Josh said it perfectly, what a great shoot! The footage is simple amazing and Amber killed it all day! All the help from the extras was amazing and thank you so much to Eric, Heather and Page for pulling together and really making this happen. Big shout out to lauren for kicking butt with the make up, choreography AND behind the scenes!
I would also like to thank Matt & Adam for their dedication and commitment in making the scenes look great. Adam, you killed it on every scene with lighting, exactly what we needed. Matt, all the shots are prime and perfect, thanks for sweating all day and maning the steadycam without any complaints or requests for a back massage, haha.
And last but not least.....Josh. Your focus and attention really brought this project home, not only your work on production day but all of your pre-pro help made this a smooth and successful production. Your my boy blue!
I look forward to showing you all the final product and helping Amber make it to the top.
Destenee McKenzie hit me up to supply Grip/Lighting and Camera support for her music video that we shot on Tuesday December 13th. Destenee wanted to use the AGrip Jib w/Remote head.
Destenee is a talented young girl who is both extremely pretty and extremely nice; She makes all of her own music and records her own vocals. It is rare to find an artist that has a combination of all of these things.
Destenee wrote the song that we shot the video for which was called "OK". Destenee came my direction a couple weeks before the shoot to talk about the concept and what equipment she would need and we worked out a basic plan. Then she went to work securing the location and making her own costumes. The basic idea of the video was that, without music people have no inspiration and they are basically dead, zombies.. etc. But when the music plays, it makes things "OK", like a ray of light shining through the clouds it brings people back to life and infuses their lives with joy. This is what we all tried to capture in her music video.
I brought a cargo van to the shoot the day of and I hired Ryan Spencer to be the Jib Operator for this video. When you see the sweeping jib shots you will know that it was ryan who operated that.
I was extremely impressed with the crew that Destenee put together for this shoot. DJ Cosgrove is the editor for this video and he was on set the day of the shoot; when all is said and done he will have done a lot more then just edit this video, he was there to not only do grip work but also provide creative input like an assistant director.
Also, bad ass film maker Joe Nation was there to help Direct. Joe is a very busy person and he told Destenee that he would come help out but he made it clear that he would not be able to be there all day; however the time that he ws there he really went in. Joe Nation was literally running and putting up lights and making sure we moved things along, very impressive.
Our DP was Joe Lombardi. He worked really hard on this production and when Joe Nation left, he really came through in a role that was more then a DP.
A lot of people helped on this production and I wasn't able to catch all of their names. Destenee obviously has something magical about her that draws quality people to her.
This video was a lot of fun to make although we did run into time limitations; we had to work as fast as we could during the end as well as juggling the location with some other people who had agreements to use portions of it during our filming. I think this video is going to come out really good and I was happy to be a part of it because I got to meet some cool people and make a music video that is uplifting and positive.
Check out my interview that I did for InFocusMM with B.A.D Company (Bars & Drums)
Here it is, the music video that this Blog entry is about: (watch it full screen, 1080, let it load first and turn your speakers up)
B.A.D. Shoot:
This shoot was amazing. AGrip and Ryan Spencer and Sean Brooks and B.A.D Company were in full effect and we really went in on this video. This video is comming out on Tuesday 11/29/11 and I believe that it is in the top 3 music videos that AGrip.net has been a part of. This video was taken to Jason Haberman from What310 for "sweetening"; Jason did color correction and subtle grading as well as the visual effects. I helped Jason with that on the lighting side.
Note: These stills have not been color graded and corrected yet.
Ryan Spencer and I brainstormed and came up with a treatment. Ryan wrote and finalized the final treatment. Some of the ideas and things that happened are not what I had envisioned but the video did come out as good as I had hoped that it would and that is saying something.
Q: What made this video great?
A1: The song. I loved the song, it went really hard and this was a vibe that we were able to come up with a good and fun vision for.
A2: The artist came through with their end of the deal, they brought extras, they brought props, they got the location, they brought energy that matched ours, and together we were able to make something great.
