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.

Roadstarr Mercedes Mclaren SLR Shoot

This Blog entry was written by DP Austin Alhborg, about his Mercedes spec commercial shoot which took place on the weekend of January 22nd 2011:

NOTE: At the very end of this blog entry, I have attached the finished video.


Roadstarr is a high end car company in Los Angeles that specializes in selling luxury cars such as Lamborghinis, Mercedes, and other top notch sports cars. Nick Christopher organized a video shoot for them that was aimed at branding the company with its vision. To pull it off, Nick got us two main components in which to formulate a story around: a Mercedes Mclaren SLR sports car and a gorgeous model named Rosa Acosta. With these two locked in, he pulled together myself and Greg Whitehead to bring Roadstarr's vision to life.

We departed the Valley Inn in San Fernando at 5:00 am to head up into the Angeles National Forest on the Northern side of Burbank. We started driving down little Tujunga Canyon Road up into the mountains while the sky was still dark and there was just a hint of the sunlight popping up over the horizon. We arrived at the location and set up the beautiful Mclaren car alongside a cliff on a narrow windy road. We used a Canon 5D and 7D with Nikon prime lenses for this shoot. We rolled the cameras at 7:13am and just a minute after we started rolling, the sun just started rising over the mountains to reveal the Mclaren in a time lapse shot.




We rolled out until the 12min shut off time on the canon cameras for the time lapse and then set up for a scene that involved our lead actor driving down the winding road on a black motorcycle. We ran mostly the 7D camera for this scene because of its 60fps for slow motion. There was a mixture of jib and slider shots for this scene.

Our next scene involved mounting the camera on the front hood of the car. To pull this off, I hit up Adam Unruh from AGrip.net to rent his suction cup car mount. The mount consisted of 4 suction cups and various C-stand arms and knuckles that connect a Ball Camera Leveling Mount w/Wide Base. The Camera mounted onto the leveling mount and was easily adjustable from there for different angles. We were really pressed for time because of some setbacks (Motorcycle falling over...), so we needed to get our car mount rigged up as fast and safe as possible.


Film maker Nick Acosta banged this out for us and had the car mount perfectly secured on the hood of the Mclaren car in about 10mins. Nick has some experience with Car Mounts and he loves filming car commercials. We mounted the 5D and started rolling as the car drove down the mountain road. We rolled for about a 7 minute shot and then I was able to quickly adjust the car mount to pan left or right for different angles. We shot a wide straight on the car, a closeup of the driver and the scenery on his left, and a POV shot of the car driving down the winding road. We got all of these shots while driving to our second location and didn't waste any time. I'd say that these were some of our best and most efficient shots of the shoot because of the ease of use of the AGrip car mount.

This is a link to the car mount:
http://agrip.net/gripandlightingrental.html#car

Day two involved getting some shots of the Mclaren driving around the mountains, but from another vehicle. To pull this off, I really wanted the camera low to the ground. But how are we going to shoot low to the ground from a moving vehicle on a winding road? I met with our AC, Wes Tracy, earlier in the week, and we came up with the concept of mounting a Porta-Jib out the back door of his mini van.




This setup worked amazing. We were able to rig the camera nice and low to the ground and swing it in all directions to shoot the Mclaren while driving. Jake Frank killed it on the Jib as our operator and got us some amazing shots that swing across the ground while driving at around 40mph. This scene involved a lot of coordination considering that the camera van had to drive in the lane of oncoming traffic for some shots. Greg Whitehead held it down and kept it safe by keeping close contact on a walkie-talkie to a scout car driving about a ¼ mile ahead that was calling out approaching vehicles. These were probably the nicest shots of the video. Not to mention the most fun.

Overall, the shoot was a success. We had to crunch to get everything in there, but we ended up with some amazing shots. It was tough, a little hectic, and we all had to grind because of the budget, but we had a hell of a good time doing it. Wes Tracy nailed our focus. Zander Fieschko stepped up as or 2nd AC. Jake Frank saved the shoot by filling the role of AD on day two. Rosa Acosta was beautiful and great to work with. Roadstarr was great at whipping the car around corners and following the cues. The PAs held it together. And the Mclaren was... well, DAMN FAST. No seriously, those things are pretty fast....



It was a great shoot, and we will be posting the finished video here for your viewing pleasure! Stay tuned...

