Cinematography Breakdown - The Truth I'm Standing On - Part 1
Lighting charts, details, and explanations of two setups used in the music video for Leanna Crawford.
In the previous post, I went into detail about the overall making-of the music video. Now here’s how we captured a couple of looks from the piece.
INTERIOR PERFORMANCE
The interior performance took a lot of time to get right, as far as looks go. We wound up needing both of our powerhouse lights outside the windows, a lot of neg to block out unwanted light, and quite a bit of haze. We also added an Aputure in the interior to fill out a bit of the space we’d lost when negging the room.
I wanted a fairly backlit, silhouette-heavy look for Leanna as we were still at a point in the song that fit that mood in my opinion. Once we’d get to our exterior was when I wanted a vibrant and less dark atmosphere. Later in the song I warmed up the color of this interior in post since at that point in the edit it could match the warmth of the exterior (hence one of the frames below looking more warm than the rest).
We shot this on a Panasonic EVA 1 on vintage Canon glass. I lived on the 35 the entire day. Honestly the 35 has been my favorite for some time - as it stays flattering when you push in for close-ups (rather than going fish-eye if you were on a wider lens) and still can show the space if you pull out. It feels incredibly versatile and I always find myself going back to it. While I didn’t push to have this shot’s white balance as cool as the rest of the interiors, I still believe I had us shoot around ~5000 K to keep the sunlight ever so slightly blue. I didn’t want this to feel too warm.
INT STAIRWAY
The interior stairway wasn’t as much of a key location as the interior performance however it wound up being my favorite look in the end.
The space was incredibly small, and above the stairs were just more rooms and a hallway. There was no light at all coming from windows - and the tungsten sources were just gross. This meant our m18’s were unusable, too since we couldn’t get them inside. Also I mean even if there had been windows we had no real way of getting the m18’s up to a second floor’s height either so… yeah.
I tasked the gaffer with the job of creating the appearance of windows casting hard light through the railings so that we could have some shape on the wall to the left of the frame and behind Leanna. I’ve started to take more notice lately of adding shapes onto flat walls in order to give them more dimension. I guess now it sounds like an obvious thing to be aware of within your toolkit but I was painfully unaware of it for a long time. Had we not added something there, the entire space would have felt much more flat and given no motivation to her being backlit. We wound up using the 300d and a titan panel to get enough light to create the look I was wanting.
Again I used the 35mm on the EVA 1. It was really, really tight in that small space but thankfully the leading lines of the stairwell make the space feel less cramped that it did in person.
For the close-up of Leanna we also had someone walk in and hollywood a tube that was wrapped in muslin, just to give her a little more fill on the face.
Making of “The Truth I’m Standing On“ Music Video
This post details the entire process of landing a music video: treatment, preproduction, and filming.
The entire process of making this video: from writing a treatment at breakneck speed, pre-production, pulling off over nine setups in a day, and delivering a final piece was a whirlwind of experience that taught me so much moving forward in my career.
While I don’t know how often I can realistically take the time to give thought out, elaborate posts that detail every lesson I received, I do hope that I can share occasional pieces of advice I’ve learned that can help others out.
Pre Pre-Production
One minute you’re feeling stagnant in your creativity, wondering what’s next in your career, and the next thing you know you’re hit in the face with a chance to turn in a treatment for a music video: the only catch is it’s due tomorrow. That’s life. Things come up at the last minute all the time. It’s about your ability to tackle those opportunities and have ideas at the ready.
I always start by playing the song - nonstop. If you can’t enjoy listening to what you’re making a video for then there’s really no point in getting involved. The entire night I wrote down any ideas, vignettes, and moments that came to mind. I’d see which ones I actually appreciated after sitting with them for a while. If you’re sick of an idea by the time you’ve written it down then obviously it’s not worth pursuing. I tried to find interviews with the artist speaking about the song as well because I wanted to be aware of her own vision and reasons behind the lyrics.
