e. gustavo petersen | cinematographer

Here’s a quick-look-see at some frame grabs from the latest music video I lensed featuring the singer Damon Dae and directed by Teo.  It’s a great R&B song, which is a nice change (the “great” part is not a dig but rather the fact that it’s an R&B song is nice) and it’s helmed by a smart director (which is always nice).

We shot it using the Panasonic HVX200 in DVCPro HD.  We also did some off-speed playback.  Our playback was sped up by 150%, 133% and 125%.  The effect is that when our singer sings he appears to be in slow motion by is still singing in time with the music.  I know it’s a bit of old-hat for music videos but I still love it.  You’ll perhaps be surprised to find out that the exterior footage, while looking like it was shot at night, was actually shot during the late morning under the full sun of a clear Indian summer sky.

{ view the video }

UPDATE: The music video screened tonight at the Bungalow Lounge to an audience of friends, family, and industry folk.  It was very well received – let’s hope it turns into more shoots!

So here’s the skinny on how we shot it.

The footage was shot with the iris wide open on almost every shot and at 1/1000 shutter for most shots.  A polarizer was on all the time to help lessen or expose the highlights on his face as needed and a Tiffen Soft Effects 1 filter was there to take the edge off the image.

Our lighting consisted of a 1200 HMI; 4-bank, 4- and 2-foot Kino Flo with Daylight globes; and a pair of shiny boards.

During post, on every shot we used the Bloom filter set to various degrees depending on the shot and color correction which consisted of a mild de-saturation, a very slight crushing of the shadows, and boosting the mids and highlights, which were changed in conjunction with the Bloom filter.

With regards to our shooting slow motion, unfortunately, our fan wasn’t strong enough to really move his shirt so the effect is hardly noticeable.  There wasn’t a breeze or movement in the background to help sell the effect either and our singer shaves his head so no hair to fly around.  Err.  Lessons learned.  You can however, see the effect every so slightly on some shots of him singing and dancing.

I should probably mention that it was shot in under eight hours with the tiniest of crew.  Oh, and by the by, I also edited it.  Sweet. It’s good to be back behind the keyboard.