My first thoughts when hearing EXT baseball field night are 18K’s, condor, maybe something soft overhead on a crane arm. However, on the tech scout we quickly realized that this shoot was different because we were shooting cardboard cutouts and background plates vs live 3 dimensional action. Also, we had 10 of these scenes to shoot with less than 12 hours of night so we needed to move extremely fast. Gaffer @tank_lights_you_up and best boy @scotts_been_shootingsuggested taking an approach that lets us be very mobile and fast. Our main lights sources were Arri M40’s and M18 running on Honda 6500w generators. They quickly wheeled the lights with their accompanying generator anywhere we needed it. We were able to go smaller and more mobile because we are able to use the stadium lights to give us a general ambiance. The key is that we had control over which stadium lights could be on and off. We turned on stadium lights that gave us backlight and turned off any lights that gave us front light. The stadium lights and our movie lights were all backlighting the stadium seats and cutouts, so we needed some light on the cardboard cutouts. This was done with one one […]
Read More
I had the pleasure of shooting the opening for the NLDS on the MLB Network again. This year’s concept was really cool. Due to COVID-19, there are no live audiences at baseball games so cardboard cutouts have been put in the stands to fill in the empty space. Each scene in the spot starts out with a cardboard cutout of a player. The cutout comes to life and we see an actual classic moment happen on a generic field. A big part of this spot happened on the field itself. In order to move quickly when shooting the field scenes and have maximum flexibility, key grip Ki Hwang placed the @jlfisher_inc 10 dolly on a Western dolly. The larger wheels of the western dolly allowed us to move easily on the grassy field without causing any damage. Great idea Ki. We put a Fisher 23 jib arm built out to 12’ on the Fisher 10 dolly. This allowed us to adjust camera height very quickly as well as giving us the flexibility for some nice movement. The camera was on a Lamda 2 head which allowed us to get it low to the ground. Flexibility was very important because we had to […]
Read More
Rocking an Arri Alexa Mini on a Lambda 2 head and Fisher 23 jib arm. We had a couple of M40s banging diretly into the lens creating some nice flares. The MLB playoff opening was a really cool shoot with some interesting challenges. I am excited to share some detailed BTS posts with you after it airs. Stay tuned!
Read More
When I first started in the film business I never imagined a day when I could light a scene with multiple color temperatures without using any gels and without plugging any of the lights into power. However, that day has come and it is incredible. Here we were shooting in a laboratory. The motivating light source is a fluorescent light that is built into this machine. We added 2 2’ Astera Helios tubes inside the machine to enhance and wrap the light on the talent’s face in a more pleasant way. The Helios tubes are RGB so we matched their color temp to the temp of the built in fluorescent tube with the green spike and all. We ran off their built in power so we didn’t have to run any power cables into the machine. Running cable would have been problematic because they would have been visible in the shot. A 4’ Titan tube was used as a back light with a cooler temp for a bit of an edge with color contrast. Another 4’ Titan tube was put against the back wall to bring out subtle detail in it and give some definition to the background. We set […]
Read More
This resolution/focus chart face mask would be perfect for camera department nerds like me…and stand-ins as well! A focus puller’s best friend, LOL
Read More