Eventually I came up with an idea I felt confident I could pull of within the given budget and was proud of putting my name on. After that I spent the remaining night looking up as many reference visuals I could find to include in the treatment to give the best possible representation of what I wanted the final piece to be.
The video would take place in a large, cold, depressing interior environment for the first half, and then on a transitional moment within the song we’d move to a warm, vibrant exterior. The switch would take place without the audience realizing until the camera would pull out from the piano the viewer still thinks is indoors but is now outside. The theme was the overcoming of personal anxieties/depression that the artist had detailed when talking about why she’d written the song in the first place. Finding a way to channel our anxieties and depression into a force that helps free us from those feelings. INT/EXT = DEPRESSION/HAPPINESS, etc. You get it.
I try to keep my treatments brief. I explain what I felt from the song, and what I believe the artist’s message is. I give a brief idea of what performance setups we’ll have and what narrative elements. I try to keep that all to one page if possible. Sometimes I go into more detail than that but not often - only when I have an idea that I think needs more details. I then include one or two pages of reference images that help convey the tone/look we’ll be aiming for.
I pitched the video and immediately told myself to forget about it. Don’t check my email. Move on. If you’re going to get anywhere within the business of directing music videos, or video projects in general, you have to have thick skin and be prepared to hear no many more times than you ever hear a single yes. You can’t spend every minute of every day hoping to hear back or you’ll be setting yourself up for heartbreak over and over again.
Thankfully this time around I eventually heard back and it was a yes.
Here are a few of the images I included on my treatment to help give an example of the tone/atmosphere I was wanting to accomplish:
PRE-PRODUCTION
Congratulations, you just booked a music video! Prepare for unimaginable stress, hurdles, adrenaline spikes, incredible highs and lows. It’s better than most drugs and far more addictive.
As I spoke to the label representatives I quickly realized I’d need a producer on board. I knew my strengths were heavily right-brained and talking about the left-brained details (insurance, rentals, releases, etc) almost made me have a panic attack. Finding someone that would field the details while I worked on the idea itself and executing it was essential. So I reached out to a producer that a fellow director friend had introduced me to a while back and we decided to tackle the project together. He was essential to this happening - so thanks Jay Hawley.
For this particular video I had pulled a lot of references and studied the location’s online images as much as I could to get a sense of the space going into this. We (myself and Jay) spent a lot of time working out the details in advance to get a location that offered everything I was hoping to accomplish based on my treatment. We would need a piano that we could move from the inside to the outside, and we needed a location that had a great interior (with multiple usable spaces) as well as a very large field nearby.
We did not have the time or budget to make this a two day shoot, nor a two-location shoot. We would not have a day to scout this location due to it being booked up. At most we’d have maybe thirty minutes to see it in-person on the day-of. So going into this day prepared would prove instrumental if we were going to pull off a good video.
We found a piano on Facebook marketplace (a great resource for looking for last-minute needs and free props) and I’ll never forget how hard it was to load that piano into a truck bed with only the two of us and a very disgruntled husband and wife who were eager to see it go. We almost gave up a few times before we finally got it into the bed. It cost nothing but the blood, sweat, and tears that it took to transport it and looked great.
The location came off of a site devoted to renting spaces for productions in our area: Avvay. If you yourself can’t haggle (like me), then make sure you find a producer who can handle that side of things because it’s incredibly important to pulling off big ideas within small budgets.
Due to not being able to scout the location physically, I made plans to quickly walk the location in the morning and note where the sunset would be using an app for tracking the sun’s path. I went over the images provided on the website to have a rough idea of what locations I’d want to shoot in and what could be avoided. I planned on shooting that exterior performance backlight by the sunset. Never leave that sort of thing to chance.
