I had the pleasure of working again with one of my favorite directors on this corporate promo project. MD Neely directed and I shot this spot for Atlas Safe Rooms. The commercial is a hybrid mix of a survivor story along with a product overview/informational approach. Defacto did the sound & mix. Watch below.

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Last fall I had the opportunity to work with talented Director Jesse Rosten, on a documentary-style commercial campaign for Sol beer. We shot on location in gritty Mexico City, seeking to show the character, history, and pride of authentic Mexico. Watch the finished commercial below.

Agency – CKSK
Director – Jesse Rosten
DoP – Matt Jeppsen
Music – StellarSound

For this spot, Jesse wanted images with organic flares and light leaks. So we utilized custom-made lexan “light blocks” to manipulate light flares and create natural image effects in-camera. These images needed to be authentic, so we shot it almost entirely handheld, keeping the crew small and nimble. We shot with DSLRs and a lightweight C300 camera package so we could capture stunning images while maintaining a low profile.

While we were on-location, Mexico won the Olympic Football final. By moving quickly to the center of the city and diving right into the mobbed streets, we were able to capture amazing images of the ensuing celebration. Here are a few behind the scenes snapshots.

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Recently, I had the opportunity to shoot Steadicam footage for Tim McGraw’s “One Of Those Nights” music video, as well as the accompanying Behind The Scenes produced by Anthem Pictures. Watch below.

Tim McGraw “One Of Those Nights” music video:

Behind The Scenes of “One Of Those Nights”:

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We painstakingly worked through props, costumes, and art direction. Production of the video took three full days with an awesome crew. And yes, the set walls are constructed of real books (roughly 10,000 of them). And yes, plenty of real fire. This project was incredibly challenging, and I’m very proud of what we accomplished. Watch below.

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The film includes some incredibly complex dolly blocking, and a beautiful handheld sequence designed by Kendal that dances through a small space in concert with our lead character. I’m really proud of the way we shot this short, and hope to see the finished product soon. You can watch a selected scene below, and here’s a writeup on the film that includes a plot synopsis. I’ve also written extensively about my experiences as a First AC with the RED One camera on this shoot.

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My good friends over at Anthem Pictures brought me in to cover a live event last fall for country rocker Brantley Gilbert. I was director of photography on this live cut of Brantley’s “Country Must Be Country Wide” for a rowdy hometown crowd at the historic Georgia Theatre. It was produced by Kenny Jackson, and Adam Taylor at Anthem did the edit and post-production. Watch below.

This live event was shot entirely on Sony FS100 cameras with the stock 18-200mm lens, at between 6db-12dB of gain. The opening b-roll shots at 0:08-0:10 were shot at 36dB of gain, just to get some exposure in an insanely dark hallway. For the remainder of the concert, we had our cameras gained to 12dB of gain, to compensate for the slow (dark) stock lens…which was a f/6.3 stop on the long end at 200mm. We would have preferred to shoot on a zoom lens better suited for dark interiors, but this was shortly after the FS100 camera had first shipped, and there simply weren’t any other realistic options for a long zoom in our budget range.

We had three shooters…two on sticks, and myself on a handheld rig. We knew that the FS100 60p overcrank feature was clean and very pretty, so we went into this shoot planning on using slow-motion to accentuate certain shots. A lot of the slow-motion shots were captured in rehearsal, and also as b-roll throughout the concert.

There are a few more lens options nowadays, from PL mount options for the FS100 that would have allowed the use of lightweight Optimo DP zooms, to electronic Canon lens mounts that would have allowed the use of familiar Canon L-Series zooms like the 24-70mm and the 70-200mm IS. Both would have been better quality options than the stock lens, and both would have allowed us to shoot at a much brighter f-stop.

One of the major annoyances of the stock Sony lens is that the servo focus is not repeatable, and it seems to drift when you move the focus ring any amount. So you can position your hand on the lens, rack the focus, and when you return your hand to the exact same spot, it never quite focuses back to where you started. So you have to essentially focus soley by eye, “feeling” out focus as you go. It’s frustrating to shoot this way, and of course this means that you can’t mount a follow focus on the lens (what’s the point). Besides that annoyance, and a few handling and layout annoyances, the camera produces beautiful images. And there is no way I would have dared to shoot at 12dB of gain on any other camera in this class…the FS100 sensor is surprisingly bright and clean at high gain levels.

Here’s a few behind the scenes pictures of camera prep and my handheld rig for this shoot.

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