Shot on RED One, Canon C300, Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 7D, Panasonic Varicam, Panasonic HVX-200, Sony EX-1.

Music: “Maps” by The Fray

So I just got a new app called Shot Designer from Hollywood Camera Work. It’s kind of, you know, amazing. Overhead schematics are the universal tried-and-true way of planning out your shots and blocking for a scene. Many times it’s a scribbly mess of chicken scratch on a piece of paper in a quick meeting at the end of a shoot day for the next day’s work or first thing in the morning, if you’re really tired. But when time is available, planning shots in advance is obviously the way to go. I’ve used the traditional pen-on-paper approach most of the time, but that can become a mess and a waste of paper. Other times, I’ve used Illustrator or SketchUp to plan out shots, but that’s always been a painstaking process as well. It looks great, but it usually takes way longer to do than is worth it and the pen-on-paper approach takes on a whole new attractiveness. Wouldn’t it be great to have something WAY easier, fast, and fun to use?

Enter Shot Designer. It’s an app that is clearly designed for touch devices and is available for the iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire (&HD), Mac and PC. I was introduced to it by the creator himself, Per Holmes. I watched the tutorials first and was blown away at the speed and ease of creating a clear, effective, dynamic, and beautiful shot plan. I especially love how smooth the interface is and how pretty the diagrams end up. You can even animate the movements of characters and the camera to illustrate clearly and without confusion what crazy ideas you have in your head. Try doing that on paper! Another great thing about this app is that it takes no time at all to draw up a move so you can show someone “live” if you need to. The app even creates a shot list on the fly.

All these words I’m writing is a futile attempt to share how awesome and powerful this app is. You really should watch the intro and tutorial videos on the website to see how amazing and crazy easy-to-use this app is. And then download it. I don’t own an iPad (inconceivable, I know) so I used it on my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. Based on the tutorials, it looks significantly more fun and easy to use on an iPad, but was still super easy to use on the Mac. It was easy to use on the iPhone as well, but the small screen makes it a little harder to work with. I would think that an iPad would be the best method of working with this app.

The app is FREE, too! You can work on one scene at a time with the free version but you can upgrade to the Pro Upgrade for $19.99 which adds the ability to work on multiple scenes, export PDF and Excel files, save multiple versions of shots for options, work on a Mac/PC version, and more.

There are so many features in this app, it’s incredible and ridiculous. It even has the ability to incorporate stills from your camera to work as storyboards and attach them to cameras to demonstrate even more clearly what the shots will look like. On top of that, it even comes with a director’s viewfinder feature.

It goes on. Go check it out!

*images “courtesy of” the Hollywood Camera Work website

Promo spot for Utah State University’s Healthy Relationships program.

www.healthyrelationshipsutah.org

Produced by Telekinesis Entertainment

Director: Alan Seawright

Original Format/Camera: HD 24p/Canon C300

See camera and lighting setups in a previous blog post:
Litepanels Sola ENG™ Flight Kit Review

Last week I was hired to shoot some testimonials for an infomercial. We shot 13 people at a couple of beautiful homes over two days. We shot on the Red Scarlet with Zeiss high-speed primes (f/1.4). I had plenty of light in the lighting package but ended up using hardly anything for these setups. I’m still baffled by what we got and how we got it. The shots were gorgeous and high key; but because of the native 800ISO of the Scarlet, the high speed of the glass, the desire to have soft backgrounds, and the lack of ND filters, I needed to use so little light that it was almost disturbing.

The houses we shot in had these wonderful huge windows that were thankfully equipped with powered shades that cut the light down a lot. We ended up closing all the shades and using a single tube of a 4×4 KinoFlo through a 4×4 frame of 250 diffusion for key. Then for fill, we bounced a 4×4 Kino into the ceiling or wall.  For a hair light, we had a 300W fresnel with full CTB and one to two double scrims (depending on the subjects hair color) to knock the power down even more. That’s it!

