CINEMATOGRAPHER Boa Simon : News2012-02-08T13:59:57ZBoa SimonCopyright 2012, Boa SimonSPHPBLOGMTVTres Top 100 - Holiday Edition
Little show from a few weekends ago just went up; thanks to director Carlos Lopez Estrada as well as my Gaffer, Coco Moore, and Jenny Hou, who lent me some of her many talents, pulling focus for the show. Colorist Trevor Durtschi did a great job sweetening that holiday feeling, and Cameron Clark's VFX work is spot on. Check out Carlos' director's cut!
Co. 3RoundBurst Prod. Edgar Romero, Rich Salamone Dir. Carlos Lopez Estrada]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111229-1335302011-12-29T00:00:00Z2011-12-29T00:00:00ZF3 in AZJust wrapped shooting in Pheonix, Arizona with 3RoundBurst, shooting for broadcast with a pair of Sony F3s.
The show was a run and gun affair, and I was glad to be joined by AZ locals Webb Pickersgill and Nick Labord as B cam operator and utility, respectively. We also sourced much of our equipment locally, gathering one of the F3s as well as much of our lighting from Pheonix rental house Broadcast Rentals.
As a side note, lensing this show reminded me how slim a selection there is of lightweight PL zooms if you can't afford Angenieux's DP line of lenses. To stay on our feet and keep the crew slim we had to carry at most two lenses per camera; we ended up with original Red zooms, keeping in mind the full days of handheld (poorly balanced handheld, as these are F3s) we had ahead of us. I guess lightweight broad range zooms are another one of those things keeping the 2/3" format alive for the ENG guys.
There will be plenty of images forthcoming as 3RoundBurst heads into post with this project.
Co. 3RoundBurst Prod. / Dir. Edgar Romero Prod. Lili Montero PM Rich Salamone]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111229-1129312011-12-29T00:00:00Z2011-12-29T00:00:00ZUnconditional Life "Haley": A Visit to Ridgecrest CAJust got back from a weekend of hard-and-fast music video photography with director Trevor Durtschi and producer Geoffrey Leatham in Ridgecrest, CA. That's another couple hours north of Palmdale, which is my typical measure for "out there a bit." The town was a great place to shoot, though; Geoffrey sourced PAs and extras locally and found all of our locations at no charge. It's always a relief to get out of Los Angeles and remember how psyched most people are about what we do for a living.
"Haley" is a video about an old miner looking back and realizing that he's missed who could have been the love of his life. Trevor and Geoffrey's biggest concern was to aim for a more cinematic look than a video, graphic look; every shot was to be more about telling the story than about sweet lens flare. So the video has a more measured rhythm throughout the story segments.
It was cold up north; the only break we got was our second night exterior, which featured two raging bonfires, courtesy of our pyro team.
Canon EOS Canon L Zoom, Nikkor Primes, Tokina Zoom Rentals from Wooden Nickel Lighting, Alan Gordon Enterprises
Prod. Geoffrey Leatham Dir. Trevor Durtschi]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111216-0312012011-12-16T00:00:00Z2011-12-16T00:00:00ZMTV tr3s Hispanic History Month: Food, Music, and FashionJust finished shooting with 3RoundBurst and director Edgar Romero for MTV tr3s’ Hispanic History Month. It was a pleasure to meet and shoot Music Producer, DJ, and Song Writer Fernando Garibay, Fashion Designer, Model, and Social Advocate Zoe Damacela, and Chef, TV Personality, and Author Marcela Valladolid. The other two spots, shot by Arlene Muller, turned out great as well! See the 30 second spots here!
Red ONE MX Zeiss Super Speed Primes, Red Zooms Rentals from Dependent Media
Co. 3RoundBurst Dir. Edgar Romero]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry111021-0202572011-10-21T00:00:00Z2011-10-21T00:00:00ZMTV European Music AwardsHad a little fun this week shooting a couple inserts for a spot MTV had already photographed for their European Music Awards. We had the pleasure of five minutes in Jared Leto's life (five minutes, very serious; he's a damn busy man!) and a slice of Jessie J's VMA rehearsal time to shoot the material. It was definitely a special kind of pressure to work under, but time constraint is not unfamiliar territory.
