Planet Asia Music Video & the Pipe Boom Kit

This Blog entry is about my music video shoot on Saturday 3/12/11.


The video was for Rapper "Planet Asia" and was directed by Ryan Spencer from Dala Horse Productions. It was exciting to get to work with Planet Asia. I listen to a little rap and of course I am always working on Hip Hop videos... I had heard that Planet Asia was a lot of peoples favorite rapper. I heard that he was one of the most promising rappers back in the day with a chance to really blow up big; Asia chose to stay dedicated to the underground Hip Hop scene though. I did check out some of his stuff and, sure enough he really is a good rapper... Also, low and behold, he is from the same random place that I am from, which is Fresno California.


For this shoot Ryan hired a guy named Joe Dilag to be our camera man. Joe was a pretty cool guy who has a lot of experience shooting high end weddings. Ryan told me that Joe has aspirations of being the absolute best wedding videographer ever. Joe wants to film the weddings in a really cinematic way. Apparently there are people who will pay big bucks and fly a wedding videographer all around the world in order to capture their wedding in the most amazing way; that is the level of wedding videographer that Joe wants to be on. Ryan likes people who think big and so that is why he was excited to bring Joe on to work on this shoot with us.

I met with Ryan and Joe on Thursday evening at the Coffee Bean in Buena Park. Ryan brought his laptop and showed me and Joe pictures of the locations that we would be shooting in. Ryan told us his plans and what he wanted to achieve; then I wrote up a list of equipment that we would need and I estimated how long each set up would take. We came up with a plan and put it in writing and I think that even though we deviated away from this plan the day of the shoot, it helped to solidify what we were going to do in our heads, which benefited us a lot on the day of the shoot.



During the meeting Ryan showed me a picture of a patio where we were going to be filming a BBQ/Party scene. It was a cool looking location. there was a tropical style bar with a corrugated tin roof. Also there was a house that had brick walls in the background. There were palm trees and green grass, and christmas lights all around. The shots that we were talking about getting at this location were going to take place at night and I knew that the area was going to get really dark.

I came up with an idea for a new piece of equipment for me. I decided to build it and try it out.

What I wanted was a way to get some soft, ambient light into our Tropical Patio BBQ area that we were filming in. I intended to use directional light sources to pump light directly where I wanted it (which was onto the performers and the crowd; soft key light, harder backlights) However I wanted a little ambient light bouncing around the area in order to give me some fill light and let me have a little less contrast in our images. This was a party so I didn't want it to look scary I wanted it to look fun and laid back.

Another thing that was in my mind about this lighting set up, is that it needed to be fast. As a rule of thumb, every lighting set up needs to be fast. However this one needed to be particularly fast because we had a lot of things planned for this music video and we also had a very small crew.

My idea was to get a Pipe Boom Kit:
http://www.cinemagadgets.com/productdetail/pipe_boom_kit_for_1_1-4_pipe/3604

I used a Triple Riser Combo Stand along with a 14' length of 1 1/4" Schedule 40 Speed rail pipe and my Pipe Boom Kit, in order to hoist 4 China Ball Lanterns up into the air above our Patio scene.



I drive a Toyota Tacoma pick up truck; it is small and agile and over the years I have figured out a way to fit a really effective collection of music video making equipment into this truck. I like to use my truck for smaller shoots because it is very convenient. The open bed puts all my equipment right at my fingertips and I can move the truck really close to where I am actually going to be using the equipment. One of the modifications that I have done to my truck, is I added speed rail receivers into the bed so that I could quickly build a speed rail cage. I knew that I could build a simple speed rail rack in my truck and then use two of these parts:
http://www.cinemagadgets.com/productdetail/mounting_equipment/pipe__speed_rail_equip/speed_rail/3747
in order to secure my long, 14' Pipe Boom Kit.

I wanted to have my china ball pipe boom kit already built, wired up, and secured onto my truck so that when it was time to do the patio scene I could quickly get the pipe off the truck (the pipe boom kit is about as long as the entire truck) and carry it to the backyard, then put it up in the air on a combo stand and swing it where I want it. I also had dimmers hooked up to this set up so I was in control of the brightness of this ambient source.



Before the shoot, I built my Pipe Boom Kit. I secured electric wire to the pipe and then I attached light bulb sockets. Friday night, the day before the shoot I turned on my china balls on my pipe boom kit at my office in Burbank. It worked. I was ready to try this out on a shoot for my first time. I took the unit apart and connected it to my truck. The set up looked pretty sweet when it was mounted to my truck. I started thinking that maybe I should get two of them. I think I will do that in the future.