A3: the AGrip Jib Crane... This thing killed it... this thing is seriously going to merk the music video game. We got all kinds of cool shots with this. If you read my Jib Blog entry from earlier you will see some of the types of shots that we were thinking about. We succeeded in getting a lot of really creative Jib shots. We went vertical and used the jib with stairs, with 3 story warehouse shelving, with a guy riding like a ninja ontop of a van... and the performance shots that we did with the jib were AWESOME.
A4: Lighting, killed it. I don't want to sound cocky but the lighting was sick. We moved extremely fast for the story line section of the video and there was no time to set up huge lighting set-ups. AGrip does have a newer run and gun lighting set up that is killing the game. Story line run and gun looked great on the lighting but where the lighting really shined was on the performance scenes. We did 4 amazing performance scenes in less than 2 hours and they really are something that you will have to check out.
A5: the collaborative spirit on set. We went with a small crew and the few people that were there were extremely dedicated to making this a great video. The crew of this video was Ryan Spencer, Sean Brooks and myself Adam from AGrip.net. Jason haberman will be doing an effect or two in post for this video.
There is a lot of other Answers to this question. This video will be comming out soon so check it out.
===========================================================================
This is the First part of the Blog Entry about this music video for B.A.D Company, written Thursday November 17th 2011:
This shoot hasn't happened yet, I am writing this blog so that you can step into my world, learn something, predict, and see what you think about the finished product.
I'm kind of putting us on the spot here, we have to come up with something good right? Otherwise you are all going to laugh at us. Thats fine, at least we will all have some fun.
Okay so, Director Ryan Spencer hits me up, says he's got this video, gets me a deposit to lock me in on Monday November 21st and he tells me his budget. Together we formulate an equipment list. This shoot is going down in 2 days.
We're going to have a 10' Jib on a dolly, with a remote head and focus control. Shooting with DSLR's. We are going to have some dolly track, fog machines, Kino Flo's, LED spots, Tungsten Fresnels, Gels... We got all that.
I wish I could post the song, its really dope but it is not to be released yet.
What we need is a concept and we are working that out. Take a look at these pictures and you can get a feel for the location.
Now imagine the Jib swooping around all fast getting performance shots of the rappers in different locations. Crazy lighting, fog, brass knuckles, a safe, maybe a guy performing on top of that container, maybe a jib shot of somebody running down the stairs, maybe a rapper comming out from the door at the top of the stairs after the guy ran down, and the rapper has a ski mask on and then he pulls the mask off and starts rapping. maybe a mob car inside the warehouse lit up cool with a jib shot comming down and around to the trunk that opens and one of the rappers is tied up in the trunk, but then one of the other rappers walks by like a ghost and hands him a stun gun and shuts the trunk door, then a second later some confident pulp fiction ass goonie nillas walk up in suits and jerry curl and open the trunk, bam lightning bolts start shooting out of the trunk then we get super slow-mo shots of these goons shaking and spazzing from the lightning that is zapping the shit out of them while the place fills up with fog, then some other goons get super terrified and run in slo-mo while one of them is trying to call for back up on an old school walki-talki then BAM he's getting zapped, spazzing on the floor, the rapper picks up the walki-talki and starts rapping into it as he is walking through the joint electrocuting the shit out of the thugs with the stun gun and the lightning bolts flying out all crazy like the evil emperor did it on star wars when he was killing Vader. Then it cuts to the Boss Goon that the guy was calling on the walki-talki and he has a suit on with some knarly eyebrows and he's like "Oh shiiit" so he throws the keys to the safe into the briefcase with a bunch of sloppy papers that he was trying to shred real fast and then he books out of there, and then... hmmm
I could go for days with this but what you think? The song is pretty hard right? We don't have the biggest budget ever but we do have some nice gear for this. Stay tuned for pictures from this shoot. And we'll be showing you the video soon enough.
Check in with this blog entry later if you know whats good!!! At least you can see WTF happens with this video. Its going down on Monday and we're gonna try real hard to keep this one out of the Vortex.
[Vortex: Metaphysical place that music videos go to right before they are either never released or released so late that they are no longer relevent to modern day life.]
