Jeanie in the Radiator - The shoot + The edit so far

THE SHOOT

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

So the day finally came that we had all been waiting for (well me at least!), The Jeanie in the Radiator Promo shoot!  Catch the full story after the break....




Thankfully it turned out to be a little warmer than anticipated on arrival which made proceedings much more bearable.  Paul Allen the sound recordist was first on the scene, super keen, he was already setting up his gear by the time the rest of the crew had arrived, a great guy and fingers crossed if his audio recordings are any good, which I'm sure they will be! (I pick them up tomorrow!) then I will be looking to work with him again on future projects.

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

Once we had got past the introductions it was important that we established where we were going to shoot the damn thing so I spoke with Paul and my DOP for the day, Alex Dove, and we decided on a great spot on the ground floor which would maximize the acoustic qualities of the space and give us the best angles to shoot the video.

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

Then it was the turn of Alex and his assistant for the day Mike Kennedy to start rigging the lighting setup for the acoustic set.  They used a selection of lights for the main rig including 6 BEBOB battery powered LED lamps which were great as they allowed for the rig to be setup really quickly as no cables needed to be ran along the ceiling fixtures.  A couple of DEDO Lights were added to boost the back lighting.

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

Finally we put the band in place and began setting up cameras ready to roll.  Alex also added the 2 Kino Flo units we had at our disposal to aid in filling the foreground with lovely soft light.

The combination of the lighting rig and the natural light coming in from the windows in the back of shot give the video a great look that I am really happy with.

In terms of the camera setup we mixed things up over the course of each of the 3 takes for each track but as a rule we had Colin on his 5D Mark 2 with a wide lens on tracks in front of the band and then had Ben and Alex off to the sides covering close ups and mid shots.  For each track we also did one run through with Alex on the tracks with a longer lens to give us some lovely close tracking shots.

Because we were running ahead of schedule I decided at the last minute to see if the band had a cover they could perform as a little extra for the video.  It turned out they had and we recorded this just in time for the arrival of the presenter.

After a short break for lunch and a discussion with the band and the presenter on how they wanted the interview to pan out it was back to work on the interview setup.

At this point all props had be delivered by Peter from UPMCR, a great guy who even through in some period extras which really helped to sell the set.  We dressed the set with a couple of feature lights, a tall floor standing lamp with a rather delapadated shade (cheers col!) and 2 rope led lights (£9.99 each from clas olson - Bargain!)  The lighting rig for this was much simpler than the performance with the 2 Kino Flos utilised as soft fill lights and BEBOBS to fill in the gaps.  Additional BEBOBs were used to light pillars in the background to highlight the depth of the location.

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

We shot continuously (well until the 12 minute limit was reached on the DSLR's!) for the interview, the sound was recorded on 2 Z1 cameras with 3 Sony clip mics and a boom mic for additional band member audio.  Anthony was a great presenter and brought a real broadcast quality to proceedings.  Around 30 minutes of interview footage was shoot and that was it! a WRAP!  All the planning and lack of sleep seemed to have paid off!  Thanks all round ensued and then I was off to see The National at Academy 1 (great gig by the way!)

© Chris Lane Photography 2010

THE EDIT (So far so very good)

WOW!

That was my reaction to the footage when I first got it in to the edit,  I was hoping for great things from these cameras but never expected such high quality visuals.  The combination of fantastic lighting, 1080p resolution and the shallow depth of field inherent to these cameras really has me bowled over.  The videos so far have a quality I have rarely seen from HD DSLR videos on the internet up until now, whereas the tendency online seems to be to stick theses cams on shoulder rigs and go  "hand held" ala 24 and Lost the shots from this shoot are the complete opposite, slick tracking shots mixed with rock steady pull focuses aided by a tripod!

Editing the 1080p clips has been pretty straightforward so far, I have been using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 coupled with the Mercury Playback Engine I am able to edit 3 tracks of 1080p relatively smoothly and even use the multi camera feature to speed the editing process along.  I have completed 2 tracks so far and have nearly completed a 3rd.

I have so many great shots to choose from for each track, I cant wait to get the videos online.  Just to whet your appetite here are a couple of stills from "Bipolar"

More to come in the next couple of weeks!