The day of the shoot, I loaded my truck. This is a list of the equipment that I used for this shoot:

Lights:
2 Diva 400
2 Arri 1000W Open face
1 Arri 300W Fresnel
1 Arri 650W Fresnel
2 Lite Panel Mini
4 ChinaBall Lanterns on the Pipe Boom Kit

Camera Support:
Speed Rail Camera slider
2 6' Straight Track
Dolly
Channel wheels
2 camera car mounts

Grip:
4 C Stands
4 Light Stands
1 Combo Stand
2 full apple boxes
10 Stingers
assortment of clamps and grip clips
6 sand bags
2 4'x4' breakdown frames w/ultrabounce

(all of this equipment is available for rental. Just call me at: 818.738.3696)

Aditional equipment brought by Joe Dilag:

8' Jib
wheeled tripod base
light weight track for the tripod base


My truck was loaded and I hit the road. I pulled up to our location in Pasadena at 10am. The Director Ryan and Camera Man Joe arrived at the same time. Joe and Ryan set up a series of shots involving a house that Planet Asia would come out of before he met up with his buddy "Tri-State" who was picking him up in the Yukon truck. Ryan decided to shoot the video in a super wide screen aspect ratio. He used masking tape to make markers on his and Joe's cameras so that they could get their framing right. I thought that the idea to use a really wide screen aspect ratio was pretty cool.



There was not a lot of work for me to do during this part of of the video so I had the owner of the house that we were shooting at move their vehicles out of their long driveway and I backed my truck all the way back, close to the Tropical Patio BBQ scene area. Then I unloaded my Combo Stands and my Pipe Boom kit, I quickly set this unit up and raised it up into the air. I also got my 2 Diva lights out and staged them, as well as 2 of my 1000W Arri Open face lights. I looked for power outlets and ran my stingers. This scene was prepared so that when we came back to shoot in that area we would be ready.

Then I went back to where Ryan and Joe were shooting in the front. As they finished their scene, I prepared the car mounts. These days I am using at least 2 car mounts at the same time so that I can save time. I think it may also be cool to have multiple cameras on multiple car mounts at the same time, because when the editor is editing they can cut between them and they will have footage that is clearly in the same area.. (I actually have a 3 Car Mount kit that is available for rental. Contact me if you are interested) Ryan talked about some angles that he wanted with me and we rigged that up. We got a cool shot of a flag that was attached to the Yukon using this camera rig:



The sun was starting to set so we rigged a car mount shot that showed both of the rappers in the car; then I rigged 2 Daylight color temperature LitePanels into the car with quarter CTO gels on them. We filmed a performance scene of Planet Asia and Tri-State driving.




After the driving scene, we moved to a wine cellar underneath the house that we were shooting at. The area was very small. The track that Joe brought was a little bit too wide to fit in the space and that was a problem because this scene was very important to the director and the producer of the video. We ended up taking one of my 6' dolly tracks and scissoring it up so that it was more narrow, then we used Joe's wheeled tripod base and we shortened the legs on it so that it would fit onto my track. The set up looked a little wonky but it actually worked very well. We were able to get our dolly shots in this very small cellar area. We used Litepanels and a Kino Flo Diva for lighting as well as a practical fluorescent that was in the cellar. We put a Red Gel on the Fluorescent Practical light in the Cellar and it gave us just a slight hint of red.

Then we moved on to the back yard patio scene. People were already there and a real party was starting. We moved our lights into position and I got a sense of how much light we would need with our combination of lens speed, iso and shutter speed. We needed more light then I thought we would need, so I dialed the dimmers all the way up on the China Balls on the Pipe Boom Kit, and I swung over closer to the party people crowd that we were going to shoot.

This is a diagram of our lighting set up for this part:





The footage from the Tropical, patio BBQ scene came out pretty nice. We used an 8' Jib for this part... I was pleased with the footage. It was exciting to see my Pipe Boom Kit in action. I think that this new piece of equipment is going to make a really great addition to AGrip arsenal.

After the BBQ scene, we packed up the equipment and headed to a Bar in Pasadena where we filmed Planet Asia and Tri-State partying with their people, drinking some beers. And that was it, the video was wrapped.

I think the footage came out pretty good. Be on the look out for this video in a few weeks. I will post it to this Blog. So stay tuned.