The date is moved…
I was informed yesterday that our shooting day has been moved to the 17th of September. The date was moved because the iControl prototype isn’t finished yet. All the scripts are finished, now I’m just waiting for the shooting scripts. I hope to have it by the end of next week.
Budget and Creative Meeting
We had a creative and budget meeting. All’s good and the client provided most of the necessary answers to questions I had. Some good solutions came out and some new problems came up.
I’ll have the final lighting plan by Monday built around moving lights, Lekos with moving gobos and some Rock & Roll lighting set-ups. I’m gonna keep it simple. It may sound empty, but I don’t want to the lighting to distract from the music.
Budget approved
So, the budget was approved and now, we’re into step two – pre-production. Two of the four scripts are finished and the final scripts should be available by the end of next week. I’ll be visiting Moviola next week to create a “looks” set-up for the commercial. It’ll be nice to put my SD cards to good use.
It seems the engineer at Time Warner recently got a portable waveform monitor and vectorscope. I’ll be using that on set which will be a very nice addition. I’ll post photographs and my set-up files after principle photography.
Final revisions?
Well the Technocrane is out. Which in someways is good. It would be a nice toy to play with but I’d rather have my crane operator have some work. The final lighting ideas will be presented to the client tomorrow afternoon. I’m considering a just using the moving yoke lights and some PARs on above the star field backing and some LED Ringlite from Fisher Lighting. I think they’ll be look good and not often used this way. I’ll need to see if we can set up a dimmer control from a Edison connection to DMX. I’ll put sketches later.
Artist: Virgil – “Got You Where I Want You” – Rock •
The start of the day began with, “Oh, my back hurts.” Moving the jib around and loading and unloading the gear did a number on my back. Can’t stop now, two aspirins and off I go, got to get to L.A. I arrive at the Dragonfly five minutes after call time (noon) only two folks where there and neither had keys to the club. (Note: When dealing with club employees, always set their call time at least a half-hour earlier than you need them. They’re always late.) We started setting up the jib outside the club and it was finished by the time someone arrived with keys. After everything was moved inside that’s when the real work started… I placed the jib, secured the eye-light, set up the monitor, focused the par cans, set the lighting levels, tried to figure out the lighting board, set up a couple of accent lights behind the equipment, ran power to the set and made sure none of the equipment got lost or misplaced… I knew the job was dangerous when I took it, but this further strengthens my resolve about free work and making sure a qualified crew is available on all subsequent shoots.
The jib’s funky pan/tilt control was still an issue. I must not be the first to complain about the controller. When I dropped off the jib, the guy who checked it in mentioned they’ve already been discussing modifications to the control to make it user friendly. My feel slightly vindicated, but not by much. This jib renewed my admiration for my jib and crane operators… Tracy, Scott and Dave, my hat’s off to you!!
The lighting was more of a happy accident. We mostly used the stage lights by focusing a dozen or so PAR 64s, and they had three Martin moving mirrors. If there was any time at all, it would have been nice to program the mirrors, but that was prohibitive and so we used a pre-programmed strobe sequence that I thought worked very nice, especially during a close-up of the opening verse. Besides that two broads lights with Congo blue were placed to accent the speakers and back wall. I placed an eye-light on the end of the jib but if we had more time, I would have like to have rigged a better placement for it. The photos at the bottom don’t do it justice.
The shoot went well enough, but short. I thought we had to be out by 8:00 p.m. but it turns out we needed to be out by 6:30 – in all, a seven hour day. From what I remember, we got some great moments from the lead singer. He’s got a strong presence. The band looked good also – some were more image conscience than others, but I think in the final edit, they all will have a chance to shine.
An unfortunate thing happened on the last shot. The video will likely open in full frame of an iron, Spanish chandelier hanging from the back of the room, then boom down to reveal the band. The hope was to bookend the video with the last shot finishing on the chandelier. Well, on the last shot, the cable that controls the head got snagged on and when I moved to reset, it snapped from the connector. It was unfortunate that cooler heads didn’t prevail. We could have done it with the head locked into position – but instead it was decided to shoot the balance of the song hand-held and then call it a day.
The weekend had its share of problems and disappointments, but also successes and contentment and I’m convinced that the two videos will turn out great.
