DIY Film Developing

So back to this whole "shooting film" nonsense: I'm a fan. At this point it's more along the lines of having unprotected sex and just "hoping for the best." Sure, it's super exciting to do the thing, but the risk of incorrectly metering your light is incredible lower than a surprise family addition or a weird rash. There's also the the thing about not waiting nine months for your film to be processed. I could go on, but I'll just snip the analogy here and now.

Unfortunately Oklahoma City isn't teeming with photo shops and getting film developed isn't as easy as it would be in a larger market. Buddies of mine ship their film out to be processed, but they're better people than I am. Turns out in this situation I'd rather have the one marshmallow now instead of eating both later. The photo lab I'd stared using here in OKC to develop my film ran into some substantial delays and I started down the rabbit hole of developing my own color film at home. As a high school student twenty-something years ago, I'd taken a photography course and developed black and white film. We never did anything with color film, but it's the future now and I'd figured there'd be a YouTube tutorial or thirty that'd get me up to speed.

Thanks to the internet I put together a film processing kit plus the confidence to not blowup my house. Willem Verbeek's YouTube videos on developing were key in me actually gaining the confidence to try and pull it off, but Will Cobb's in-depth video was crazy helpful with the nuts and bolts of the process.

The worse part was waiting for the $200-300 in gear I'd ordered off Amazon to be delivered. There was a problem with the first round of plastic reels included in my Paterson kit being defective, but I was able to work out a hack while waiting for those to get replaced. I'll say too the amount of developing chemicals I'd ordered was twice as much as intended (got the two liter Unicolor kit instead of one liter) and the recommended bottles were smaller than I should've gotten (the four pack of 32oz dark amber glass bottles vs. an accordion style solid plastic bottle). Thankfully I can do basic math and use a calculator to split the chemicals in thirds to make the mismatched puzzle work.

It was nerve-racking getting used to spooling the film negatives by feel alone in a dark bag. Some of the tutorials I'd watched had dudes sacrificing an unused roll of film but I didn't want any part of that $12-15 of nonsense. I got somewhat comfortable with the spooling process after practicing in the light and then the dark bag with some previously developed negatives I already had. Those botched plastic reels – even with the hack – ended up creasing a few sections of my negatives and added some "character" to a few frames. Thankfully though most of the rolls I developed came out pretty well, especially considering how I'm just getting started. There was one roll I'd hoped to get more from that turned out a bit sour; pretty sure I'd botched the developing time on that one. Still, not bad in terms of the collateral damage I expected early on.

At this point I'm something like 6-8 rolls into developing my own film and it's much less daunting than expected. The startup costs weren't nothing, but considering how much money I was spending having someone else do it I'll end up ahead here pretty soon. I figure too the time I'm saving doing it myself will help with the learning curve of shooting on film.

I knew I'd not be getting the same results I'm used to from my digital cameras, but this is something else. This old film camera is making things interesting and I'm crazy impressed with the unpredictability and character of the images I'm getting. There's also this thing of the inherent mood and color that comes along with the film negative compared to digital. There's an annoying camera scratch on my negatives due to something scraping along the negatives in my film back. I've still not figured out what it is, but Photoshop fixes are working till I get the problem solved.

My old-school Mamyia RB67 doesn't have a built in light meter, so in order to figure out exposure I've been using a combination of a handheld light meter and my Canon DSLR. I'll do an initial light reading with my incident meter and then a test shot with my digital camera to help dial settings in. The Sekonic meter I currently have doesn't include a spot meter, so I'm sure I'll upgrade in time.

It's easy to get lost in trying to correct and grade the different images, especially if you're trying to match multiple shots. The time I'm spending scanning my negatives and dialing in the colors to look the way I'm wanting will only help my color correction and grading for paid work.

This dip into the world of film photography has been super interesting to me as a digital cinematographer. Watching how some of the film photographers I've been following expose their images has been refreshing compared to my near reflexive habits and digital workflows. It's wild seeing more and more images from film photographers that I'd normally consider overexposed compared to the dark and moody frames from my cinematography brethren.