Our video was at the very, very beginning of Covid regulations so we were acutely aware of keeping a minimal footprint, and a light crew. In the end it was myself as Director/DP, a Producer who essentially was the AD too (he also become our on-set Covid regulations appointee as well), a Movi/Cam Op, and a Gaffer. Ultimately I’d say the day was hardest on the gaffer who was constantly having to shift m18’s around outside the house to whatever window we needed inside. No one really had it easy though.
Especially anytime we all had to move that piano.
Seriously do not overestimate how much they weigh when you put one in a field for your treatment.
PRODUCTION
The big day was right around the corner, so I spent the time leading up to it pouring over reference visuals. I wound up having a five page reference guide that had around fifty images that I used to help keep my own mind rooted in the tone I envisioned. Sometimes on the day of a shoot it’s easy to forget things that earlier felt unforgettable - so having a guide I could reference to bring my mind back to my idea was very beneficial.
Just a few examples from various pages in my references:
The day before the shoot I spent a while working out a detailed shotlist. I wanted to make sure I could cross off every single shot once I knew we had it, instead of relying on myself to know when we’d truly gotten everything I would need for an edit. When I don’t have a list or something to check off, I can often times tunnel vision and just do the same shot over and over again. A crucial moment was mentally preparing myself for how best to pull off the bait-and-switch of the piano being inside for one shot, and then outside for the next one.
Initially I’d planned on having curtains rigged up in the field as well to help sell the switch but on the day-of we decided that wasn’t necessary. I made sure to frame up the push-in on the piano keyboard, and then took multiple images of the final frame on my phone so that we matched it on the exterior for our pull-out later in the day.
An example of what my shotlist looked like for a couple of the setups. I made sure I knew on the day-of what I could walk away without getting, in case we ran short on time:
One of the best parts of the day was having someone so accessible and open for direction and played well to the camera. Leanna had an energy that you could see on screen, and a willing vulnerability that helped to sell the opening moments. When we finally got to the moments of celebration in the song and the exteriors I think we were all at a point where we truly felt like celebrating being outside and able to shake off the energy we’d been holding onto for the earlier moments.
It’s important to not focus entirely on images as a director. Focus on your artist and the emotion first. With Leanna it was easy. I wanted her to feel comfortable, to be herself, and to not be afraid to give herself over to the idea of the video. For some of the shoot Jay helped to set the mood by playing some sad ambient music (that I can’t for the life of me remember now. Novo Amor? IDK). Pay attention to where they’re facing, their eyes, and everything about their expressions. Oftentimes it’s not enough to say “look sadder” (also that’s just a weird ambiguous thing to say in general) but instead give them specific directions.
In the end the day ran the full twelve hours we’d planned on it going. Our movi fell apart right during sunset. A few people went home with chigger. While we had to scrap certain shots due to time, we managed to pull off every setup I’d had in mind. We’d survived. We all walked away exhausted, but also incredibly proud.
I mean, I dunno - I was at least.
BTS:
THE FINISHED VIDEO
Another time I may dig into details about how I edited this, and the collaborative process that goes into editing a video and receiving notes from a label/artist. For now the post has already gone long so I’ll just leave you with the final video. I’ll post lighting charts soon in separate posts. Thanks for reading.
Click here to go to the first lighting breakdown for this music video.
Cinematography Breakdown - Pop Tart Music Video - 1st Setup
In-depth explanation for how we achieved a certain look within the music video created for the 2019 Musicbed Challenge. Lighting chart, examples, thought process, and reference images.
Earlier this year I got together with a few friends and used a (very rare) free weekend to make a video for the Musicbed Challenge. I’d been busy with work and hadn’t felt like I’d done anything to really express my own creativity in some time so I viewed this contest as a chance to hold myself to the fire and make something for myself. While there are parts that I would change about the finished video now, I’m still really pleased with the final looks I achieved in a day with only about two days of pre-production and all costs coming out of my own wallet.
