Taylor Swift " Bad Blood " shot on Weapon by Christopher Probst

[Jarred Land]

Directed by Joseph Kahn / Color Timed by Dave Hussey @ CO3

 

[Christopher Probst]

Thanks for posting Jarred! Truly honored to have been able to shoot this project on 2 Weapon cameras even though Jarred and team were scrambling to prepare for NAB. Thanks to Brent and Justin for the support and allowing me to short change the first 2 days of NAB with 2 less Weapon cameras to show off... BUT, I promised as a show of appreciation, I would post the incredible results this camera can achieve and bombard you all with some exclusive behind the scenes incites into the making of...

Stay tuned!

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Christopher is a machine. Some interesting cameos in there. As always exceptional cinematography.

 

[Phil Holland]

Sick costumes. This collaboration you got going Chris is freaking awesome.

 

[Brad Allen]

Amazing work as always Chris - really looking forward to some BTS info from you

As an aside - black levels of the entire frame seem lifted (not just the image, but blacks surround the 2.39 aspect ratio) - is this intentional?

EDIT: Here's what I'm seeing with a comparison shot to rule out a gamma or black level problem system wide on my end.

 

[Christopher Probst]

We intentionally went for softer blacks in the coloring. How that translated to the letterbox is beyond me, but I'm not displeased. Nicer on the female faces.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Crazy Vid... Really enjoy it... Congrats to al involved!!

Chris, if you could share some BTS of the Weapon in action would be very cool!!

 

[Akin A]

Great job, again! You keep giving Taylor some really nice videos.

Must've been hard to edit, choosing from all of the good looking shots.
For example, the short back-flip shot from 3:34-3:35 might be one of my favorites. I wanted to see it held longer.

 

[Brad Allen]

We intentionally went for softer blacks in the coloring. How that translated to the letterbox is beyond me, but I'm not displeased. Nicer on the female faces.

Good to know - yeah I think the blacks look great - just was surprised to see it extend to the letterboxing and wanted to make sure what I was seeing was accurate

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Congratulations crazy-cool man.

Look forward to the BTS

 

[PatrickFaith]

Really enjoyed this, actually started a coughing fit I was laughing so hard at some take offs from old scifi/spy film shots - of which theses even look better.

 

[Anthony Marino]

I'd be a fool to give the camera any credit with such hard work and creativeness but my God it's on a whole other level.

 

[Jeff McCoy]

Beautiful. Wow. What was the budget?

 

[Gabriel Sanchez]

Really beautiful work!

 

[Scott Balkum]

That's great work.

 

[David Battistella]

Wow. Amazing. Great work.

 

[Kwan Khan]

Nicely done

 

[Christopher Probst]

Okay gang, here's the skinny... I'm super honored to have the opportunity to be one of the first to shoot on two 6K Weapon Dragon cameras... Jarred and Brent jumped through some hoops to allow my grubby hands on TWO fresh out of the oven 6K Weapons for our Taylor Swift, "Bad Blood" shoot. We also had some rad on-set support from Justin Jones, who had some extra parts and made some mad-dashes back to Red Irvine to get me more monitor adapters for the two cameras. Additional high-speed work for explosions was obtained with Camtec's Phantom Flex 4K... Though we had 4 other Weapon/Dragon cameras rolling between 86 and 200fps for this material as well.

With prepping the two brand new cameras, much of my Carbon Fiber accessory support like riser plates and top plates didn't exactly apply anymore. The body is shorter both in height and length. So some improvisation was in order. Prepping out of my usualy camera house, Camtec, in Burbank Calif. I pieced together a few cheeseplate options for additional topplate screw positions.... You can see here in these prep pics...

We shot the video on the new Arri/Zeiss Master Anamorphics except for a few Ronin shots where I used my smaller/lighter Kowa anamorphics on the gimbal. Our locations were all in downtown LA, both on practical locations and at LA Center studios for some of their office interiors/exteriors and stage work for set builds and bluescreen work.



Our "lab" set was constructed by production designer Charles Infante and was incredible to look at and light.

As much as this video is about explosions and knives and swords, it's also about beauty and fashion... Having amazing looking talent in front of the lens goes a long way!

We shot 2 days in the underground parking lot of the LA Convention Center... Some of you may recognize it from my Lexus Super Bowl ad I posted... So I didn't want to repeat the treatment I gave it for that spot... Instead of turning off all of the overhead lighting, this time I elected to use it as an architectural motif to build off of.

One of the first sequences we shot there was the motor cycle chase/performance.

We also constructed a boxing rink and used the depth of the entire garage in the background.

Also featured in the parking garage is the "Ice Box" set...

Another prime location in the video is the downtown bank that has been used in films like Zodiac and Dark Knight... There we set up our training facillity where much of the cameos and badassery ensues.

A separate location was used for the Locker Room set, which featured more gothic tiled arches that we built a more clinlical, modern structure inside of as a textural juxtaposition.

And finally, there was the stage work... We had a huge 120' by 30' bluescreen cove for "exterior" shots and also a little hallway set that plays in the middle of the video.

And here's some of the finale images of the explosion sequence...

 

[Brad Allen]

Thanks for this Chris,

Truly inspiring work - thanks for taking the time to take progress pictures along the way for us all. It's projects like this that make me wish I lived in the US so there was even a chance that I could find myself involved in some capacity.

Care to comment on whether you guys shot ProRes proxies on Weapon and how this impacted your post workflow, if at all?

Also - I'm so impressed that the lab set was entirely practical!

 

[Nick Morrison]

Chris, LOVE the spot, and love the breakdown. Thanks so much! Notice you were keeping the camera at 320/400 most of time - esp in lowlight. Is that you're preferred ISO for most situations?

Also what OLPF was this? Or did you mix and match?

thanks again! And great job!!!