Artist: Isaac Romelle – “Don’t Trip” – R&B •
Tonight director Merrilee Burke and I shot the “Don’t Trip” music video for artist Isaac Romelle, and by far and away, the shortest day I’ve ever had on a music video. We arrived at Cal State Northridge at 7PM and started setting up. The gear consisted of Panasonic DVX100 (Thank you, Aaron), a 2500W genie from Home Depot, a jib with a 2-axis head, and whatever lights I could dig up from the studio. The biggest job was the jib – balancing, securing the cables and getting power to it for the eye-light and camera AC.
The jib we got is an Intel-a-jib, unfortunately not an intelligent jib. Overall, it’s a good idea except for the single switch that reverses the joystick control for pan and tilt direction. Normally, both the pan and tilt have reverse direction switches – this only had one. What’s the big deal you ask? Well, when the pan was OK, the tilt was backwards for me and when the tilt was OK, the pan was backwards for me. We lost so much time on poor camera shots while I struggled to work with the dang controller. It would have taken too long to explain it to the director, so we marched ever onward.
(UPDATE: I recently got an email from the makers of the Intel-A-Jib pointing out that they do not make the remote head controller. Fair enough. Then a word to the wise, make sure you’re comfortable with the remote head you get when renting from whatever vendor you go to.)
Then we had to move the jib, which was a chore – it must have weighed at least 85-awkward-pounds.
(UPDATE: Again a message from the makers of the jib who have issues with my claim of 85 lbs. True the jib itself does not weigh 85 lbs – by their specifications it weighs 65 lbs – but when you build it and you have the camera, a monitor, the head and the heavy-duty tripod to support it all, it clearly weighs quite a bit to be sure. As to my use of the word “awkward”, let’s face it when you have to move a jib that doesn’t have wheeled support it is awkward, period.)
Not a big deal when Merrilee’s friend was there, but after he left… well, let’s just say I muscled my way somehow. The crew? Well, only the director and myself really. No crew… again. (Someone shoot me until I learn!) For some strange reason everyone I know wants to get paid! Go figure.
The lighting was shamefully simple. Merrilee wanted to work with the use of car-lights as background elements and as lighting units. It worked for the most part. I used paper tape to control the intensity of the car-light. The key light was a single source from a 750W open-face broad light generally placed about 3/4 front, 30° height, with Lee 216 clipped to the barn doors. Overall it looked very nice. After the wide-shots were done, we moved onto the medium, then close ups of the singer.
After the close-ups, the night was done shortly after mid-night. It took an hour and a half to break down everything and put it away. I ended up being the last man standing. The drive home was nice – it’ll be nicer still after I move to North Hollywood.
Technocrane for the shoot?
Panavision (Woodland Hills) offered some very tempting rates for the Technocrane. We’re looking into the possibility of using it for this shoot. The producers and I have a budgetary meeting Monday afternoon to consider our options. And it looks like ELS (Entertainment Lighting Services of North Hollywood) will be our vendor for our supplemental lighting needs, i.e. moving yoke/mirror, hazer, color changers, etc.
Weekend of fun…
This weekend I’m shooting a pair of music videos for artist Isaac Romelle and the band Virgil. The shoot for the Romelle video is being shot at Cal State Northridge. The Dragon Fly on Sunset is the location for the Virgil video. I’ll post photos as soon as after the weekend. The director of the videos is Merrilee Burke.
Today we had a chance to look at the venue – the Galaxy Theater in Costa Mesa, CA. Oh, boy, is this gonna be hard. We’ve got a job to make that place special and grandiose. I’ve got some ideas and Ken (Art Director) has some ideas – but, I think our ideas are bigger than the location, the budget and the available crew.
I’ve got a job for Time Warner Cable to shoot a series of informational loops that will air on their iControl channel. We’re gonna shoot at the Gear Monkey stage in Orange, CA. On this shoot we’re using the Panasonic SDX900 camera.
For a long time I’ve wanted to have a way of documenting the projects I work on, the difficulties and successes of those projects, and a general account of what I did over the course of the year. Well, this blog is going to be just that. I’ll try to be as accurate as memory will allow and I’ll try to be kind to those whose names make it into this journal. At first, I’m only going to document my projects, but that might change in time. So if anyone actually reads this, enjoy.
What’s going on with me.