I was hired on last minute to work as a set lighting technician on the television show ‘Extra Virgin’. The first season of the show is still in production and we were shooting the ‘Intro’ of the show that will play before each episode.
I was hired by Michael Roy, a gaffer who I have worked with before and have had great experiences juicing for. I was also excited to be working with the Cinematographer, Per Larsson, as he is a very well known DP in the reality TV world. Per is known for his work as a DP on The Amazing Race. The lead actress was Debi Mazar who was very pleasant to work with on set and also exciting for me being a fan of Entourage as well as the multitude of other shows she has been on.
It was a simple day of production as we really only had one lighting setup with minor tweaking. Along with one other electrician, Michael had us light a large studio green screen setup. We had 4 5K Sky Pans on the cyc wall, 2 5K Fresnels backlighting the subject, 2 10K Fresnels through 12x half grid on either side as fill and a single 10K Fresnel off a 12x Ultra Bounce over the camera as key.
It was great working with Michael Roy again, he remains one of my favorite gaffers to work for and I definitely plan to work with him more in the near future.
I just finished a 6 day shoot on the short film ‘Death of a Shiek’ directed by Vladislav Kozlov. I was hired as a set lighting technician working under gaffer Terry Meadows and Best Girl Electric Maritza Murillo. I worked with none other then my two favorite juicers; Jeff Webster and Daniel McNutt. The production shot two days at the Million Dollar Theater downtown Los Angeles as well as 4 days at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Going into this shoot I was very excited to work with both Terry and Maritza. The shoot went fairly smooth on all 6 days and I can confidently say that G&E was the most well-oiled department on set. Thanks to Terry and Maritza, I can’t think of one time where the crew was waiting on our lighting to get the next shot off. Near the end of the shoot was had a fairly large night exterior lighting setup at the Cemetery which is always a fun and exciting challenge for an electrician. It was a pleasure as well as an awesome learning experience working with a professional Gaffer and Best Boy who have been in the industry for decades. I look forward to working with them again soon.
Last weekend I worked at ‘Young Actors Camp’ held in Azusa, CA as a camera operator documenting camp experience. The acting camp is world famous; kids ages 11-15 from nearly every continent of the world attended the week-long camp in hopes of honing their acting abilities and being recognized by Hollywood talent agents. I was working as part of a two man team to capture important bits of each of the workshops and activities throughout the day. At the end of the week an editor put together a 30 minute video and the kids attended a red carpet ‘premiere’ of the show.
I was hired by New Image Media who was the production company working to produce the camp documentary. I was shooting the camp at DVCPRO50 on the Panasonic HVX-200 camera onto P2 cards. Between events I would rush back to the edit suite to log and capture the clips. I had a bungalow to myself for the night where I organized the clips for the editor and selected the usable footage from the day.
The camp itself offers a very impressive program for the aspiring actors and actresses. On the two days I was working there the kids took a green screen class where they learned the pros and cons of acting on a green screen stage. The workshop concluded with a live green screen demonstration where the kids could see their acting against any background they choose. There was also an animal trainer class where professional animal trainers gave an impressive demonstration with a host of both exotic and familiar animals. At the end of the workshop several students where able to work directly with the animals and act out scenes from different films. There was also a question and answer time with several Hollywood talent agents where then afterwards each student was given a chance to individually audition in front of the panel of agents.
Overall I enjoyed working this gig; it was a very low stress environment and working with and around children was a very different dynamic than what I am use to. I was able to make several new contacts and in addition, New Image Media appreciated my work and is interested in hiring me again soon.
For more information about the camp visit www.youngactorscamp.com
I recently worked on a short film as Best Boy Electric. “Knight to D7” was directed by Nathan Scoggins and produced by Greg and Emily Wilson. Michael Roy, a known professional in the industry, was the Director of Photography and working under him was Jeff Webster as the Gaffer. Jeff also brought on Daniel McNutt and Charlie Balch to work with me as Juicers. We also had some great talent on set including Hector Elizondo, Jackee Harry,Meg Cionni and Angelo Salvatore Restaino.