Red ONE MX Zeiss Super Speed Primes, Red Zooms Rentals from Dependent Media
Co. 3RoundBurst]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry110930-0230392011-09-30T00:00:00Z2011-09-30T00:00:00ZMTV / blingThis little spot for MTV’s new “bling” line of bling survived catastrophic drive failure and a power outage. A little elbow grease later we had things under control; by the time editor Trevor Durtschi put everything together all that panic had just turned into a good story. See the spot here!
Red ONE MX Zeiss Super Speed Primes, Red Zooms Rentals from Dependent Media
Co. 3RoundBurst Dir. Sergio Abuja]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry110916-0219332011-09-16T00:00:00Z2011-09-16T00:00:00ZFlowers: EOS on the RoadJust wrapped a short for director Jocelyn RC, shooting all round Los Angeles on a 5D and 7D pairing outfitted by Digital Film Studios.
The fun for this show was getting a 5D and 7D to cooperate quickly with a variety of shooting environments and camera support accessories. As a sort of life-experience-en-montage, the show required we shoot all around greater Los Angeles and even as far as Lancaster on a very tight schedule; our cameras had to be able to swing between the Steadicam, sticks, handheld, and the car seat quickly.
The Viewfactor solution DFS uses is the most pragmatic and effective solution I've found for these idiot-savant machines. Having an Anton Bauer battery solution simplifies power for the camera, monitor, and whatever focus accessories are needed; running the Marshall through the Blackmagic rather than raw HDMI is cumbersome, but who can blame a professional rental house for shying away from the hell that is HDMI? What gets me is the complete absence of carbon fiber: it's a wonderful material for the Video world, but I'd never handle some Redrock system the way I could handle this system with all its weight. Throw a pair of Spider Grips on the rig and it's like you've got a real camera, even handheld! I digress.
Prod. Jenny Hou Dir. Jocelyn RC]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry110815-2141402011-08-16T00:00:00Z2011-08-16T00:00:00ZThe Old Samurai: Shooting 1200fps on IDT's Y5HDiabloI spent this past month working with director Ben Wong on “The Old Samurai,” a contemplative piece about a Samurai at the end of his life coming to terms with his past. The film takes its context and rhythm from the Japanese Iaito practice: a single attack that begins with the sword sheathed and ends with the sword sheathed. An ideal Iaito battle ends in an instant; in “The Old Samurai,” that moment between combatants stretches as we are given a look into how the old swordsman has reached this point in his life. To stretch that moment, locked in battle, we looked to IDT's Y5HDiablo.
The camera came from IDT itself; our rental and training was handled by Ciamac Parhizi, whose expertise covered all my concerns and all the concerns I didn’t know I should have. Phantom’s policy on camera system training is a little more strict: the classes are expensive and if you aren’t certified you don’t get trained. I’m big on wrapping my head around the equipment I’m employing if I have the time, so I was pleased to attend Ciamac’s training on the camera.
On set I was lucky enough to have the Phantom certified and otherwise incredibly resourceful Robyn Buchanan to keep the camera in check. Her presence was a necessity: it’s become common practice in this digital age to handle media very carefully when a camera first comes out, then slowly relax until smaller shows are asking their second assistant to hand over the slate and go download some media; it’s not such a good idea with one of these cameras. IDT’s camera is, like many such cameras, primarily designed for laboratory use, and takes some care to cooperate when placed next to a rain machine in a parking lot at night; although physically rugged, camera settings are accessed and adjusted through the Windows workstation you’ve set up on set. The camera is recognized over a LAN, with an IP address; it’s not that odd from a software engineering perspective but a little odd to discuss with your technician after giving lighting notes to your gaffer. The camera shoots a certain number of frames given a resolution to sample from its sensor, and those frames are chewed through faster or slower depending on the framerate you designate. The killer is that once the mag is depleted it’ll take some time to download; this is dead production time unless you have another camera body, as the IDT camera doesn’t have removable magazines.
