The Sword and the Pen featured on IDW Publishing website

With the comic book Usagi Yojimbo moving from Dark Horse Comics to IDW Publishing, I was asked if they could use my documentary on the IDW website as an introduction of Stan Sakai to their readers. I was happy to oblige and now it's being featured along with the announcement of the publisher change.

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.

The Sword and the Pen available to watch

After a successful run at the Temecula Valley Museum, I've made The Sword and the Pen available to watch online. I'm hoping to do more directing in 2019.

The Sword and the Pen from Kyle Wright on Vimeo.

The Sword and the Pen completed

After editing the almost 6 hours of footage down to 13 minutes, I delivered the completed documentary last month. It is now playing for "The Art of Stan Sakai" exhibit at the Temecula Valley Museum, which runs through October 22nd. It was a real pleasure directing this documentary and I'm pleased with how it came out.

The Sword and the Pen documentary

It's been an extremely busy year and I just had the pleasure of directing a short documentary on famed comic book artist Stan Sakai. I've known Stan for several years now and have wanted to do a piece on him for some time. After watching tons of comic book creator interviews and documentaries, I was left underwhelmed by the lack of visual storytelling. It seemed that everything I watched used the same old, boring style of interview shooting that we're all too familiar with, so my pitch to Stan was to do something a little more visually compelling and cinematic.

We shot on the Alexa Classic using my Sony CineAlta prime lenses. To help give it that slightly softer, vintage look, we ran a Hollywood Black Magic 1/4 in front of the lens at all times. We used a combination of tripod and handheld shots to help give a visual energy. While the stills are from a very quick color look I built, it demonstrates the slightly warm and desaturated look I'm going for, with the desaturation being a subtle nod to the black and white nature of the comic book series, Usagi Yojimbo, that Sakai is known for.

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.