The camera is set up for 4K over cranking (so no lens match math) up to 96 fps, more than enough for most of our needs. The smaller body and configuration will allow me to move the camera faster, closer, lower and with less effort. And with the new SSD drives I won’t have to worry about the drive hanging off, being in the way, or taking a knock and dropping frames. (I also took this opportunity to upgrade our Red to SSD for many of the same reasons.)

I will give a bit of handheld a turn in this, but without the side module and another handle config I fear this will be less than its ideal config for this. As we’re just capturing little scenes I’ll most likely just use the top handle, as balanced as I can manage, for most of this work. I’d also like to see the Nikon mount come to fruition so I can take advantage of my Nikon G series lenses. These fast, good looking primes could make a super lightweight, full-frame setup. And I could get this whole rig in a 1650 case to make transport easy.

So this brings me to the other part of the equation, matching up the pulled stills from the Epic with the digital captures from my Nikon D3x. Red swears by the application of the Epic for still photos (of course they do, it’s their job). But they have focused on its editorial use which requires a smaller capture than what my 24.5 megapixel D3x is capable of. I am more interested in how big these can blow up to for commercial and fine art application. Bigger often equals more money, especially for fine art. We’re already looking at switching our personal fine art work over to medium format so we can get larger print sizes from it. I know Red trotted out Peter Lik and his stitched landscapes, but — believe it or not — I usually want to capture our images in one frame as often as possible. This part of my test will be easy as I’ll pull a frame and hand it over to Stacey. I’ll get the feedback soon enough on how she’s able to push the pixels around.

My assumption going in are that for some instances the epic will be fine for both still and motion like in our portrait of Rachel Brice for Coilhouse 06 — perhaps also in small commercial applications. But even so, I may still favor the compact, lightweight, higher res, uncompressed RAW of my D3x. Especially as I’ve grown more fond of Lightroom’s RAW processing speed and ability, even on my older laptop. I’ve taken to doing a good push on the shaping and exposure control there in RAW before dumping it in Photoshop for cleanup and finishing.

Keep an eye on Tumblr for the fruits of our adventures with Charmaine and the Epic.

Stacey has two more of her set/costume pieces in there as well. The baby head bench she created for the continuation of our creepy kids series (and re-imagineered for Shadows of the Damned). And the wings from the Gretchen Menn music video (directed by Eric Shamlin) that I shot. That video also is playing found alongside the wings.

The show has a number of other artists that are participating. The opening event was fun and it was great to see a number of them there, along with some of our new artist friends.

John came into the studio ready with drawn large hands, eyeballs (or replacements of) and a shirt in his artwork style. It scaled perfectly with the capturing of him drawing his own character on his face. To achieve a connection with the camera we shot through a one-way mirror allowing John to look directly down the lens. As it was a head an shoulders lock off, we could use a couple of 4×4 kinos to get a nice, soft lighting ratio and not over heat him. A little lighting from the spacelites on the cyc finished him off for illumination. I shot it on our Red One, overcranked 30fps for 24fps to help smooth out some of the actions. In post I then sped it up to cut the time down. As I reviewed the clip, I highlighted different sections to drop to normal speed to let his character and style come through. Thanks again to Tartufi for providing the perfect bit of music to compliment his rhythm.

The still portrait was a bit more conventional in lighting, primarily white to match his canvases. We have a couple of versions (mediums, wides, etc.) but chose a close up for the show to match up with the motion portrait. The finishing touches involved a few elements drawn by John, including his hair and mouth and a few of his customary hash marks.

Next up: Monsters!!!

The actual production took place over a little more than half a year. To pull this one off, we would build a set in our (then empty) warehouse for two weeks, shoot for a day, and plan the next iteration. There was often a huge gap — one to two months – between shoot days, but the cast and crew pulled it off without a hitch.

Post production ended up being our Achilles’s heel. In that we had thought we had lined up a creative agency to take care of it, but alas it didn’t materialize. I then spent the better part of the last two years looking for someone else to take it on. Unfortunately, the skills needed for this section, both illustration and effects composition, proved to be devil in the details as there was no one-stop-shopping for this combination.

