Portraits of Inglewood

I shot a music video in Inglewood the other week.

Part of the video was to capture the local flavor of the neighborhood with portraits of the residents. Although a seemingly easy task, it was actually quite difficult at first to find anyone who would stop what they were doing to be filmed. Towards the end of the day, we came across a group of kids on their BMXs who were excited to be a part of the video. As we hung around longer with our cameras out, more and more of the neighborhood came out and soon we had our hands full trying to capture as much as we could before the sun went down. It ended up being a really fun afternoon interacting with these kids and families. I'm happy they were all kind enough to let us briefly into their lives, so I can now share these images with you!

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!

Hooray For Earth "True Loves"

Hooray For Earth's "True Loves" has finally released after several months of VFX and heavy coloring, but it is getting some great reviews. Here it is for you all to enjoy!



Technical info and making of in the post below.

Shooting on the AF100

I just finished shooting a music video this past week for directors Alex Takacs and Joe Nankin aka Young Replicant The video is completely narrative, showing the journey of a man traveling his mindscape across all types of geographies. Location and costumes were all epic!

We had the choice of going with the 7D (which we were all familiar with) or trying out the new Panasonic AF100. We did some tests and decided to go with the AF100. Initially we considered the AF100 because we wanted to shoot 60fps at 1080p. Further down the line we realized the video was going to be a bit more run and gun on location, so having the conveniences of a conventional video camera (like built in ND filters) felt like a safer choice for this project.

For anyone unfamiliar with the AF100, you can spend a good deal of time sifting through Phillip Bloom's review, which does a pretty good job covering all the bases in good detail. However, I hadn't come across much feedback from narrative or music video DP's, so I forward to seeing more work and hearing more experiences surface in the next few months.

I think the easiest way to describe this camera is it being a hybrid between an HVX and DSLR. The menus and on-board controls on this camera are very similar to that of Panasonic's previous prosumer HD cameras. The scene files are all still there, white balance and gain selectors in the same place, and XLR inputs. Nothing too crazy or groundbreaking in that regard. What's new about this camera is that it offers HD-SDI and HDMI (and the HDMI doesn't deactivate the on-board LCD!). Certain menu options have changed for the better, like the ability to reformat cards in Record Mode (so you don't have to toggle to Playback when you insert a new card). But unlike the HVX or other cameras shooting on hard drive, the AF100 takes quite a bit longer to format than you would expect. I never clocked it, but formatting lasted several minutes.

The on-board monitor is set up slightly different than before. Possibly one of the biggest let downs is the focus check that used to be on the HVX, that little button that gives you a pixel-for-pixel display to make sure things are nice and sharp. The AF100 offers the EVF detail, which makes for a pretty ugly image, and a Focus Assist that can be programmed as one of the user keys (there are 3 user keys on the camera). The latter option is similar to the focus assist on the RED ONE; it goes off contrast and highlights the sharp areas in red over a B&W image. What's unfortunate about using this feature on the fly is that it can't really account for the motion blur of a moving object, so it's basically useless if you have to do any real focus pulling on your own. For this shoot we had a Marshall 7" that primarily served as a director's monitor, but certain shots it was definitely needed to pull focus off of.

I can say one of the best additions to this camera is the option to add frame guides. This video was shot in 2.35:1, so it was easy to add those guidelines via the Display Setup. So many times I've had to scotch tape the 7D off a framing chart, which is never as easy as it sounds...

The image sensor on this camera is 4/3", which I was pretty disappointed about when I first heard about the AF100. This camera is meant to compete with the DSLR's, but I think it also caters a bit to the live shooters and ENG style cameramen that don't have a perversion for shallow depth of field. This smaller chip size gives an even tighter crop factor than the 7D, which offered a little bit of confusion at first on choosing lenses for the camera. AbelCine has a really helpful tool that helps visualize the difference in sensor size here. So we had to account for crop factor and make we were covered for our wide lenses. We shot Zeiss Superspeeds with a custom PL Mount made to fit Panasonic's AF100 mount. Having the Superspeeds really helped us overcompensate and achieve a film-like DOF. We shot wide open mostly and in certain cases having the extra stop saved us from using too big of a lighting package or shooting later in the day. We shot 200iso and in some cases had to bump up to 400iso which gave us quite a bit more noise than I had hoped for. Unfortunately the AF100 doesn't seem to do too well in low light.

Photo by Tim Suglian

Photo by Julia Chase

I will be sure to post the video when it's released. Overall I think I will be very pleased with the final picture and feel that the AF100 held up to most expectations we had going into the shoot. Check back soon!

Local Natives "Who Knows Who Cares"

Here is the video for Local Natives "Who Knows Who Cares"



We shot this video back in late August on 2 7D's outfitted with the powercage setup thanks to Digital Film Studios All of our daytime setups were natural light with an occasional shiny board. We moved fast, so we could accomplish all of the daytime vignettes of the band and their friends romping around the wilderness. Boa Simon shot Bcam for the performance setup and broke off to shoot 2nd Unit for the daytime scenes.

I highly recommend checking out Local Natives' album Gorilla Manor if you haven't already.


Photos by Eric Rippin

Maximum Balloon - Making of

I had a nice surprise this morning to find my recent Maximum Balloon video on the front page of Vimeo. Who knows how long it will there so I had to capitalize in snagging a screenshot of the Vimeo page!


