THE MAKING OF 'SHARP'

I recently teamed up with director Nicholas Conedera and producer Jack Hooker to shoot the feature film, 'Sharp' (http://sharp-themovie.com/) Sharp is a coming of age dramady that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's funny and entertaining, but still poignant and moving. Terrance Withrow (Played by Nick Nigro), a lazy, stoned-out surfer must adapt to the corporate world and learn how to sell cutlery in order to support his family and get his parents back together after his dad loses his job and walks out on the family. 

We had a very healthy 4 week prep time for pre production and Nick and I spent the better part of 2 of those weeks combing through the script scene by scene, tailoring a very detailed shot list for storyboards. This was critical to our success in making all our days on our incredibly tight 22 day shooting schedule with an average of 5 pages/day. 

Our camera package was provided through Panavision Hollywood, comprised of a Red Epic-M and Ultra Speed set. We shot red code 5:1 compression at 4K and cropped for 1.85. 5K was considered but I ultimately decided against it so I'd have my true focal lengths and I knew we were going to stay on the wider end of things and the 17.5 vignettes quite a bit with the up-res. 

We rated the camera at 800ASA and used IR NDs on our exteriors to drop us down to a T4/5.6. I used 1/4 and 1/2 coral filters on the exteriors to really accentuate the Southern California look (the film takes place in San Diego).



I used a rota pola occasionally and used ND SE horz grads on exteriors to knock down the sky occasionally. 

There two very distinct looks in this film; the Sharpco world which is heavily influenced by Wes Anderson and Pop Art. We came up with a manifesto of sorts for these two worlds. 

Sharpco: 
-- Deeper depth of field (T4/5.6)

-- Symmetrical compositions 
-- One-point perspective 

-- Precise movement

-- Camera only moves on X,Y, and Z axis (no diagonals) 

-- Bold, saturate colors, especially red in the production design

-- More head room 

-- Wider Lenses (nothing tighter than a 35mm) 

-- No diffusion in front of the lens 

For Terrance's home world, we decided to keep things as grounded in reality as possible.

Terrance: 
-- Shallow depth of field (T2+)
-- Asymmetrical diagonals  
-- Camera is always handheld, loose, and responsive

-- Organic shapes, and earth tones in the production design

-- Cooler hues  

-- Color temp mixing 

-- Tighter headroom 

-- Hollywood black magic 1/2 and 1/4

As the film progresses these two worlds begin to mesh together in Act II and III and we experimented with mixing styles. 

We rarely used a lens tighter than a 50mm and stayed mostly lensed the actors with 24, 29, and 35mm focal lengths. 

Throughout the film we get deeper and deeper inside Terrance's head and visit his dreams. This was my first time filming underwater and it was a blast despite all the obstacles we had to overcome. We shot all the underwater material over a weekend in Zuma beach area using Hydroflex's Deep Water Epic Rig. 

We had to add 2 extension bellows to the rig to accomodate the very large and heavy 17.5mm Ultra Speed (9lbs). This brought the total weight of the rig to 60lbs which became quite the challenge to get the camera completely out of the water past the shallows. We filmed all the underwater at 120fps at 4K. 

The director and I went out with our actors into the 55 degree water with nothing more than the rig, 3mm wetsuits, booties, flippers, and mask. None of us were scuba certified but luckily I'm competitive swimmer and can hold my breath for up to 3 minutes and the director is a surfer so we were able to manage quite well out there despite purple lips and numb fingers. I had to be very conscious with my trigger finger because 120fps at 4K gobbles up media! My 1st AC Adam Corriea was a huge help for all the underwork. 

Terrance's home is a chaotic, crumbling space so I wanted to go incredibly minimalistic with the lighting and keep things moody and atmospheric.

I wanted it to be cozy and familiar. The location we used is actually the director's house so it was really nice to spend as much time as we did during preproduction at the location, allowing me to see the different looks of the natural lighting throughout the day. We scheduled our scenes based off my notes for the most optimal times to shoot in each room. 

For the dinner scene my wonderful gaffer Eric Corriea built a covered wagon with (6) 75w bulbs, dimmed to about 40%, skirted, and diffused with Full Grid. We put all of the living room practicals on dimmers and motivated them with a 650w fresnel with XXS chimeras and multiple layers of diffusion, providing a backlight for Hunter.

I used a dimmed red head in the kitchen bounced into 4x4 bead board for a little background ambience. 



The nice thing about shooting in the director's house is he let us screw in wherever we wanted to save time rigging speed rail, a rare luxury for location work. My Key Grip Jordan Black was very pleased. This allowed us to shoot 360, allowing the actors to loosen and improvise which Nick liked to do often. 

Dalton's trailer proved to be a very fun challenge because of the very cramped quarters. We lit the scene entirely practically using peanut bulbs for the bottle lights, a 100w photoflood in the green shaded fixture on the table and hid various wattage bulbs around the space to create depth.

We color graded at my house using Da Vinci Resolve, finishing in 2K. 'Sharp' premiers on April 27th at 2PM at the Downtown Independent in downtown Los Angeles. The address is 251 S Main St, Los Angeles. If you'd like to attend you can buy tickets here: http://www.sharpthemovie.eventbrite.com/

THE MAKING OF 'ISSUES'

I recently wrapped my first metalcore video with director Dillon Novak (http://montaukfilm.com/) of RSM. The video ping pongs between performance and narrative, examining a cycle of multi-generational domestic violence. The narrative is broken up into two segments; the character as a child and as an adult. We opted to shoot with longer lenses with slow motion for a more observational aesthetic for the flashback scenes with the child.