ATTN: HERE IS THE FINISHED VIDEO: Watch on Vimeo to see it full size.


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Superseeds shoot Sunday January 23rd

This Sunday, January 23rd 2011 I worked on a movie called "Superseeds".

This movie was written and directed by Kholi Hicks. "Superseeds" is a fun movie about a few late teen, early twenties characters who stumble across some pills that give them super hero powers. The movie is an action comedy.

This is a link to the Superseeds facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/Superseeds

Kholi has been in the process of filming this movie for about 6 to 7 months I would estimate, however we only film about 1 day every two weeks or so. Slowly but surely this movie is getting pieced together and is very close to completion (about 6 more days of shooting). It has been a lot of fun to be a part of the making of this movie. Over the course of filming this movie we have filmed in a lot of different locations, and done a lot of fun and interesting things. Each day of filming could be its own blog entry. This is going to be a great movie that I would definitely recommend checking out.

However, this particular Blog entry is specifically about the shoot on the date of Sunday January 23rd.

Kholi emailed me the list of equipment that he would be needing for the shoot. Sunday morning I woke up early and loaded the truck with the equipment that we would be needing, I printed out my directions to the location and I headed out.

This is the list of equipment that we used for the shoot:

1 Speed Rail Slider w/8' Pipe
2 Low Boy Combo Stands
2 Junior Nail on Plates for slider mounts
2 Cardellini Clamps

2 4'x4' Kino Flo
1 Diva 400 Kino Flo
2 Chimera Pancakes
1 650W Tungsten Fresnel
2 300W Tungsten Fresnel
2 Lite Panel Mini Daylight color Temp
2 1K Dimmers

2 48"x48" Floppys
1 48"x48" Unbleached Muslin Floppy
1 18"x24" scrim Set
1 24"x36" Scrim Set

7 40" C Stand w/Grip Head & Arm
5 2 Rise aluminum Lighting stands
1 Telescoping Baby Boom w/Ear
10 25' stingers
2 50' Stingers

10 20Lb Sand Bag



I arrived at the location at 10am. The location was a little club on Peck Road in South El Monte. It was an interesting location for sure, I walked in and noticed that it was a night time hang out, an Asian karaoke bar with dancing, and private VIP rooms that cost upwards of $90 an hour to hang out in. We were talking about what might go on in this location.... Make-up artist Rachel Olson and I agreed that Asian people seem to really like Karaoke so maybe it was just awesome Karaoke that went on there(at night time when we were leaving I started to see some fancy cars roll up to the place). Anyways, there was a bar, and there was a dance floor that had custom intense dance floor lighting. There was also a small stage with some room for the DJ. The decor of the location was eclectic, for instance even though the place was an Asian Karaoke bar, with Asian writing (with its humorous English translation underneath), there were things like a Knight's armor that gave the location an interesting style. I pulled the truck up to front door and we unloaded it. We carried the equipment into a room that we would use as our equipment staging room.



The DP of this film is Matty Garrett. Matty is a very talented, laid back DP. You can tell by the input that he gives and his overall knowledge that he is an experienced film maker. I enjoy working with Matty a lot. Also there to help out is a guy that I normally work for as a Gaffer or a Grip and that is DP Geoff Reisner who is a friend of Kholi and Matty. It is interesting working on a project with Geoff where he is NOT the DP because I am so used to him being the DP. I like working on projects with these guys because they are both knowledgeable and laid back at the same time, yet both of them are very efficient, so together we get some really good work done without exhausting ourselves. On a lot of jobs that I do, I seem to be the senior most lighting expert but it is good to do jobs, where you know that the people that you are working with could put together a beautiful feature film without you even being there! Yet, since you are there, everybody works together to make a great project.

Geoff Reisner is also a pretty funny writer and he and I come up with a lot of ideas on set that we should probably write scripts for and turn into some movies!

The part of the movie that we were filming on Sunday the 11th was a part where one of the characters named Pete Pai, played by actor Keye Chen, is looking for his girlfriend who he just broke up with and he has heard that she is in this sordid club. Pete's ex-girlfriend is played by the beautiful Anna Roberts. Pete shows up in the club to find his ex-girlfriend lounging with a character named "Mark Hardon" played by Cody Deal. Cody is a big guy at about 6'4 220 pounds and he is a pretty good actor who cracked me up with his improv skills. We needed to film this scene from a couple different angles and Kholi also had to manage his extras so that we could make the location look like a happening Club at nighttime. We accomplished what we wanted and we had some great looking footage.



