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Filed under: Cameras •Editing •Lighting •Post Production •Production •Visual Effects •

It’s not the budget, it’s where you put the camera!

This is the shot that Jono used near the beginning of his edit as he felt it was a very vulnerable moment. I agree—it’s a brilliant moment, and I used it as the opening shot of my edit. This was shot in Jono’s apartment using two lights: a table lamp sitting on the floor off to the left of the shot (you’ll see a wider version of this later) and a 4x4 bounce card covered with Reflectix in the kitchen off to the left. I’m using the kitchen doorway to cut the Reflectix source off the back wall.

(all production stills courtesy of Katie Hodges)

Reflectix is a fun material. It looks like silvered bubble wrap. It’s extremely reflective, to the point where you could easily blind someone just by bouncing a bit of sunlight at them, but if used in the right way it has an interesting softness to it. Not only can it be very soft but it is also very directional, which helps if you don’t have a lot of C-stands and flags and crew around. I’m not sure how much heat it can take but it held up fine under the tiny lights we were using. In this case I believe it is bouncing a 650w tungsten open-face Arri light from about 8-10 feet away.

I was the oldest person on a crew of 20-somethings, and occasionally they did things that made me feel very old indeed—for example, when we needed to raise the table lamp off the floor for a shot, the handiest object around was a Corona six-pack.

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Our first location for Day One was the pool at the local Boys and Girls Club. We had the whole place to ourselves. There was some natural light from a row of windows high atop two walls that ran the length of the building, and we added some side light by opening a couple of roll-up doors. Before the extras arrived we grabbed a few inserts to tell a little bit of the song’s story, which boils down to a girl leaving a relationship because her boyfriend’s swimming career was more important than she was.

The flags dropping into the pool became the inspiration for a trick shot we did later in the piece…

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We shot this on a bluff overlooking the ocean, the Santa Cruz pier and the boardwalk. The quality of light was spectacular that evening—very soft, very low in contrast and just skimming the ground. The fill on Rachel’s feet was provided by a 4x4 Reflectix card held by Dan Allen, the brother of a film student I’m working with. He came out to assist me on Day Two (this was our second to last location), which gave me a lighting/grip crew of two, including myself. He was a huge help, especially as there’d only been one person on the lighting/grip crew the day before.

What a beautiful location. When we finished there we went to

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Jono’s place. Remember the first shot in the video? Same place. We had Rachel do some hand gestures and feet moves, and this move really caught Jono’s eye. I think it’s a great little moment. Lit entirely by a 4x4 Reflectix bounce off to the left.

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This was a cool shot. Here’s a still from later in the shoot but from approximately the same camera position as the shot above:

The bright glow is a 4x4 Reflectix bounce card leaning against a picnic table. It lit up the entire back wall of the pool area. When Jono came over to look at my shot he cast a wonderful shadow on the back wall. I pointed it out to him and he loved it, so we rolled the camera and then had the entire production team walk along the back of the pool, pretending to be a swim team. It worked out quite well. I love the quality of the shadows: they feel very natural, not artificial at all.

On the left side of the picture you can see me holding a shiny 2x3 something. That’s my 2x3 Reflectix bounce that I used later to light the other end of the pool. That story shortly. Keep reading…

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This is a transitional “grab” shot that we knew we’d use, although we didn’t know where. Note that this shot, and the life preserver shot above, are graded with the “green” look I created for all shots related to the pool.

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This is an interior shot at Rachel’s house. It’s a lead up to our little trick shot which follows—

You may notice that Rachel is in two places at once as the flags fall from the top of frame. We knew we were going to do this effect shot in advance, but Jono added the falling flags to the mix on the day of the shoot and the reaction of both Rachels to the same action completely sells the shot. Here’s how we did it:

This is Rachel reacting to the flags falling, even though they aren’t, followed by

Rachel in the background reacting to the actual falling of the flags. The gentleman on the right of frame is Jono’s friend Jay, who triggered the flag falling using a piece of black thread attached to a pin. We did an 8-point matte in Final Cut Pro to put the two images together. If you look closely at the final composite you can see a faint line in the top right of frame as the flags fall; I think that’s due to a difference in the amount of ambient light hitting the wall with Jay standing in position. It’s barely noticeable.

We lit this with two Reflectix boards and two 650w Arri lights. One light is sitting to the left of the frame on top of a stove, where it’s bouncing into a piece of Reflectix attached to a 2x3 foam core. By angling the card in just the right way I was able to light Rachel at the table while keeping a fair amount of light off the wall without using a flag. The quality of the light is very soft but directional enough to pop Rachel without lighting up everything in the room.

The second light is a 650w fresnel bouncing into a 4x4 Reflectix card rigged on a light stand in the bathroom in the background. By getting the right angle on the Reflectix card I was able to light Rachel with soft pretty side light without spilling it onto the ceiling and bringing up the overall level in the room.

More details on page 4…

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