We kept the camera at a low angle to match the child's eye-height for POVs and dirtied up the field of view as much as possible with foreground elements (mirrors, windows, curtains, etc.) to evoke a sense of fragmented memory.

We used heavier diffusion in front of the lens using 1/2 and 1 strength black magics to aid this dream-like effect. Really love these guys for digital because they take the edge of the highlights in an organic way, blossoming without effecting the contrast.

   

For the present day scenes, we threw away the diffusion and used wider lenses in the 29-35mm range for CUs for a more immediate intimacy, mixing handheld with fluid slider movement.We used a 8' dana dolly which is by far the smoothest ride for a slider that I've come across. Super buttery.

For both the flashback and present day scenes we used a lens baby for our insert shots to draw a subtle visual parallel between the child and his adult-self.

Although it was a bright sunny day on our production day, we wanted a more melancholy overcast look. We used overheads when we were dealing with direct sun and shot all of our day/ext work during magic hour. I wanted to unify the performance and the narrative with a "creamy", atmospheric, and soft image. I wanted high contrast lighting, but I still wanted to dig into the shadows and pull out as much detail as possible in the toe.

For the performance I wanted slightly harder light to compliment the soft lighting of the narrative scenes. We used a 45 & 90 degree shutter angle and opted for a responsive, dynamic handheld look for the camera movement. We really diverged from the narrative style, embracing shaky-cam, but using it sparingly to create energy bouncing off the 120fps material.

We had M18s coming through the curtains for a 3/4 back and keyed with a jokerbug inside with a chimera and 4x4 frame of 1/2 grid. I had the camera set at 4300K to create a color contrast between the cool daylight and the warm, amber practicals and curtains. My gaffer, Silvestre Rios spiked me with lens flare with a shuttered down source 4 to ping from just off-camera.

Panavision Hollywood provided us with a Red Epic package with an ultra speed prime set which included 14, 17.5, 21, 29, 35, 50, 75, and 125mm lenses. We shot the video at 5K and I colored the footage with Dillon in Da Vinci Resolve.

You can watch the video here: 

Making of 'Tear'

I recently collaborated on an impromptu short set to Amon Tobin's 'Angels & Deamons' with director Elliott Sellers (http://www.elliottsellers.com). This was a total creative exercise because we literally put the video together in less than 24 hours. Elliott came up with the concept and I quickly suggested we check out one of my favorite locations to see the sunset in LA, in a hidden spot tucked on the westward side of Griffith Park.

Elliott called two of his acting friends Katie Bunn & Dontez Hood, we hand-picked some fabric and an umbrella and we jetted off for the sunset, a skeleton crew of a Elliott, Myself, and a producer friend from New York, Chavvah Stuart (http://chavvahstuart.com/), who was able to tag along and help us while filling her delayed flight's hours with some sunshine.

I think the title of the song is a bit self-explanatory for the concept of the video. We wanted to play with traditional, Western-genre stereotypes in wardrobe, clothing the angel in black and the demon in white.

We used a Panavised Red Epic with Kowa spherical primes shooting at 2K WS to crank the camera up to 300fps. The Kowas are one of my favorite sets of lenses and we made sure to showoff the wonderfully organic lens flares.



If you hit the 20mm just right you create perfect swirling, amber circles in the middle of the frame. They are the sister set of lenses to the spherical Baltars, which render warmer skin tones with cool flares.

I'm going to guess we shot nearly 80% of the video on the 20mm bc we wanted to be as wide as possible for our very wide 3.0 aspect ratio and crop factor shooting at 2K to accomodate for 300fps. When we needed a true wide we would switch to 4K at 120fps.

We weren't able to utilize the sensor's 5K capabilities because the lenses were made in the 50's and can only accomodate for a s35 format. We maintained a very shallow depth of field by keeping the camera close and shooting wide open at 2.3. We used very little filtration only using ND, a polarizer, and a sunset SE grad for our wides.

You can watch the video here! Enjoy!

 https://vimeo.com/62059569

Photojournalism, Tenebrism, and Why I Dislike Rembrandt

"Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually." – Henri Cartier-Bresson

I was recently inspired by a really interesting article on NPR, deciding to explore the massive online vault of the Magnum Agency, quite possibly the most respected collective of photographers in the world. The article explores the moral implications of photographing and incidentally disturbing a person in grief. It's a challenging scenario because the photographer has to overtake split-decision moral obstacles while on the job; that moment could be gone forever in a blink of an eye and it's your job to capture that moment. I find it amazing that these photographers were able to create, striking and more often than not, ironically beautiful tableaus, while being overwhelmed in their environment. 

I thumbed through thousands and thousands of photos from every Magnum photographer that ever was, looking for inspirational material that I've never seen before. I chose these photos for different reasons. Some are picked because of their painterly aesthetic and fine detail to the framing, light, and exposure. Many of these were picked because of their pronounced use of chiaroscuro. I've always enjoyed darker and moodier artwork so I may be a little bias when it comes to tenebrism ... 

And, I'm not talking about Rembrandt-moody. Murky is a possibly the most fitting description of his monochromatic works ... "uninteresting" also comes to mind ...  His placement of his key is always displeasing, The Nightwatch is boring, and his work rarely has naturalistic lighting. Can you tell I'm not a fan? Overrated ... 

Anyways, the end resultant of these efforts is a collection of photographs that have inspired me because of their visual aesthetic. I hope these inspire you too.

Here is the NPR Article which I highly recommend reading before you view these photos. It'll make a significant difference in how you view these. (http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2013/01/28/169536213/what-it-feels-like-to-be-photographed-in-a-moment-of-grief?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130128as)