The way the challenge works is that you’re given multiple choices of music available from the Musicbed’s library and you must use one of those songs to create a video specific to the category you’re entering. I decided to go with a music video and landed on the song “Poptart” by Margolnick. Once I landed on the song I started to draft up ideas. Honestly one of the first ones that came to mind was what I went with in the end: an obsessive stalker kidnapping someone they’re in love with. The whole idea came from the cover of the album and this figure standing with their back to us in a red raincoat.
So with that idea in mind I started grabbing reference stills that helped me focus on the tone and look I wanted to achieve.
Reference stills aren’t always about replicating the looks of what you’re pulling, either. Sometimes it’s worth having stills that hit you personally with a certain tone or mood, and can then be used to put you back into that mental place when you’re on set and having trouble remembering your inspiration and feelings to aim for. Pull anything that inspires you and achieves the same tone, look or atmosphere you hope to hit.
I knew due to this being a very last-minute project that access to locations would be pretty limited, so I wrote the story around being able to shoot in a small digital studio we use at times and the rest taking place at my own home where I had complete control over all the other aspects/availability. I also wanted to practice more control in my shots (I love going handheld but rely on it too often), so I chose to use a tripod as often as possible for this particular shoot. I wanted framing to matter, and movement to matter when it happened - not just have it be chaotic.
Most importantly I just wanted to challenge myself to practice something I don’t usually do.
We started the day at the digital studio. Once we wrapped there we’d head to my house where we’d be for the rest of the day. I had an idea for a jungle-like atmosphere with bright neon colors as a representation for the mental hideaway of the captive. It wouldn’t be easy to do that on a budget but what I finally landed on was going to a Hobby Lobby, buying about 150$ worth of fake vines/flowers, and throwing them all onto C-stands around the talent.
The best part of this to be really honest was being able to return the vines later on so that I hadn’t spent any actual money on suddenly owning like 20 strands of plastic vines. It’s not the best method for approaching every video you shoot, but sometimes it’s a good corner that you can cut that helps add additional production quality to a given look.
Studio Setup
The entire video was shot 4k, Clog 3. While I knew I wanted to shoot as much as possible on a tripod, I also wanted the option to add movement in post, which I did a lot. I would’ve liked to have been able to pump more haze into this location but due to circumstances outside of my control, I couldn’t pump any sort of atmosphere into that space — so I did the next best thing: using pro-mist filters. Since we have two c300’s at work, and each has their own filter kit, I just doubled up and put both of our 1/4 Pro-Mists into the same filter since we’d only be using one of the Canons that day.
Thanks to framing, the backlight (Digital Sputnik ds-1, full red, on a Matthews stand) was obscured by the talent and the vines. This allowed a nice bloom right into the middle of the frame, and a night symmetrical hair light.
The Skypanel (seriously the best light ever) was a teal color, with full diffusion inside of a chimera. We added a grid over the softbox to control the spread of light, and shot it down onto the talent from the left of camera. Keeping the light to where it hit only where we wanted it to was pivotal if we were going to keep the small space falling off into darkness around the vines and talent, and using a grid+softbox allowed this.
Once these two things were set, we were done with the setup and just rolled the song over and over and over again until I felt I had enough takes. The only changes made were slowly adding elements to the talent that made it clear his space was slowly being invaded (ropes, and eventually the female talent). I kept the camera locked the entire time, and on the same lens, shooting at 4k. My AD also ran a 4k Black Magic Pocket at times throughout the day which got me a lot of additional coverage and was very cool to have to play with. If a shot is shaky in the final video, there’s a good chance it was one of his handheld shots with the Pocket cam.
So that’s it for setup 1 of the day. I’ll dig into the other half of the day in another post sometime! Let me know if you have any questions at all, or comments, feedback, etc. I’d love to hear it. Thanks for reading.
Cinematography Breakdown - Bar Interior - 2nd Interview
In this post we talk about another setup for a single person interview in the interior of a bar. How to address daylight versus tungsten, windows, camera color temp, and more. Includes lighting charts.