The entire shoot took place at the same location, a home in Van Nuys. We achieved most of our lighting with a Sunray 6K HMI, two Sunray 4K HMIs, Sunray 1200 HMIs, several Jokerbug 400s w/ Chimeras, various size Kino Flos w/ K55 globes and a LitePanels Mini LED bank was intermittently used as an eyelight. For distro we had a 250A biodiesel genny and a single 900A Duzz-All distro from which we ran 240volt single phase to our three big heads, everything else on the grid was 120volt.
Working on this crew was a pleasure to say the least. Everyone on set had a great attitude and the positive energy aided in relieving all the normal stresses found on a typical set. Seeing as I usually find myself in camera dept. on set; I was able to learn a lot from the DP and gain additional experience in the grip and electric dept. I made many great contacts on this production and I look forward to working with them in the near future.
For more information on the project visit www.k2d7movie.com
Behind the Scenes:
Day 2 <—- Don’t Miss 2:45
Last week Colin Cabalka, a good friend of mine from Biola, hired me to be a second operator at a wedding he was shooting the upcoming weekend. I wanted to do it so I could practice ‘run and gun’ style shooting on the Canon 7D. I have shot many weddings on my Panasonic HVX-200 and I must admit that shooting weddings on a DSLR is an entirely new beast.
Both Colin and myself we’re shooting on 7Ds with an assortment of glass and support systems to work with:
indiSliderMini (2’)
Steadicam Merlin
SIgma 10-20 3.5
Canon EF 17-40 4.0L
Canon EF 20 2.8
Olympus Zuiko 28 3.5
Carl Zeiss Flektogon 35 2.8
Pentax Takumar 50 1.4
Canon 70-200 2.8L IS
Vivitar 135 2.8
Canon EF 200 2.8L
My day started at 7am with an hour drive to the Crown Plaza Resort in Anaheim, CA for the bride and groom to promptly begin getting dressed a 8am. Colin made the last minute decision to try and accomplish an SDE (same day edit) and he was confident we could pull it off with the right amount of planning and coordination.
Overall I am happy with my operation of the 7D. The first several shots of the day were rough for me; the lightness of the camera prevented me from being able to hold the camera perfectly still, but that went away with some practice. Having Colin’s arsenal of lenses made getting the perfect shot much easier and also allowed me to work with the unpredictable environments we were put in. Whether we were in a 400 sqft room during the Tea Ceremony or a 20,000 sqft sanctuary, I was able to get the shot I wanted almost every time.
Two other great tools that I enjoyed using frequently were the indiSliderMini and Steadicam Merlin. The 24” slider upped our production value 100%. Every shot I could make it work I would shoot on the slider and give the shot just a slight bit of movement. The slider really came in handy in the sanctuary of the church during the ceremony. The light and architecture of the church complimented each other and really gave our shots a solid foundation. The Merlin is well known as one of the most difficult members of the Steadicam family. It is so lightweight with the 3lb 7D that balancing the sled and then being able control it is very hard. When mounted on the Steadicam we mostly shot on the Sigma 10-20mm 3.5 so even if we couldn’t compose the shot perfectly it was still wide enough to capture what was happening.
Accomplishing a SDE proved to be extremely more stressful that I expected. If there was even 5 minutes of downtime one of us was running/driving back to our SDE base station and transferring cards or editing footage. We finished exporting the final cut at 10pm with almost no time to spare. Within 10 minutes of the video being played Colin and I had run out of business cards. It’s amazing what a great ‘plug’ an SDE can be for wedding videographers. Colin and I were asked by several couples to shoot their weddings and put together a similar SDE package. Although I spent most of the day stressed, in the end I say that including a SDE package is one of the smartest decisions you can make as a videographer, even if that means hiring extra help.
Although I do have my issues with the Canon 7D, a wedding is one of the few situations it shines in. I look forward to shooting more weddings with Colin on DSLRs.
LINDA AND CHRIS - SAME DAY EDIT
There will also be full-length highlight video (25mins) being released at some point this summer.
The shoot went great yesterday. As you can see our set was a courtroom down in Costa Mesa at the Whittier Law School. We had a small crew of about 9 people on this job but overall I think people will be impressed with the final product.
My contact from Omnific, Jesse Springer, directed both spots while I ran camera. I was able to hire Jeff Webster as my Gaffer last minute and David Pearsey was my Key Grip but filled in as boom op during the takes.