Alright errybody I wanted to share a music video that I worked on a little while ago. This video was for Ralek Gracie who as many of you may know is a pretty serious Jiu Jitsu fighter; he actually beat Kazushi Sakuraba who I thought was probably the best fighter in the worlrd. Well, we did this music video and, I know its not THE BEST music video and song in the world, but damn people are being ...haters big time. Comparing this to Rebecca Black and stuff. Damn... I know the guy is known for fighting but that doesn't mean he can't try some new things, I don't think that this song and video are THAT bad, its not Jay Z or Kanye but damn its kinda fun. Its got some stuff in it I call "inside raps" (when you rap about some things that only people in your circle know about and nobody else gets) and its got some repeats like when you run out of things to say you just repeat the word.. and its got some talking at one part... where he's just saying random things like "gotta get something from my CAR! car, car car, I hope I didn't park it very FAR, far far" but mannnn this thing is kinda fun, check it out:
I've always been a big fan of the Gracies. I have really fond memories of the first time that my dad let me hang out with him and his friends in a man to man kind of way, I was about 15. My dad had "caveman BBQ's" and all the guys would come over and watch "Bare Knuckles Fighting", which was basically UFC when it first started and was something brand new. Some say that the UFC was started for the Gracies and Royce Gracie. This was manly stuff and I was finally allowed to watch it and hang out with the men. I will never forget seeing Royce Gracie fight and hearing stories from some of the other guys about some of his fights. I learned quickly that Jiu-Jitsu is a great fighting technique that works and can allow a smaller man to defeat a much larger and even stronger man.
Through-out the years I have watched the Gracies fight and watched their instructional DVD's. I even learned some of their moves and used them successfully in fights back in the day. (true story).
When Ralek Gracie hit me up to do Grip & Lighting on his music video, I thought that that was pretty cool. Ralek Gracie is a Jiu-Jitsu fighter but he is also a musician and he came up with a cool song and music video concept that he hired me to be a part of. I talked to Ralek the night before the shoot to make sure that I could in fact do the shoot, because as it turns out I was already scheduled to shoot footage for another music video earlier that day in Manhattan Beach. I coordinated the earlier shoot which needed very minimal equipment and then I wrote down what gear I would be bringing to Ralek's shoot in accordance with his budget.
By 5:30 on Tuesday November 15th the sun had completely set and I had shot some beautiful sunset shots right near the ocean with a classic restored 50's Cadillac. I then headed to a warehouse which was about 15 minutes away to shoot with Ralek.
I got to the warehouse where I met Ralek Gracie and my DP, Echo Charles. Echo was really cool to work with because he was laid back while being efficient at the same time. These are important qualities for a Cinematographer to have because, obviously everybody wants their video to come out amazing; freaking out will not help you get an amazing video. Echo was smart, on point and very easy to collaborate with. Echo took my suggestions about various lighting options and made the final decision on everything. I really liked the visual product that we created for this shoot. Jason Haberman and his partner woman Neysa, were also there to help me with the Lighting and Jason brought his own extensive skills to our collaboration. Echo brought his own partner woman, Sara; Sara and Neysa were a big help on this shoot. (Dang, I need to get my own partner woman….)
As soon as I rolled my truck into the warehouse and met Ralek and Echo, we wasted no time getting down to business and started talking about the shots that we wanted to get. Ralek reiterated the concept that he told me the night before and showed me where he wanted to film and we talked about the angles and possible framing. I formulated a lighting plan and then found out where the power outlets were. I was a little nervous about not having enough power to run all of the lights that I initially wanted but we were able to run enough stingers in order to get what we wanted.
[AGrip TIP: Always have lots of surge protectors and cube taps with you. Go crazy and bring 1 cube tap or surge protector for every stinger that you bring.]