Here we go again. Honestly I was blown away by the response my first post got on Reddit. I think at the time of posting this ~1700 unique visitors came and checked out my first lighting/cinematography breakdown. Hopefully I can keep providing what little I’ve learned over the past few years back to a community I rely upon heavily at times myself.
Long story short: thank you for taking the time to read this. As long as people get something out of this I plan on keeping it up.
In the previous post I detailed how we set up for interview 1 of 2. A couple points I kept in mind moving into number 2:
The first interview was at the bar — meaning that we’d want a separate location for interview 2. We didn’t want to reuse the same interview location if we could help it: at least with this particular shoot which aimed to be a full 11 minutes of a 22 minute episode. We wanted each setup to be unique-ish. (Of course some rules like that one exist to be broken).
The first interview was framed with the interviewee left-of-frame. Moving forward we’d want the other person featured in this piece to be right-of-frame facing left. It’s a small thing to keep in mind but can help make a huge difference when it comes to edits and keeping footage interesting. Don’t just randomly decide how you want to frame someone, make it a conscious decision.
Since this piece featured just two people it was easy to have one facing each direction — when you have more than two people it’s up to you to approach each interview creatively. Do you frame every supporting interviewee the same direction, and leave the other framing for the main subject? Center frame some? etc. etc.Lastly: A link to Part 1 so you can see the equipment at our disposal too.
Interview Setup #2
When we arrived in the morning at 10am and walked the space, the producer had mentioned the bar for the first setup and then suggested a couple of different places they were hoping the next setup could work at.
Before I get to which one we landed on I’ll mention the bar’s layout:
One pool table/playing area.
A couple of dart boards/standing area.
The bar.
A narrow, lounge-type area with a very small “stage” for performances against the back wall.
So those were the general areas I had to work with. I’ll save my full notes for the performance setup for the next post (If I actually make that one. At that point in the day we were running very behind schedule so I don’t have any BTS photos, if that matters) — I’ll mention now that I was hoping to not use the stage area for the singing/performing though. I wasn’t a fan of the space nor using a stage for a performance.
It felt like taking the easy way out, among other complaints.
The producer disagreed and when I had finished making my case they still felt a push for that space to be used for the performance. So in short — the stage/lounge area was out for the interview and would be used for the song.
A Quick Note:
I have a belief that as a DP it is your job to be the vocal advocate for the best visuals to represent the story you’re telling — but also to realize at the end of the day what hill it is you’re willing to die on.
Know this: you won’t get many hills (if any), and if you constantly are argumentative and aggressive about getting what you want without compromising, you’ll not be remembered kindly and likely not brought back (until you’re at a point in your career where you’ve earned that right — which most never do).
Be willing to make your case for something and then live with the fact that you may not get your way. Once you decide this is my hill then fight for it. However, for this particular shoot and that particular disagreement, I was nowhere near feeling like it was worth discussing further. I would light that area to the best of my ability when the time came.That wasn’t a hill for me.
We decided to use the pool table area for the second interview (the space I’d hoped to make use of for the performance). The biggest hurdle for this area was that we’d be fighting a lot of daylight from the entrance. The pool table was immediately inside the bar.
Exterior of the bar. The pool table area was directly behind the large orange sign you see to the left of the door upon entering.
I was hoping to incorporate interior lighting in my setup, visible in the frame. When I balanced the camera for daylight (if we didn’t flag it off, it’d be the primary key/motivation/source of light for the subject), the interior looked pretty bad to me. In the future I’ll try to have more examples when it comes to deciding between white balances. I wasn’t planning on sharing all of this so I don’t have a ton of references to provide to back up the claim at the moment!
I made the decision to flag off the daylight in the end as I felt the colors when we embraced it were too off for me. I didn’t like the mixture of the daylight with the tungsten interior for this particular setup. Sometimes it can work really well.
