A few pics from the Night Moves shoot. Thanks to Peter for sending. From our location at High Park.

Lining up a shot. From Left to Right - Me behind camera, Director Peter Genoway checking my frame, 1st AC James Hellyer, Key Grip Pete Dreimanis.

Shooting our lovely actress Juana Samper.

Peter and I figuring out our blocking. Camera team and Pete standing by.

I just finished shooting a short film for director Peter Genoway called Night Moves. The film is told entirely without dialogue, visually with sound cues.

We shot RED with Zeiss Superspeeds with the majority of the film being shot on wide lenses - the 18mm and 25mm were favored to render our location with a certain feeling and depth. Lots of mixed color temp play with a great location.

Thanks to lighting/grip team Adam Crosby and Pete Dreimanis who totally hustled and my stellar camera team whom I worked with for the first time - 1st AC James Hellyer and 2nd AC Brendan O’Brien.

Camera package from DJ Woods
Lenses and camera additionals from PS
Lighting/Grip from Whites
Small L/G additionals from barrycheong.com

Not a whole lot of photos…just some image randomness…maybe some more will surface at some point or I’ll post some screen caps once I can get some rushes…

Shot reference from the RED onboard shot w/ my iphone. 1200 HMI coming through the window with a Long 4 lighting the table.

Kitchen scene lighting ref w/ my D300. Key Grip Pete Dreimanis standing in. 1200 coming through the window and practical bulbs over the stove. I ended up taping up a short 4 bulb to a wall, camera side, to fill in the shadows a bit. I love the sheen of the tungsten on the appliances on the right side of the frame.

Camera team w/ our RED package shot on my Instax200 camera. Generally trouble free operation with our RED. We had one boot issue while we were shooting in a hot and steamy washroom but otherwise operated perfectly.

Brendan my 2nd AC ready with the marks…

Adam and Pete setting a Triple net in front of a 1200. Lots of trippl’ing down on this set!

[CLICK ABOVE FOR VIDEO]

Just did a test shoot shoot with the Nikon D90 for the first time, experimenting with it’s HD video mode. I was asked to shoot some stills for my friend Cathy, who works for Mac Cosmetics, in Toronto, for their trend book for the upcoming season. Customers who walk into their store can see examples of the latest makeup trends for the fall/winter period.

I ended up coordinating and overseeing the shoot, so I could shoot some video, while my sister and her boyfriend shot the actual stills.

The D90 shoots 1280×720 video at 24fps but features no manual control of it’s shutter, ISO or aperture (aperture control if using a manual lens). This lack of control is rather frustrating and even more so because there’s no way to even tell what it’s setting itself to. There’s also a fair amount of compression on the image and you can see stair stepping and banding in certain areas and conditions. Regardless, I’m really impressed with the results considering the context of what the camera is. Under the right conditions and with some care, and especially if your target is the web, it could be a viable option for your project.

The video was shot with mainly a Nikon 50mm 1.4 AFS lens as well as a 18-200 3.5-5.6 VR lens. With the 50mm my process was to set the lens to 5.6, aim the camera at the white ceiling, where light from a softbox was leaking a little, hit AE-Lock and then open or close down the iris to control exposure from there. With the zoom I would AE-Lock onto a brightness that allowed me to get good exposure on what I was shooting, as there is no iris ring on that lens. Those shots are also grainier as it’s dialing in a higher ISO to make up for the lack of speed on that lens.

Overall it’s a really exciting time to see this kind of development with cameras - hits and misses - into something as compact as a DSLR and at the price point they’re selling these kinds of cameras for. This shooting style - short documentary/loose narrative - but with high end/high end looking cameras is something I’m becoming increasingly more interested in.

Thanks to Cliff Ramnauth for letting me borrow the camera for the shoot.

Wanted to post a few select screen caps from Inside. These were taken from 1024×576 Pro-Res rushes, cropped to 1.85:1 and a little bit of CC in Photoshop. The Pro-res files were made from 4K 16:9 files at Redcode36.

Thanks to Director Yaz for allowing me to post.

Finished shooting “Inside” for Yaz Rabadi. Didn’t have any time to take any pictures but I have a few pics to post from sound recordist Kirill Belousov. Maybe more will surface at some point.

The schedule was really hectic and each of the 4 days we had A LOT to cover to get our day. I’m glad I was shooting on RED which allowed me to get images I’m happy with considering how ridiculously fast we had to move. Overall I’m really happy with my first experience with the camera.

Some quick tech info - Shot most of the scenes with daylight after reading about the camera noise issues with tungsten. For practicality, I shot 2 scenes with tungsten lights with camera balance at 4200 or 4400 K (can’t remember now) which will be remain warm at the color correct stage. For a few scenes I played a 1/8 or 1/4 Black Pro Mist - which I really liked. I was hoping to get Soft FX but BPM became the only option at the last moment. Lenses were Zeiss Superspeeds and I generally shot them at 2-2.8 @ ISO 320.

Much thanks to my hard working crew - Gaffer Mike Armstrong, Key Grip Adam Crosby, respective Best Boys - Anya Shor and Peter Dreimanis, 1st AC Paul Vilchur and 2nd AC Tess Garneau.

