Californios short film

I recently shot a short western out at Paramount Ranch. This was a super low budget project and I was the DP, my own AC, gaffer and grip. Basically, the crew was myself and our sound mixer/boom operator, with a couple extra hands helping to carry things from the parking lot to the location, but since they weren't film crew, that was the extent of their assistance (other than setting up tents, tables, and crafty).

With this in mind, I shot on a RED V-Raptor XL [X], as the internal ND and wide dynamic range let me make fast changes while shooting under the blazing hot sun. I occasionally set up a floppy so I could operate in some shade, but basically just let the light brown ground act as my bounce fill with an occasional assist from an 8x8 ultrabounce. I certainly leaned into my documentary experience on this, working with the existing light and making the best of it. We at least planned out what direction we'd be shooting during the morning and afternoon to try to maximize the amount of backlight the sun was providing, though we couldn't avoid the dreaded "sun directly overhead" middle part of the day due to our shooting schedule, so I at least tried to do more of the wides during that time. I also shot at 6500K to give the town a little bit warmer feel. The client didn't like working with RED R3D files on the last project I shot for them, so I went with ProRes 4444 files this time around downscaled to 4K (from the sensor's native 8K).

For lenses, I paired the camera with a set of Canon CN-E primes for their clean look and controlled flares. Partly due to me having to pull my own focus and partly because I like classic cinema depth of field, I tried to shoot everything around a T4 and favored the 35mm and 50mm focal lengths, though I chose to shoot nearly wide open and telephoto for one specific character...the one that doesn't belong in this town.

We knocked out 10 pages in a single day and, while I was fairly pleased on location (I could only see the image so well in the glaring sun and relied a lot on false color and the traffic lights for exposure), I am quite happy with how it looks after pulling it into my computer at home and making just basic two point curve corrections: pulling down the shadows a bit and dialing in my higher mid-tones to get the contrast I wanted. The RED held onto highlight detail quite nicely and I'm impressed with how it looks, all things considered.

Though this wasn't necessarily my preferred method of working, as I like working with a crew where I'm not quite so rushed to do everything myself, it was a good challenge to see what I could do with the most minimal of help. I've wanted to shoot a western for years and was pleased to finally make it happen.

Here are some quick snapshots with <1 minute color grade tweaks.

I also gave the director some basic color grade starting point options with a few different LUTs I had sitting around that I thought worked well for this project. I personally like the Panavision DXL2 LUT I used on all the above images (and is the second panel below), but ultimately the director went with the warmer LUT seen in the fourth panel, which I admittedly also really like. The top panel is the LOG image, just for reference.

Devon Thompson - Pillory music video

 

I recently shot a low budget music video that just came out. The premise was simple: a Blair Witch style "found footage" video of a woman being chased through the woods. With that in mind, we utilized a mix of cameras, from a RED Komodo with Dulens Mini Primes (daytime) and a Sony ZV-E1 with G-Master primes on a gimbal (night), to a Sony Handycam for an especially low-fi look.

The whole crew was the director, myself, and a friend of the artist to help carry a few things. For the nighttime shots, I embraced that found footage aesthetic and primarily used a camera mounted light or car headlights (in the road shots). I had planned on using a couple sources to add some "moonlight" to the forest at night, but the director wanted it to fall off into darkness and, hey, my job is to give the director what they want and so that's exactly what I did.

You can see the music video here:

We also shot some late daytime stuff that was supposed to transition us into night, but it didn't make the edit. I think it was some of the better stuff we shot, but I guess they decided that part of the story didn't work once they got into post. Anyway, here are a few grabs from the unused footage.

iHeartRadio AMA - Alice the G00n

I recently shot a little AMA for iHeart Radio and Alice the G00n. We referenced the lighting for a particular scene in a movie (which, to play it safe, I won't name since it'll tie in to the next music video) which had a harder light, under-lit look. I started off with quite a bit softer light and the producer kept saying, "It's too soft!" so I obliged with a more direct lighting style because I like to make my clients happy. And it more closely matched the reference this way. 