I swear, it looked like we had struck the lights to break for lunch, but it was our lighting setup! The director walked in and thought that we weren’t lit or that someone had turned off the lights. I’m not exaggerating. It looked WAY TOO DARK to shoot ANYTHING. But on camera, it looked fantastic. Here are some shots of the setups:

One tube of a Kino through a 4×4 frame of 250 diffusion. What?!

Essentially the same setup but I did have the help of a half-open window for key.
Also, there is a 1K spotted on the flowers and vase in the background from outside to liven it up a bit.

Here are a couple of BTS shots of some recent ones. Sorry, I don’t have any frame grabs from these to show.

I’m mean, huh? Well, to my defense—if that’s possible—I wasn’t lounging around the whole time. I was talking to a friend of mine who had called and the only place to sit anywhere in sight was this hammock. Seriously!

Below are some photos from the setups and screen grabs as well. We shot on two Canon 5D Mark IIs and the usual 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses. For lighting, we had 3 Arri HMI fresnels plus 1 4×4 KinoFlo with 5600K tubes.

I had to trade one discomfort for another, though. If you haven’t gathered this about me already, I’m not the outdoor/woodsy guy. Camping? Hunting? No. But on this trip, I got to be involved with both. I can’t say it necessarily grew on me, but it became tolerable. LOL Most of my fears about moose hunting and being eaten or mauled by bears melted away after a day. Sticking close to the guys with the riffles helped.

Funniest story of the trip:

So last time, we stuffed the furnace with wood so as to last longer in the night. It was cold! Towards the end of the trip, Josh and I stayed in a cabin that had nothing in it but beds and a furnace. Remembering what we did last time, and not wanting to freeze at night, I stuffed it with firewood like I had seen before. What I hadn’t taken into account was that it was more than 60 degrees warmer than the last time I was out there, and we were in a cabin and not a tent. You know that saying, “hotter than the blazes of hell?” Well, that’s what it felt like as I tried to go to sleep for two or three hours. It was the most miserable thing ever. I tried opening the window by my bed a bit, but the mosquitos started coming in. So I left it open just a crack, fanning the cold air into my face. Somehow, Josh was able to sleep through all this. Finally after a few hours, I realized I could close the vent on the front of the furnace to choke the fire. Yeah, I wish I had remembered that could be done a lot earlier. After a while, the heat became tolerable and I fell asleep. Never again.

Here are some random pictures from the trip:

Music video for Nik Day’s “Slow Down”

www.nikday.com

Produced by The Corner Media
www.meetusatthecorner.com

Director: Tucker T. Dansie
Original Format/Camera: HD 24p/Canon 5D MkII

Looking for the ideal portable lighting kit? The Litepanels Sola ENG Flight Kit may be it.

I’ve had the opportunity over the last few weeks to use the Litepanels Sola ENG Flight Kit on a few different projects: a series of interviews, a documentary in Alaska, a commercial spot, and a music video. These little lights were  designed as on-board camera lights, but this kit attempts to make them a little more than that. As such, I took them on a few shoots and used them as “conventional” lights, so keep that in mind as I review this kit.

First, a little bit of an introduction. The Sola ENG Flight Kit consists of three very compact and sturdily-made 3” LED fresnel units. They are daylight balanced and put out a pretty decent amount of light (equivalent of about 250W Tungsten or 1ooW HMI) for the minuscule 30W of power they require. The fixtures have a well-designed dial on the rear that acts as the power switch and dimmer. It dims smoothly from 0-100% with no apparent color shift. There is another ring around the barrel of the Sola ENG that rotates smoothly to control the flood/spot feature (70º to 10º). The unit also has a relatively quiet cooling fan built in, but more about that a little later.