We carried over the matts that would go on the ground that the fighters would perform and fight on. We arranged pallets so that people could stand on them and we also made a DJ booth out of pallets. I climbed up high into the steel shelving to rig a tungsten light that was gelled with a party color, to shine onto the DJ booth. I hooked up a fog machine behind the pallets that made up the DJ booth and then I hooked up a Tungsten Fresnel unit to backlight the fog, I put the unit on a dimmer so that we could lower the intensity and I wanted it to go slightly warmer. I used my Kino tubes to light the floor in a cool and moody way and since the fighting Matt had a shiny black finish the Kino bulbs made cool reflections off of it. I made sure to establish areas of our "white light" for the night which was tungsten and then mix in other areas with color. At this point I started to notice that my DP, Echo, had brought some cool lights of his own; what was also cool is that his LED Spot lights were battery powered. They were a daylight color temperature and we used them in the frame, and to back light the fog in the upper section of our frame. When the warmer tungsten light backlighting the bottom of the fog mixed with the daylight that was backlighting the top part of the fog it created a really awesome purple color especially where the two lights met. To be honest this scene looked great and to top it all off we had 3 sections of my 45 degree curved track to use to capture the performance shots.
Echo did a great job of operating the camera and setting it up. We quickly fine-tuned things and we were very happy with the image that we created. Ralek came back from getting food and champagne and he brought about 30 people with him. I got to meet some of the other Gracies which was cool and they also brought quite a few hot chic’s with them.
In no time we were filming. The shoot went smooth and everybody was having a lot of fun. The song was an upbeat song and so people were dancing and grooving to the music while they watched the fights; I have done a lot of shoots where we have to tell extras to get into it, that wasn't the case with this shoot, there was no acting everybody was really having a good time.
I give major props to Ralek for coming up with the idea for this video. As a music video maker we are always looking for something interesting to shoot with dynamic camera movement; this was the first time that I have seen fighting moves done like this and it looked awesome. All of the fighters that we used were actual pro fighters and they looked the part, they each had a few moves that were unique and looked interesting on camera.
When we were done with the main set up we filmed Ralek and his crew breaking into the warehouse. The last shot of this night was a really cool one; we took all of the people who came to the video and had them go outside near the roll up door to the warehouse. I did some simple lighting (that I thought was pretty nice) and then we had Ralek open the door, as the door slid open fog came into the frame and we dollied back quickly as a massive amount of cool looking people flowed into the warehouse.
This shoot was a lot of fun, it was cool to meet the Gracies and I also got to hang out with my friend Angelo Costa who directed the Donnie video that you can read about on my blog.
Stay tuned for the video, you can catch it on this blog in the future.
NOTE: This video is posted at the end of this blog entry:
Yesterday me and Jason Haberman from what310.com shot a music video; it was freakin crazy.
Jason booked me for the shoot 3 weeks in advance. He sent an email with the song and the treatment. We put together a gear list, the gear that we used was mostly run and gun stuff with a couple things to film a live performance from the band at a bar at night. This is a list of the gear that you can rent from AGrip that we used:
The truck was loaded and I was headed to Inglewood at 80 mph at 7:30am on Sunday October 30th. When I got there, we headed to the neighborhood that we would film our first shot in. It was a quiet and nice neighborhood in the South Bay area. The house we were shooting in front of was a pretty nice suburban house with some fun Halloween decorations. We set up 16' of track on the sidewalk across the street and then we waited for the band to start getting there. Some of the band members were late and either hung over or drunk from the night before. Soon the car that we would be using showed up. It was a pretty funny little car, perfect for the shoot. It was a hatch back, white, old, smog problem, and really jalopyish. We filmed a shot dollying over on the track of the car pull up to the sidewalk to pick up this chic as she came out of the front door. The band member that drove was slightly inebriated and he could barely drive. He ended up driving the car up onto the curb and stopping it too fast. The girl got in and they drove off. It was really funny and totally ridiculous and unexpected.
This music video had a certain style to the production that I like. We did run and gun story line stuff in multiple locations for the first part of the day and then we took a break and ate lunch around 3pm, then we lit up the performance scene at the bar and shot that footage from 6 to 8pm. Then it was a wrap. Jason did a great job cutting this. Take a look at the color grading and light replacement work that Jason did. We shot nice looking footage but Jason also made the footage look great in post and the combination of quality raw images and good color grading made this 7D footage look great.
Something important to note: This music video was shot on SUNDAY October 30th and completely finished and online by WEDNESDAY! November 2nd!!!... Jason Haberman is a music video editor that gets it done. He does good work but also, crucial to this industry, he keeps projects out of the Vortex. (Vortex: [vawr-teks]noun,plural-tex·es,-ti·ces / in Music video - A situation where the project that you have put the sweat of your life into, goes into a metaphysical place where it is never released to the public and if it is, it is released so late that it is no longer relevant.)