Usually when figuring out what angle I want to work with, I’ll find the general direction I want to shoot toward and then start looking through the wide to find the right frame. That was the case for this shot especially. I wanted to reveal more of the bar with this interview and yet make it clear we were still in the same space.
Once we had the wide-angle up and running, I began adjustments to what was seen. I knew she’d be right-of-frame and I also wanted the dartboards to still make it into the shot. We turned on a lamp that was sitting on a space in the background as well. I’m a huge fan of lit practicals being in-frame. I wanted the pool table to be visible for the color/texture it offered too. I made sure to actually have someone get the balls out and onto the table for additional color/set decoration: the table looked too empty without them.
I also really wanted to find a way to get that chandelier above the table into the shot. At first that didn’t seem possible — the chandelier was a good 3-5 inches above the frame, hanging from a hook, the cord was stapled into the ceiling, and ran about 15 feet away to an outlet.
I’m a better to ask forgiveness than permission sort of person so I waited for my opportunity. With the help of a couple of other folks I slowly fed all of the slack in the cord through each staple, toward the chandelier, and lowered it by about 4-5 chain links. I don’t endorse pulling stunts like that without permission to be honest — but sometimes I do it anyways and it pays off.
The DS1 on the disco ball would stay as well, but I repositioned it from below the ball this time.
Getting more things into place.
From this angle you can see our main key to the left, the Arri Skypanel s60 with a full diffusion chimera and eggcrate on it to help control the light’s spill and soften it. This was almost certainly set to 3200K.
For a nice toplight I used our 2L Litemat, set to 3200 as well (or close). I hoped with our Promist filters, and the fact the talent had vibrant red hair that a light from above would make her glow. Thankfully it did.
To be honest I hadn’t done that many times before and wanted to start experimenting with using diffused, soft, overhead lighting having seen it so often in BTS for films. If it didn’t look good I was prepared to scrap it and use just the Skypanel.
After the results I definitely have incorporated it more often though. The benefits, to list a few, are that it helps give a soft separation to the subject from the background, and also since the light is straight down there’s no spill to worry about on your background; It helps to add slightly more fill to the face — or could honestly work as a key light depending on how you set up the shot/scene.
View facing toward the cameras.
The Producer would be on the stool where my second shooter was seated at the time. You can see the flag directly behind the cameras, trying to kill as much daylight from hitting the talent as possible.
It’s hard to see from this view but our other flag was horizontally positioned over the windows, from outside, behind the second shooter and the AP in this shot. It’s the black bar that starts halfway up the window. I had them lay it out horizontally. I also took both of our 4x4 silks and leaned them against windows to at least soften some of the light coming in as well. I’m not sure how much the silks helped but I tried to kill/soften the daylight as much as possible with what was on hand.
Canon Cine Prime. 85mm. F 1.6, 2 Stops ND, ISO 500, WB 3700.
Turns out when I looked back through some of my BTS that I did have a shot revealing a little more information: I went with 3700K.
I can’t honestly recall 100% now but I feel like I bumped the temperature up from 3200 to 3700 in order to compensate for a bit of the daylight still coming through in spite of the flags/silks. I’d wager that the lights were both still set to full tungsten, but I may have bumped them up a hair as well from full tungsten to a similar temperature.
BTS with the talent in the frame, the producer asking questions to the left.
Final Frame, Wide. Graded. 35mm. Canon Cine Prime. 1/4 Promist filter, 3700K.
Final Frame, CU. Graded. 85mm Canon Cine Prime. 1/4 Promist filter, 3700K.
You can see the effect of the light hitting her from above (note the hair and shoulders) as well as providing a bit of additional fill to the face — while allowing the main key of the Skypanel to still provide the majority of light.
I was really, really pleased with the final look of this particular setup.
If you’ve made it this far I just wanted to say thanks one last time.
The reception to the first breakdown blew me away and really helped motivate me to push this one out asap for readers as well. I’ve enabled comments so you’re more than welcome to leave one.
Feel free to leave any feedback!
