"Unbroken" [Promo] by Aeralie Brighton (Shot on Dragon at night w/ natural lighting)

[Tony Aaron II]

"Unbroken" [Promo] by Aeralie Brighton (Shot on Dragon at night w/ natural lighting)

"Unbroken" - 4K

"Unbroken" - Vimeo

This was an impromptu promo video shot for singer Aeralie Brighton's 1st single entitled, "Unbroken". It was the middle of the night and I was kicking around promo video ideas and she put me on the spot and said, "Let's just go now."

So, I quickly planned out a shoot that took us up by that restaurant on the mountain overlooking Burbank, to a bridge over the 5 freeway, back to North Hollywood for 2 shots, then we headed down Hollywood Blvd for the final shots I had in mind for getting the song title on the screen with her and etc.

Obviously I wanted to show how I could play with color at night and use it to setup her story and song. Everything was designed to be lit with the existing lighting (street lights - all shots filmed at f1.8 with manual follow focus), then I took the footage into Davinci Resolve for some awesome color grading. Check it out, it's actually a great song about her struggle for the strength to press forward after a relationship that left her doubting herself and her career.

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/album/id968840731

Davinci color grading stills are below...

 

[Christopher-lee dos Santo]

Looks great. Nice work Tony.

 

[Tony Aaron II]

Thanks, Christopher. It was looking like I was going to go 0-193 views for a minute there. That wouldn't have been ideal, lol. I actually thought you guys would like the night footage.

 

[Christopher-lee dos Santo]

I've noticed guys are very quiet on the forum sometimes... What gamma and colour settings did you use in your grade? Redlog Film? Red Gamma 4? Dragon color 2?

 

[Tony Aaron II]

I went out of my way to try to update resolve multiple times but I was having a bunch of different computer errors last week and wasn't able to so DragonColor2 wasn't an option for me. TRUST ME, I was pissed.

I begrudgingly used REDlogfilm and Kodak 2383 LUT for all but 1 shot (the IVAR building - because the colors wouldn't reproduce that anywhere near that well with the film LUT no matter what I tried). My next shoot I'm going to try to work exclusively within DragonColor2 just to make up for lost time and play around and enjoy myself. There's really a unique look and quality to DragonColor2 that is really underrated. The contrast and cleanness of the colors is amazing.

 

[Christopher-lee dos Santo]

Awesome. Thanks for that. I have an edit I am playing with now on Dragon Color... I think I should jump over to Dragon Color 2. That being said, the images are great. Awesome stuff for a one man middle of the night run and gun shoot. To think a few years back we needed to plan and budget for a full crew to shoot something like this.

Well done.

 

[Tony Aaron II]

Thanks. I would DEFINITELY go with DragonColor2, btw. And even though I used the film LUTs I really think people should get away from that because muted film colors is actually a bad thing. It was just that the film couldn't do better. Raw digital color space is much more honest to real human sight. Shoot me a link to your edit when you're letting people view it.