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


!!!!!! ;-)