This Blog entry is for my music video shoot on Sunday April 10th 2011. The name of the Artist was Yung LB. This video was directed by Jason Haberman and the Camera Man was Andrew "Stretch" Patterson.
I have embedded the video that this blog entry was written about, onto the bottom of this Entry; please scroll down and enjoy the video!
Jason Haberman, AKA What310 contacted me a week in advance to ask me if I would be available to shoot this video.
Jason has a cool website that he put together, check it out:
http://what310.com/
Feel free to contact & hire Jason. He is a very professional person who will make a great asset to any project and team.
We were planning on doing a 1 day shoot, multiple locations, mostly outside. That meant that we needed a minimal amount of equipment and we needed the gear to be fast. When I shoot with Jason he likes to incorporate a lot of movement into his videos, also, he wanted a cinematic feel for the video which meant that we would not be doing any hand held shots. For Camera support I brought Track and Dolly, as well as a Speed Rail Camera Slider.
This is a complete list of the equipment that was used on this shoot: (All of this equipment is available for purchase at www.cinemagadgets.com, and for rent through myself at AGrip.net)
Camera Support:
3x 6' Lengths of Straight Track
1x Channel w/Wheels
1x Cheeseplate Dolly
1x 8' Speed Rail Slider w/Low Boy Stands and Full Apple Boxes
1x Special AGrip Car Mount Kit
Lighting:
2x Diva 400's with Tungsten and Daylight Bulbs
1x Arri 650W Fresnel
Grip:
5x 40" C Stands
2x Baby Light Stands
6x 20Lbs. Sand Bags
1x 8'x8' Frame
1x 8'x8' Silver/Ultra Checker
2x 4'x4' Breakdown Frames
1x 4'x4' Ultrabounce
1x 4'x4' Black/White
1x 4'x4' Highlight
1x 4'x4' 1/2 Soft Frost
2x 48"x48" Floppies
2x 48"x48" Gel Frames w/Opal Diff
2x Furniture Pads
5x Stingers
This is about the least amount of equipment that I will use on a music video shoot. In the morning at 7:30AM, the truck was loaded and ready to go. I got in the truck and headed west towards Inglewood/El Segundo which is where Jason lives. When I got to Jason's house, Andrew was already there. Jason's place has a cool vibe, he has a shack behind the main house where he has his room set up. He has his editing work space set up there and even though the space is somewhat small, it is really cool how much utility this little room provides. Jason's work space is somewhat coastal and close to the beach, so the weather is always nice over there; it has a laid back, beach feel. Whenever I go over there I feel like I am in a place where we are about to get serious about doing some Art; and we do.
This morning was no different; I came in and sat down on the couch next to Andrew as he was going through the Camera equipment, showing me what lenses we would be using. Jason was talking about some things and we were listening. These are two of my favorite guys to work with, because the environment is laid back and yet we are all very serious about doing our best. When it was time, we went to the vehicles and headed to the first location. We headed to a really nice neighborhood and house in Palos Verdes, near the Ocean. I backed the truck up as close as I could get it to the house to make unloading easier.
Quickly we unloaded 2x sticks of track, the dolly, wheels, 2 Divas w/Daylight bulbs, and some stingers. The house we were shooting in was very nice and had wood floors. We laid down Furniture Pads to protect the floor and then we laid our track on top of that. The light stands that I use have rubber feet. I used an all daylight Diva near the window to supplement the light coming from that window and to also give a slight amount of wrap to the artist that we would be filming who was waking up on the couch in the living-room of the house. For a fill light I used another Diva from camera right, with 3 daylight bulbs and 1 tungsten bulb. Since this light was coming from the interior of the house I wanted it to be slightly warmer. We set up a dolly shot. While Jason and Andrew were filming this scene, I went out to the truck and quickly set up the camera slider. When we were ready, Jason and Andrew helped me carry the Camera slider into the house and we moved quickly and set up a scene where the Artist goes into the restroom in Pajamas and then comes out in his nicer clothes. Because of the smaller space, we filmed this part with the Camera Slider.