Over time all this nonsense will work its way into how I make a living. Even this early on I'd feel much more comfortable approaching the idea of shooting motion film stock. I know St. Anne the Wife and I have had a couple different conversation about some of the money I've pumped into this thing. By no means is it crazy money, but surely it's a much more cost-effective mid-life crisis compared to the spandex clad buddies of mine and their deep dives into road racing.

LSU with HSC.tv

Normally the first part of the year is dreadfully slow, but thankfully January is looking to be a busy month. This past week I spent a couple days in Baton Rouge, LA with HSC.tv shooting an interview for the 2020 College Football National Championship.

HSC had two crews shooting different content at the same time at the LSU football practice facility. The main crew was shooting multiple interviews in the LSU Football Trophy room while we were covering an interview with ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit and LSU's Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Joe Burrow. Pretty sure we all flew with a carry-on of HSC gear (camera bodies & batteries) plus something like 18 checked bags.

We shot the interview with two Arri Amiras, a Mini on a Movi setup, and the reverse angle was on a Panasonic EVA. Not sure of the lights we used, but they were HSC's and the local gaffer and key grip were great. Originally we were supposed to only have 30 minutes total with Joe Burrow and needed to shoot the interview, a walk and talk down a hallway, and footage of the two talking and playing catch on the indoor practice field. Our main DP, Brian (TwZ) Brousseau, had us set our color temps to the lighting on practice field and then gel our main HMI light for the interview to match the color. Pretty sure that was the first time I'd gone that route and it worked out great. We ended up getting a bit more time, but I'm crazy glad we planned and rehearsed ahead of time to find and work out potential problems ahead of time.

We did have an issue getting enough exposure in the interview without going above 800 ISO on the Amira and Canon 17-120mm lens pair. The lens for the wide shot was able to open up to T2.95, but the lens ramps up to a T3.9 and we were at the end of the zoom for the tight shot. We were maxed out on the light output to begin with considering how high it had to be in order to not be in the reverse shot. Then we lost more output considering the gels we used to match the color temperature in the practice facility. We were able to dial in the setup to get the exposure we needed then had to add a black wrap scoop at the bottom of the light so we'd not blow out the seats directly in front of our interview.

It's always crazy to me how many views these projects get. By the time this post goes up this video will already have had nearly 106k views. Absolutely grateful I got to be a very small part of it.

Elena Goddard - "Energy"

"Hello again. The song we've already done a video to, has another part to it - the non-ballad version, that will be released back to back. If you're around in the next month or so, I'd love to shoot something for this with a very dark dramatic theme (opposite of our ballady beach shoot)." - Elena Goddard 8/20/2019

The fact that these things ever even see the light of day still amazes me. I know I'd read someone else mention something similar about putting out personal work, but good lord the time, effort, and resources going into this kind of nonsense is mind-blowing. This is the third music video I've done with [Elena Goddard][1] now and by far my favorite, but unquestionably the most difficult one to pull off. Literally to the VERY last minute before she had her YouTube channel premiere we were running into problems.

WRITTEN & PERFORMED BY: Elena Goddard
DIRECTOR/DP/EDIT: me
CAMERA ASSISTANT: Kyle Vines
MAKEOUT BUDDY: Elias Abraham
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Lillian Maslen

Originally we'd talked about shooting something much more simple in a graffitied bathroom we'd found in a bar on our side of Brooklyn. It'd probably have been easier to go in that direction, but nooooo... I figured we should go for something more.

Her song is about loving someone but knowing the time wasn't right and that she'd need to let them go. I had her find a makeout buddy and figured we could film with the two of them a bit, get some singles of her in the places they used to frequent, and then land some takes of her performing the song. That was the plan at least. Here's the lookbook/treatment if you're up to check it out.