Seriously people, hire Jason Haberman and keep your hard work out of the Vortex!!!
Hire AGrip.net and What310.com to make YOUR next punk rock video (or any genre... hire us and its onnnn)
On October 15th I shot a music video for Doni Flanigan. Angelo Costa hit me up to do this shoot. Some of you may have seen a prior blog entry where I talked about a night of shooting at a country western club for Donnie’s video with Director Angelo Costa; this was day two of the "Git Yer Twang On" shoot. Angelo got a sweet location in Norco at a guy’s house who was a country western and history aficionado. He had some cool things on his property like a saloon, a small stage to perform on and a barn; he also had old frontier wagons and a cool water tower and fire pit. Everything was miniaturized and kind of a facade. During the day the place looked pretty cool but I knew that at night it would be really great because we would control the light in order to only light up what we wanted to light up. Unfortunately this place did not have a lot of power so we had to bring generators. My 2000W Generator put in work on this night and was ran to its capacity. We also had a 6500W Generator.
This was the 2nd shoot that the AGrip Jib has been used on. Angelo and I talked in advance about using the jib for this and Angelo actually came over several times to practice using the Jib. I contacted Austin Ahlborg about being my Jib assistant.
The day of the shoot we gathered at the location in Norco. I began setting up the Jib with Austin. Angelo set up some Par Cans on the stage to light up Donnie’s performance on the stage. We began doing test shots with the jib while the sun was still up and we began to devise a plan while we listened to Angelo’s thoughts on what he wanted. The plan was to have Donny drive up in a really cool classic country western looking truck, as we jibbed up, he would get out with his girl and they would walk through the crowd up to the stage where he would begin performing with a band. Like I said, power was tough so we ended up using the 2000W generator on the back side of our set, and the 6500 on the front side. We didn't want cables running all over and also since we were using the Jib which had much wider areas of perspective we needed to hide the lights more than usual. We came up with a system and we also got the fire pit going. We used full CTO on one of the lights that was lighting up the water town and that worked because it mimicked the color from the fire. We put up a key light for the truck and a backlight as well. I wanted to use half CTO on the backlight in order to separate it from the key light and I knew that the fire would motivate the warmer color. We side lit the stage and the crowd with a powerful light with diffusion on it. Things were ready, we practiced the jib move and it looked great. Angelo operated the jib for this, we did a few takes to get the truck roll up and have Donny get out.
We filmed Donnie’s performance on the stage and it was pretty good. It took some work getting the crowd into it, we had a nice crowd and they were dressed to fit the occasion and there was lots of pretty girls; unfortunately some of the guys were tired or something and were not ready to "Get their Twang on". We had to move some girls to the outside of the crowd to get an illusion that this was a really intense crowd. The set looked great with the saloon and the par cans that were gelled different party colors, with the red barn next to the stage. While Angelo was getting the Jib shots with Austin spotting him I began to set up the Steadicam and some lite panel lights. As soon as Angelo was done He strapped on the Steadicam vest and I grabbed a c stand arm and a lite panel and we moved into the crowd for close ups. We made some pathways in the crowd for Angelo to move through. The scene was already lit but we used the lite panel in order to get that little bit extra exposure and I tried to keep it somewhat frontal and subtle. I tried to notice where Angelo was going to go and then I would move there where I wouldn't interfere with his movements, then I would aim the light and not move it. I tried to keep my light not moving as much as possible so that we could cut around the lighting changes. This was a largish crowd and this is intercut b roll footage so we were not too concerned about big changes in the lighting. We moved all around getting cool shots of the band, Donny, the crowd, girls dancing. It was great. It was great to be able to use the Jib the way we did and then move in with the Steadicam. Some shoots, you need to move fast and this was one of them and we moved fast and got great product. I like this style of shooting. I wouldn't shoot every video in this quick up-tempo style but i think it is great to shoot maybe half the videos I do in this manner.
