Monsters and Night Scouts

Anne and The Boys are out of town for a few days this week. It's always weird having the house to myself overnight and having even a short respite from parental responsibilities. I joke about Anne being the family quarterback and me being the JV waterboy, but she NO DOUBT runs the parent show around these parts. That being said, not running the dinner service, being wrist-deep in the day's dirty bottles, and coercing two small children to go the f**k to sleep, I made the most of last night and was out before, during, and after dusk like some kind of monster.

The better three-quarters of my family are off visiting relatives with her mom. They're planners – and better than me – so they arranged their trip while I was working the deadCenter Film Festival this week. If you're up for it, go watch what on-camera talent Katie Parker and I put together for them last year.

I was also out last night scouting for another small personal project shooting this week. For scouts, I'm normally out with my Canon 5D Mark III & 24-70 lens kit plus the Artemis app on my iPhone. The DSLR is out there because the images are better and I can do more with the camera, but having an iPhone app that will show the aspect ratio with a specific camera, resolution, and lens is incredibly helpful in prep. Sidenote: I promise I shot these last night; The app dates are off.

If I'm out by myself, I'll shoot my clenched fist to get an idea of what the light will look like. The knuckles and creases are a quick stand-in for the shapes of the face and eye socket. Lower light levels don't always play nice with my camera's auto-focus, so I'll open my hand up to give it at least a fighting chance. I've also seen people online carrying around black marbles to check for eyelight – but I'm not dealing with that kind of nonsense. Probably should though...

A Lighting Test

So this was a different thing. By far the most moody and stylized projects I’ve done to date versus what normally fills up my hard drives. I’ve been sitting on a couple reference images for a long time that I absolutely wanted to use but for one reason or another hadn't gotten around to shooting. The whole idea was wrapped around lighting, body structure, and direction. Well, that and my thing of always wanting to do stuff and a goal to post to my blog at least once a week this year.

In putting a treatment together – or at least a lookbook – I dug through a ton of references I’d already had stored away. I’ve also been listening to a TON of Anderson .Paak so I knew his music would be playing a major part. By the way, I'm awful at coming up with titles, so ignore the "Graceful Strength" part if you download the lookbook. This whole thing was more about a lighting test than anything proper. The footage from this film is available for licensing over at Filmsupply.

There were also the self-imposed restrictions of a simple background, using my own equipment (short a couple c-stands and apple boxes), and keeping the talent either seated or lying down. I’d love to talk about my incredible studio space with all its incredible amenities, nice leather couches, and cases of LaCroix Sparkling Water, but instead, I’ll show you my bedroom where I pushed everything up against the walls before the shoot and then reset before St. Anne the Wife got home.

Initially, another model was lined up but I reached out to someone else due to scheduling conflicts. Madison Bready is an OU student I met years ago and worked with a few times recently. Turns out Madi was absolutely the right person for the shoot. Cynthia Dreier is a makeup artist I’ve worked with on quite a few projects and she killed it in making sure Madi looked her best and kept us on track during the shoot. Did I mention Madi is an OU student because we only had like 90 minutes to do makeup and shoot everything in between her classes that afternoon. Oh, and did I mention I was super happy with what we got? Because dang…

Gear-wise, we shot with my RED Weapon Helium at 8k, 60 fps, 2:1 aspect ratio, and 15:1 compression with my Zeiss CP.2 len set (25, 35, & 50). I'd also set my white balance to 4500k to warm up the tungsten light and white backdrop – along with her skin tones and hair color. That being said, all the footage in the edit is straight out of camera; I didn't do any additional color work to the footage (or still frames). I also tried a step printing technique shooting at 8 fps and a 360° shutter angle, but it was in the last couple minutes of the shoot and I wasn’t really happy with the footage; I should’ve shot closer to 4 fps. For lighting, I set up an Arri 650 head through a couple scrims and two layers of diffusion. A bunch of black fabric hung on camera right helped control the spill. I’d roughed in the lighting setup using a styrofoam head on a light stand before the talent got there.

Post-wise, I knew the 8k files were going to be a monster. We shot about 325 GB of footage which isn’t nuts with my camera package, but honestly a pain to edit such large files. Adobe Premiere on my Mac Pro setup will handle it like a champ, but having to lower the playback resolution to 1/8 or 1/16 just to just slog through the .R3D files is like tying that champ’s arm behind his back before going into a fight. I’d worked with offline edits WAY the hell back in the days of SD footage and tape decks, but this simple YouTube tutorial pretty much changed my workflow and is keeping me from looking so longingly at those fancy Alexa Minis and their blissful 4k sensor sizes.

Music is always the hardest part for me during an edit. I promise I’m all about supporting other creatives and paying to license music, but after a genuinely solid effort I couldn’t find or afford something that fit as well – in my opinion – as this Anderson .Paak track. 99% of my edits start with a music track – especially with personal projects; It's got to feel right or else it's not worth the effort.

After I'd gotten somewhat through a rough edit (and several glasses of whiskey) I reached out to a few other creatives for feedback. Crazy thanks to those guys for the insanely solid ideas, helping me step back from how close I was to the work, and look at what I was missing.

Good grief I hope to do more of this soon.

Steadicam Aero 30

For someone who's shot a ton of handheld in an EasyRig over the years and seriously considers it part of my shooting style, adding a Steadicam to the mix has been kinda mind-blowing. We shot this simple test with Madison Bready in just over an hour one afternoon in an impromptu shoot organized just before lunch.

In addition to the Steadicam Aero 30 rig I'd just bought earlier in the week, I'd rented a wireless follow focus and monitor setup from lensrentals.com for a shoot the next couple of days. After a handful of texts, emails, and phone calls John and Madi met me at a coffee shop near downtown Oklahoma City to hang out for an hour or so and make something.

For sure there's plenty of "Hey look at what you can do with a Steadicam!" nonsense in the edit, but being able to move and operate a camera in new ways is like kissing for the first time. Yeah, you're really bad at it, but it's awesome and sure makes your heart beat faster.

Ronins and Movis booted sliders from the trendy/relevant filmmaker pedestal a few years ago but I'd only shot with them a handful of times. Yeah, I've seen some awesome shots with those tools, but I never really bought into it. My back always hurt after using them and I never felt like I had the amount and type of control I wanted.

All the conversations I'd had around stabilized camera movement kept circling back to Steadicams being the way to go. There were a few camera department guys I trust and constantly pester here in town plus the LA steadicam op I connected with working on a recent feature. They all talked about how much practice it takes to even be remotely passable as a Steadicam op and I absolutely agree. I've got a ways to go. Oh, and I now realize I've traded the back pain from an EasyRig for hip pain delivered via a Steadicam vest.

Camera-wise, everything was shot with existing light on my RED Weapon Helium at 8k widescreen, recorded to 4k ProRes, and a Zeiss 25mm CP.2. None of this nonsense was color-corrected or graded. The music is another rad Louis Futon remix from Soundcloud.

Crazy thanks to [John Dewberry][1] and Madison Bready for putting up with and helping me shoot a test like this. I've been working with John over the years and he had come over a day or two before to help me initially set up the kit. I'd been doing some simple tests and practicing around the house, but nothing beats actual time working with talent in front of the camera and an AC pulling focus. Seriously hope to do more with both of them very soon.

deadCenter 2017

deadCenter is easily my favorite week of the summer in Oklahoma City. Over the years – give or take a couple – I've been able to work with the film festival in covering events and screenings with on-camera talent Katie Parker. Here's this year's recap video.

 

Oh, and another thing I got to be part of screened this year in Okie Shorts. Check out the link to Illustrators Anonymous for more info about our film.