I figure this is a good occasion to provide a bit more informative look back on the video, as the Behind the Scenes posted somewhere below in my blog shows a much more glamorous view of the set (as these things tend to do).

For this song Carlos came up with a really awesome concept that gives a fresh take greenscreen by taking traditional objects found in daily life, painting them green, and keying them out to put imagery inside (that imagery had yet to be fully determined going into the video). That idea fused with the artists desire to have a video in which he "receives a letter inviting him to a house party in Heaven" pretty much sums up how this video evolved.

The budget was extremely tight and therefore only allowed for one day of production. So our approach going into this video was highly focused on moving quickly and making sure we got all our shots. We all all admitted and understood this video's selling point was the greenscreen gag. Having a glossy or polished look was something that was unrealistic with our shooting schedule, and we hoped that a slightly unrefined the approach would further the greenscreen effect.

We chose to make use of the front-lit spotlight approach that has been pretty common in music videos recently. This was something that was portable and quick to set up, and for this we used a 200w Joker HMI with a few battery belts. We scouted in downtown Santa Ana and chose locations that were already sufficiently lit on their own, so with the addition of our one light we were ready to go. We matched our lights with the location lighting, gelling them with Lee's Urban FX Sodium Vapor and Mercury Vapor gels with the intention of doing an overall correction to the image in post to get the colors looking a bit more neutral.


One of the bigger challenges we faced was determining the best way to light the subjects. With keying greenscreen, of course its important to minimize shadows, which we anticipated would be especially difficult at night. Opting for front light wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing route to go, but it gave us the least amount of shadows and avoided any difficulty in hiding lights that would've been scene in some of the steadicam moves.


The video called for 6 so NIGHT EXT's and a large NIGHT INT. sequence that all had to be packed into a 12 hr day. Surprisingly or not, we didn't make our day and some of the NIGHT EXT's had to be left for pickups with a body double. Thanks to everybody owning a 7D now days, it wasn't hard to pick up a camera and get the remaining shots we needed.

Big thanks to the crew for putting in the extra hours on a super long and exhausting day of production.

Without further adieu, here is the video:

Maximum Balloon "Groove Me"

Here's a pretty cool little behind the scenes for Maximum Balloon's new track "Groove Me". We shot about 2 weeks ago and the video's almost done. There's heavy VFX work and lots of green screen, as you might see in the BTS.




We shot with Adam Richman's 7D rig - which most notably comes with the ViewFactor Powered Cage, which gives the camera a bit more film capabilities.

Noel "Momentos"

Just completed a very fun and successful 2-day music video shoot for Latin American Sony BMG artist Noel Schajris for his new song Momentos. Carlos Lopez Estrada and Carles Torrens co-directed this video, one of few times I've worked with two directors. I have done several music videos with Carlos, but only recently have I come to know Carles, who is an accomplished writer/director.

Carles Torrens - setting up our first scene of the day.

Carlos Lopez Estrada - our last scene of the night with stunt performers/drunken sailors.

Now for some technical details:
The video was shot in two days with 2 RED cameras. Each day we accomplished roughly 5 "scenes" and around 30 setups. In order to finish on such a tight schedule, lighting was kept to a minimum. The two cameras worked primarily on the same scene, but often times we would split off to cover two different scenes. Many thanks to David Cho for providing the additional RED, and the talented Kyle Klutz for stepping in last minute as the 2nd Unit DP.

In order to accomplish a hefty shotlist, all scenes were it so that there would be very little to no relight from shot to shot. Daytime consisted mostly of bounce (12x12 ultrabounce) and an occasional shiny board. This gave the crew time to start pre-rigging and lighting the more intensive interior scenes in the main circus tent.

For our exterior night scene, a 9-light bounced off of 6x6 unbleached muslin keyed the scene, string lights lit the location, and a few 5k's highlighted some of the set in the background.


For the interior tent scenes, practicals played a huge role. The tent was filled with string lights that gave an ambient fill to the whole scene. The location also provided vintage floor lights which were directed towards the stage and provided an uplit feel. For the audience, we simulated this same effect with bare bulbs configured on the floor with diffusion over them. Finally, two lekos (20 degree lenses) were placed at opposing ends to key the stage performers. Once haze was added, the whole location came together in a nice warm vaudvillian look. The cameras were also balanced for 5600k in the interiors to add to the tungsten look. Once we went in for closeups, china balls were used to supplement the key, or provide a bit more wrap-around on the subjects.

Cashis "Light It Up"

Here are stills from a quick music video I shot a rap artist named Cashis. He is the most recent and one of few artist signed to Eminem's label Shady Records. This video is primarily a performance video shot around the grungier areas of Santa Ana (OC) to highlight Cashis's roots.


Camera Specs: HVX + 35mm RedRock Adapter with Pentax Lenses

I'm currently coloring the project with Apple Color. I've made the switch over and am happily coloring all my work on Apple's software. This video I am working more heavily with the FX Room working with a few different Bleach Bypass looks.

I am still trying out different methods with grouping shots and applying corrections to similar or identical shots. The Shots Bin allows for clips to be grouped, then by dragging a correction onto the group, it is applied to all shots specified. Although I find it still questionable if its efficient to go through the tedious process of grouping shots rather than simply applying the correction to each individual shot.