When we were done with that location we moved people over to the bonfire area, a lot of people were sitting in a large circle around the fire. This scene was already lit for us as we did our major lighting in the begging in. We did the same thing with the lite panel that we did for the crowd performance stuff. We ran around the outside of the circle and the footage looked great, very dynamic as the people were moving by the frame in the foreground with the other side of the circle moving the other direction. We ran around the circle and then ran through a gap in the circle up to Donny who was sitting there with his girl.
All in all it was a fast and simple shoot with a lot of energy and the footage looked great. Everything had a lot of character because of the sets and our jib and Steadicam movements and also you could tell that people were having fun.
This is going to be a really great little music video and I can't wait for it to come out. We have a really good editor for this and Angelo is giving him the cream of the crop footage. Stay tuned for this video, I will post it on this blog and when I do you can say to yourself before you watch it: "It’s time to get my twang on"
On Sunday October 23rd I shot a music video for Mr.Extravagant. This video was directed by Wes Beard and produced by Greg Whitehead. Greg hit me up a week in advance and booked me to shoot that Sunday with the AGrip Jib. Greg also rented a slider and some bounces and frames from AGrip. The song that we were doing the video for was called "Like Mike" and it was about how the artist wanted to be like Michael Jordan. This was a cool song that kind of reminded me of the same vibe from that classic Kurtis Blow song called "Basketball". The vibe was relaxed and it was just about how fun basketball is. I always loved basketball so this video was a lot of fun for me.
The location that Greg chose for the video was good because it had a good look and style but it was also convenient. I parked on the sidewalk right next to a walkway near the basketball courts. We got an early start (7am) so nobody was at the park and I think that that made things go smoothly. The park had basketball courts and a softball field, a playground and a school with trees all around. I unloaded the truck and wheeled the Jib cases and dolly over to the court. I began setting up the Jib with my assistant for the day, Alvin and was done setting up in about 20 minutes. While I was setting up the Jib the director and two camera men, Daniel Rego & Timothy Tippens as well as assistant director Gibran Gaither shot a performance scene of the artist Mr. Extravagant, performing while sitting in the center of the bleachers with 1 friend on each side. Brandon McEachern of Broccoli City was there as well acting as our UPM. While I set up the Jib the guys shot 1 camera looking straight at the artist while dolling side to side with the slider. the other camera was on a tripod. We used a silver bounce to side light the artist and we used a hi-light scrim to diffuse the sun when we moved in for the close up. AGrip's super quiet Honda generator came in very handy for this shoot. We used it to power the stereo and charge camera batteries, as well as to power the Jibs monitor.
While they were shooting this I was finishing up setting up the jib. When I was done we wheeled the dolly with the Jib on it into position. We put the focus ring on the camera and mounted it to the Jib. In moments we were ready. The Dolly for the Jib was located directly in front of the artist where he sat on the bleachers. Behind him was a softball field with a game in progress. I normally do not operate cameras however I do have practice with the Jib and on this day I was the one who needed to operate the Jib. I started doing some practice movements as Director Wes Beard watched the monitor; both of us started to get a feel for what we wanted and I told him to remember what he was seeing so that he could point it out when we rolled the takes. After a few moments of practice we rolled the song and began to do some takes. I flew the camera from side to side and matched the pan speed to the speed of the jib movements. I also did some shots low from side to side and a couple from high to low. A cool shot that I was getting was taking the jib all the way to the side and then aiming the camera at the artist, then flying in really low to the ground and raising the camera as I came in and passing by the artist. What added to the dynamics of these shots were the artist’s friends dancing on each side of him in the bleachers. A lot of people on set were getting REALLY excited about how great this footage looked.
After we filmed that we filmed the performance scene of Mr.Extravagant sitting on the basketball rim. We hiked him up to the rim and he got into position. He was way up there, 10' in the air. He was wearing a white outfit and the backboard was white as well but it had reddish orange trim. It looked pretty cool to me and the sun was in the sky at a good angle, slightly back lighting. The angle that the sun was coming in was perfect, we didn't necessarily have to use a light disc to get an exposure on the artist but we used one anyways and it made the shot look fantastic. I started to practice my movements and I quickly realized along with everybody else on set that we were about to shoot some amazing footage.