Cinematography Breakdown - Bar Interior - Interview
In this post I talk about location scouting, gear used, reference images from the shoot, managing natural light, adjusting practicals, and more.
Hopefully this can become a semi-regular thing I do on here. Maybe, somewhere down the line, it’ll help someone that’s looking for inspiration or guides on how to set up shots of their own. If so that’ll be enough for me.
If there’s one thing that I crave when I’m looking for posts about cinematography online it’s lighting setups with pictures. Knowing the how and why behind choices that different cinematographers make helps me personally feel a stronger connection and understanding to the craft.
A little background for this particular shoot:
I had not been to this location before, so I was going in very blind (A note to producers: please don’t assume cinematographers don’t want to go on scouts and that pictures will suffice! ). This meant that I ran the risk of over-packing our available gear. While I believe in hindsight we used most, if not all, of the things I had us load into the van — I could’ve been even better prepared having been able to scout this location beforehand.
This was going to be a very busy day. Due to the availability of the artist, we were looking at arriving on location at 10am, and being done with two interviews, a musical performance, and b-roll by 3pm. That’s a very fast turnaround per scene. I prefer having an hour to light any given setup as well, which definitely wasn’t going to be possible this time around. We’d have to light fast, and accept that some things may not be perfect. In the end I’m still happy with the results.
I believe this is what all we loaded into the van:
2x c300 mkii
The cameras that are the workhorses for all of the content I shoot currently.
Canon CinE Primes
24, 35, 50, 85
I believe this was a rare case where every lens wound up being used on a shoot as well. For most shoots I find us leaving the 50 in the case, and often the 24 as well. Usually one shooter lives on the 35 and the other on the 85.
Skypanel s60 with Chimera, Full Diffusion, & Honeycomb.
The Skypanel is a heavy, annoying, amazing light. It’s a workhorse with a ton of output. It looks beautiful when diffused and even though I hate loading/moving/lifting it — it’s always worth the effort.
Our two Litemats (a 2L and a 3)
These lights are literal godsends. Lightweight and bi-color, and each comes with its own set of 1/4, 1/2 and full diffusions with frames and grids. These are lifesavers and honestly when I can get away with needing less output I find myself using these over the skypanel for shoots. For how often we were moving around that day, I found myself throwing these all over the place and only using the skypanel for major setups.
DS1
https://digitalsputnik.com/collections/ds1-products/products/ds1-basic-system-us
A great light that’s controllable via an app on your phone. I love having this for a little hair-light or splashing color onto a wall/object in the background. Sometimes I use the full RGB ability of it to balance out a room’s color if I’m not happy with the wall’s color, etc. The fact it can be powered off v-mount is definitely a plus as well.
2 each: 4x4 Flag, 4x4 Silk
I need to order more of these for our kit. We needed many more flags for this day (to black out the front windows of the bar). I’m hoping to find a set of flags that expand to 4x4 but collapse and are heavy duty. The one issue with these 4x4’s is they don’t fit into anyone’s trunk so we have to use the van to carry them around if we want them on set. It’s more of a headache than it sounds like, believe me. Our production van isn’t a great one, and that’s being kind.
4 c-stands, 1 combo stand, 1 matthews stand.
c-stands for flags, diffusion, litemats. Combo for the skypanel. Matthews stand for ds1.
Dana Dolly Kit, rails, stands.
Knowing there’d be a musical performance, I wanted our wide angle on a dolly.
2 Tripods
For interviews. We tend to go for 20+ minutes on each interview and I didn’t see a reason for them to be handheld or on an easy-rig. We would also need one tripod’s head for the Dolly later on.
2 EZ-Rigs
For all B-roll and the close-up shot during the musical performance.
2 Matte Boxes
I knew I wanted filters for this shoot. We have two Wooden Camera Matteboxes, and two 1/4 pro-mist filters which I’ve fallen in love with when it comes to getting certain looks.