The first reference Elena sent over was the Break My Broken Heart video by Winona Oak and she liked the idea of colored lighting. I knew we'd be short on time, crew, and we'd not have access to power at our locations, so for sure we'd need battery-powered lights. This past year I've had a few chances to work with the Astera Titans and knew they'd work for the colors we'd want plus they're battery-powered.

Elena isn't signed to a label so she's footing the bill for these projects. We had my camera and lens package and a $400 budget. I rented a car that doubled as our picture car and a means to get gear around, two 4' Astera Titans and some misc. grip from Lightbulb Grip & Electric, plus a couple of Gold Mount batteries and a Smoque filter from a buddy of mine named Dave Adams. I was also able to snag Kyle Vines again to AC on the project at a crazy discounted rate. I swear one day I'll be able to have him pull focus so I don't embarrass myself with soft footage making the edit.

Originally we'd talked about shooting something much more simple in a graffitied bathroom we'd found in a bar on our side of Brooklyn. It'd probably have been easier to go in that direction, but nooooo... I figured we should go for something more.

Her song is about loving someone but knowing the time wasn't right and that she'd need to let them go. I had her find a makeout buddy and figured we could film with the two of them a bit, get some singles of her in the places they used to frequent, and then land some takes of her performing the song. That was the plan at least. Here's the lookbook/treatment if you're up to check it out.

The first reference Elena sent over was the Break My Broken Heart video by Winona Oak and she liked the idea of colored lighting. I knew we'd be short on time, crew, and we'd not have access to power at our locations, so for sure we'd need battery-powered lights. This past year I've had a few chances to work with the Astera Titans and knew they'd work for the colors we'd want plus they're battery-powered.

Elena isn't signed to a label so she's footing the bill for these projects. We had my camera and lens package and a $400 budget. I rented a car that'd double as our picture car and a means to get gear around, two 4' Astera Titan LED tubes and some misc. grip from Lightbulb Grip & Electric, plus a couple of Gold Mount batteries and a Smoque filter from a buddy of mine named Dave Adams. I was also able to snag Kyle Vines again to AC on the project at a crazy discounted rate. I swear one day I'll be able to have him pull focus so I don't embarrass myself with soft footage making the edit.

There were a few happy accidents too. By far my favorite shot is Elena singing in the backseat of the car. I'd picked the spot in advance knowing the existing lighting would get us pretty far. I'd just need to add the red accent on camera right and augment the levels coming in on camera left. We were shooting near the base of an above-ground section of the subway and during our first take we had a train come by. The interior lights of the train made some great-looking reflections on the car windows. We also lucked out with some cars driving by during one of the make-out shots and a couple of her performance takes near the wall. Honestly, we didn't have the resources to add much intentional motion to our footage so the happy accidents adding some subtle on-screen movement were by all means welcomed.

Phoenix and Red-Eye Flights

This week had me booked again with Running Robot to shoot out on their home turf in Phoenix, AZ. Being used to flying out of Oklahoma City all these years, it was a bit of a hike from New York to that part of the country. Flying out Wednesday afternoon got me there in time to get to sleep that night, pick up rental gear the next morning, the actual shoot, return rental gear, and then race back to the airport for a red-eye flight back to NYC Thursday night.

Big fan of LensRentals and how easy they make shipping across the country. For this trip, it was easier to rent and ship a similar tripod to a local FedEx vs. me traveling with mine. For grip and electric, I connected with MP&E Equipment Rental out in Scottsdale. They're 30-40 minutes outside of Phoenix but the scenery was worth the drive.

Speaking of Scottsdale, Chris Fenner – a solid Instagram follow and car enthusiast – introduced me to Four Coffee and their rubber stamps. Have I mentioned I've got a mild obsession with collecting rubber stamps from coffee shops? It's a thing and filling up my notebooks...