The owner of the house was present while we were shooting and she was very attentively watching us. She was a nice lady and she asked us if we would like to have a shot of the best Whiskey ever. Now, normally I would obviously never drink on set! However she was showing us the bottle, and the Whiskey had been aged for 25 years and came in a wooden box that looked like it cost about $100. She was adamant that this was the best whiskey ever and so Andrew and I decided to oblige her and try a shot. She poured it for us and we said cheers; I smelled the whiskey and sure enough it smelled amazing; Andrew and I took the shot. While I do not know very much about liquor, I have had some whiskey in my time and I know that this went down really smooth. It was really good. Not only was it good but for about 5 minutes I was thinking, "wow... that was good..." She asked us if we would like another shot.. but we said no thank you. She was a very kind host.
Then we moved back out to the living-room and filmed a couple more things, as well as a performance shot just incase we would need it. Jason and I find that, at certain times in a music video shoot, once you have the equipment set up, it can be a good idea to go ahead and run through the entire song a few times and capture a performance scene because you never know what is going to happen with the rest of the day. Since the equipment is already set up, you can give yourself some REALLY valuable insurance by just conveniently shooting about 10 minutes of performance.
Just before Jason and Andrew began filming the extra stuff in the living-room, Jason went outside to the driveway with me, where we had a very nice Range Rover that we would be using for the video. Jason thought about what angle he wanted to get and then he told me where to mount the camera for the Car Mount shot. We only planned on using 1 Car Mount angle for this music video and I think that Jason chose an angle where he could not only get good shots of the Artist performing, but he could also get nice shots of the beautiful scenery that we would soon be filming as we drove to the beach. Honestly, this car mount shot could have been better, but this was not a video that afforded us the time or budget in order to get it exactly how we may have wanted it.
I finished setting up the Car Mount and then I went back into the house and watched as Jason and Andrew finished shooting the performance scene. Then the 3 of us carried the equipment out and loaded up the truck. We used the slider briefly to film something with the truck and then we mounted the camera onto the Car Mount, got into our vehicles and headed to the Beach!
The drive to the beach was beautiful. As I followed the Range Rover I had the familiar feeling of filming music videos with my Car Mounts, where I just hoped that we were getting great looking footage; I hoped that the exposure was right and that the camera was still recording.. There is always something to worry about when you film car mount stuff, while you can do your best to perfect a system, in the end there is a degree of luck to getting beautiful car mount shots.
When we got to the beach we parked and then carried the slider rig over the railing, we filmed a performance scene near a bluff. It was a beautiful location. The slider made it possible for our lower budget, run and gun production to get cinematic looking shots in a hurry. We used a few longer focal length lenses for this part.
next was lunch!
.....................................................................
Then, we drove to Long Beach with a small caravan of people. We filmed inside of a Restaurant. Lighting was tough. We ended up turning on the house lights which were florescent tubes that happened to be close to daylight color temperature. This was lucky since it helped get more ambient light into the location.
We used the Divas with daylight bulbs and put them as close as possible to our actors. The restaurant had tinted windows for walls but the sun was bright compared to the light levels inside. We ended up making it work. We filmed with the Dolly and the slider, we even used a longer lense for B Roll shots of the Lunch. Then we packed up and moved on.
We headed to our next location which was a Skateboard shop. We were going to do some cool stuff there.. unfortunately.... PROBLEM. Even though the owner of the shop told our Producer that he was going to be there, he flaked. We needed to go to plan B. We had a talk outside of the skateboard shop about what we were going to. We ended up deciding to go back to the house and shoot the last scene of the Artist performing and hanging out with his friends by the pool. I knew that we needed to leave quickly so that we could get there at the right time with the sunset. When we got to the house, we moved quickly. We set up the dolly and a lighting set up. It was simple but it worked.
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