Deadlines be damned – at least every now and then. We're CRAZY DEEP in major life transitions at the moment so this week's Monday post is being pushed out on Wednesday night. It's all good though seeing how I'm emotionally and physically wiped with everything going on. Oh, I also had a super quick shoot just outside St. Louis, MO, Monday & Tuesday of this week.
Freelancing means taking what you can when you can. What that sometimes looks like is me running so hard in the Houston airport Tuesday night that I needed to puke once I got the gate agent to re-open the jetway and let me on the plane. My flight out of St. Louis was delayed and I had to seriously hustle if I wanted to make the final Oklahoma City bound flight out of Houston that night. In full transparency I didn't end up throwing up on the plane, but good lord I apologize to anyone who heard me and my unsuccessful attempts in that tiny airplane bathroom.
With all that being said, I'll be quick with this week's post: Monday & Tuesday had me out of town with a longtime client. They reached out with a new batch of shoots the next few months and our first was just outside St. Louis, MO. It was a simple two camera talking head with additional b-roll for the edit.
The project had me shooting on their Canon 7D as well as me flying out with my Canon 5Dmk3 package and basic lighting kit. There wasn't a scout ahead of time, so I just packed what I had and hoped for the best. I've had that camera and lighting kit for years, but this was the first shoot with my new SmallHD 702 Bright monitor. I'd rented them over the years as needed, but finally replaced my aging 7" Marshall monitor thanks to a recent ShareGrid & AbleCine sale.
The interview setup was very straight forward. We shot next to nearly floor to ceiling windows on a balcony overlooking a large lobby area. We had mostly clear skies that day and the wall was a patchwork of glass with a few of the windows having a blue tint to them. We also had tungsten lighting overhead, so basically a mess of color temps going on the whole time. My best option was to use the existing daylight blasting through the windows and try to augment the look with my small lighting package.
Having to wrangle the mess of color temps had me adding a blue gel to my tungten lights to try and get closer to the daylight pouring through the windows. I also set the white balance in each camera to something like 4800k to try and come close to what was happening in the space light-wise. I'll normally shoot a flat color profile on DSLRs so the image can be more easily fixed as needed in post. These two shots ended up being a bit more green than I'd expected, but not a big deal.
I will say I'm digging the SmallHD monitor so far; For sure feels lighter than the dinosaur of a 7" Marshall I've been rockin’ since the early years of the Obama administration. One of my favorite features from that Marshall monitor was the false color option. Unfortunately that psychedelic godsend finally crapped out on my relic a while back and I was forced to judge exposure by eye like some kind of monster. This fancy pants SmallHD monitor has multiple false color options, but the corresponding IRE color representation is a bit different than the Marshall so I'm still getting the hang of it.
Oh, and a couple side notes: One, my rental car was brand new and literally had five miles on the odometer when I got it. And B, go find Sump Coffee if you're needing a caffeine fix in St. Louis. They're doing the Lord's Work out there.