Once again, we were rocking the two-camera interview setup: Canon 5D Mark III with a 70-200 lens for the tight; Canon 7D with a 24-70 for the wide. They also had me shoot a third camera through the interview to act as additional B-roll for the edit. The Running Robot guys booked a conference room in a downtown Phoenix co-working space. Three of the four walls were floor-to-ceiling glass so reflections were a real issue.

Slowly but surely I too am preaching the good news of working with these 4' Quasar Crossfades. The slim profile let me get the backlight in a tight spot between the talent and the glass wall. The skimpy dimmers from the rental house were unusable trash, so instead I used some gaffe tape on the fixture to make a small skirt on the light cutting back some of the output. Oh, and the baby pin mounting option and rubber bumpers on each end of the tubes – so rad. The hodgepodge of color temps flooding the glass room from everywhere was a hot mess. I still feel like the color on these fixtures is a bit more red than I'm used to, but it's an easy fix in camera or post. My iPhone Xs was having issues too in getting the color temps correct for these BTS photos. Side note: we had to rig the audio boom pole to a light stand via spring clamps because we felt like it (and didn't have the proper mount anyway).

Can we talk for a moment about red-eye flights? They're pretty awful – but still have their place. By all means it was my choice in scheduling because I wanted "the experience." Plus I knew it would help budget-wise seeing as how expensive all this is. Plus (plus) I'd already scheduled a couple meetings back in NYC knowing I'd be back in time thanks to flying through the night. The air travel part isn't that bad. Yes, it sucks trying to sleep on a plane, especially on a rough flight and next to a seatmate who isn't into "personal space", "boundaries", or "jackets without massive shoulder pads." Some solid red-eye flight tips are only a Google search away and I know what I'll be doing next time – i.e. neck pillow, window seat, glasses instead of contact lenses, etc...

For me, the rough part of flights back to NYC is actually getting from the airport back to my place in Brooklyn. There's a tipping point between the financial benefits of public transit ($15-20 and 60-90 minutes) and the time and comfort of just hiring a car from the airport ($50+ and 30-40 minutes). It was seriously a trip stumbling into my now regular coffee shop knowing only a few hours earlier I was standing on the other side of the country (Phoenix to San Francisco to Newark). I was fried for my 11am meeting in Manhattan, but it still went well. I was two coffees in before my 1:30p back in Brooklyn, but again, it went well too.

Philadelphia for a Night and Day

Just before moving to New York a client I've worked with the last few years reached out about a quick shoot in Philadelphia. No question – let's go. I knew I'd already be in Brooklyn by then, so I did the normal thing and looked for flights, this time out of New York City. Google Maps made fun of me and let me know Philadelphia is a two-hour drive from the city.

"Don't be dumb, get a rental car." - Google Maps (pretty much).

Booking a car and picking it up in my neighborhood – easy. Driving in and around NYC and trying to park – I'd rather lose a fingertip in a fight with a table saw.

Not having to fly my gear on this shoot allowed a bit of wiggle room with my grip and electric budget. All the cool kids on the internet shoot with those fancy Quasar LED tubes but it's tough getting your hands on those Jedi laser swords in Oklahoma City. This is where Lightbulb Grip & Electric comes in. By far they were more than accommodating in my small order and made sure I had what I needed and knew how to use it. They set me up with two 4' Quasar Crossfades, dimmers, clamps, and c-stands.

After more than an hour trying to drive the four or so miles from Park Slope to the other side of Brooklyn to pick up the gear at Lightbulb, I was off to Philadelphia and working up fresh 'Yo Momma' jokes for the next table saw I came across. Good lord it was weird being out of the city after not being more than six to eight miles from my apartment for nearly a month.

It was dark when I got to my hotel in downtown Philadelphia and paid the $30 for overnight parking. I bundled up and headed out with a camera instead of camping out in my room because, again, that's what the cool kids do (I'm told). Word to the wise, the National Park Service Rangers – or at least the hired overnight security guards – will yell at you if you're walking too close to the chain railing on the street next to Independence Hall. Also, make sure your headphones aren't up too loud so you can hear them yell at you the first time. Oh, and they're not up for jokes if you're trying to lighten the mood and get them to stop yelling at you.

