Anjulie "Brand New Bitch"

New video out for Canadian artist Anjulie "Brand New Bitch", directed by Hannah Lux Davis.




This song has such a strong energy that Hannah and I really wanted to compliment the track with visually dynamic setups - as much flashing, pulsing, and moving lights as possible. I worked with Hannah quite a bit going over references and really honing in each lighting setup and choosing an overall color pallet for the video.

There are also some serious flares in this video! Several months ago I had been testing anamorphic lenses and I came across a zoom with some pretty unique characteristics. Hit with the right light, it would give a constellation of square and circular flares across the frame. Once on set, we found ourselves primarily using a gelled Source4 aimed directly at the lens to produce these flares. The Source4 iris attachment was also useful in varying the size and intensity of the light, which translated into clarity of the flare. Most often, a small ping of light gave us the most pronounced flare. In a pinch, the LED Flashlight also worked great for providing a quick flare (this can be seen in the Hallway and Mirror setups).



The lighting was featured more than usual with this video. Without budget or time for moving lights, we used a few "tricks" to get movement out of normal theatrical lights. For the primary Beauty Setup we used an old fan found on location to add some movement to the light. The Hallway Setup is backlit by a Source4 rigged with a Gobo Rotator. This was my first time using the gobo rotator, and it worked as expected! Ordering the gobos was a fairly simple process as well - Rosco's catalogue of steel gobos can be found here - we used the Radial Spokes gobo. With the quick cutting, you can just barely distinguish the rotation, but it adds that extra element to this setup. On top of that, having enough haze or atmosphere was important for these beams to be seen.



The final Dance Setup was the most important, highest energy setup of the video. It was our last setup of the day, so of course we were racing the clock and had the least amount of time to light it! Our approach to this setup depended heavily on the layout of the location, so during our tech scout we decided on utilizing metal track structures on the ceiling to mount kino tubes to. We used SuperBlue tubes (my first time using these) to help go along with our color scheme. The SuperBlues looked electric, which helped give some energy to the frame. The kinos were manually flickered at random, a flicker box was added to several fresnel backlights, and we wet the whole floor down to reflect back all that lighting. During color correction, the decision was made to overhaul this setup to give it a warm look. Although that was not the intention, the video benefits from having this variety and finishes even stronger!