I have only had this jib fully operational for a short time and like I said this is only my third shoot using it. each time I use it I feel like I am vindicated for getting this jib and I am very happy with the product but this time, with this basketball hoop performance scene, I was REALLY happy. I have shot a lot of music videos and shot a whole lot of video footage so it is hard for me to just say "that was the best footage that I have shot". And, to be honest we were only using a 60D camera, with pretty average lenses so I'm not going to overhype the footage especially since I only saw it in my jib monitor, but I will say that the framing of what I was seeing, the sun light the performance, was truly some of the best footage I have ever been a part of, I was just SO happy about it. I did a lot with the Jib as we went through the song about 3 times. I did lots of side to sides; I took the camera up to him high. One of my favorite ones was to take the camera way off to the side and do the really low fly in and then fly up to him. I used the backboard as a dynamic element to the shot peaking the camera by it, Mr.Extravagant was watching as the camera peaked around the backboard and he came out performing when it did. I also played with the sun which was coming in from a perfect angle to get cool lens flairs and one of the coolest things about the shot that I was getting, was a shimmery flash of sun off of the backboard when I swept the camera by from a certain angle. I played with that shimmery flash and even got a couple of them to happen to the music.
This footage was truly a joy to shoot and I cannot wait to show off this video.
The rest of the day was fun. We shot B-Roll footage of basketball games; we also shot dancing performances from kids wearing Michael Jordan jerseys and shoes. The last shot that we did was a shot from the Jib coming down towards the artist as he stood on the basketball court at the top of the key. As the Jib came down he turned around and showed off the awesome picture of Michael Jordan doing a slam dunk, on the back of his sweater and then he walked off as I did a jib away to the right with a camera tilt up; as I shot this I was thinking of the Adele video that is posted in my previous Jib Blog that I provided a link for above. As I did the shot I wondered if it was going to come off and be edited into the video. We did a few takes of this, I think with the Jib you can start to sense very small things that you can do better and so you repeat when you know it will be good; it feels good when you know that you nailed it. I think that at this point I am a descent Jib operator; I actually think that I have a natural ability at operating Jib because I enjoy it so much and since I have been doing video for a long time, I have developed an eye for movement and rhythm in music videos. Being a musician helps my jib operating in music videos. My friend Ryan Spencer also operates the AGrip Jib and at this point I think that he is still slightly better than I am at it mostly because he has previous experience with Jibs at the horse track, and he also has a lot more experience at operating camera in music videos. The two of us have practiced a few times together so we kind of collaborate on developing our eye for what works and what we like in Jib movements. I think that collaborating with partners to develop your eye for the shots is something that is very important in taking your Jib craft to the next level.
This music video was a joy to make, the fact that it was 1 location all day helped to make this project doable, I think that we succeeded in maximizing the location which is an idea that I am always talking about when I talk about music videos.
This blog will be re-released when the video is released.
Yesterday I did my first shoot with Director Aris Jerome for an artist named Kevin McCall.
Aris hit me up with his treatment and told me his idea for lighting. He wanted to use black lights in order to bring out fluorescent body paint on the girls. I thought it was a cool idea. Unfortunately we were not able to get ahold of any actual black lights so we ended up having to use Light Sabers. It was difficult at first to mount the Light Sabers to C-Stands but I figured out a way to do it without burning through the light stands.
The footage looked really cool. This was my second time shooting a black light scene and I had a lot of fun working on this video because we tried some new things. We also used a fog machine on this and we tried to use it sparingly. When the fog came out fresh from the machine it looked really cool when it was back lit by the Light Sabers and of course since it was a music video and we weren't recording audio the humming sound that Light Sabers make did not cause any problems but we did have 1 fatality when one of the booty shaker girls didn't realize that they were actual Light Sabers and touched one of them.
For a few moments things got really controversial on set when a discussion started between Kevin MCCall, his manager and myself over whether or not we would date an Avatar. We all agreed that Avatar chics are pretty sexy however some of us felt that since they are very tall (we estimated about 12' to 13' tall) that could make a long lasting physical relationship somewhat arduous (too much booty). However, Kevin's manager insisted that he wouldn't mind dating a 12' tall sexy blue alien female, part of me agreed that it might be cool.