Drawbacks taken into account we made our day; we continued the show on a Red MX from Digital Film Studios, and I got to play around with a Tokina 11-16, rehoused by Duclos for PL-Mount use. The lens was a necessity to cover wides on the Y5HDiablo’s approximate Super16mm sensor, but we wore it several times throughout the rest of the show. It’s a very sharp lens, and Duclos’ work makes it a pleasure to use.
IDT Y5HDiablo & Red ONE MX Lomo Spherical Primes & Duclos Tokina Zoom Rentals from Digital Film Studios & IDT
Dir. Ben Wong Gaffer Colin Trenbeath ]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry110616-0123542011-06-16T00:00:00Z2011-06-16T00:00:00ZSummer Campbell: Shooting One Talent for TwinsJuly saw my crew and I wrapping up with Summer Campbell, a story of teen revenge and young love. We shot around Los Angeles and Orange County with one night on Dockweiler beach, photographing on a Red MX courtesy of Digital Film Studios.
The main challenge of the show was our male lead; Brian Tarkington, (played by David Hudson) who is fated to surpass his platonic relationship with female lead June Campbell, (played by Becki Kregowski) has a twin brother Brett Tarkington, who appears alongside Brian in nearly every scene. David Hudson, of course, does not have a twin brother. Although I'd say the toughest job fell on David's shoulders, switching between significantly disparate characters several times during a day of photography, director Scott Sullivan and I took special attention throughout our planning and previz to tackle the problem.
Principal to both Scott and myself was that we shouldn't deviate from how we would have shot a scene if there wasn't any problem. Scott's work typically calls for a clean Hollywood feeling so we were able to avoid the troubles of compositing a handheld image right out, but there were plenty of other camera movements we weren't willing to compromise. We quoted out a simple two-axis head and dolly motion control system and got a fantastic rate after consulting with Camera Control; unfortunately, although we could have made enough room in the budget to account for the hardware and operator's rate we couldn't make room in our schedule for the addition of technical adjustment and review. Even the most minor of technical difficulties can add up to slow down a show, and several sensitively expensive days such as our Dockweiler Beach bonfire made time a particularly valuable commodity.
Our solution really came together in rehearsals; blocking along the relationships between the characters made our situation easier than it might have been. Because Brian is anxious over secretly falling for June and Brett is a strictly platonic goof, choosing to place her next to Brian with Brett opposite gave a scene a comfortable, balanced tone to contrast with the tension which immediately arose when June was placed with Brett, facing Brian.
For camera movement, precise blocking and talent action became integral, finding natural and story driven means to hide the face of our stand in until a frame wipe or a planned cut could allow us to switch characters. In the pivotal moment June is humiliated by our antagonist Zach (played by Jordan Youmans) at the beach bonfire party, Brett comes in first to confront Zach, placing himself between Zach and June. At this point we're already pushing in on June as the moment burns itself in her memory; as soon as we're close enough to June to lose Brett's face, a planned cut allowed us to replace Brett with our stand in and bring David in as Brian, approaching seconds late to console June directly. A move earlier in the film swinging around from looking at June and Brian sitting on a fence to look past them at Brett approaching only required a little help from art department to give us a frame wipe to cut on and switch out the talent. In the end we shot only a handful of true composites; Red's 4K image has us confident and looking forward to seeing the finished composites.
I've since seen a first assembly; to be honest it really only takes a shot or so with the twins next to each other early in the film to drop any question about who is who. David and Scott did an excellent job differentiating the two characters; even with this very early cut Scott is happy to say that it's no longer a concern he's looking at as the cut moves along.
I have to mention a special thank you to producer Jenny Hou and her production team on this one; it was a massive show given the limited personnel and even when the pyro team that was all ready to go backed out 10 hours before call time on our beach night, Jenny found, booked, and permitted another team all before our director had woken up to prepare for the day.
Co. Moon Behind the Trees Prod. Jenny Hou Dir. Scott Sullivan]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry100810-1701092010-08-10T00:00:00Z2010-08-10T00:00:00Z"La Nina" Finalist at Cinegear Expohttp://www.cinegearexpo.com/filmseries/finalists10.html
Also, plaque showed up from the ASC!