Camera: RED One - 4K 16:9, Aspect: 1.85:1, 2K 16:9 (hi speed work). Camera by Charles Street Video.
Lenses: Zeiss Superspeeds. Lenses by Production Services.
Camera Additionals by Image Gear, Black Collar Films and barrycheong.com

Lighting and Grip by barrycheong.com and Black Collar Films.

Lining up our first shot on our first day. Director Yaz Rabadi to my left, Focus Paul Vilchur (in hat) standing by and Key Grip Adam Crosby (in green) by the dolly.

Taking a quick breather between handheld setups to line up a shot on the ground. Handheld was not fun in the config that I had the camera in. Next time I’ll have to insist on getting additional CF cards instead of shooting to the drives.

Finished shooting a short film for Toronto Theatre group Shadowland and director Luke Langsdale. It was a 5 day shoot comprising of actors in paper mache masks and miniature sets with puppeteers.

The story is based on a series of old biblical tales with a contemporary twist.

I shot on a DVX100. The film will be targeted for DVD and the web. Had a great time hanging out in their shop space in Parkdale, eating lunch outside and enjoying the pending spring weather.

Lighting and Grip by barrycheong.com

Arber, Brad and Anne from Shadowland. Director Luke Langsdale in the centre right and me below.

I finished shooting my second short with Director Mike Heron and Producer Michelle Whiting. This time around we shot on Super8. Mike and Michelle were both very interested in exploring the format when they approached me about shooting it. The story is about a guy who’s depressed about his otherwise boring and loveless life with a bit of a twist at the end.

I shot on Kodak 7219 500T and 7217 200T. The 500T was used for all reality based sequences and 200T for all the fantasy sequences. The idea was to have a less grainy look for one sequence vs the other though testing revealed the grain structure to be fairly similar. Unfortunately I was only able to look at our film tests after the film had been ordered due to scheduling. I had hoped to shoot Super16 for the fantasy sequences for a more dramatic change but budget prohibited the choice.

The film be will be processed at Niagara Custom Labs and transfer by Frame Discreet. Thanks for Justin Lovell at Frame Discreet for providing the Canon 1014 that we used to shoot the film.

Lighting and Grip by barrycheong.com

Lining up a shot. Camera Assist Julia Seidman standing by with a sound blanket so she could…..

Do this. The camera was a little too loud for the sound team so I had to be wrapped with a towel, a jacket and a sound blanket to blimp the camera.

Finished a short for Director Luke Langsdale called Harvey. It’s about a balloon sculptor, Lornicus, who has an imaginary balloon dog friend named Harvey and the conflict that his has with his girlfriend Estelle.

Shot on a Sony F900 mainly using a cine-version Canon 11×4.7 zoom from Sim Video. Lighting & Grip by Affiliated Equipment. Special FX to be completed by Crush Inc.

My 1st AC Julia Seidman and our F900 package. Shot on Toronto Centre Island. Taken with my new Fuji Instax camera!

Me lining up a shot.

Was up in Ottawa shooting a short film for director Glenn McDonald. The story is about a woman, who’s lover, a specialist in the area of dreams, finds himself trapped in the dreamworld and she must kill him in order to set him free.

Shot on the EX-1 camera. A really great camera as far as operation goes - really great feature set and workflow. The peaking function beats the pants off what Panasonic offers on their cameras.

I lit most of the scenes with kino flo’s gelled with Rosco 60 Cyan and Source 4 Leko with gobos for texture. The other locations were fairly run and gun where I only had bounce cards and my Litepanel mini. A Soft FX 1/2 lived on the lens for certain scenes.

Super thanks to Mark Nichols who came up with me from Toronto to help with the lighting and grip and also did sound and a million other things!

Lighting and grip by barrycheong.com

Director Glenn MacDonald and Sherry playing the female lead.

With the EX-1 at a hospital location.

Finished shooting Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat for Director Mike Heron. In the end the production extended the schedule to include a 3rd day which worked out very well.

Lighting was kept simple to accommodate the large number of setups, very small crew and small package. Excluding the first day, most of the lighting was accomplished with existing practical lighting augmented with a long 4′ Kino mainly bulbed with cool white tubes to model the cast better. A mini-plus Litepanel unit was also used for closeups. As much as I would have liked to shoot HD, it was nice working with the faster speed DVX100.

Thanks to the crew for a job well done. Lighting and Grip by barrycheong.com.

Day 1. Flew a tungsten Chimera pancake over the coach. Our only heavier tungten world day. Everything else was mainly Kino.

Day 3. Shooting in an employee lunch area of a Blockbuster. Skirted some of the existing fluorescent practicals to improve contrast and long 4′ with cool whites tubes to key. From L to R - Art director Johnny Nghiem looking confused, Producer Michelle Whiting, 1st AD Kristine Regier and Sound Recordist Daryl Buttineau.

Day 3. An above view of a Home Hardware we were shooting in. A long 4′ (bulbed 2 coolwhites, 2 daylight) aimed in the direction of the checkout that we were shooting against and the cool white practicals provided most of the lighting. Some negative fill was used also to improve contrast when it could.

Day 3. Me wheeling around in our poor man’s dolly. Most of the film was shot handheld so the less than smooth feel still worked.