This was a smooth and fun shoot, stay tuned for the Video.
On the weekend of September 24th & 25th I shot a music video for rapper Casino Redd. Director Daniel Anthony scheduled me for this shoot a month and half in advance. Daniel worked with an excellent storyboard artist in order to plan the vision of this music video. Daniel spoke with me about the locations and time frames and I chose the equipment to bring for the shoot.
This was my second time working with Isaac. I have been very impressed with his work. The first music video that I saw that he DP'd for Daniel Anthony that brought him to my attention is this video: Express Fresh Video
The song for our Casino Redd video was about how the artist, Casino Redd's new girl is not as hot as his old girl but she is hotter then YOUR new girl. We had a lot of very pretty ladies for this music video. The first location was a strip club in the valley. This strip club was very seedy and kind of like a dive bar, more like a titty bar than a strip club; however the way we framed it and lit it, I think it looked cool. We only had from 8 to 11 to film in this location and unfortunately some of our girls showed up late and also took a little while to do their make-up. We moved fast and filmed what we could film with Casino Red. We got some angles of the girls dancing that I think were really nice. I saw the story boards when I got to that first location in the morning and I thought, "hmmm these are nice storyboards I hope we live up to them!" haha, I think we did but you will have to be the judge of that. I will post the video on this blog when it is released.
We wrapped it up quickly when our time was up at 11 and then we moved on to the second location. This second location was a really nice choice by Daniel Anthony, it was his former cinematography college. We filmed a classroom scene that had a lot of fantasy elements to it. Originally it was supposed to be a regular school day but we changed it to Detention and I think that worked better. One of Daniels former teachers played the teacher and he was very funny and excellent in that role. I was really impressed with the performances that Daniel was able to get out of the actors, he knew just what to say to them in order to get them to do what he wanted. One of the actors who he wanted to act paranoid, he told him to act like a meerkat and then he did an impression of a one. (video of a meerkat) Sure enough, the actor was able to do a great meerkat inspired acting job as he tried to not get caught using his cell phone in detention. This scene was a lot of fun to film and of particular coolness was that, the school had a Fisher Dolly right there for us to use. I pushed the dolly and controlled the hydraulic arm while Isaac operated camera and Megan controlled the focus. We filmed some cool shots. Our lighting style was minimalistic for this but I think the footage looked great. We filmed a fantasy part where the school girl turns into a vixen, we used more of a back light from one of my lights and then we used a LitePanel that I hand held in a certain way to cause a lens flair that gave the footage a really cool dreamy effect. Honestly, that was some of my favorite footage that I've shot.
Next we moved down the hall to a green screen studio that the school had. Everything was pre-lit and I basically just rolled up dials in order to get the green screen lit and to get the lighting we wanted. Isaac wanted a more contrasty look and so we quickly got that going and filmed our performance scene there.
Daniel choosing the school was a great choice because the class room scene was really cool and also, it was a 5 second walk from a very convenient green screen studio.
The second day of the shoot, we had to adapt a little bit because we managed to get Freeway Ricky Ross to make a cameo in the video. Daniel had a great location in LA near a huge railroad depot, a lot of the backsides of the buildings had really colorful, great graffiti. The Real Rick Ross was live and in effect. Again, we got some beautiful footage this day and in that location, before we moved on to a bedroom scene to be filmed at a house. The lighting for the bedroom scene was simple but it worked well. The girl that we had was named Brittney and she was very beautiful and had a great personality as well. (All of the girls that we had for this video were very, very pretty)
Everybody had a lot of fun filming this part.
This was a great project to work on. I thought that these story boards were so cool. Normally, on the AGrip Blog I post a lot of pictures of the behind the scenes as well as a couple stills from the videos, but for this particular video I wanted to show you the story boards so that later you can watch the actual video and see how we did. I realize that we were not completely accurate to the story boards but I do think that it will be interesting to see how these drawings came to life in a way. So stay tuned for this video, I know you will enjoy it.
