Here’s some pix from a recent shoot.
I had planned on this picture being your moment of Zen.
“Just don’t hit me!” We used a GlideCam V8 for almost all the shots. It’s a good little unit, but some more training for me might be in order. Still fun though!
It’s “Dish Guy” and the “Verizon Guy” – well, not really.
Tony watches the shot.
Look at me. I’m a SteadiCam operator… SWEET but, dang my back hearts!
Your moment of Zen…
Words to live by!
MARCH 21, 22, 23 – Orange County
Here are some highlight pix from this year’s road trip to NAB in Las Vegas.
Chapman Leonard’s 15′ and 32′ telescoping crane with fully submersible arm.
A new camera made here in the US. It shoots 1080 & 720 at various frame rates and records this information to an internal hard drive. It can mount PL, C, and F lenses. And it happens to sell for about $20K. I might have to get two!
Arriflex’s new 416. The sweetest 16mm camera.
Lite Panel has a single, 2×2, and 4×4 LED panel.
Panasonic’s new HD plasma monitor. 103″, 1080p!
Panasonic’s new LCD HD monitor’s. 27″ monitor on top (their 17″ monitor underneath).
Aaron plays one for the road… at the 7-Eleven!! The intervention meeting will be taking place on Thursday.
Some travel notes from the trip… We had a chance to eat the buffet at the Wynn Hotel and it was fantastic. As one person mentioned, usually when you go to a buffet you’re looking for something you like, but here you have to actually look for something you don’t like or not like as much.
During the drive home, Aaron played a book on tape. Getting caught up in the story was a great way of keeping me from slipping into driver’s hypnosis – the dreamy state from being tired and driving long, straight roads. I’ll test it again when I drive to Northern California in a couple of days for a shoot.
Alien Fresh Jerky – Yummy eats on the way home. There was a tiny, 8mm indie production shoot going on while we were there.
A feature film I shot some years ago finally will be available to all the masses. The film is “All Babes Want to Kill Me” starring and directed by Colin Miller and produced by Alex Miller. In short, the story is about a martial artist afflicted with a rare disease that makes beautiful women want to kill him and he goes on a suicide mission to find true love anyway. Isn’t love grand?!
It’s martial arts fighting, beautiful women, big cars, exotic locations, and big, swooping crane shots. I think the film might best be summarized in the tag line… “Come celebrate the cruelty.”
The film is produced by High Cotton Films and now distributed by Shoreline Entertainment (Glengarrry Glen Ross, Brooklyn Lobster).
Congratulations to Alex and Colin on the sale!!!
I had a chance to see Gregory Colbert’s “Ashes and Snow” exhibit this weekend at the Santa Monica Pier and I have to say, it’s quite an amazing couple of hours. You can get a very good feel for what you can expect by visiting the website.
The exhibit features three 35mm films (projected digitally on what I believe are TI machines) and over 100 large-scale still photographs imaged on handmade Japanese paper. The films and photos all are sepia or umber tone, grainy, and rich in mid-tones.
The exhibition is housed in a traveling building called the “Nomadic Museum”. The building was the collaboration between the artist and architect Shigeru Ban and is created from 152 steel cargo containers stacked 34 feet high with most everything comprised from recyclable materials. In short, it’s one huge building.
From a visual standpoint, the mise en scene is without a doubt awe inspiring. (Sorry for the pretentious phrase but in this case it is appropriate.) The composition, the use of slow motion, the lack of color, the editorial pacing, and the choice of settings, people and animals works perfectly in unison. It’s worth seeing, if for no other reason, than as a visual reference for future projects but I have to believe that you’ll get so much more out of seeing it.
I just finished two days of shooting about 56 recipe demos and cooking techniques for Chefs.com at the Kitchen Academy in Hollywood. We shot using the Canon XL2 in 24p.
In two days we covered 56 vignettes. Do the math… two 10 hour days, that’s 28 vignettes per day, divided by 10 hours… approximately 3 recipes per hour or 20 minutes each! Seems like a lot of time, but it’s isn’t when you consider you have to shoot every step, get coverage, hope for no major mistakes, and, as usual, all on a limited budget.
We had four assistants helping one chef prep and finish most all of the recipes. That’s a lot of cooking with little time to take a respite. But it got done (barely). We set up lights for the chef’s station and a tabletop for the finished plate.
The demos should be online soon – I’ll post when they’re up.
Chef Michael cuts an orange for garnish at our demo station.
My favorite chopsticks – when the plated food went to our tabletop set, I used the chopsticks to fix the arrangement of the food. They’re great for picking up small items on the plate and moving them around without affecting the surrounding food items.
Frame-grab of fried calamari with cocktail sauce on our presentation table.