Recently, I picked up a set of Dulens APO mini primes and I put them to use on this shoot. They have a little more vintage look, with some softness taking the edge off the digital sensor and leaning a little towards the warmer side. It was just a crew of the producer (who also ran audio), Alice and myself. Since the main camera, a RED Komodo, was a locked off wide, I brought my Sony ZV-E1 as well to operate as a medium tight B-cam so that they would have the ability to edit without having jump cuts. I often use my Sony as a B-Cam, mostly for slow-motion work, so this was my first time using it as a second angle. For being a "blogger" camera, it looks really nice. Side note, the ZV-E1 has the same full frame sensor as the very popular FX3.

Correspondence: a suicide prevention awareness mini-series

I got involved with this shoot via a producer, who I met on Mystic Cosmic Patrol. The idea was fairly simple: show what it's like being a phone worker for a suicide prevention hotline. It was to be shot simply and with a budget of basically zero (though we did get pizza!). So, with those in mind, I hopped on board to help shoot the thing.

What's interesting is that I filmed with the hotline worker, but the callers on the other end recorded in a completely different room simultaneously. Because of this, I only heard the worker's half of the conversation and didn't hear the context of the other side of the conversation until I saw the completed videos.

Since the budget was basically non-existent, our camera was a Canon 60D and I supplied a Canon 24-70, which we shot most of the project on. G&E was minimal (I was basically the G&E department anyway, so not enough people to do elaborate setups even if we had the gear) and I lit mostly with the existing space lighting and my Kino Select 30. We generally shot 3-4 takes of each script all the way through and, being handheld for most of them, I would jump around during the take to get a variety of angles to try to give us a little more visual interest.  The first episode arrived today and the subsequent episodes will follow over the next couple weeks.

You can read a nice interview with director JD Mendonca and actress Sheryl Lee over on the Welcome to Twin Peaks website.

Episode 1

Free - A Mosaic Film Performance

This is a project I shot a few years back that I thought I had lost the final video. I was going through some old hard drives the other day, however, and came across it, so I thought I'd share.

I love shooting in black and white. I also love shooting in odd aspect ratios, so this is one of those times the two coincided. We shot the project on a RED Epic MX, which is a color sensor. To get a better idea of how it would play in black and white, I merely turned the saturation all the way down to give us a black and white image while the color information was retained in the R3D file. We shot in widescreen, but created custom frame lines to give us a 3:1 guide for our final aspect ratio. The whole thing was shot gorilla style, with only a bounce board to help shape light. Shooting black and white also helps with that, as you can shoot a bit harsher light than you would in color and it will look good as long as you get the image properly exposed.

Story-wise, this was to be exhibited as part of a live performance, with the protagonists leaping off the screen at the end of the film and onto the stage to perform a dance routine (with the faceless people as background dancers). It was pretty cool to see this exhibited as a hybrid film/live performance piece.

Free - A Mosaic Film Performance from Kyle Wright on Vimeo.

End of 2018 recap

I closed out the last couple of months of 2018 with a few shoots. The first of these is Correspondence, a 5-part anti-suicide project. It was nice to work with actor Chris Candy (Mystic Cosmic Patrol) again and we were fortunate to have Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks) involved as well. We shot this one on a Canon 60D with various Canon lenses (24-70mm F2.8 did most of the work). It was a tiny crew, with me DPing, lighting and gripping. But we got it done and even ended our day on time.

I've also been involved with a group of filmmakers doing a collaborative series of related short films, for which I shot one of the first batch of episodes. Our episode is called A Mother's Love and was directed by Marilyn Ghigliotti (Clerks), a longtime friend of mine. This was shot in two locations on the Alexa Classic and Cooke S4 lenses. We had a small lighting package and I opted to use as much available light as possible, utilizing sunlight through the windows and shaping the light with flags instead. I think this style of lighting fit the piece really well and let me shoot a little more into the shadows than I usually get to.

Finally, to end the year, I went to Guatamala to shoot a documentary project in VR for Free Wheelchair Mission, a program that helps people in developing nations that can't walk and don't have access to wheelchairs. We brought along two Z Cam S1 VR cameras. While my Spanish is pretty terrible, it came in pretty handy while down there. We had a translator with us during the day, but when we'd go out to eat, I was the only one that sort of spoke Spanish, which turned out to be good enough to get by. We spent a couple days working in a more touristy town before driving a few hours out into the interior, far from the tourist traps for a couple more days of shooting. I always enjoy getting to see the "authentic" side of other countries, traveling far from the normal places that you'll find tourists and getting to experience a place that isn't all dressed up for the sake of foreigners.