We started this scene out with the camera pointed towards the character Mark Hardon and Pete's ex-girlfriend whom were on the couch. We used a 100MM Sachtler tripod head that we mounted the Red MX to. Kholi wanted this shot to move forwards on the Slider. I set up the speed rail slider and we ended up getting a low angle by setting the speed rail slider up on two Full Apple Boxes. We were using 8' lengths of speed rail pipe on the slider.

This is a diagram of the lighting set up for this scene:


The light that we used as the key for this scene was a 1K Chimera pancake light that was mounted on C-Stand and armed out over the actors with a Telescoping Baby Boom.

http://www.cinemagadgets.com/telescoping-baby-boom-wear-p-2084.html

These Baby Booms are a cool piece of equipment that you can use to arm out larger equipment. AGrip also has these booms in the larger Pipe Boom style. Both are available to for rental in your next lighting package.

The Chimera 1K Pancake space lights are cool because they are made out of good materials so they won't fall apart on you like a paper Chinese lantern does, but they also have flaps that you can roll down, to get control over the light that is spilling out, you can roll the flaps to the desired length and then use Velcro to secure them. These things put out a nice soft light; we hooked the unit up to a dimmer. Because of the way that it was rigged, the stand for it was safely out of the shot. We also slowed down a bit of the light off of one of our actors that was closer to it with a 24"x36" Double scrim that was armed out from a C-Stand. This key light was coming down onto our actors and hitting them from camera left. We tried to see what we could do with the DJ house lights which had some intense settings and different colors, but we couldn't really get what we wanted from them for the scene. The brightness or intensity of the lights from color to color, varied a lot and messed up our lighting ratios and exposure. We still wanted a color hitting the actors from the opposite side that the key light was hitting them from, we ended up using a Diva 400 with daylight bulbs AND, a blue party gel on it. It was dimmed down a little so this light from the unit was very faint on the actors. To back light the actors we used an Arri 650W Fresnel armed out on a C-Stand. The 650 had a Straw gel on it which warmed it. This Backlight was raking the actors from behind them and camera right and High. Next we needed a light to put just a little bit of light on the back side of one of our actors who was going to stand on their mark, we were going to slide the camera forward past their shoulder and we needed some light on them so that we could see them as the camera passed by them, we brought in a Kino Flo 4' 4Bank mounted vertically with Tungsten Bulbs and only 1 tube on.

This scene ended up looking fantastic. One thing that is great about working with Kholi and Matty is that, they are really efficient the way that they shoot things. They make sure to do things in the proper order, so that the minimal amount of work needs to be done in order to get the results that we need. In other words, if they know that they need to do a lighting set up a certain way for a certain part; they will do it at the right time so that the next scene doesn't have to get wildly adjusted, and then wildly adjusted another way for something else, thereby making more work for everybody. When you work with people who are efficient in this way, they tend to get better product on a regular basis, and it is one of the things that separates professionals from amateurs. The bottom line is that if you are taking hours upon hours to get the same footage that somebody else could get in a much shorter amount of time, then the person who got it done in the shorter amount of time is going to be able to repeat this, more often, and get more work. That is one of my favorite things about working with Director Kholi Hicks and DP Matty Garrett.

We filmed a little special effects stuff on this day also. Our special Effects guy was Christian Lau, Christian made a suit for our actor, Cody Deal who was playing "Mark Hardon", in the scene we were filming, the character named Pete, played by Keye Chen, challenges "Mark Hardon" to a fight. What Pete doesn't know is that Mark has taken the same pills that Pete has taken, that give them super powers. Mark's character's powers are that he can turn into what he touches. Since Pete threw a wooden chair at him, Mark turns to Wood, and he punches Pete and beats him up, with his wooden powers. One of the jokes that the Character Mark Hardon says during this part is "Now that’s what I call a woody!" Our special effects guy built a latex suit that looked like wood. The only parts that would be seen in the movie were the arms and the neck, so basically the suit was a long sleeve white shirt, that had latex on the arms and neck that looked like tree wood.