The shoot the next morning and the reason I was in Philadelphia went very well. We were shooting another two-camera interview for a series of client videos. It's not like these things come with a built-in location scout, so I showed up with my normal Rock-N-Roller cart full of gear. Thank goodness for carts. We had to park in a garage a couple blocks away and then use a service elevator to get where we needed to be in another building. Luckily I was able to get all my nonsense from the car to where it needed to be in one trip.

So those Quasars... I'm a fan. We were shooting in a white room with plenty of daylight bouncing around. If I'd just had my trusty tungsten ARRI kit (650/300/150) I'd be freaking out knowing the gel and diffusion death march I'd be putting it through in getting the color and softness I wanted while praying it still had enough horsepower to overcome the ambient light coming through the windows. Those Quasar Crossfades were soft and bright, and I was able to quickly dial in the color temperature to what I wanted. They also weren't hot so the talent wasn't melting and I didn't have to wait for them to cool off before packing up. They felt a bit more magenta than I was used to, but that could've been how my monitor was set up. I've heard the color temp warms up a bit as they're dimmed down, but I had them at full blast. Seemingly the only butt-pain in using these lights in a travel kit would be hauling around c-stands; surely there's an easy solution to that.

Clara the dog is up here with me in NYC and needed to be boarded overnight while I was gone. That was a whole thing too, but it was a great experience with both the neighborhood vet's office and the actual boarding facility. I'm assuming you're not here to read about my dog, but I will say she had a good time riding the subway. You're not supposed to have a dog on the train without them being in some kind of carrier – which again is a whole thing – but she immediately made friends on the train and surely made it on at least one more Instagram account.

Shooting with Penny Pitchlynn

Meet Penny Pitchlynn. She's a badass. She's the Norman, OK, based musician behind LABRYS plus she's the bass player in the indie rock band BRONCHO. I also remember her Low Litas days awhile back. She reached out a few weeks ago through a buddy of mine and we finally got to work on something together. Have I mentioned I'm always down to make stuff with other creatives? 'Cause I am.

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When she reached out I immediately knew I didn't want to shoot something with her playing or an interview about her music projects – there's plenty of solid stuff out there already. I did want to try and play with contrasts though. I'm always a fan of the idea of who we are vs. the person we sometimes need to be. In setting up the shoot, I sent Penny some reference images and an idea of a person being in two different worlds; Kinda like how I feel about being on LinkedIn. Footage from this film is available for licensing over at Filmsupply.

This was also a bit of a shotgun blast in the dark with hopes of hitting something. "Hey, let's try a book light." "Oh I know! Let's shoot white on black and black on white!" "Man, that Vaseline on a clear flat would be cool." "What about shooting through a curved piece of glass to distort the image?" If you're up for it, here's a link to download the look book I put together for the shoot.

Penny had an interesting comment while we were shooting and trying out different techniques and ideas. She mentioned it was kinda like her time in the recording studio and recording with different microphones. There's not always one right way to do something and there's creative value in trying different approaches.

CRAZY thanks again to Cynthia Dreier for coming on again to be part of a personal project. Seriously, she's one of my favorite people to work with on set. Obviously she kills it with the hair and makeup, but more than that I trust her and the ideas she brings to keep things looking great on camera.

For wardrobe, I had Penny bring a couple different options but stuck with solid white and black. I knew I was going for a Polished vs. Rough look and wanted contrasting white-on-black and black-on-white, but wasn't set on which was which personality beforehand.

I did the whole "convert-your-bedroom-into-a-simple-studio" thing again with a white paper backdrop for one setup and a black piece of fabric for the other. I knew I wanted to feature Penny and especially her facial expressions, so I didn't try to go all dark and moody" with the lighting. Again, I used my styrofoam bust to rough in the lighting setups before having the talent sit in.

