Chris McKechnie
Well-known member
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2011
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- 5,218
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- Location
- Dallas, TX
- Website
- digitalcinemaguy.com
Hey guys. Here's a little music video I DP'd last week for Megan Nicole (young Disney star). It's kind of a flash-back/70's concept where most of it takes place in a roller-rink. Megan was an absolute blast to work with!
Note - I didn't shoot the very beginning of the music video (phone sequence), everything else I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyPb6vLs11w
There were quite a few challenges for this one. First being that the director wanted to do long takes, covering a lot of ground, which made lighting pretty difficult. Plus, he wanted a lighting gig to happen in the middle of the music video, where essentially all power goes out and lighting changes.
We couldn't rig anything up on the rink or tap into any of the power above the rink...which sucked! If we rigged up above and lost power, we would be shut down as we couldn't access the breaker above the rink, so we had to go mobile. The director wanted soft beauty light for our main talent, and with the continuous rink shots, we couldn't run power, so the only real option to keep the lighting as consistent as possible on our talent while she was skating, was to rig battery powered light panels to a golf cart (which production rented) and shoot them through diffusion. I sat on the back of the cart with the MoVI and Tiltamax Armorman rig (which saved me). The golf cart was only used on the rink, which had to be orchestrated well as there were so many extras skating at the same time on the rink. Right before the lighting break, I bailed off the back of the golf cart so I could get close to her without the lighting change, then back-peddled and tracked her. Didn't use the golf cart again until the cut when she's back on the rink skating.
The choreography/blocking of everything took most of the time. There were so many people/extras involved and they were given just a general direction as to what they were supposed to do, which made traversing them difficult, especially when I was walking on the floor with them skating all around me. I had my first AC, then production provided the rest of the crew since it was lower budget. They gaffer had some experience, and 1 grip had a tad as well, but everyone else was pretty green.
The fact that it's a music video and most of it was shot in a roller rink, I was ok with seeing a couple of fixtures here and there, since roller rinks generally have all kinds of lighting around, but for the most part, wanted most things hidden.
Was shot in a day (well...all nighter) since we had to shut the entire rink down. The "rink manager" was a real pain, not really allowing us to do anything.
For the grade, it looks like it did on my monitor...no real grading was done. The director said it was going to go into Davinci, but I think they ran out of time.
All in all it was a long day, but fun and I think it turned out alright given the hand we were dealt. Even though lower budget jobs are common and present challenges, they are still fun and I love doing them and getting involved.
Let me know whatcha think!
Shoot Specs:
Epic MX
Contax Zeiss Glass
8:1 Compression
Paralinx Triton for HD Streaming
Cinegears Wireless FF
MoVI M10
Note - I didn't shoot the very beginning of the music video (phone sequence), everything else I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyPb6vLs11w
There were quite a few challenges for this one. First being that the director wanted to do long takes, covering a lot of ground, which made lighting pretty difficult. Plus, he wanted a lighting gig to happen in the middle of the music video, where essentially all power goes out and lighting changes.
We couldn't rig anything up on the rink or tap into any of the power above the rink...which sucked! If we rigged up above and lost power, we would be shut down as we couldn't access the breaker above the rink, so we had to go mobile. The director wanted soft beauty light for our main talent, and with the continuous rink shots, we couldn't run power, so the only real option to keep the lighting as consistent as possible on our talent while she was skating, was to rig battery powered light panels to a golf cart (which production rented) and shoot them through diffusion. I sat on the back of the cart with the MoVI and Tiltamax Armorman rig (which saved me). The golf cart was only used on the rink, which had to be orchestrated well as there were so many extras skating at the same time on the rink. Right before the lighting break, I bailed off the back of the golf cart so I could get close to her without the lighting change, then back-peddled and tracked her. Didn't use the golf cart again until the cut when she's back on the rink skating.
The choreography/blocking of everything took most of the time. There were so many people/extras involved and they were given just a general direction as to what they were supposed to do, which made traversing them difficult, especially when I was walking on the floor with them skating all around me. I had my first AC, then production provided the rest of the crew since it was lower budget. They gaffer had some experience, and 1 grip had a tad as well, but everyone else was pretty green.
The fact that it's a music video and most of it was shot in a roller rink, I was ok with seeing a couple of fixtures here and there, since roller rinks generally have all kinds of lighting around, but for the most part, wanted most things hidden.
Was shot in a day (well...all nighter) since we had to shut the entire rink down. The "rink manager" was a real pain, not really allowing us to do anything.
For the grade, it looks like it did on my monitor...no real grading was done. The director said it was going to go into Davinci, but I think they ran out of time.
All in all it was a long day, but fun and I think it turned out alright given the hand we were dealt. Even though lower budget jobs are common and present challenges, they are still fun and I love doing them and getting involved.
Let me know whatcha think!
Shoot Specs:
Epic MX
Contax Zeiss Glass
8:1 Compression
Paralinx Triton for HD Streaming
Cinegears Wireless FF
MoVI M10
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