Each fixture comes with a 2-leaf snap-on barndoor, a compact (Nano) stand, an AC power adaptor, a D-tap cord for battery-powered applications, a plastic gel kit (full CTO, half CTO, diffusion), a ball-head shoe mount, and a TVMP 5/8” stand mount. The kit also includes a collapsible 8” softbox, and a Pelican 1510 carry-on case with custom foam. If you’ve never used the 1510 case, it rolls around really well and fits perfectly in overhead airplane compartments. It even fit (snugly and with a little bit of force) in the tiny overhead compartment of a CRJ900. The flight attendant even told me to tell other flight attendants that it will, in fact, fit if they tell me otherwise.

There are a lot of pros and some cons about this kit. I love that it’s so compact and relatively light (28 lbs). It’s a far cry and a welcome relief from the Arri Softbank Kit that I’m used to lugging around. The custom foam makes it very secure and super easy to pack up at the end of a shoot. I like that it comes with a gel pack so you don’t have to mess with clumsy sheets of CTO and C-47s. They put out about as much light as I would have hoped for and more light than I was actually expecting. I think it’s a fantastic kit for documentary and news work. Although, it’s not perfect.

I found that it was best and at its most useful when used more for accent lighting. Because of it’s beam pattern and dimmer, it is perfect for creating little hits here and there, edge and rim lights, adding separation, etc. It’s also great for bouncing off walls for a kiss of fill. But as a key light, unless you’re going for a hard key look, it’s just simply too small of a unit to create an attractive key for my taste and not powerful enough to shoot through a silk for soft light.

Regarding the collapsible soft box… A great idea and a clever solution on paper, but a moderate fail in it’s attempt to create a soft source. In theory, increasing the 3” round source of the native fixture to an 8” square should provide a decent amount of softening. But the lightly-frosted diffusion screen that affixes to the front of the box is ultimately ineffective; only expanding the 3” source to maybe 4” at best. A seemingly easy solution would be to include something with more diffusion power like the ones you typically see on a Chimera or Photoflex soft box but the unit probably doesn’t put out enough light to make it an effective key light (for my purposes). With that in mind, I ended up using other fixtures for my key light in all instances that I used these lights. Sometimes a 1×1 Litepanel, another smaller LED battery-powered panel and in one case a “slightly larger” 6×6 silk with a 1K Arri openface ;)

The cooling fan that is built in to the unit is relatively quiet unless you are going to be in a quiet room and in close quarters. I did not find myself in any situations where the fan noise became a problem, but I can see how they can easily become a problem in a situation like an interview in a small to medium sized quiet room where the fixtures are close to the subject, and therefore, the mic. I don’t know what the solution would be to fix this other than not using the lights. I’m assuming the fan needs to be there and in use; so until they can come up with a silent fan, this could be a big problem for some.

Some additional notes on this kit that could use some improvement:

• It would be great to include a minus green in the gel pack. If cost is an issue, ditch the diffusion gel as it doesn’t do much for softening at all.
• The ball head/shoe mount + TVMP stand adapter combo is a bit wonky. If you don’t tighten everything just right, the light can slip off the shoe mount adapter. The ball head is a decent solution for directing the unit, but with all the different knobs and screws, the whole system becomes a bit “trinkety.” Fumbling with light is the last thing I want to do in a rush.
• A 1×1 Litepanel + 2 Sola ENG kit would be the most ideal for my uses. I would easily trade one of the Solas for a 1×1 panel in a snap. If they could figure out how to pack this assortment of units into the 1510 case, it would easily be a kit I would be interested in buying and I would use it constantly.
• Somehow improve the softbox to not fall off the unit. It merely (and barely) hugs the fixture front rather than clipping on, or otherwise, securely attaching to the unit.

So, in short: The Sola ENG is a great little light, the Flight Kit is a great kit, but not perfectly suited for my particular needs but with some “minor” changes mentioned above, I think it could be a perfect news/documentary kit. Litepanels has a great product line and I love using them. Special thanks and shout-out to Alan Ipakchian of Litepanels, Inc. for allowing me to test out the kit.

Here are some shots from the set(s) with indications of where and how I used the Sola ENG lights:

For this establishing wide shot, there are a Sola units (red and yellow) behind the square pillar and wall cross lighting the extras. Another Sola is placed directly behind the main actors, fairly low, aiming right at camera to add some highlight on the floor. *Note: All the Sola units were left uncorrected on this shoot (shot at Tungsten) for the blue color.

