Monday, April 18, 2011

Video Blip #1

As many of you know, I was in Eureka, CA a couple weeks ago shooting some footage for Cher-Ae Heights Casino in Trinidad. I must say, Trinidad is beautiful... Eureka on the other hand... Anyway, I thought I'd share a little video blip of the stuff I captured. The marketing manager of the casino pretty much gave me one thing to accomplish, "Make my commercials not so stinking dark." Well... you do know this is a casino, don't you? So, I figured I better bring every light I can because I sure as Honkey Tonk can't just make the three and a half hour drive back to the office to grab more.
When I arrived, one of the first things I shot was the Slot Machines. These are extremely difficult to light if you don't have a huge boom stand to hold the light above your actors. It's awkward because you are shooting a profile shot but you're still trying to get as close to the machines as you can so you're not just filming over the actors' shoulders. And on top of that,there's a line of machines in front of them... so where are you supposed to put the lights so that you get more than just back lighting? I had to improvise (as usual) and I think the result turned out quite nicely. The picture here shows you where the lights were actually located:


So it only took three lights and maybe I could do it with less, but I think the image looks nice. It's not dark but it's still dramatic. You can clearly see a foreground and the background is there but not in the way by any means.
This image was really an eye opener for me. I look so longingly at professional video footage and think, "How do I get that?", but the more I do shoots like this, I find that lighting is so key. People often say, "Oh we can fix it in post". That causes a lot of problems because the more you do in post the more opportunity there is to ruin your original footage. I want to make sure that when I'm filming, that I get that "Yes! That's what I'm looking for" feeling straight from the LCD on the back of my camera. I don't want to have to worry about whether or not it will turn out nicely once I've abused every last pixel in the shot.
I hope this is helpful and enjoy the clip!

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