I shot part of a documentary about Rick Springfield the other day. The film follows a number of New Jersey housewives and die hard Rick fans as they see him perform all over the country. Pretty crazy, but a good idea.
Rick was really gracious in allowing us backstage at a concert he played at a fairground in Jersey. We had to wait out the TORNADO that touched down not too far away! It rained so hard the roadies packed his gear up and he just played a solo set in the rain. Made for an interesting look. Can’t wait to see the film.
Meet Your Farmer is a series of eight short profiles of farms in Maine. Produced with our friends Pull-Start Pictures for the Maine Farmland Trust, an organization that works to preserve farm land in Maine for farming use, the films offer a glimpse at the many different types of farms in the state. We did a lot of the cinematography, some editing, and even some of the music for the films. They premiered at the Strand Theater in Rockland, Maine this past Friday. Sold out show! The short films remind viewers that farming is more than just a historical feature of Maine; farming in Maine is alive and well. Check out the website Here! Congratulations to Pull-Start on a heck of a cool project.
Another quick commercial shoot with Manny and Serpa Group at Bravo Studios in Manhattan (this one was about 6 hours). I had never even heard of Bravo, but it was a nice green screen studio with a decent grid, although we had to do some small tweaking on the floor. The shoot was for a local attorney and we shot all on green, the idea being to have the guy walk through text elements on a white background. I guess we could have just as easily shot on white, but at least they have the option of overlapping some elements now.
My favorite part was Bravo’s blanket light over the floor, which appeared to be a bunch of 6ft. Kino tubes off an UltraBounce, then through a full silk. Really bright and soft. We lit the talent with some Kinos on the floor, filling with mostly bounce, and he was backlit by a 2K from the grid. Really nice setup. I’m looking forward to seeing the post on this one.
Shot the first three pilot episodes of a web/TV series in Clinton Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, and Harlem. We did about 26 pages in three long days! It was a two-camera shoot with Paul Shin as the 2nd operator. Pretty basic lighting with a small package and lots of practical junk, like rope lights, which I am becoming a huge fan of. We tried to build a lot of small units into the sets, especially in our big restaurant location. I knew there would be lots of characters, lots of angles, and not a lot of time. And without any really big units we had to be able to move fast and light small. It was a constant mix of color temperatures.
There were some great shots of food and drink in this show. It was a truly zen experience watching a professional chef dice vegetables for about 20 minutes. The hum of the refrigerators. The buzz of the lights. Beautiful.
The night interiors in a cab were really my chief concern. We used a Rosco litepad as the driver’s key and supplemented with a bunch of different LED’s taped to the outside of the windows. Some went a little green, some were gelled to be sodium, and we had a lot of light coming in from streetlamps, which was beautiful. Up on Riverside Drive, there isn’t a lot of light out over the water. But the streetlamps saved us, and besides there being no air conditioning in the cab (wow was it hot!) it was actually a pretty easy car ride. Not a lot of bumps or traffic lights.
We had a mix of lenses, which I would have been more concerned about if the show were going to be screened on a large screen. I tried to keep my Zeiss ZF 85mm on as much as possible and Paul shot with his 90mm Leica, which is beautiful. I did find myself using the 70-200mm Canon a lot for closeups. It breathes a little and the focus is NOT easy, it’s also slow. But man it looks nice. Some day I’ll pick up the f/2.8. Unless a complete set of Zeiss Compact Primes make their way into my hands. I’m just sayin’….
Big thanks to Chris Leone again for being so patient and helpful. And to Paul for being the man.
Did a one day commercial with Manny and Serpa again. This was for a shoe commercial. Springtime, fun in the sun (it stayed overcast most of the day), cute kids, and flowers. We shot in Prospect Park near the big pond, but the geese wouldn’t cooperate. In fact, I was pretty sure they were going to eat me and my camera at one point.
We shot on the 5D again. It fit the bill in being small and convenient to run around handheld. I relied just on bounce light for this one because we were moving around so much. I wanted something to create some nice flares across the images and lower the contrast a bit. I briefly entertained the idea of detaching the lens from the body to “flash” the sensor, a technique Hunter Richards was telling me about, but I wouldn’t have been able to focus properly and wasn’t crazy about getting dirt on my sensor. Instead I went with some Ultra Con filters from The Filter Gallery. We messed around with some fog filters and a yellow streak filter, but the Ultra Con was really a gem.
A lot of quick setups on this shoot. Can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Wrapped my 2nd feature. It was an ambitious schedule, but we pulled it off. I think we all knew going in that it was a very low budget affair with minimal crew, but it was still a shock wearing that many hats. My neck is still sore.
I am torn about my ideal crew size. And I think each film is unique and requires attention in different areas. I will say that I probably won’t shoot without a proper gaffer ever again. There is a reason Hollywood movies show up on location with so many trucks. Granted, there is a waste involved with filmmaking that I think we could all improve upon (plastic water bottles and idling engines to name a couple) but what I do like about the equipment and crew is that each item serves a specific purpose and makes the machine run smoothly. Imagine driving your car without 3rd gear. That’s what not having a gaffer is like for me.
I think the 5D saved my ass many times on this shoot. Not having control over so many highlights and shadows with grip gear could have really screwed me. But the dynamic range was really impressive and the images were sharp enough that any blownout areas don’t really bother me. I’ve come to appreciate zooms a lot more for shoots with such a fast pace. Although I would definitely entertain the idea of having a separate camera body for each focal length, provided we could get colors to match on each body.