Finally, I gave up (or gave in rather). I knew at the beginning of this summer that if I wanted to hit the next festival season I had to make a strong push to finish the film. First I went through and did the final edit on the film, really tightened up the bits and cut out the chaff. Next we revised the perhaps rather lofty ideas we had for the death scene effects to something more manageable. Then I dusted off my meager After Effects skills and composited the piece together. Now it was at a point where I could use it as leverage to attract the talent to help us finish off the film.

I was very fortunate to find myself surrounded with the people that I needed to finish the film at this point. Phil Perkins was working on a show shooting in our studio (what was the warehouse) and I mentioned the project to him. I was looking for a recommendation, but after seeing the film, Phil said he was happy to help us see it through (YES!). I knew that a good score would help really sell the bits, and I had pinged Vivek Maddala who had done a beautiful score for our film Desert Into Fire. Our timing wasn’t synching up however, until we coincidentally found ourselves in NYC in June and met up for a lovely brunch. Besides the wonderful coffee-rubbed hanger steak, we had a great conversation where I believe some of my passion for the film rubbed off on him. Having worked with Elmer Bernstein (Airplane) and been through the composer lab at Sundance, I knew that Vivek would get the film and be able to have the right approach to the humor.

The third element missing was the background visuals for the death scenes. Originally we had designs on shooting these as photo elements and then construct the environments, but it proved to difficult to amass all the items needed. In the meantime, we had expanded our range of friends to include a number of artists and it was in these that we found the perfect match. Josh Ellingson‘s illustration style was spot on to provide the right look and feel for the visual reference we were making (a viewmaster). He just nailed it as well and the motion footage originally intended for a larger story fit these reduced scenes like a glove.

So here we are at the end of the summer and all the elements fell into place (well, at least enough to push out a submission version that is essentially ‘done’). I’ve got a few submissions out now and will continue to plot a path for how it roll itself out to the public. The social media aspect of films has changed a bunch since we started working on it. We have a website, blog, FB, twitter, etc., but they are somewhat legacy at this point and need refreshing/retooling to become more relevant to today’s arena. But hopefully they will give some good traction points for the film as it plays in different areas and takes on new life. A film’s interaction with its developing audience is always an interesting thing to watch and cultivate.

So after a ton of effort focused by a mixture of passion and determination we have the little short film that was too big for it’s britches. A bajillion locations and sets; perfectly tuned name talent; star-league crew helping to pull things together and collaborate; and a minute of effects that almost brought the whole show down. But now the hard pat is behind us and the fun part ahead. As there is no major market for short films, and no real hope of ‘making our money back’ on this, we have nothing to do but enjoy the successes that come. Huzzah!

I draw another similarity to Crewdson: we both had parents who were psychoanalysts. In his scenes I enjoy how he displays the complex bundle of emotions that surround us. For me, this developed into a life-long lesson in observing and listening to people to understand both what they were saying (and not saying) and what is the inner conversation, the motivation behind their actions. I find it is this is where their true personality resides (and comes out in the on-set chit chat), and my better work comes from manifesting these bits of character on their face and body.

I think this interaction is also apparent in our on-going portrait series. At very beginning of our portrait process we research the subject to find out what others know of them. If we’re lucky, they have the time to speak with us personally. This really opens up the person and can reveal a lot of inner truths, which is where the connection begins for me in making a great portrait. There should be a story involved in every picture, and in portraits that story is usually what the subject is made of.

Most recently we’ve been shooting portraits with a lot of fine artists (like illustrator Josh Ellingson, monster creator Alex Pardee, mixed-media artist Scott Wilson). Admittedly, this is a bit easier with artists as they tend to pour themselves into their work and it’s easier to interpret. We also find they are open to creative work and are less reserved about committing to a scene as they understand putting themselves into a project. But this is the fun part in every portrait, discovering that something inside that defines the person and having that come out for the camera.

