Oklahoma. I know it's somewhere in Oklahoma. Probably not crazy far from the outskirts of Pawhuska, OK. It's far enough out there that you can stand in the middle of the road and shoot for much longer than you probably should.
BTW, the barn below shouldn't still be standing. It's probably older than the state, but it'll probably still be there after I'm gone. No rush...
Had another shoot WAY the heck out there and stopped for lighting – and to shoot – more than I should've during the 2-3 hour drive home. Don't tell my wife...
If your website is something like bestpartyintown.org you’d better not disappoint.
Carnivale is a black tie event in Tulsa raising money for the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma (MHAOK). The organization works to combat homelessness and the stigmas associated with mental illness.
Tulsa-based TPC Studios is the creative force behind the Carnivale event and responsible for making sure the fundraiser lives up to its URL. This year’s Stars and Stripes-themed event is inspired by the World War II era. TPC put together a team to recreate the set of a celebrity USO Tour Press Conference featuring the MHAOK Chairs and Committee Members.
TL;DR – Basically it’s a big photoshoot for the main promotion imagery for a HUGE fundraiser/kick-arse party.
I’ve been on a couple of the Carnivale sets over the years filming BTS footage and interviews (2015 & 2016). This year I was able to join the team shooting “moving portrait” style footage that they’ll project on screens during the event. Cue the RED Weapon Helium shooting 99fps at a 6k widescreen resolution.
What I absolutely love about the Carnivale shoot is the creative team behind it. I’d highly encourage checking out and following this stew of creatives. Crazy thanks to Todd Pyland and Tony Li for letting me crash the party.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Todd Pyland
ART DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Tony Li
PHOTOGRAPHER: Jeremy Charles
CINEMATOGRAPHER: me
CINEMATOGRAPHER (BTS & Interviews): Grant Sweetwood
SET DECORATOR & STYLIST: Stacy Suvino
WARDROBE STYLIST: Shannon Schroeder
HAIR & MAKEUP: Jordan Best
PHOTO ASSISTANTS: Sarah Eliza Roberts & Clay Flores
The travel side of what I get to do is honestly worth the uncertainties and stress that are also part of this work.
A couple months ago a client hit me up about a shoot in south Florida scheduled for mid-January. When possible, I’ll head out a day earlier on my own dime to take in being in a new place or city. I’ve already been to Florida, but I’m not about to say “No” to a beach and a chance to find another decent coffee shop. Thank goodness West Palm Beach didn’t let me down.
It’s still slow season at the moment and every dollar counts, so I booked a cheap room for the night, got a rental car for less than it would have cost to pay for a ride share or taxi, and ate dinner at the United Club during a layover.
It's worth the effort to commit to one airline and take advantage of the perks. Years ago a DP buddy of mine got me hooked on United Airlines and I’ve not looked back. At this point, I'm not flying enough to get club membership via elite status, so I pay roughly $450/year in membership fees for a United MileagePlus Club Visa card. It gets me Premiere status with easier check-ins, earlier boarding, and two free checked bags on each flight, as well as United Club access. The two free checked bags perk alone helps me save a crazy amount of money considering all the gear I travel with and more than covers that yearly membership fee. There are other perks too, but those are the main ones keeping me a loyal United customer.
I found a solid coffee shop in downtown West Palm Beach and after breakfast, I walked up and down the beach until my parking meter ran out. Before meeting the rest of the crew, I picked up some gear I’d rented from Lensrentals and had shipped to a local FedEx branch.
We scouted the first location that afternoon before heading back to the hotel for the night. I’ll typically have my Canon 5Dmk3 with me on scouts along with my iPhone. For sure I’d rather scout the location during the same time of day before the scheduled shoot, but that wasn’t an option. The Sun Seeker app let me know where the sun would be during our shoot and Artemis helped me make some shot choices by being able to plug in my camera, resolution, and lens choices.
The shoot itself went well the next day. The creative agency, Signal Factory, hired me out with my RED Weapon Helium package and CP.2 lens set. We used their Oconnor 1030Ds fluid head and sticks plus their Dana Dolly. For the Dana Dolly, Signal flew out with their setup and we bought two 10’ pipes from Home Depot near the location. They’d also rented some additional grip & electric but we didn’t end up using it – pretty bummed we didn’t even turn on the ARRI Sky Panels.
Signal Factory had also hired a couple local photogs to shoot stills and drone footage so we had to coordinate on set as needed. The client nixed the second location and we were able to get all we needed at the first.
We dumped footage back at the hotel, cleaned up, and went out for dinner. Our flights were stupid early the next morning, so it wasn’t going to be much of a late night.
One thing I plan to look into this year to try and make my life easier in airports is TSA PreCheck. In addition to my checked bags, I travel with two carry-ons: a larger backpack (personal items, 13" MacBook Pro, and iPad) and a roller bag for my "must-have" camera gear (camera bodies and lenses). I always carry on my main camera gear just in case a checked bag gets lost. Clients are spending good money on me and my travel expenses, so it does them no good for me to show up to a travel job without my gear – it's happened before.
TSA typically freaks out at having to check all my gear during security screenings. There have been more security measure updates recently and when I was leaving Oklahoma City, the TSA agents took out all my camera gear, batteries, and iPad to X-ray again without giving me a heads up. I understand their purpose is our safety, but experience has taught me they seem to have more to think about than how to properly handle camera gear. TSA PreCheck is something like $85, lasts five years, and because they've already done a background check, it helps get you through security much quicker. Their website mentions that “In December 2017, 93% of TSA PreCheck passengers waited less than 5 min.”
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.
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.
Short of all the coffee I bought in 2017, one of the best spends last year was attending the Film + Music Conference in Ft. Worth, TX.
Pretty much like all things from the Musicbed/Filmsupply mothership, the Film+Music team killed it. They brought in some freakin' fantastic speakers: some I'd heard from before, others I'd followed online for years, and still more that were new to me. The music and live performances brought another dimension to the event. A serious kudos is due to whoever was behind the lighting design on stage. Most of all, the people attending seemed to be the "Who's Who" – and the rest of us plebeians – in the creative film/music world.
My biggest takeaways were ideas like "The world needs you to stop being boring" and "The internet is a treadmill that doesn't love you" from Brad Montague of Soul Pancake/Kid President. Ryan Booth – of Ryan Booth fame – encouraged us to "Go home, make things that are interesting to you, and put them on the internet." Natalie Kingston's lighting workshop was pretty rad and wish it would've lasted longer.
We'd been wanting to get out of town for the holidays and St. Anne the Wife's mom found us all a place in Lyme, CT. With two small kids, Anne and I – plus the mother-in-law with this trip – are seemingly always playing defense so the house doesn't burn down, but I was able to sneak out with my camera right after the snowfall Christmas morning.
Behind the scenes from the November 2017 G-Zero World Puppet Regime shoot in New York. I'd never filmed with puppets in this capacity, so there was a bit of a learning curve. The pros I worked with on this one had done quite a bit of big-league TV puppet work already, so they were kind enough to keep me from looking like a fool. Thanks again to Lead Puppeteer David Bizzaro and Director Alex Kliment from Eurasia Group for having me.
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.