The suit looked really cool on camera. We also did a lighting gag where we took a Lite Panel Mini and put lots of green gel over it, we waved the light and splashed its green light onto the actor when he made his transformation into the wooden arms thing. This effect will be accentuated in post-production.

We did quite a few other lighting set ups in this location and we also did use more of the equipment, and more lights. This was a good day of shooting, in which we captured some really funny stuff, and it looked so beautiful in the camera. That is what movie making is all about. Oh and also, our producer Teresa Decher really came through in a big way on the Crafty. It makes a huge difference on shoots, to have some good food to eat during the day.

Superseeds has been being filmed intermittently for a few months now, but this week it is being shot Tuesday through Friday and then it will be DONE. This would be an excellent movie to check out when it is done! So stay tuned!!!!

This is a link to the Superseeds facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/Superseeds

Teairri Mari - My Body, Music Video Shoot!

~I have embedded the music video that this Blog entry is about, at the end of this post.

This is about my music video shoot, the weekend of 1/15/11, for artist Teairri Mari:


Director Ryan Spencer with Dala Horse productions hit me up 1 day a couple weeks ago. He had gotten a budget to do a music video for an R&B singer. He said they wanted something kinda sexy, etc. We talked over some ideas and I told him some equipment that we could use to do this or that.

Ryan looked at a couple DP's to do this project. He was determined to do a really great video. Ryan directed a video about a year ago, that actually a lot of people liked, the video wasn't up to his standards though and he really wanted to resoundingly top that video.

Ryan chose DP David Stewart for this project. I think David is accustomed to doing larger projects than modern music videos, which typically do not have super large budgets. I was already bringing enough equipment for the rate that I was getting paid, to do a pretty good music video for most other clients. David however wanted MORE gear. (and I am glad he did because we ended up using that gear, to make a better music video that I think benefits everybody involved)

This is a list of equipment that we ended up using for this video shoot:

1 Cheeseplate Dolly
1 Channel w/wheels w/case
3 6' track,
1 Crate of wedges

2 1200W HMI Par w/Magnetic
1 800W Joker HMI
2 4' 4 Bank Kino Flo
4 Arri 1k Open Face
2 650W Arri Fresnel
6 1K Par 64

3 48"x48" Floppy
2 48"x48" Opal Frame
1 24"xx36" Scrim Set
1 18"x24" Scrim Set
2 24"x36" Gel Frame w/diff
2 18"x24" Gel Frame w/diff
1 6'x6' Frame
1 6'x6' single
1 6'x6' double
1 6'x6' silk
1 6'x6' solid
1 6'x6' Silver Lame

5 3 Rise Steel Beefy Baby
4 Aluminum Baby Light Stands
13 C-Stand

3 Furniture Pads
2 Super Clamp
2 Cardellini Clamp
1 Furniture Clamp
2 Bead Board Holder
5 safety hangers5
5 spring clips #1
5 spring clips #2
5 spring clips #3


6 50' Edison Stingers
16 25' Edison Stingers

12 20Lb. Sand Bag
6 35Lb. Sand Bag

1 60Amp Generator

2 Fog Machines

Most of the equipment on this list came from AGrip, however some of it had to be subrented from Wooden Nickel Lighting. I took care of that for Ryan and David.

The Days of this shoot were Friday and Sunday. I was not able to shoot on Friday. However I did help prep this shoot on Friday morning. Friday morning Ryan rented a U-Haul truck and brought it to my office in Burbank. (CinemaGadgets warehouse at 1112B Chestnut St., Burbank CA 91506 - come on down and check it out) Ryan brought Ace Filmore and Marcus McDammit, two music video making guys that I work with quite a bit, as well as the artist Italix who was helping out. We loaded the U-Haul Van, and then they followed me to Wooden Nickel so that we could get the remainder of the gear that we would need for this shoot. When we had loaded up at Wooden Nickel, Ryan and Co. took off to do the shoot and I went back to work.

The shoot on Friday went pretty well from what I heard. I called Ryan to ask how it went Friday night and he said that things were going well. I was happy to hear that. Here is a picture from the shoot that Friday:



Chris Cornell was brought in by DP David Stewart to Gaff this project. Normally I am hired as a Gaffer but Chris was very experienced and good to work with. The two of us made a great team on set and I think that we, along with Ace and Marcus and Ryan Lloyd, had good chemistry and fun, which is important. I know that I was happy, on Sunday morning to find that the U-Haul van was loaded pretty well and all of my equipment was clearly being treated properly.

