Last week I got a new Nikon D300 w/ Nikon 18-135mm lens (3.5-5.6). I haven’t had much time to play around with it besides shooting some reference things on Team Epic and shooting the crew on my lunch breaks. I have the next couple of days off from Epic and plan to test some things out.

I was messing around with some rushes from the Brietling corporate video from the other day. This was shot in the underground parking garage at the Grand Hotel in Toronto with a Bentley Continental GT that they lent to us for a couple of hours.

Shot with an HVX200 at 60 FPS with some speed effects in post.

So I begin shooting Team Epic tomorrow. The rest of prep was a little crazy and some things are less than ideal. Nevertheless I’m looking forward to the shoot.

I have yet to confirm with the PM whether I’ll be allowed to post any material about the shoot. I have a feeling probably not, so details on some of my setups might have to wait until the episode airs which should be in May.

I met with the Team Epic production crew last week and began getting up to speed on the project. This is the third episode of the web-series and up until this point they’ve used the same DP for the first 3 episodes. Most of the crew involved have been on the show since day 1 so I definitely feel like the new kid in the class coming in half way through the semester.

The director is Adrian Munroe who directed Episode #3 and Ryan Knight (who I shot a short for in Jan) directed Episodes #1 and #2. I’ve worked with a handful of some of the other crew before so it’s not totally new territory. My gaffer is Chad Roberts, who is a new collaborator and Key Grip is Grant Wood, who I’ve worked with before. Both guys I have a lot of confidence in.

Adrian had the entire episode storyboarded when I came on-board and I’ve been reviewing his notes and drawings and making any comments as they come along. Right now I’ve been scouting locations, looking at photographs, comic book references and the previous episodes in order to figure out how I want certain scenes to look. I’ve also been trying to act as a sponge to what all the other departments are doing and have been doing on previous episodes. Tuesday I’m meeting with all the department heads - art, post, FX to discuss any concerns and ask questions. We go to camera in just over a week so there is not a lot of time.

The show shoots on an HVX200 with no 35mm adapter which I’m happy about. I’ve been testing both the Century 0.6x Wide lens and the Century Fisheye for select shots both for practicality of locations and to offer a unique perspective on certain shots. Things have been composed for 2.35:1 in previous episodes which is a framing I haven’t worked with for a long time - I think it’ll work graphically well with the superhero/comic content. We also have a few scenes with multiple characters which the wide frame will help with. Lens filtration will probably be minimal.

The show features quite a handful of special FX shots - plates, CGI, etc which I haven’t done a lot of and am looking forward to hearing about the workflow from the FX department.

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While all of this is going on I’m shooting a corporate/commercial this upcoming Friday for Brietling Canada. Brietling makes luxury watches and the intention of the video is to showcase some information about the company and integrate some “lifestyle” shots of various people in their day to day environment.

I’ve just been hired on to shoot Episode 4 for the web series “Team Epic” (www.teamepic.tv). It’s about a team of Canadian superheroes who battle evil the Canadian way.

I will post updates as they happen.