It may be years until the day my dreams will match up with my pay

It's been embarrassingly long since I've last posted. I fear I may not remember all the details of the last big shoot I did camera for - but I will do my best.

Back in April, Garrett Rowe (key grip on 'Like the Penguins') approached me about being the DP for a web series pilot he was directing called "Strangely Enough". I was excited right off the bat because Garrett has a real technical knowledge and knows a thing or two about production value. He was also willing to put up his own money to make sure this looked as good as possible. One of the first ideas he pitched to me was wanting to shoot with the RedRock Micro lens adapter and Zeiss primes. It was to be my first time as DP on a shoot with film lenses. Needless to say I was jumping at the opportunity.

The shoot was scheduled over 2 days: July 25th (office scenes) and July 26th (exteriors, web video sequence). The office setups included an interior office room, a conference room, and a common area. I was going to be filming up to 3 people at a time, one of them African-American. The variance in light a subject's skin tone calls for is a great exercise in shaping light around an actor, rather than just blasting it across everybody and everything. We rented equipment from Wooden Nickel for the 'Like the Penguins' shoot and found them to be very helpful people (even after/before hours). Wooden Nickel took care of all our lighting needs for this shoot. I took advantage of the budget Garrett gave me and got everything I thought we could possibly need: 2 4ft. 4-bank kino flos, an array of Arri fresnels (1K, 650W, 300W, 150W), and a 6X6 silk for the backyard sequence. Garrett took care of renting the RedRock and Zeiss primes (an 85mm, 55mm and 35mm). I can't remember where he got them from.


Shooting in the office was straight-forward but lighting it was quite time-consuming. Every setup required a complete breakdown and rebuild. Keeping the light/shadows off of the walls as characters moved through the frame was the most difficult obstacle. One dolly shot took over an hour to light. I still don't feel I effectively used the flags I rented - it just seemed like opening a whole new can of worms and I was already feeling the time crunch. I did make it a point to use a lot more backlight than usual to make sure the series looked sharp and polished.


I am quite satisfied with the lighting for the most part and the film lenses did WONDERS for the image quality. We shot on the Panasonic HVX-200 (one of my favorite cameras). I was astounded by the beautiful colors, shadows and selective focus the film lenses provided and ever since using them, I always suggest reserving some of the budget to rent an adapter and lenses (it's quite costly, so I haven't had any takers just yet - but I'll keep trying!)

That's not to say I didn't make some new rookie mistakes. It being my first time using film lenses - and having a two-person crew specifically to help me run camera - I did not stress the importance of critical focus as much as I should have. Because the depth of field is so small, my AC had to constantly pull focus from one character to the other in a basic 2-shot. Garrett has assured me that the focus issues are minimal or have otherwise been covered in editing.


The exteriors were much less stressful to shoot - a lot of that was because we were forced to shoot them guerilla-style. But again, the film lenses just make everything look beautiful. The backyard "web video" sequence required very little setup. We didn't even end up using the silk. In retrospect, I wish I would have put up at least one silk - I think the sunlight in that scene (at least from my memory of shooting it) are way too bright/blown out. But I don't think it will be distracting for the casual viewer. Plus it is representing a no-budget web video - so I really shouldn't worry.

I haven't seen an edit of the footage from that weekend, but Garrett is enthusiastic. We should be shooting again by the beginning of next year (pickups for episode 1 and all of episode 2). Locations will include a bar and tv studio - wrangling those should be a blast!