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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!

It wouldn’t be a music video without some symbolism. Here Rachel tries to raise herself to the level of the swim team, although 30 seconds into the song we already know she will fail. The stool wasn’t popping at all so I brought out a 650w open-face Arri light and lit it and her with uncorrected tungsten light mixed with daylight. I knew that I would be desaturating and skewing the color later so I wasn’t overly concerned about how the two white balances would mix. To my surprise, though, they both held very well—a tribute to Panasonic’s colorimetry.

The background is lit with a 650w fresnel raking across the wall.

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Lit with natural light at the beach location. The camera original footage was a little flat so I added some punch by bringing the gamma down and making the colors a little more vibrant. I think I used the “telecine net” module, which is one of my favorite effects: back in the 80s and early 90s it was popular to put some diffusion in the light path of the telecine, and as the telecine was scanning a negative image and making it into a positive one the diffusion affected the blacks instead of the highlights. The shadows bleed a little bit into the light areas, an effect I just love.

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Once again with the stool. This is one of those little shots where Jono’s edit just blew me away. He uses just enough of the shot to tell the story and absolutely no more. The slow motion really works here.

I lit Rachel’s legs to the point of just clipping, wanting her to be the brightest object in the shot.

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This shot was pretty cool when we shot it, but the composition needed a little something extra that I knew I could add in post. The grad was done in Looks and adds quite a bit to the shot. I’m not sure why I chose salmon as originally I thought I would go blue but the reddish color just felt right.

Jono supervises me closely so I don’t do something COMPLETELY insane:

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Rachel rises above the swim team. Jono’s cut only uses the top of her head rising above the swimmers’ shoulders; it’s very subtle and very beautiful. Unfortunately I found that several people didn’t see her without knowing where to look so I used a moment later in the shot where she struggled to lift herself above the swimmers.

I had to light this using a double bounce:

The Reflectix card is precariously balanced on a light stand that’s been tilted forward to get the right angle on the swimmers. The primary bounce is a 2x3 Reflectix card placed out in the sunlight, about 40’ away. I had just enough light to shoot this shot, although I had to bump the gain up to 3db to do this. The swimmers on frame left got more light than the ones on frame right, but I knew I could vignette the shot in post and put the focus back on Rachel—which is exactly what you see in the frame above. Rachel is at the center of the vignette, with the rest of the team dropping off in exposure.

The edge light hitting Rachel from the left of frame is from the primary bounce outside. Everyone is getting little scratches on both sides from the high windows that line both sides of the building.

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Remember the shot that opened this piece? Here’s the wide version. The table lamp on the floor is dimmed down to the point where the inside is clipping (which is fine, because it’s featureless anyway) and the shade is just on the edge of clipping. The light on Rachel’s face is, for the most part, coming from a 650w Reflectix bounce in the next room. I used the edge of the other room’s doorway to keep the bounce off the back wall. I wanted this to feel claustrophobic so I used the “soft edges” module in Looks to fuzz out the edges of the frame.

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We shot a wide shot of Rachel putting on this mask and I asked Jono for a closeup, having a feeling I might want to use it in the cut I did for my reel. I enhanced her eye color in Looks in order to create a stunning contrast with the darkness and warmth of the mask. This shot is lit entirely by one light bouncing into a 4x4 white bounce card at face level. (That’s one of the fun things about this video: I was forced to work so simply that we moved REALLY fast. )

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We did a number of beach shots that I loved, but for some reason this one struck me as being right for this cut. I’ll show you Jono’s choice later, and while I think it’s brilliant I think it works better for his cut than for mine.

Here’s the lighting setup for this shot:

For about ten years I’ve had 6x6 full grid and light grid in my small bag of tricks. They’ve saved me in a number of low-budget situations where I wanted to build a nice big source, or where I needed a soft source with a lot of punch (as I could line up every light I had behind them). If you have a grip truck on location then you don’t need these, but if you bounce between low budget and high budget jobs, as I do, it’s nice to bring some of the more cost effective high budget tricks onto the low budget shoots.

Using Looks I added some diffusion and warmth while subtracting some blue to make the ocean a bit more desaturated and cyan.

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The last shot of the video. I didn’t like all the little chachkis in the background so I added a heavy vignette in post, and then used the “swing/tilt” focus emulator in Looks to focus attention just on her lit eye. The shot feels very vulnerable and sad, especially with the blink at the end. And that’s the end of the :30 promo.

But… there were a lot of shots we didn’t use. Read on….

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