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.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol - Time Crisis

Okay, the next episode (again, in two parts) has arrived! Check them out below.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol

Mystic Cosmic Patrol has arrived! It actually debuted last week, but I wanted to wait for the second part to drop today. Because of short attention spans, the episodes are being released in two parts, whereas I think they work better as a complete, whole episode. So now you can get the whole episode experience by watching part 1 and part 2 back to back.

Edit: Funny or Die has revamped their site and MCP is no longer available there. But it can be seen on YouTube and the episodes aren't cut in half!

And the good press and interviews keep coming in:
TrunkSpace (Tim Jo)
TrunkSpace (Chris Candy)
TrunkSpace (Minae Noji)
TrunkSpace (Chris Masterson)
TrunkSpace (Cig Neutron)
TrunkSpace (Laura Monaco)
TrunkSpace (Tim Russ)
Japanator
ComicBook.com

And an interview with KTLA 5:

Mystic Cosmic Patrol is coming!

After a long wait, Mystic Cosmic Patrol is finally going to see the light of day! It will be airing soon on Funny or Die, with four episodes coming out weekly over the course of a month. It's been a long road, but I'm eager for people to finally watch it.

For now, we have a trailer that gives a preview of the low-fi comedy that we were going for.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol Trailer from Kyle Wright on Vimeo.

Not only is the trailer out, but we've been getting some good press from:

Forces of Geek
Fanbase Press
TrunkSpace (Gavin Hignight)
Daily Dead
and BigShinyRobot

And the show isn't even out yet!

I'm super excited for people to see this. I had a great time shooting it and we had a incredible scripts, a great producing and creative team, and the cast and crew were fantastic. Hopefully there is much more to come!

MCP on Facebook

edit: The first two episodes are now on YouTube.

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.

Hotels, hotels, hotels

Been a busy month doing hotel corporate work. I just got back from a week in Las Vegas where we shot some corporate events using Canon DSLRs and a Sony FS7. I stayed on the Canon 5D MkIII with a Canon 70-200. Being a live corporate event, we didn't have the opportunity to light and we had same day turnarounds on the videos, but it turned out pretty well all things considered. Below is one example of what we produced (we made 4 spots total).

 

Besides that, a few other hotel spots came out. The video from the Four Seasons Health and Wellness shoot last fall came out. We shot this on the Alexa Mini with Sony CineAlta PL lenses. The color grade is a little flatter than I would have done, but overall I like it.

Last month we also shot some interviews at a hotel, but while there took the opportunity to shoot a little promo video as well. While the interviews were lit, all the hotel promo stuff was shot in a working hotel and we couldn't light it. Still turned out decent, I must say.

When I wasn't working on hotel stuff, I was busy with pre-production on a nature documentary that I've had in the back of my mind for a couple years now. I met with some experts on the subject and have been researching more about this particular animal. Right now, I'm not 100% certain how I'm going to approach funding and producing this project, but will be looking at grant opportunities and making sure I've done all my homework.

In parallel, I've also been working on the outline for a feature length screenplay that, like the above documentary, I've been thinking about for years. I figure that if the idea has stuck with me this long, then I better do something about it. The outline is progressing nicely and this will be the year I finally get the thing written.

Back in the camera world, I also went out with a couple new RED owners (Scarlet-W and Epic-W) and did a little training with them, helping them to learn how to better use their cameras as well as some tips and tricks for setting up and getting the most out of their RED cameras. We had a great sunset that made for some fantastic cityscape shots.

Local rental house EVS had the new Canon C700 in for a few days to play around with. While I couldn't take it out and shoot with it, I did spend a good amount of time playing with the settings and getting used to the menus and buttons. As far as usability, I think the controls were well thought out, with logically arranged settings and quick access to the things I use most. I really like the design of the camera, so hopefully their sensor and processing pipeline lives up to the high marks I give the ergonomics and user interface.

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.