I went with an open beauty dish (no grid) for the key, set fairly high ranging from 10 to 30 degrees off axis. And then I blasted the back of the gal’s heads with a 30 degree gridded strobe. This all was set against a thunder grey seamless to take down the background and contrast the girls. They picked out the shots that they felt did the job for them, and I cleaned and prepped them.

I tried to go through as well and find a couple of more interesting shots to play with. One I ended up killing off just about everything leaving a glowing, floating head. It helps that it was Alexis from Look whom I’ve worked with before and is just awesome! And using some deep shadows and darkness I shaped another shot to let the other gal Tory really come through. In both of these I was pushing their face and highlights to be at the top of the histogram and find that wonderful fall off.

So I think this qualifies as a good lighting exploration as I’m happy with how the light ended up caressing their faces. And I like how I was able to push the shadows down in a convincing enough manner. It’s always nice to have a project also be a lesson.

Laura Meyers was traveling through town and her schedule would work with our availability. We have another project (not yet finished posting) that we enjoyed working with her, and she seemed to encompass the young persona that we were after. Plus she has zero level of discomfort being exposed and we felt that was important for the premise of this series to find it’s honesty.

As always with us, color combinations are quite important. Stacey went shopping for wardrobe at ACT and came up with a yellow-ocher polyester waitress jumper that seemed perfect. To make that pop, she mixed a deep cyan color for the walls, and then distressed them for a grimy look. We saw the room now developing into more of a Day Hotel feel — stark, mismatched, dirty. We scrounged up a table, small bed, a suitcase full of odd clothes and some odds ‘n’ ends to flesh it out.

The colors also helped to pick the color of her eye shadow and lips to help them pop. Daryn did a great job of applying a great make up job and then smearing it to hell and back. But we fell down on the wardrobe a bit as we were after a sheer bra. We wanted to show that she felt good about her own body, even as it was shroud in a gunny sack, and it would expose her a bit more. Unfortunately, communication and time worked against us, but a luck would have it, Laura had a nice looking red bra that would accomplish the same task, and the color would pop out as the third compliment.

For lighting, I had prepped a 12x silk to shoot through with a magnum reflector so that it could both come in through the window and wrap the key around her face for a very beautiful key. I split the 12x so half was behind the set and half was in front. As for color temp, I wanted to augment the cyan and yellow with some real splash. Stacey and I had talked about a light behind her to giver her a back rim. We settled on a sconce as it both lends an awkward permanency to the room cementing our setting and could be place on the wall behind her and not directly behind her head. I used a full straw gel on the sconce-motivated light to give it real splash. I put a full CTB on the magnum to increase the color separation between the two and picked a color temp on the camera of 5000K. Post was mostly push and pull of light, clean up some extra bits in the corners and bob’s your uncle.

We were quite pleased with the results of the shoot, and look forward to exploring more in this series. I can’t say that they will all have this color, but for sure they will have the rawness of the resulting image.

Here are some more of the Oakland A’s spots from this year that are out there.

And the behind the scenes reel.

They run the review session twice a year, once in the summer and again in October. For this session coming up, they are focusing on the integration of still and motion work, and called to ask if I we could provide a few clips to help illustrate their case. This should be an interesting summit and experience. You can see their page for the motion elements featuring Purebred and a few others on their site.

Another direction for us involves a darker, personal, revealing, slightly erotic (but not pornographic) moment that begins to get a little dangerous. And by dangerous we it explores a space that is alone and private and how that might manifest. These moments are meant to be voyeuristic, exposed, explicit, illicit at times, carry a narrative but leave a good amount of room for participation in the discussion. Depending upon the viewer, there will be varying degrees of being uncomfortable, and that will be the undercurrent to the series. Some of this has appeared in elements of our photos — The Day We Stopped, My Head Is Where My Heart Is, Up To No Good — and other works. The settings will be rather simple, and more suggest a space than be 100% literal, at times it may even bleed into the surreal. The first one is on the calendar for the end of the month. I’ll start putting them up here, and what’s appropriate on fb, g+, our port … the usual places.