So I’ve had a few people ‘asking’ for me to be a bit more informative with some of my posts as I generally post pictures of the jobs I’m on and don’t really explain a huge amount about what they are, how we’ve done it etc so I thought I would this time. Basically the two pictures are from the music promo I was on today for a DJ Shadow track called ‘Scale It Back’ which we shot on Arri Alexa. The idea by the video was to shoot it in one take but I cannot explain why as when the video is released it’ll become clear to those who watch it what it’s about plus telling you about it ruins it surely? Anyway as I mentioned previously we shot it on an Arri Alexa at ProRes 4444 at 35fps with a timebase of 25fps with the song slowed down in order for the steadicam op to walk/run the shot without having to rush too much possibly sacrificing composition.

As you can see from the picture we had a 32mm ultraprime on the camera which was fixed at T2.8 and using a depth of field calculator and rough markings throughout the duration I calculated that I generally had about 3ft depth of field throughout so there was a small margin for error but not a lot. I also had a preston wireless remote focus and a cinetape rigged to the camera which made my life so much easier, this being that I never had to touch the camera throughout the shot but more so the cinetape giving me pretty solid readings of the distances of the various objects in the shot. The reason this was so helpful was down to the fact that were points where I couldn’t be alongside the camera so it wasn’t possible for me to calculate the distance of the subject to the camera, hence the cinetape to give me readings so I could adjust accordingly at these various points.

The main obstacle throughout the shoot was ensuring that all the components from hair, make-up, camera, lighting, performance, cues etc were all perfect or as close to perfect as they could be in order for the piece to work as there are to be no cuts at all throughout the video. With this taken into account keeping the image sharp throughout the entirety of the track was difficult but with a few rehearsals and a couple of markings here and there I was able to keep the entire video sharp. It’s been a long day and I have another Alexa shoot tomorrow so I’m off to bed and hope those of you who were seeking more from my posts are happy to have read this?!