For the black background, I setup a book light to camera left using an ARRI 650 bounced off some white paper I'd taped to the wall and pushed through a roll of diffusion hanging from a C-stand. I also used a small ARRI 150 through diffusion as a backlight on camera right to help separate her from the background.

For the white background, I'd originally planned to stay with the book light on camera left as the key, but having such a large light source made the white background too bright and distracting. Having the background brighter than Penny's face wasn't working and I didn't have a way – or the space – to cut the background spill from the book light. I swapped the lighting setup so the key light was a smaller source and coming from above. Now that the source was smaller, I was able to use a solid flag to cut even more of the spill from making its way to the white background.

For the in-camera effects, I used a thin coat of Vaseline on a clear flat in the matte box for some shots as well as shooting through a curved lens. Shooting through the Vaseline made for softer edges and a cloudy image if you use too much. Yes, I know... I used too much of it in some of the shots and it's distracting – fight me. I also used the curved lens of a pair of plastic safety glasses held right in front of the lens to make the double image distortion. I've also tried shooting through curved glass like wine glasses and vases, but keep coming back to the smaller lenses on safety glasses. Shooting through the curved lens changes the path of the light as it gets to the image sensor.

A Lighting Test

So this was a different thing. By far the most moody and stylized projects I’ve done to date verses what normally fills up my hard drives. I’ve been sitting on a couple reference images for a long time that I absolutely wanted to use but for one reason or another hadn't gotten around to shooting. The whole idea was wrapped around lighting, body structure, and direction. Well, that and my thing of always wanting to do stuff and a goal to post to my blog at least once a week this year.

In putting a treatment together – or at least a look book – I dug through a ton of references I’d already had stored away. I’ve also been listening to a TON of Anderson .Paak so I knew his music would be playing a major part. By the way, I'm awful at coming up with titles, so ignore the "Graceful Strength" part if you download the look book. This whole thing was more about a lighting test than anything proper. The footage from this film is available for licensing over at Filmsupply.

There were also the self-imposed restrictions of a simple background, using my own equipment (short a couple c-stands and apple boxes), and keeping the talent either seated or lying down. I’d love to talk about my incredible studio space with all its incredible amenities, nice leather couches, and cases of LaCroix Sparkling Water, but instead I’ll show you my bedroom where I pushed everything up against the walls before the shoot and then reset before Anne the Wife got home.

Initially another model was lined up but reached out to someone else due to scheduling conflicts. Madison Bready is an OU student I met years ago and worked with a few times recently. Turns out Madi was absolutely the right person for the shoot. Cynthia Dreier is a makeup artist I’ve worked with on quite a few projects and she killed it in making sure Madi looked her best and kept us on track during the shoot. Did I mention Madi is an OU student, because we only had like 90 minutes to do makeup and shoot everything in between her classes that afternoon. Oh, and did I mention I was super happy with what we got? Because dang…

Gear-wise, we shot with my RED Weapon Helium at 8k, 60 fps, 2:1 aspect ratio, and 15:1 compression through my Zeiss CP.2 len set (25, 35, & 50). I'd also set my white balance to 4500k to warm up the tungsten light and white backdrop – along with her skin tones and haircolor. That being said, all the footage in the edit is straight out of camera; I didn't do any additional color work to the footage (or still frames). I also tried a step printing technique shooting at 8 fps and a 360° shutter angle, but it was at the last couple minutes of the shoot and I wasn’t really happy with the footage; I should’ve shot closer to 4 fps. For lighting, I setup an Arri 650 head through a couple scrims and two layers of diffusion. A bunch of black fabric hung on camera right helped control the spill. I’d roughed in the lighting setup using a styrofoam head on a light stand before the talent got there.

