped in bleached muslin and on dimmers. I had just watched Dennis Villenueve's Enemy the night before and they really embrace the super warm yellow lighting at times, so I thought I'd give that look a try as well.

This wood wall treatment adds great texture and mixes well with the warmer color palette I was going for.

Gotta love out of focus backgrounds. For this room, I went with a little more neutrally balanced whites.

Tried to channel a little bit of my inner Wes Anderson for this shot.

I have a couple other projects I'd like to share, but I'm waiting to get some footage and approval to share, so those will have to wait until another time.

A good ending to 2016

Whew, the end of the year really flew by with lots of travel work. The music video I shot for Karmin (see last post) got released and you can view it below.

I also shot some interviews and a hotel spot in New York City. We used a Canon 1D X Mk II with Canon CN-E primes. We were supposed to shoot three days, but managed to get everything done in two. The third day, after returning our rentals, we got to explore the city, which was fun. It rained a bit, but I took advantage of it and did some nighttime street photography. I wasn't super prepared to go out and shoot stills, so made do with the only camera I had: my cellphone.

Since selling off my co-owned RED Epic Dragon last year, I've missed having a camera to shoot with. With a pre-order in on a Scarlet-W, it was a matter of waiting for those to ship. Due to the extensive delays on shipping, RED offered a great deal to step up to the Epic-W with the new 8K Helium sensor instead. So now I'm part owner on a RED Epic-W kit.

Latest addition to the equipment family.

The documentary I was supposed to shoot in Florida went through, so I spent my time leading up into Christmas working on that. Although I had shot some short format stuff with the Epic-W, this was the first larger project test of the camera and I came away pretty pleased. I shot in 6.5K 2:1 most of the time (with some 6K 2:1 for limited slow motion sequences). Shooting 6.5K helped to save on data storage requirements. For lenses, I shot on the Sigma Art zooms (18-35mm and 50-100mm F1.8) and the Canon 24mm tilt shift. I'm pretty happy with the pairing of the Sigmas with the Helium sensor. A few screengrabs are below. The shoot went smoothly and we plan on shooting the other half in late February or early March.

In other news, the short film I shot this past winter, The Untimely End of Ms. Xiang, had a screening that I attended. The editor told me that everyone who he showed it to were amazed that I shot it on a Canon 7D, as they assumed it was done on a proper cinema camera. After seeing it, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It's been making the festival rounds and has won a couple awards.

The house was totally packed by the time we screened The Untimely End of Ms. Xiang.

The DC tribute film that I co-shot, Fair Fight, has also been winning awards including "Best Fan Film" at the Action on Film Festival as well as Martialcon. That team went on to make a Harley Quinn fan film, but I was unfortunately unavailable to shoot that project.

There were a couple other random shoots mixed in there, interviews and YouTube content, so it was a very busy ending to the year. I'm looking forward to what this year will bring and am excited to push myself even harder.

October update

This past month has been yet another super busy one filled with work; a few shoots and lots of pre-production on some upcoming projects.

While it hasn't been released yet, I was very happy with the music video I shot for Karmin, Love Is Louder. I always jump at the chance to shoot in black and white, so was excited when the director and I agreed to go monochromatic. I was also encouraged to frame the performance bits in a "Mr. Robot" style. Hopefully this track will get its video release soon, but for now I'll just leave a few screengrabs.

Another fun project this month was shooting a lifetyle spot for Four Seasons. I utilized an Alexa Mini with my Sony CineAlta PL primes, with the camera jumping between a DJI Ronin, tripod, Dana Dolly, and handheld. We only had access to the hotel for a single day, so we kept the shot list simple and I had a team prelighting the subsequent scene while I was shooting. That allowed us to knock out a ton of locations within the hotel, before going to a second location to grab a couple last shots. I don't yet have any of the footage from that shoot, but will get some images posted up once I get my hands on it.

Most of the rest of my shooting month consisted of corporate interviews and a couple live performances (one dance event, one concert event). Since those were pre-lit venues, I didn't bother grabbing footage since I was more of a camera operator lead, as there was no lighting input from myself.

Besides the days shooting, I had some productive meetings for a couple projects, including a feature length documentary that we'll hopefully start shooting in December. I also attended Stan Lee's Comic Con (formerly known as Comikaze) where Nobility had a panel and I sat in as a panel member on a Low-Budget Filmmaking & Building a Team presentation. Usually I prefer to be behind the scenes making things happen, rather than in front of a crowd, but it wasn't too bad. The panel was centered around the award winning DC fan film, Fair Fight, that I co-DP'd a couple months back. I did manage to get a couple pictures from that, at least.

Last bit of news is that I decided to jump back into the camera market, as I miss having something where I can just go out and shoot whatever I want to, so now my business partners and I have a new RED Epic-W on its way. I'm excited to put the new Helium sensor through some tests to see what it can do. It should offer a lot of flexibility, giving us the ability to record everything from 2K ProRes up to 8K RAW (and all sorts of options in between). The payments have been made and things are shipping, so the kit should all arrive soon.