Charles Papert
December 18th, 2010, 05:00 PM
After preaching against shooting wide open with DSLR because of the incessant focus hunting that inevitably occurs, I have finally shot a project that embraced that look! Ah, how the might hath fallen.
Crystal Bowersox--"Farmer's Daughter" on Vimeo
Also viewable on my site (http://web.me.com/chupap/Charles_Papert,_Director_of_Photography/DPReelmusicfarmersdaughter.html)
Meiert Avis of Pusher Media, for whom I have shot six or seven videos this year, won the debut video of American Idol runner-up Crystal Bowersox; he developed a thoughtful, simple treatment and we discussed how to best present it. Since I introduced him to the 1DMKIV he has been an ardent fan. When we started talking about the image of a long strand of yarn unraveling from a sweater, I started to picture stretching it from below the lens to the subject and racking down the length of the yarn with minimal depth of field. Also our exterior location, under the famous 6th St. bridge in downtown LA (where last year I worked with Vincent Laforet on the first 1D video, "Nocturne"), would also benefit from the shallow treatment as it had a lot of construction junk that distracted the eye from the subjects. Largely though, the song is about isolation and distance and this visual approach fit the theme.
I brought in a second camera, a 5D, manned by Gary Hatfield who is now the DP on Community. Gary's nickname is "The Lone Wolf", he loves to go off unsupervised and grab interesting shots. I've used him for this on a number of projects over the years. He has a selection of crazy old lenses for his 5D including some 70's era Sears brand...!
We shot the first half of the day under the bridge; rarely going under a 100mm Zeiss ZE on my 1D (mostly on Steadicam operated by Cedric Martin) and Gary even longer with doublers. I kept the stops down under 2.8, often at f2. My poor AC Markus Mentzer was putting up a brave face trying to hold focus on moving subjects and Steadicam with that little depth of field but he did as well as could be expected.
Later we moved to a room in the Barclay Hotel, an old and largely decrepit residence hotel downtown that is often used for filming. We shot Crystal performing the song on guitar in a few setups in the room. Again, long lenses and wide open stops made for focus challenges galore. Markus groaned when he watched the final video...as for me, I'm still not a fan of searching focus when it's not intentional but it was an interesting exercise.
Lighting on the exterior was a 1200 Par through diffusion for the static shots and a Joker 400 for walking shots to separate the faces and lend a bit of presence. I had thought we were going to crush everything down a bit which would have returned the faces to normal and darkened the environs, but this didn't happen (I wasn't involved in the color correction). For the interior I gave the dingy environs a warm, naturalistic look for the shot with the little boy running into Crystal's arms, which we shot first, but which appears at the end of the video; we then went straight into performance mode without any lighting changes as the director liked the look. I might have softened the key a little for the closeups but with the Steadicam, any given take could range from wide shot to closeup so I had to go with it. I had a 4x4 Kino outside the window to the left as a key, a 650 inside the bathroom to the right, two Dedos above the bed (one pointing down at the pillows, the other as a backlight on Crystal), a Source 4 on the headboard of the bed and another bounced off the carpet in front of her as fill--sometimes I added a piece of showcard if I needed more punch. As we moved throughout the room for other setups I keyed with a 4x4 bounceboard with Source 4 punched into it.
The song seems to be gaining traction so hopefully this video will get some good exposure. It's a strong and emotional piece, certainly not your average pop song.
Crystal Bowersox--"Farmer's Daughter" on Vimeo
Also viewable on my site (http://web.me.com/chupap/Charles_Papert,_Director_of_Photography/DPReelmusicfarmersdaughter.html)
Meiert Avis of Pusher Media, for whom I have shot six or seven videos this year, won the debut video of American Idol runner-up Crystal Bowersox; he developed a thoughtful, simple treatment and we discussed how to best present it. Since I introduced him to the 1DMKIV he has been an ardent fan. When we started talking about the image of a long strand of yarn unraveling from a sweater, I started to picture stretching it from below the lens to the subject and racking down the length of the yarn with minimal depth of field. Also our exterior location, under the famous 6th St. bridge in downtown LA (where last year I worked with Vincent Laforet on the first 1D video, "Nocturne"), would also benefit from the shallow treatment as it had a lot of construction junk that distracted the eye from the subjects. Largely though, the song is about isolation and distance and this visual approach fit the theme.
I brought in a second camera, a 5D, manned by Gary Hatfield who is now the DP on Community. Gary's nickname is "The Lone Wolf", he loves to go off unsupervised and grab interesting shots. I've used him for this on a number of projects over the years. He has a selection of crazy old lenses for his 5D including some 70's era Sears brand...!
We shot the first half of the day under the bridge; rarely going under a 100mm Zeiss ZE on my 1D (mostly on Steadicam operated by Cedric Martin) and Gary even longer with doublers. I kept the stops down under 2.8, often at f2. My poor AC Markus Mentzer was putting up a brave face trying to hold focus on moving subjects and Steadicam with that little depth of field but he did as well as could be expected.
Later we moved to a room in the Barclay Hotel, an old and largely decrepit residence hotel downtown that is often used for filming. We shot Crystal performing the song on guitar in a few setups in the room. Again, long lenses and wide open stops made for focus challenges galore. Markus groaned when he watched the final video...as for me, I'm still not a fan of searching focus when it's not intentional but it was an interesting exercise.
Lighting on the exterior was a 1200 Par through diffusion for the static shots and a Joker 400 for walking shots to separate the faces and lend a bit of presence. I had thought we were going to crush everything down a bit which would have returned the faces to normal and darkened the environs, but this didn't happen (I wasn't involved in the color correction). For the interior I gave the dingy environs a warm, naturalistic look for the shot with the little boy running into Crystal's arms, which we shot first, but which appears at the end of the video; we then went straight into performance mode without any lighting changes as the director liked the look. I might have softened the key a little for the closeups but with the Steadicam, any given take could range from wide shot to closeup so I had to go with it. I had a 4x4 Kino outside the window to the left as a key, a 650 inside the bathroom to the right, two Dedos above the bed (one pointing down at the pillows, the other as a backlight on Crystal), a Source 4 on the headboard of the bed and another bounced off the carpet in front of her as fill--sometimes I added a piece of showcard if I needed more punch. As we moved throughout the room for other setups I keyed with a 4x4 bounceboard with Source 4 punched into it.
The song seems to be gaining traction so hopefully this video will get some good exposure. It's a strong and emotional piece, certainly not your average pop song.