Post-wise, I knew the 8k files were going to be a monster. We shot about 325 GB of footage which isn’t nuts with my camera package, but honestly it’s a pain to edit such large files. Adobe Premiere on my Mac Pro setup will handle it like a champ, but having to lower the playback resolution to 1/8 or 1/16 just to just slog through the .R3D files is like tying that champ’s arm behind his back before going into a fight. I’d worked with offline edits WAY the hell back in the days of SD footage and tape decks, but this simple YouTube tutorial pretty much changed my workflow and is keeping me from looking so longingly at those fancy Alexa Minis and their blissful 4k sensor sizes.

Music is always the hardest part for me during an edit. I promise, I’m all about supporting other creatives and paying to license music, but after a genuinely solid effort I couldn’t find or afford something that fit as well – in my opinion – as this Anderson .Paak track. 99% of my edits start with a music track – especially with personal projects; It's got to feel right or else it's not worth the effort.

After I'd gotten somewhat through a rough edit (and several glasses of whiskey) I reached out to a few other creatives for feedback. Crazy thanks to those guys for the insanely solid ideas, helping me step back from how close I was to the work, and look at what I was missing.

Good grief I hope to do more of this soon.

Seamless Paper Backdrops

A client I've been working with recently hired me to shoot a campaign they were working on for a small clothing brand. They wanted to feature on-camera talent wearing the brand's clothing in front of multiple solid color backgrounds. We didn't have the budget or the time to build out multiple sets in different colors, so our best option was to use one lighting setup and multiple colors of seamless paper backdrops.

Over the years I've shot a ton of talking head projects and normally our only requirements are making sure the room looks somewhat decent and is big enough for our equipment, crew, and talent. Recently I started using Savage Seamless Background Paper to try and improve our production value and it's been a great experience. It does take a bit more time and effort to get everything set up given the additional space and stands necessary. It can also be a hot mess to transport those wider paper rolls if you don't have a larger vehicle or box truck. Once you figure that nonsense out, the improved look can certainly be worth the effort if it's in line with the creative direction.

Talking heads are pretty simple. More often than not they're locked-off shot(s) and the on-camera talent is sitting and not moving around. For this project though, the client wanted the talent to be moving around and for us to capture a mix of close-ups, mediums, and full-body shots.

We had the budget to rent out a larger studio space here in the Oklahoma City area. The additional space gave us plenty of room to unroll enough paper for our head-to-toe shots. The space also had enough power for the larger fixtures we needed to evenly light our bigger setups.

The goal was to keep the shadows super soft, so for our key light we made a book light with one of the studio's 5k fixtures bounced into a 6x6' ultra bounce and back through a 6x6' silk. For the backlight, we pushed a single 4' Fourbank Kinoflo through a 48" diffusion frame. The larger light sources gave the talent plenty of room to move around while still maintaining a consistent look. We also used a large black solid opposite the key and a double net at times to help sculpt the lighting. We shot another look during the first half of the day using the studio's large white cyc wall, but we can talk about that some other time. Sidenote: my life is forever changed after using wheeled combo stands for the first time. Those things are magic.

Knowing how well they'd worked for me in the past, we used those Savage Seamless Paper Backdrops and the client picked out four colors: blue, yellow, pink, and red. The final delivery would be a 16x9 format, so we used the 107" wide backdrop. Savage does have a 140" option, but we weren't able to get that for our shoot.

The paper backdrops we were using were wide enough to fill out the background of our close-up and medium shots, but the full-body-length shots would need a bit of work in post. Depending on the edit, the paper backdrop edges would need to be digitally extended to fill out the 16x9 frame. As long as the on-camera talent didn't go past the edge of the paper, they'd be fine.

In the end, we were happy with our footage. The client didn't want to deal with a ton of post-work so we shot the full sensor 4k ProRes on my RED Weapon and baked in the the RedGamma 4 / Dragon Color 2 look. You're a bit limited with the framerates in using the 4k ProRes option on the RED Weapon, but we were able to get what we needed and the client didn't have to deal with the much larger raw 8k .R3D files.

