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Filed under: Cameras •Lighting •Production •Tips •Training •Visual Effects •

Lighting Against The Wind: The Making of a Mime Music Video

In the last two years I’ve often described myself as a “reel-building whore.” If I’m asked to do a low-budget and “reel worthy” freebie by a trusted director/collaborator I jump at the challenge. When director Ian McCamey asked me to shoot a freebie music video with three interactive mimes who were all played by the same actress, I couldn’t say no.

About six weeks ago the band Pink Martini announced a contest: anyone who wished could make a music video for one of the songs on the band’s newest album, and the winner would become the official promotional video for the album.  The winner would also be flown to Nice, France for a live concert, which is nice and all, but we just wanted to stretch ourselves and show the world what we could pull for virtually nothing.

Enter Nanishka Camberos, actress extraordinaire. Nanishka is one of Ian’s favorite actress friends, and with good reason: she’s very talented and very humble, which is a wonderful combination. She had to learn two different choreographed routines that were perfectly timed so that the points of interaction aligned perfectly. (One visual effects moment required her to hand sunglasses to herself!)

After several weeks of choreography we secured The Producer’s Loft for a single day of production, and our small but dedicated crew descended on the stage and worked feverishly to make the project a reality. Here’s the semi-final result:

The Producer’s Loft was perfect for this project as it has a moderately-sized lighting/grip package that works for most everything you’d shoot on a small stage.

There’s still some visual effects cleanup to be done but 95% of the video is complete. Turn the page to read how we pulled this off on a limited budget and with very few resources…

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The Best of Stunning Good Looks Art Adams | 08/30 A directory of my best articles, sorted by topic. This entry is a guide to my best articles, sorted by topic. Enjoy!

NAB 2012: Assorted Snapshots Adam Wilt | 05/08 A few cool things I saw at the show that didn’t fit into any other articles. NAB is too big a show in too short a time to see more than a fraction of it. I’ve covered a few things in some depth (as have other PVC folks), but there’s plenty more that slips by without proper coverage. Here, I have a few photos…

NAB 2012: Canon C300 Image Processing Adam Wilt | 05/01 Canon’s Larry Thorpe on the C300’s quad-HD sensor and “super green” sampling Canon held a press dinner Monday night at NAB, where Larry Thorpe held forth on the Canon C300’s use of a quad-HD sensor (2x HD resolution in both H and V dimensions) and how Canon’s “super green” sampling boosts MTF and…

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I find these articles of yours very illuminating, no pun intended. I follow 258 blogs, many about film-making craft in one form or another. None of these others provides the depth and detail of day-to-day cinematography ... at least on a scale I think I might ever achieve. The diagrams, the photographs, the prose, the details ... just magnificent.

If we ever meet, dinner’s on me!

Peace,

Rob:-]

Posted by Rob  on  06/19  at  01:44 AM

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Thanks, Rob. I’m glad you liked it, and thanks for saying so. You made my weekend.

Posted by Art Adams  on  06/19  at  02:18 PM

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