The plan was to get to our location on Sunday at 9:30. I was totally ready to shoot because I had a day off on Saturday and I was well rested (went to bed early) I was at the location at 8:30, sitting in my truck waiting to kick ass kind of like on that Star Wars movie (star wars... yeah, I’m talkin bout star wars) when Obi Won Kenobi and that mentor guy that he had... don't remember his mentors jedi name... but uh, they were fighting darth maul and those force field walls would appear and they had to sit there and wait a second to before the force field went away so that they could fight. But the whole time they got to look at their opponent. Well it was just like that for me, I was sitting there in my truck looking at the location thinking, it is so on....

Anyways, that U-Haul van drove up in there in slow motion and I was like... "it’s on" as I stared at it. Then I took off running towards the van. The instant that the van came to a stop I reached it and had my hand on the door opening the van up so that I could get to the equipment inside and get started making this music video.

I also officially met Chris and David Stewart just then. we walked through the Gym and checked it out, and talked about what were were going to do. Then BOOM, action.

I got in the Van and started handing a couple things to the guys, to get them out of our way so we could access the equipment in the van. Then we pulled out the generator and wheeled it over by the window that were going to use to put HMI's into to backlight our artist. We put the HMI's up, 2 1200W HMI's and plugged them into the generator, they were good to go. Then we ran stingers from the Genny around the corner and inside the GYM. Inside the GYM, David was fast at work setting up his shot, he did his own art direction, moving some of the work out equipment around to get the scene to look the way that he wanted. We took one of his lights, a Mole Richardson Dichroic 2 light (2 650W Dichroic bulbs) and we put about 5000Degree bulbs in them, then we bounced them against the ceiling behind us to raise the ambient light levels in the room. Then we put the 800W Joker HMI on a C Stand arm, and armed it out right over the camera. The Camera was mounted Low. This is a Diagram of this lighting set up:





David did a cool thing that I haven't seen before, he took one of my Channel w/Skate wheels, that I normally use with the dolly and dolly track and he set up a piece of 6' track, he only put one of the Channel w/Wheels on it, he used a super clamp and a magic arm as well as a couple Sand Bags to mount our camera, a 5D, low low low to the ground.



The guys set up a monitor on an apple box, then we took 2 of the 4' 4 bank kino flos and set them up vertically on both sides of the scene. In the background was a big shelf of colorful large exercise balls. We used a fog machine to put just a hint of smoke in the air that caught a lot of the light and made subtle shafts as well as, just gave the scene an overall atmosphere that was good. We brought in the dancers. They were hot. We also brought in the star of the show which was Teairra Mari. They had a choreographed dance routine worked out. We did a few takes of that and it looked just great. I was really into it and not just becuase the ladies were fine ladies.



After we shot that scene, we kept the lighting set up and we brought out a guy named "Ice" who was like the stud dude of the video who unbreaks Teairri's heart. We filmed him working out for a second. Then we brought out a fiiiine lady. Her name is Liz and I was looking at her face reeeal hard because I coulda sworeee she was in another video that I did way back. So anyways we filmed her and this other girl on the treadmill and it was great footage. Liz was lookin very right. After her part I asked her if she was in the video I did wayyy back, she said she was. Also I saw her in a Nipsey Hussle video. She kinda blew up in music videos. This is a link to the video that she was in that I did way back when:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uI_62F5H7E&feature=player_embedded
See if you can find out which one she is....

So we filmed some more stufffff, and then we did a great scene in a work out room of the GYM, that had large frosted glass doors that opened up to the room, that had wood floors, mirror walls and a big row of treadmills. We put 3 1K PAR 64's on the treadmills, carefully so they wouldn't burn the treadmills, and we back lit really hard. we also brought in our 2 1200W HMI's and punched them through the glass, outside of the room and used them as a key light on our dancers. There were mirrors all around this room so there really was not many options as far as where to put the camera. We used a super clamp and a Bogen magic arm:
http://www.cinemagadgets.com/magic-arm-p-3121.html

to secure the camera to one of the sliding glass doors. We hooked up the monitor, put just a slight touch of fog into the room, and we filmed it. It looked great. Also we came back to this lighting set up and room later, to film a really cool thing with just Teairri Mari where she is doing the splits and touching her toes stretching. She looked really good. We ended up shooting this part from outside of the room, we opened up the glass doors and we brought in the 6' track and laid it pointed at Teairri for a straight forward dolly shot. David brought in the Channel w/Wheels and did the same camera mount that he did earlier. This footage looked... SO GOOD... Ryan is going to make a piece of video that does a transition from the World Star Hip Hop logo, to Teairri Mari doing the splits in this room. I think that it is a great idea.