There were only a total of four separate shots between both commercial spots and almost no changes in lighting. Every shot had camera movement on a dolly. When we first arrived I worked with Jeff to setup our lights for the day. The fluorescent lighting in the room forced a very ‘flat’ look that I didn’t like but we didn’t have enough lights (or power) to light the scene with fluorescent lights off. Thankfully you could turn the fluorescents to 1/3 power which worked great with what we had. In the end, I was very happy with the lighting setup, it gave the actors a great look that was much more dramatic than the typical courtroom ad.
This was my first time DPing a project shot on the Canon 7D DSLR. As expected, I was very impressed. The footage blew me away, 1080p is such an upgrade from 720… plus the color was amazing. I knew from the beginning that shooting with the 7D would be different then shooting with a professional video camera but honestly the only thing that I found very frustrating was that the LCD screen was not adjustable; my head needed to be directly behind the camera in order to see what I was shooting. For the wide shots I used a Sigma 30mm @ 4.0 and for the close-ups I used a Canon L 70-200mm 2.8 set at 100mm @ 4.0. I wasn’t positive what the native ISO was for the 7D so I shot everything at a conservative 320 ISO.
I’m excited to see the final product and will be sure to post it up here when it’s finished. The spots will air on national television as well as various internet sources.
Below are some grabs of the shots.
My pal Jesse Springer over at Omnific Advertising called me last week to hire me to shoot two 60 second commercial spots for one of their cients. The details are still coming in but the client is a debt consolidation service and the commercials would be shown on television. Jesse wanted to hire Flagship to shoot the spots but the client can’t afford a larger production with that many people. So as of now the technical crew will consist of whoever I hire to grip and myself… should be interesting.
I will be shooting the spots on one Canon 7D with Zeiss prime lenses and Canon EOS L-Series zoom lenses. If my internship allows it, I’ll try and bring out as many DSLR AKS that I can but no guarantees (it would be nice to have an on camera monitor and a follow focus). The location is the interior of a basic office space so I don’t plan on having to do much lighting. I’m bringing out a few basic lighting tools to cover myself but nothing big or exciting. Jesse only hired me to DP so it will be a relief knowing that at the end of the day I can hand off of the footage and not be responsible for cutting any of it. This will be my first time shooting on a DSLR but it’s about time because I work with 1Ds, 5Ds and 7Ds all day at Birns & Sawyer, I’m excited to see how things turn out.
Production dates are still being tossed around but I’m expecting to shoot sometime in the next 2 weeks. I’ll keep you posted.
Update: We are set to shoot Wednesday, May 26th. I’m rushing to secure equipment rentals on short notice. I’ll post up photos from production later this week.
Three weeks ago Flagship was hired by Felicia Henderson to shoot a short film to promote her work as a director. Felicia is most well known for her work executive producing and writing for shows such as Fringe, Gossip Girl, and Everybody Hates Chris. Felicia’s IMDB
Originally I was crewed as 2nd Assistant Camera but after having trouble finding a Key Grip I decided I would put my love for camera dept. aside and take the position. Although I do enjoy working in the G&E dept. I feel my passion is behind the camera and I would rather establish myself as a member of camera team early on in my career. This will be my second consecutive project working as Key Grip with Jeff Webster as the DP. Jeff say’s he likes to use me as Key Grip because I’m “good at rigging stuff”, haha. I suppose I’ll take that as a compliment. On this shoot we have several driving scenes where I will need to rig up a car mount for the camera. The last shoot I Key Gripped was 90% car mount so I became very well versed in the use of car mounts. Feathering Felicia should give me a good opportunity to put my experience to use.
Apparently we are to have several major actors working on this project as well. As you can assume an established producer in Hollywood would have a great pool of actors to choose from to cast in her directing promo. The names of the actors are escaping me right now but I’ll be sure to note them in my next blog. We are scheduled to begin shooting on Friday, May 14, and wrap the following Monday, May 17th. I’m pretty excited for this project. I love working with the Flagship crew and none of us have ever worked with such a high caliber of directing and acting team. This should prove to be a great opportunity to sharpen my filmmaking skills.
