Maxsta “Pop Off” directed by Luke Biggins.

I remember given very little notice to shoot this promo, it was within the region of 2 hours. Just had enough time to grab my light meter and viewing glass to get down to the studio for 18:30 hrs, since I had a free afternoon I said why not…
Arriving there I was literally starting from Ground Zero. Decided to hang some domestic tubes that were laying around the studio, originally the bulbs were 865, but I swapped them out for cool whites and position a couple of gelled 2K blondes around the set and set my lighting ratios for low key/ high contrast look, using multiple colour temps to create mood and atmos, wanted it to feel like a gritty drama. Shot on Arri Alexa with Cooke Panchros straight onto SxS cards ProRes 4444.  

Many a times you have to make the most of what is readily available to hand and  think quickly on your feet, something I quite enjoy.

Definitely a great shoot and the label was quite pleased with the final results.

Going to keep this post short. maybe from here, now onward I will keep all entries to just a few lines.

Sabrina Washington – Hit it Hard, directed by Ben Peters, have to say we were blessed with such a good day for shooting outdoors.

Sabrina  was such a pleasure to work with, really down to earth and a real trooper.
Shot   on the Arri Alexa straight to the internal SxS cards at ProRes 422, the footage was then transferred via laptop to two hard drives on set – very straight forward.
I really started to appreciate how much latitude this camera has with the shot of Sabrina under the bridge in a semi silouette.  I was still able to maintain detail in seeing her face and still see her left eye, with no lighting, just purely by getting the exposure where I wanted it. I was just blown away by this. There are of course many cameras out there that may hold a similar level of latitude, but thinking that the Alexa footage can be ingested straight into any editing platform of choice, ready to be edited without transcoding/ developing  when you think about it is amazing. 
Definately one of my favourite shots – 120 FPS, using the 300mm lens, wanted to jump to 600mm but I was just way to close to the edge of the canal. I was close enough as it was already.

The shots in the gym were fairly straight forward as well, just concentrating on Sabrina Washington and Shantel Jackson who is Floyd Mayweather’s fiance. It all ties in with the whole boxing theme – nice.
The match did take some time to choreograph and to get the camera angles right, having the women work at safe distances enough so as not to cause injury to each other but close enough  for the shots to work.

Overall a good day.

Molella music promo – “Let Me Give You More” is the new single of Maurizio Molella that will be released in Italy on May 18th 2012

My mission should I accept and I clearly did was to follow Bethany Harrisons’ bum for the entirety of the shoot, literally. This was the concept of Director Ben Peters.

When my girlfriend saw the rough cut, she smiled and said ” I bet you enjoyed that shoot” to which I responded by pointing out the complexities and technicalities of pulling it off successfully, which were to the best of my knowledge absolutely true, (spin doctor insert here) so there was no time to “enjoy” the shoot – a stern look & silence…
Haunched over, armed with a Sony F3 and a 14mm ultraprime in hand I set off on my mission. Have to say though, 12 hours in the same awkward position was taxing, I truly felt it the next day.
Shot the entire promo on that lens, being so wide there was minimum distortion except for when I went in really tight, which gave the bum a much more rounded look in my professional opinion, there were make up checks on her cheeks and a powder down to go…
Bethany’s bum was/is Hero (or is that Heroine)

As for the under water stuff it was quite straight forward, shot on the 1D MarkIV which held up quite well, shot on a deep stop, knowing the 1D MKIV holds up well in the iso range.
Created a custom look in camera to get the grader in the right direction and that was really it.

Definitely a great day for all the right reasons…

You can also view it on youtube here, if you like to read comments.

Small crew  and all hands on deck , generally good fun working on these shoots, everyone just pitching in to make it happen. Challenging as always but a real feeling of achievement.

Had to engineer it, so we could get through 50+ extras for the portrait  shots and be flexible enough to just swing around for the performance shots, with minimal turnaround time. Directed by Ben Peters this simple but effective promo is just the right feel and tone for the track,  we both decided to go for a more naturalistic look.  The BTS operator picked up shots of the artists and crew working away at it,  this gave me just enough time to concentrate on the portraits and performance.  All looks were created in camera using the picture profile setting, so essentially what you see is just straight out the gate – well I mean sensor. Whilst all of this was going on, I had rigged a 7D  for the time lapse shots on a hi hat secured onto a step ladder, no ladder pods, always got to find a way.

Most Definitely a good day. 
you can also watch on youtube here if your into reading comments. 
Ps, Hopefully next few times round I could actually snap a few  pics.

Just a quick shoot I did a while back, received quite a few queries from the still posted o the home page. so here it is.
Hope you Enyoy !