Over the past week Malachi and I found ourselves with a Red package & dead days in between interviews in our ongoing Synoptek documentary (details soon); we'd heard about the Nikon 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!



Watch Malachi Rempen's "Contentment"!
Please comment on the NikonFestival website!










Watch Candace Jade Lewis' "Abstractions"!
Please comment on the NikonFestival website!








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

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.

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.

WATCH AN EXTRA PRELIM SHOWREEL!

I just saw a cut of Chris Manus' "Korean Barbeque", a character piece following a struggling couple considering a swingers' night. The shoot was a mellow affair with a bare-bones crew working off an even thinner budget, but the footage proves that every cent was spent on the screen.

A key concern for the visual style of the film was camera movement. The edit was to recall "The Jackal" in splicing not necessarily sequential shots while significantly trailing or leading the audio cut; while we wanted to keep things more subdued than the handheld energy in "The Jackal", every shot would still need a drift to support that edit. It was clear that we'd be rigging everything above the spaces; furthermore, we'd only make up for the lost time laying track on every shot if I could keep my light tweaks to a minimum. It wouldn't have been too tall an order for Gaffer Kyle Bjordahl and I except for our quite limited lighting package; apart from a single workhorse 150w Dedolight kit, I was a little nervous to run the show on two Lowell DP lights and a set of Baby Solarspots. The schedule shook out well enough to allow Kyle and I to build the scene at the beginning of each day; Kyle et al. had plenty of fun laying wall spreaders throughout each location, and even when we had to rip everything out to rig for another scene within the same day we never fell behind.

Shooting again on the Evolution Image Group Red from Eric Ulbrich, I picked up a Lomo spherical prime set from Digital Film Studios. The set's a four lens kit from 28mm to 75mm, each in the t1.4-t1.5 range. Despite the lens manufacturer's suspect reputation & build quality I was pleased to find DFS has kept the lenses well; the glass was clean and optics only pleasantly soft on the open end of the lens (never got around to seeing any of the lens set any tighter than a 2.8). The look is low contrast & milky, but was suitably bohemian for the show. My focus pullers thought they might have cased the lenses better in a couple soda cans & some PVC piping, but the lenses held marks & DFS had replaced Lomo's OCT-19 mounts with PL so we didn't have to replace the Red's PL mount.

Color will be done soon on the project; I'll then have a showreel to post as well!

1:2.35
RED ONE
Lomo Spherical Primes
4K 2:1 Acquisition, Redcode 36
Rentals from Evolution Image Group, Digital Film Studios, Wooden Nickel Lighting

Dir Christopher Manus
Gaffer Kyle Bjordahl
1st AC Adam Richman, Jenny Hou, Paulina Bryant

La Guerrera played this week at the Mann Chinese Theatre as part of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival!

Unfortunately, prior obligations preceded my attendance, but I'm sure all went well; you can follow La Guerrera's twitter here.

We've just found out that Malachi Rempen's "La Nina del Desierto" has been chosen for 2009's "First Cut," and will be screening October 7th at the Los Angeles Director's Guild of America!

For the screening there has been organized the very generous donation of a free 35mm print from our DPX sequence out of Autodesk Lustre, completing our digital intermediate process! I'm incredibly excited to see the film truly completed; while watching the 1080p DPX sequence is satisfying to a point, I can't wait to see what the emulsion will bring back to the image!

A quick update: worked again with Evolution Image Group’s Red package shooting a spec ad for Old Spice’s commercial contest. Michael Nie and I worked together to shoot the spot over a single day after director Malachi Rempen and I planned the show over a couple hours’ phone conversation the night prior (the equipment only became available by serendipitous coincidence, so we weren’t planning on shooting anything until that phone conversation). Google Maps was an integral part of the impromptu pre-production: even hours away from each other I could mark map points & routes for him to see, and pull up photos of locations through Google Maps’ Panoramio plugin. I suggested pulling up Open Canvas to share storyboards, but we understood each other’s language enough that Malachi was confident with the frames Michael & I would photograph.

On a very limited schedule and even more limited crew, Michael & I set ourselves on carrying a Cooke 10:1 for all of our daytime photography. Gaffer & Key Grip Kyle Bjordahl strapped and secured a Fisher dolly inside the back of our cube truck, and with a safety line on each Michael and myself hauled the truck through the winding mountain roads near Ramona for photography of a racing convertible. Of course the picture car couldn’t peak above 50 and stay behind our rig, but kinetic camera movement and a thin shutter angle heightened the sense of motion; Michael and I traded off operating and whip pulling, with one whip for focus another snapping the zoom. By the time we got into Los Angeles it was dark and we switched to faster primes; riding through areas which might have been more permit sensitive we had a few scares snapping the cube truck closed around ourselves and our rig.

Once we rendezvoused with Malachi we picked up our story bookend; unfortunately restricted by uncompassionate locals we shot available augmented only by a 575w HMI. We had more control over the product shot we closed the night with, and I even improvised a diffusion filter with a dab of the Old Spice spread over an optical flat!

Dan McClellan cut the spot together two days later, and I polished it that night in Apple Color; composer Brian Andrews sent in a score (while on vacation in Oregon!) and the whole spot was together from concept to delivery within five days. Nothing to win an Addy, but maybe enough to win Old Spice’s contest!