One of the Solas backlighting the extras. Here you can see the 6×6 silk frame we used for they key light (1K).

Here is an overhead of the panning three-shot setup. One Sola (red) is backlighting the extras. Another (blue) is backlighting the female talent and [side-lighting] the waiter. The third (green) is adding a blue splash to the otherwise plain wall behind the waiter.

Virtually the same setup for the female’s coverage as the wide establishing shot with the exception of the edge light on her right side. I used the unit that was on the floor for the wide shot as her edge light here. 6×6 key with a kiss of bounced fill.

Blue splash on the wall (red). Backlight for male talent (green). China ball on the floor for the back wall, 6×6 key and a little bounced fill.

Here is a shot of the setup for the male talent’s coverage.

Sola (green) adding a little glow behind the chair for more interest. Edge light (red) from the same general position as the other unit (see below). 650w openface through a 4×4 silk for key light. Remaining Sola bounced into the wall behind the guy’s head for a bit of fill.

Here is the setup of the Sola units used for the wall glow and the edge light mentioned above. Here you can see the full CTO gels used to correct the daylight-balanced units.

A shot of the setup for the female’s coverage (minus the edge light and fill light we hadn’t placed yet).

Male coverage, almost same as the female’s. Edge light is placed low on the ground hidden behind the arm of the sofa (see next photo). This shot starts out as a medium shot and pushes in to this framing.

This is the unit that was hidden behind the arm of the sofa.

These two shots are from one setup of a series of interviews I shot for a web campaign.

Sola 1 (red) is bouncing off the wall to create a subtle and soft “backlight”/rear fill(?). Sola 2 (blue) is hidden behind the wall and lighting the lamp, table, and wall to the right. The last Sola (yellow) is adding some interest in the background. We used a 1×1 Litepanel as key light.

Another interview from the series. Mostly window light. The Sola (red) behind her is adding a really subtle hair light and there is another unit that I forgot to indicate on the left that is adding some light to the bottom half of the book shelf.

This is an interview we did in Alaska on a doc shoot. We toted the light kit everywhere for over a week and only ended up using them for this setup which we did outside at night. Our key was an off-brand, battery-operated LED panel (green). I had a Sola (red) highlighting some animal traps hanging on the wall. A second Sola provided some fill.

Just the accent light on the traps.

Accent light plus key light.

Accent light, key light and fill.

ADDENDUM:

Sorry there are no pictures from the music video shoot. I guess they didn’t make it off my iPhone 4 when I switched to the iPhone 5. I’m pretty sure I took pictures of setups and the Sola units in use. Oh well, you get the picture, right? Here’s the only one that survived… somehow:

One Sola is hitting the stairs from the left, another is hitting the back of the recliner chair and the third is on the floor behind the player’s hands. And if your brain is hurting to know, there is a Joker 400 behind the piano with a Chimera softbox as key; another Joker 400 is at the top of the stairs aimed down the stair well; a 4′ 4-bank Kino Flo on the ground behind the sofa uplighting the fireplace; a non-Litepanels brand 1×1 light panel behind the recliner chair illuminating the back wall; another 4′ 4-bank Kino Flo behind the camera for fill; and another non-Litepanels brand panel off camera left for the talent’s back light.

A comedy on the “joys” of motherhood and the crab-colored lenses that tint those precious “little” years. I thought it would be fun to direct for a change while mentoring a student filmmaker. Thanks to my wonderful wife for the beautiful script! :)

Promotional piece for Charity Vision.

We shot this on two Canon 5D Mark II cameras with the following Canon lenses in our bags: 70-200mm, 16-24mm, 24-70mm and 100mm Macro. Shot mostly handheld with the occasional use of a MicroDolly.

Director: Greg Whiteley

Below is a longer, more story-driven version called, “Bill and Audrey.”