We filmed some more things in the Gym, it had turned into night and... for much of the day, we had ambient light in the building from the sun coming in through the windows and the sky light. We needed to keep the footage high key and daylight looking, and obviously that is more difficult to do when you don't have any of the actual daylight that was there earlier. We ended up using both of our 1200W HMI's, our 800W Joker, and our 2 4' Kino Flos with daylight bulbs in them. I do think that the footage would have come out better if we had actually shot it in the day time.. But it looked good. It had a look, and it worked. Also, subject matter that was happening in the shots, with the people, was really good. It fit the theme of the music video and I thought that it was really well done by everybody, from the actors to the director, to the DP, etc.

We wrapped up pretty late at the GYM... we loaded up the van. Skewered the GYM for any equipment that may have been left behind. And then we started to coordinate our next shot. It was about 11:30 at night. A red Lamborghini Murcialago pulled into the parking lot at the GYM and it was looking verrry nice. I realized that that car was there to be in the video. I thought hey that’s cool. I've probably shot a million Lamborghini's getting performed in front of but honestly it never gets old to me because I LOVE Lambos. Always been my favorite car. And I was ready to do this! We also had a 4 door white Porsche that was pretty cool. We all caravanned to the next spot which was an industrial type warehouse complex. It started getting late and everybody in the crew was feeling kind of tired. My gaffer Chris ended up having to leave since he had surgery bright and early in the morning. We started to talk about the lighting set up. We had a little bit of confusion for a few moments about what was going to take place but we decided to not use the Lamborghini. We went with the white Porsche only because, the White Porsche fit better with Teairri's outfit which was a gold satin, sexy outfit.

We wetted down the parking lot. Brought the Porsche in. At first we were going to put about 5 1K Par 64's on the ground (ontop of sand bags) in the background to be backlights, but then we decided to put them on stands and raise them up to about 10' high. We used the 2 1200W HMI's to be key lights on Teairri and the car. Some people on the crew had doubts about this shot but I was confident about it. The Camera ended up being white balanced mostly towards the Blue of the HMI's, that made the tungsten 1K par 64's that were our backlights, have their golden warm feel. This color temperature actually looked awesome with Teairri's outfit. Teairri looked so good in her outfit with her hair done and her make-up and everything that she had going on. I have a behind the scenes pic of this shot but it really doesn't do the shot justice. We set up 12' of dolly track and since most of the video that we used dolly track on (we didn't use dolly track for most of the video, but the parts of the video that we did use dolly track) we used it for angles where the camera is moving straight in on the talent, and straight back. I proposed that we shoot this side to side and Ryan said he liked that. We brought out the dolly, the track the wheels and had it set up in no time. Monitor was in place, talent in place. Everything was ready. Oh and I have to say that, they brought out a really cool music system for this that I would recommend anybody who wants to get into shooting videos get. It was basically a skinny 4' tall speaker type thing, that had an amp built in. It had a iPod docking port on top of it, it was kind of rugged, all you have to do is plug it in and put the iPod on top and you get some good volume from it. Good audio playback really makes it easier to do music videos and is better.

Anyways, the shots on this part were just awesome. We did wides, mediums close ups, the works. I got excited about this footage and I told Teairri that I think we were gonna end Beyonce's career. (I mean Beyoncé and her videos are really good..... but, i'm just sayin! Teairri looked amazing and the shot was amazing and so was her song so.. i'm just sayin)


We wrapped that scene, and we wrapped the whole video.

The next part of this story is the part that a lot of younger people getting into making music videos or movies need to hear. Now we all enjoy making moving pictures, thats a given. Everybody enjoys it... I don't know a human that doesn't like movies or TV or something that was shot with a camera. Liking it and actually doing it are two different things and if you are going to do it, then you need to understand that there will be some extremely hard work involved especially when you consider that most of us in this modern era are used to sitting in front of computers or working in a factory where machines do all your work for you.