]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry100527-2124182010-05-28T00:00:00Z2010-05-28T00:00:00ZASC, CTAs, and MTV The ASC Awards was a momentous event; great seeing everyone with their families and friends! Caleb Deschanel, ASC, made a shakingly poignant speech accepting his lifetime achievement award that left me wonderfully sentimental for weeks; hidden in his stories about production mishaps and surprises at dailies screenings was a reminder that although sometimes it feels like our work dictates a certain way of life, it's really the lifestyle that we want which is informing the way we work. None of us should be in this for the money; it's a hell of a lot of work if you're not in love with it. The comradery which comes with that understanding... there's nothing like it.
Candace Lewis' "Le Pony" and "Jeremiah" for Italian Japanese are on the MTV in Brazil and the UK, coming to the US on all the major music video channels this month! We're shooting the next video, "Jaguar Paw (Remix)", for the Universal-signed band this coming week.
Scott Sullivan's "Summer Campbell" is also on the road, locking up my early June schedule. We're planning Red for the show; I'll be glad to be back with a camera that weighs more than my breakfast after a stint of Canon EOS shows. More about that soon.]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry100429-2346292010-04-30T00:00:00Z2010-04-30T00:00:00Z"La Nina" Wins ASC Awards Honorable Mention! ".......Hello?" "Hi! Is this... Is it 'Simon Boa', or 'Boa Simon'?" "Um, Boa Simon." "Great. Hi Boa, this is Michael Goi, president of the American Society of Cinematographers." *pause* ".......Hi! Hi, Michael!"
He was calling to let me know that my work on Malachi Rempen's"La Nina del Desierto" was being recognized with an Honorable Mention for the ASC's Undergraduate Heritage Award at this year's 24th ASC Awards. Awesome!
My official invitation to the event came soon after; I think I'll go with meat for my dinner. I wish Jenny could come; anyone want to help with a donation toward her $350 ticket?
UPDATE: An article on the ASC website: ASC Names Student Cinematography Winners]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry100219-1353422010-02-19T00:00:00Z2010-02-19T00:00:00ZCandace & Malachi's Entries in the NikonFestivalNikon Festival and decided to pump out a couple shorts in our free time! Malachi and Candace each directed a short, and they're currently up at the site, pitted against hundreds of others for the Nikon's prize money!
1:1.77 RED ONE Lomo Spherical Primes 4K 2:1 Acquisition, Redcode 36 Rentals from Digital Film Studios, Wooden Nickel Lighting
Dirs Malachi Rempen, Candace Jade Lewis Gaffer Christopher Richmond, Andre Herrera 1st AC Jenny Hou]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry091219-1206592009-12-19T00:00:00Z2009-12-19T00:00:00Z"La Nina" Submitted to ASC AwardsThe Dodge College of Film & Media Arts at Chapman University has chosen my work on "La Nina del Desierto" to submit to the ASC's 24th Annual Heritage Awards. The submission went out Monday, and the ASC announces it's selections from film schools around the world in February 2010.
Given the choice of either a single six minute clip or a four minute clip coupled with a separate two minute clip to submit I opted for the single six minute clip: the film was in every element made to be an experience of the environment created, and I wouldn't want to cut that feeling short; furhermore I feel the cinematography was strictly a conduit for the narrative, and would lose all its power without a least some access to the narrative. I was, however, dying to submit the night gas station segment as well as the day stuff. All about choices. ]]>http://www.boasimon.com/news/index.php?entry=entry091023-1217572009-10-23T00:00:00Z2009-10-23T00:00:00Z
Just wrapped a short for director Jocelyn RC, shooting all round Los Angeles on a 5D and 7D pairing outfitted by Digital Film Studios.;)
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The Dodge College of Film & Media Arts at Chapman University has chosen my work on "La Nina del Desierto" to submit to the ASC's 24th Annual Heritage Awards. The submission went out Monday, and the ASC announces it's selections from film schools around the world in February 2010.