1:1.76
RED ONE
Zeiss Standard Speed Primes
4K Acquisition, Redcode 36
Rentals from Evolution Image Group, Otto Nemenz International

Dir Malachi Rempen
Co – Director of Photography Michael Nie
Gaffer Kyle Bjordahl

Photos courtesy of Kyle Bjordahl

On the 19th of July we wrapped photography of Ben Sandlin's as yet untitled film which we named "Rock Climbing" for the purposes of production. A film about two formerly outdoorsy brothers taking one last trip to climb together before parting ways for good, "Rock Climbing" took us from Los Angeles for the urban book ends of the film to Big Bear and Idyllwild for the meat of the characters' journey. Our rugged location work climaxed at Suicide Rock in Idyllwild, where a hike that would account for 1000 feet of vertical climb stood between the crew & the day's photography. The show's hard drives are now in Nate Orloff's hands, and we'll see how it comes together!

From our first conversations Ben was set on RED as our acquisition format; while the production didn't have the budget to shoot 35mm, capturing the majesty of our locations with a wide field of view through lenses which still had emotional depth of field was a requisite. While I'm typically inclined to give rental contracts to friends whenever possible I had recently witnessed horror stories develop with rentals via private RED owners and was planning to head to one of the rental houses when I got a call from Eric Ulbrich of Evolution Image Group. Eric detailed to me his incredibly comprehensive RED package, and I booked the camera for our shoot by the end of the week.

To say a RED package from Evolution Image Group is a comprehensive rental is to understate: traveling on a senior camera cart, EIG's collection of cases contain all the typical camera necessities (with ARRI accessories, wherever possible) and quite a few pleasant surprises: after lengthy discussion with DITs, ACs, and DPs, Eric has tailored EIG's RED package to be a camera department's best friend. For the DIT, CF & SD readers with a full set of Firewire 800 & 400 protocol cables cover the connection from camera to DIT station and from camera to camera for painting; for the AC hex keys, a sensor loupe, and a selection of 640 gig RED Drives & 16 gig CF cards for acquisition; the DP stays in touch with the operator via a director's viewfinder & 7 inch RED Monitor, whether the operator is using the included handheld handles & pad or the O'Connor 2060 head, which has been geared with 2575 weights & springs for cinema use. Then there's the 17 inch Panasonic production monitor for video village; it sounds like I've pulled copy from EIG's website, but he doesn't have one and he hasn't written any. The fact is that the camera package has few flaws (camera dept. will always find SOMETHING to complain about) and certainly nothing to work on; if we'd have additionally rented EIG's DIT package (including a RED streamlined MacBook Pro, RAID Arrays, and E-Sata connections for quickly developing on-set dailies) we'd have been running smooth as butter.

Of course, suggesting that production might have run more smoothly implies that there were difficulties; working far away from the common electric grid & in locations inhospitable for even a Honda or likewise carryable generator, we found ourselves in an endless struggle to keep our technology alive. While the difficulty in setting up a digital loading station with enough power to run the hard drives within a proximity to be logistically feasible was largely avoided through the use of RED Drives, (careful use; we'd unmount the drives during any significant moves to avoid damage to the spinning hard disks) the RED eats through its RED Bricks quite fast and would require a runner making the ten minute to half hour trip down the mountain nearly every hour and a half of production. It certainly didn't help that the RED offers only electronic viewfinding; without an optical viewfinder, the RED must be powered on to position camera, check frame, and rehearse. The RED chargers were also a hassle; I was surprised to learn that they are designed to charge only one RED Brick at a time despite having two mounts per charger. And it hardly needs to be said, but 90 seconds to power up? It takes four for the Varicam!

RED's quirks are not limited to its electronics, unfortunately; the camera physically suits its adolescent place in the industry, persistently awkward despite its adaptability. I divided the worlds of the two brothers visually with a commitment to standard fluid head support for the brother in med school and handheld work for the brother who insists on going climbing; therefore the entirety of the outdoors photography would be handheld. Despite having a full selection of parts and accessories in EIG's package to build up the camera, the RED's design makes handheld troublesome. We solved the camera's front-heaviness by tossing the brick plate far off the back of the camera on the long iris rods, but found no solution for the dangerous position of ports on the back of the camera; the butt of a camera is usually a great place to grab or put weight for extra control or support, but with the RED you're liable to put damaging tension on the power or drive cables or else change vital settings by accident. In the end none of our difficulties were insurmountable, and Eric's taken great strides with EIG's package to mitigate the peculiarities of the RED system with first-class accessories. With the state of the industry I expect to be shooting RED via EIG again soon. (in fact, I already have; more on that soon)

Our climbing at Suicide Rock in Idyllwild was rigged and supervised by Bob Gaines & Erik Kramer-Webb of Vertical Adventures, whose vast experience found us precisely the spots to deliver the sense that our reasonably climbing-savvy talent were only a slip away from the plummet. Despite some harrowing camera positions operator Michael Nie felt quite secure in the harness.




1:2.39
RED ONE
Zeiss Standard Speed Primes
4K Acquisition, Redcode 36
Rentals from Evolution Image Group, Otto Nemenz International, Digital Film Studios, Wooden Nickel Lighting

Dir Ben Sandlin
Cam Op Michael Nie
1st AC Katy Echols & Jenny Hou
2nd AC Christa Watkins
Gaffers Andre Herrera & Kyle Bjordahl
Production Designer Chelsea Pickens
Makeup Artist Jenny Hou

Photos courtesy of Kyle Bjordahl, myself