Setting up the lights and making the movies is fun and cool, but the part of the day where we make our money is the part where we pack up the equipment. Budgets for videos are not so good now a days and the equipment still costs a pretty penny. If you are missing 1! thing, you just screwed yourself out of a paycheck. This is why at the end of videos we meticulously go through our equipment to make sure that it is all there. It can be tough when you have worked a long day but it has to be done. We went through our equipment, made sure it was all there, loaded the van.

THEN, we had to take home two of the guys that worked on the video. THEN, me and Ryan had to drive my truck and the U-Haul truck to my office in Burbank. We got to Burbank at about 5AM. THEN, we had to unload the truck! already very tired and soar, we had to unload the van. We unloaded it, locked up the office. THEN, I had to go with Ryan to return the U-Haul van. It basically had to be done then because there was no time to do it later. THEN, I had to take Ryan to his car. THEN, I had to drive home. THEN, I had to take a shower.... THEN, I got in bed, it was about 8am. THEN, I had to get my ass out of bed at about 10:30am and get to work in Burbank. THEN, I had to load my truck up with the equipment that I had to subrent so that I could return it... my body was very tired. Very very tired. THEN, I had to do my job at work. THEN, I had to load up my equipment, in my truck, and take it home. THEN, I had to put my equipment back where it goes, taking every last piece of gear out of that truck. THEN.... I had to get a shower.. THEN.. I had to sit on this rocking chair in my room in agony for about 45 minutes because I was too tired and soar to sleep, but finally I was able to crawl into bed and sleep soooo hard. Soooooo hard that I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. So hard that I couldn't get to work the next day until noon.

And it don't stop... I'm working now.. I'm working tomorrow. I'm working Monday through Friday and I got booked for another music video on Saturday and a movie on Sunday called Superseeds.

But you know what I love it.

Teairri Mari - Body,. Dir. Ryan Spencer


!!!!!! ;-)

On Saturday 8.2.10 I tested the new Bungy cam system with Jason aka What1 aka what310. (of what what310.com fame)

We built the speed rail frame into the truck and then we took it for a spin around the block. We tried some different weights on it to get a smoother ride. It was a pretty relaxed day. We called up Yung LA because he wanted a short 1 verse music video, so he came through with a sweet oldmobile cutlass and we filmed this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl0s2B6ontI

As you can see we also used the AGrip car mount. I think it came together pretty nicely the way it is intercut between the car mount and the bungy cam. This bungy cam is going to be a great tool in the AGrip arsenal. There are tons of things we can do with it and in the coming months, probably years to come, I will be posting videos with examples of this piece of equipment and what it can do.

So, stay tuned!

Work out program pilot

Cool shoot from 7-27-10 with DP Geoff Reisner and Kholi Hicks. This was for a work out video. We interviewed Joe, a pretty cool guy who has trained quite a few world champion boxers and lots of A-List actors.

This was a fun little project. We came into this gym and lit it up nice in a few spots and then they put on "for those about to rock" by AC/DC and everybody just started training hard while we filmed. We got some cool boxing footage.

Here is a list of equipment that was used:

2x Floppys
2x 4'x4' break down frames w/ grifflon
8x sand bagsbags
8x C Stands
1x 400w HMI
1x 2' 4bank & 2x 2' 2bank
1x 650W Fresnel
1x 1k Open Face
2x 4'x4' opal frames
2x bead board holders
2x 24"x36" Scrim Set
2x furniture pads
10x spring clips

(a few other things were used but this is the the meat and potatoes)

To do this again I would have brought either the dolly or the slider, the Jib, ummmmm, and that is about it. Cool Shoot though. Kholi is a real pro.

Get out the 3D glasses!!

Well get out your 3D glasses, AGrip & What310.com are going into 3D production.

For a long time I have bought equipment that would be big enough to, in the future support 3D camera systems. The future is coming and we are getting in position to be the 3D grip and lighting/gaffer services company of choice.



NOTE: this is an "old school" style (red/blue, Anaglyph) of 3D. The new style for televisions that are currently being marketed is a "variable shutter" system which uses 3D glasses that show one of your eyes the frame from one of the cameras, then the other eye the frame from the other camera. Essentially each eye is watching a different perspective of the same movie which creates the illusion of 3D.