2 full apple boxes, and 2 half apple boxes.
I also packed all of our sound equipment for our freelance sound engineer that would be on set, but honestly I know little about sound equipment — so I can’t really say explicitly what all we had on hand for this. I know we had our soundbag for mixing on-set, a boom, and 2 DI boxes (for the performance instruments) + multiple cables/LAVs.
Interview Setup 1
The first setup of the day was an interview with someone that worked at the label that had signed the artist. According the shoot schedule I’m looking at, we had 45 minutes after landing at the location to be lit and ready for her. Technically we were supposed to be “set” at 10:45 and she wasn’t slotted to arrive until 11am which gave us a little extra space. What wasn’t calculated was that we’d need to actually unload the whole van, build out the gear, and have cameras set — so we were cutting it a bit close by the time she arrived.
Our producer told me they wanted something at the bar for this setup. I began looking around and decided on a frame similar to the image below. We could get some practicals into the shot and reveal a bit of the overall layout of the space as well. I made a mental note moving forward that since the first interview would be left of frame, facing the right, that we would need to flip the next interview (right of frame facing the left).
Thankfully this was a rare shoot where we had almost too many hands on deck to help out (one of our in-house editors came to watch/help, as well as an intern, myself, a second-shooter, and an associate producer).
Finished Shot - Wide - Graded - 1/4 ProMist Filter (I believe this was the 35mm). You can see the effect of the pro-mist especially on the lights in the top-right of frame.
Finished Shot - CU - Graded - 1/4 ProMist Filter (85mm)
The first setup wasn’t TOO terribly involved. In the wide you can see the ds1 in the background splashing teal onto what is a small disco ball (hard to tell in the image). I left it in the shot as a practical that was visible after the producer mentioned they liked it. Honestly I had thrown it up back there because of the disco ball and I’d wanted to hit it with some color for a later setup. I was going to take it down after seeing what it looked like. They just happened to mention liking the look of it before I took it down: so it stayed.
Sometimes you just luck out.
I remember exposing for the interior of the bar and turning off all of the lights except for the practicals you see in the shot: colored string lights, dartboard lights, and the bar lights. There were other lights available but they honestly took away contrast instead of helping add it.
I really, really wanted to frame at least some of the bar’s lighting into the shot so that’s why the wide has the interviewee farther from the frame than what I’d usually like to achieve. The shot just wasn’t as appealing without those lights giving some more interest to the frame and inspiration for lighting choices. If she had been closer, I would’ve had to frame from below her eye line to still show them — and that’s 9/10 times an unflattering angle for almost anyone. I tried raising the seat via some appleboxes we’d brought, but it looked really awkward. Unfortunately there was no way of lowering the lights closer to the bar.
I wish I could recall the exact color temp I went with for this one. I exposed for the background, and adjusted my white balance to a color where I felt good about what the interior looked like through the camera. I know I flagged off as much daylight as possible, and if I had to bet I was somewhere between 3500-4000K as far as white balance goes.
From the perspective of the talent. I believe I wound up scooting their chair away from the corner even more by the end of it all. We lit this entirely with practicals and the 2L litemat you see on the left with full diffusion, and eggcrate. I usually try to light and shoot into the fill-side (shocking stuff, I know). This setup also allowed for the visible practicals of the lights over the bar to help influence the lighting. The more I’ve lit interviews, the more I lean towards a light above the talent, angled down onto them as opposed to directly parallel to their face. The resulting shadows are more pleasing to my taste (and more resemble “Rembrandt lighting” as well).
The flag was there to kill as much daylight as possible — and help add more contrast, and there is another flag blocking a window directly behind the two cameras. You can see the producer to the left of the wide camera, as well as my second-shooter operating the wide camera in this shot.
In hindsight I do wish I’d added a light directly overhead, slightly behind the talent just for a little more separation, but I can easily live with what we got in the time we had to get it.
Very sloppy representation of the lighting for this setup.