CLIENT: Red Moxie Media
DIRECTOR: Tanya Martineau
AC: John Dewberry

Slow Season Busy Work

It's slow season ya'll with way more time than work. It's that time of year when I'd honestly prefer shriveling up into a wad of insecurity and self-doubt and drink coffee till things get better.

St. Anne the Wife has been around long enough to know when I need to get out and go film something. Thankfully I got out to The Farm before the January temps in Oklahoma dropped to angry Minnesota winter levels. Oh, and by "The Farm" I mean "my-parents-land-forty-five-minutes-from-Oklahoma-City."

Obviously, I'm always hoping for good light but that's harder to come by now with two young kids. Normally I'm running one kid to school around sunrise and then cooking, eating, and/or cleaning up after dinner during the evening light. My window to shoot these days feels like a relentless insult of the midday sun.

It was still that "Hey dummy, no one likes you" type of overhead light while I was out the other day. The thought was to try and shoot anything around The Farm and how it was moving with the wind. I also had a can of Atmosphere Aerosol with me, but it was too windy for it to make a difference. The footage was all shot on a 35mm CP2 between 5-8k widescreen on my RED Weapon Helium at framerates between 60-150fps.

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All the footage got edited down to its good bits in what I call a "cuttingboard" timeline/sequence. That sequence then gets copy-pasted to a new "v1" sequence and I go from there. I always end up pulling frame grabs from the footage to feed the Insta-beast and color that nonsense as I go. VSCO is my go-to photo editor on my phone, but I'm also learning to use Adobe Lightroom. There's also the idea of making custom LUTs in Lightroom and bringing them into Premiere Pro. I tried making a couple for this edit, but in the end, I went with a pre-made LUT in Premiere. The color correction and grading process is always the most intimidating part of any edit for me. I'll reference my edited stills, but those looks rarely end up being appropriate as part of a whole in the final edit.

Music is the next part of the project. Obviously, I always get the music rights for client projects, but that's not always the case for these random projects I'll put together that'll be seen by like six people. Recently I've been digging through SoundCloud for music; some let you download, others don't. It's great to find a song you like and then it'll refer you to other work you might also like. For this edit, I used "Fireworks" by Pham. I'll break the full track down into bits, normally looking to keep the total edit to around 60 seconds. Again, gotta feed that Insta-beast.

Once I get the music close to where I want it, that's when I start laying down the edit. Again, for this edit I wanted to do something with how the wind was moving the grass and trees. The footage alone wasn't enough, so I also added digital zooms and subtle rotation at times. Editing something like this is mostly gut-level for me. I'm not looking to tell a story, but I'm VERY intentional about how each clip feels and interacts with others in the timeline and how they play off the music. It's a constant process of building and releasing tension and concluding with some kind of resolution.

UPDATED: 3/18/2024

Beyond just going out to make something, these exercises produce original content and digital licensing opportunities in the form of stock footage. This project is part of my Filmsupply portfolio and is available in its own section: Field Scenery. Certainly, I'm stoked to see additional revenue from my independent projects, but it's always wild seeing how other creatives use and re-purpose your work. The video below from The Trevor Project uses one of my clips at 1:56.

Interrotron Teleprompter Hack

Nerding out about finally using the iPad/iPhone/FaceTime/Teleprompter Interrotron hack I'd seen somewhere on the interwebs. We were doing another project for Central Oklahoma Habitat for Humanity and wanted the interviewee to look directly into the camera. That's easier said than done as most people would prefer to make eye contact as they're talking to another person and not lens. Honestly, it worked out much better than we expected.

In a nutshell, you're essentially having the on-camera talent look into the teleprompter and see the person they're speaking with via an iPad that's FaceTiming another iOS device – in our case an iPhone placed right behind the camera. ProTip: make sure you mute the iPads/iPhones being used so you don't get a feedback loop. If you're interested in the teleprompter I'm using, make sure to check out the 15" ProLine Plus by PrompterPeople.