I wish this film luck, I’m sure it will find an audience somewhere. I feel pretty fortunate to go to work in a different place every day. Sometimes my office is on the beach. Which is nice. A huge thanks to Chris Leone (sound) who had plenty of patience on this shoot (and plenty of cheeseburgers) and was always offering me a hand. And to Vanna Pilgrim (AD) who is destined to be a ruthless and savvy producer.
The crew moved out to Montauk, the easternmost tip of Long Island, for the second week of shooting. We drove down in pouring rain and faced some serious flooding of the roads. The rain stopped just long enough for us to get a few exterior shots and then a serious fog rolled in. At first it was really eerie and beautiful shooting in the fog. Everything had an atmosphere and it was as if we dropped a huge net in front of our backgrounds. Then it just became a pain in the neck. It came in between the camera and our subjects and looked like heavy diffusion on the lens.
We covered a bunch of scenes in a seaside motel first. It was a large echo chamber with white walls, but at least I had ceiling height to work with. I tried to shoot with as much available daylight as possible, using the windows and door. I supplemented with large CFL’s in the lamps and a china lantern. I hadn’t noticed a green spike in the fluorescents when I first started using them, but I’m convinced over time that some of them are even turning yellow. It’s not ideal by any means, but we don’t have the crew or budget for HMI’s. There are many instances where I wish I could have ND’d the windows, thrown a solid up to control what was coming through, and lit with some 6k’s or higher. But all in all, the 5D has been holding highlights well and I have had overcast days that kept my backgrounds from blowing out. The motel was tricky in terms of exteriors, since the porch outside the rooms was about 10 stops darker than the parking lot, but I think we avoided any major overexposures.
I had planned on using some funky lenses on the beach. It was sunny skies all day and I backlit our lead actress with the sun and bounced it back with some gold/silver lame. I tried out an old Kodak zoom lens I have that weighs next to nothing. It’s plastic with some more plastic inside. I wanted to get some nice flares, but the sun was too high and the lens breathed like crazy. Rather than looking dreamy, it just looked soft. So I went with the Canon 70-200mm and got what we needed. That lens has really been my workhorse for most of the mediums and close-ups in the film. Harder to nail focus on a long lens, but when it’s on it’s sharper than the 28-70mm f/2.8.
Our house location proved to be even more difficult for me than the motel. We were constantly in between sun and shade, daylight and dusk. Most scenes took place in the living room/dining room area, which has one wall of windows (about 6 or 7) that look out onto the bay. Although we got some really sunny days, the sun is in such a position this time of year that it rarely shines directly through those windows. I was wishing it would provide more of a key for me, but instead it was all bounced light in the room (white walls) with not much punch, and everything out the window went way too hot. I eventually started bouncing sunlight through the windows and just adding a little eyelight to everyone right over camera, which worked well.
“A Sense of Wonder,” the feature film I worked on a while ago, will be on PBS on Earth Day, April 22nd. The film is adapted from a play written by actress, Kaiulani Lee, based on the life and writings of environmentalist, Rachel Carson. Kaiulani has been performing the play for audiences for over ten years and, having seen the play and the movie, I can say she truly is amazing in both.
The film was actually shot on my old camera, a Panasonic HVX-200, by Haskell Wexler, ASC. It was an amazing experience working with Haskell. The man is a legend and his lighting was flawless. Even if he did think the HVX was “for the birds,” I think it looks great.
Check out the film, April 22nd. PBS. Intro by Bill Moyers.
Day 5 brought us to a small house in Dumont, NJ. And when I say small, I mean it was more like a dollhouse than a human house. We crammed about 15 people into a tiny living room with ceilings about 6 inches from the top of my head. Since all of our scenes took place right in the living room, I didn’t have much of a chance to put up lights. I relied almost entirely on light coming from the sliding glass door and from the lamps in the corner of the room. I swapped each lamp with daylight balanced CFL’s, which gave me very little green, but maybe a bit too much blue. They matched our daylight perfectly, and I should have had some incandescents that were a little warmer. Oh well.
I filled by bouncing a tweenie wrapped in blue and opal into some bead board as if it were a window just out of frame. We ran into situations where actors crossed my light in undesirable ways and I had to ask them to be more conscious of the light on the other actors’ faces, which is something I really hate doing because it can be distracting to them. But in a place that cramped, I don’t think we could have done it any other way. We covered ourselves with different angles and were relieved to do a few shots outside at the end of the day. So much cat hair in that tiny living room, I’m just glad I didn’t have an allergic reaction. I think I was too busy.
Day 6 was in a midtown office building. Literally, my biggest concern in this location was being shocked everywhere I went. There was so much static on the carpet I had to take my shoes off and figure out a way to ground myself before I touched the camera. I was worried we would fry our footage, but it turned out OK. If I had time and money to swap all the overhead fluorescents in the office with daylight balanced tubes, I probably would have. They were always a bit too warm. In the tiny conference room (why is everything we shoot in a tiny space?) I just turned them off all together and went with an overhead soft light of my own. But for the most part, it was an easy day. We had simple scenes, and out in the main office it really helped to have that boring overhead fluorescent look for the story.
Spent all day today scouting for another shoot. I’m ready to take a long break. But when I do, I’ll probably take my camera with me.
