With our switch to the RED Epic camera, we’re now working with RAW files on the tv commercial shoots. This gives us an extraordinary amount of color control and range. Below are a few snapshots from my day in the color grading suite optimizing the color on the files from our last shoot.

With film (as opposed to digital), color was an obvious part of the Director of Photography’s job since color was a result of film selection, development technique, and the choice of lighting, lenses and filters. The DP would recommend and come to a decision with the Director before the shoot on what the final look would be, then execute that look.

Now that digital is taking over, the color tones are largely determined in post-production on computers (setting aside set and wardrobe choices). The tools range from simple sliders in the editing software, to separate software packages just for color grading, to full hardware/software integrated bay’s at the higher end like we have in the images here. This particular system is the Nucoda Film Master at the post-production house Keep Me Posted.

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The new RED Epic Camera and Arri 18-80mm 2.6 lens that we were testing in my earlier post has now been rolled into production on our latest tv commercials. It’s a beautiful setup — detailed photos below.

The lens is not only quicker for transitions (no lens changes), but also sharper than the Zeiss CP2 primes we had been using. The raw files are beautiful, with an extensive range to manipulate in post. I also love the well thought-out touch screen field monitor from which you control most functions in the camera. Fast, intuitive with exceptional image quality.

It’s not light, but compared with cinema cameras of even a year ago in the same category it’s far more versatile in terms of movement and rigging. The extra weight is actually nice on the larger fluid head, making moves on the slider (shown below) even smoother.

We had a curve-ball thrown at us in one shoot which required shooting portions at very dim lighting levels, and we had no problem matching the brighter shots with the more dimly lit ones.

Very happy with this new setup, this will be the standard in the immediate future for our broadcast tv commercials.

Photos from the recent productions below show how we configured the rig.

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Great article in the Wall St. Journal this week by the lead singer of the band “OK Go”. His assessment of the music industry is directly relevant to all media, and all creative professionals.

“We’re just moving out of the brief period, a flash in history’s pan, when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. For several decades… the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.”

The same is true with movies, photography, magazines, you name it. Digital distribution, no longer constrained by the controls that can be placed on physical materials, has made the product intangible, easily replicable, and readily abundant. No more controlled packaging, no more commercial product (or a significantly reduced one).

The new path emerging is merchandising around the media, events, and of partnering with benefactors seeking something other than a direct financial return on the art/media. This last one is how art has work for most of history. Much like the model I recently discussed and am exploring for an ambitious art project, OK Go is finding brand sponsors for each of their well-defined creative projects — be it a music video, performance, or new CD.  Unlike the traditional financial backers of such efforts, the brand sponsors seek a marketing return, not a cash return on the investment.

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We’re ramping-up for the shoot with designer Anthony Franco that I posted about previously.

It’s going smoothly thanks to the team in place which includes not only Anthony, but also Francis overseeing casting, Geordy our brilliant master of all things audio, Lonny the master of digital infrastructure & workflow, JP helping with location scouting and visual effects planning (yes, a some fun effects planned), and Raymond who will be leading the editing with the two of us working closely on shaping the final form of the short film — I plan to be in the edit booth too, I love the film editing process (tinkerers like me can’t help it).

I cranked out the script with more speed than I expected, the concept came to me in three pieces over the course of a week at which point it just felt right. The team is pumped up about it, you can tell when the people around you are into a project — that makes such a difference.

This script is consistent with my style and tone in some respects, but in other ways a departure. I’m looking forward to it as a step into what I see as a new creative phase. Periodically there are clear changes in the vibe of my work, and I feel I’m at one of those points right now. I always feel when one of these transitions is coming on — it’s a mix of eagerness to move forward and break the old mold and some ambiguity in that I’m taking new risks by abandoning many of the methods and techniques that have served me well in the past. But this kind of performing without pre-established muscle memory is how we advance our work (and, in fact, ourselves).

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My ideas for personal shoots tend to get away from me. They always start out as ok, lets do something quick and fun and easy this time — instead of the full circus production my shoots tend to be. Then it snowballs and ends up this as complex elaborate thing. I can’t help myself. But that’s ok because I like the circus.

It used to be that magazines would fund big ambitious creative work, whether it was exploratory photojournalism or over-the-top fashion or whatever it is LaChapelle has been doing all these years. Then print entered its death spiral. But our ambitions for big passion projects never went away.

This decline in accessible financing is affecting all creative mediums: music labels have seen the collapse of their business model and are no longer putting the same money behind their artists. The more indie-oriented branches of film studios have mostly been shut down while the big movie studios have greatly reduced output and have almost abandoned original content creation. And grants for the arts are down with the government and corporations in fiscal hard times.

Amidst all this, perhaps because of all this, two new solutions are gaining momentum: crowdfunding and brand sponsorship. And while not easy to pull off, they each seem to offer benefits over the old regime when one does swing it.

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With the world headed toward cross-platform advertising (i.e., digital + print + broadcast + digital + digital), any investment in marketing artwork will soon require both still images and motion pieces from the same production.

Clients will be doing fewer and fewer still-only photo shoots, or just shooting 30 second spots on their own. Now they will need a range of creative material for the increasing range of marketing channels.

Increasingly these distribution channels for the artwork will be digital. And digital channels crave both still and moving images, often together, but certainly each in various contexts.

The most valuable resource on a shoot is time. There’s never enough of it. And now doing two things (stills and motion) in the production, time just got even more scarce.

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Echoing my thoughts on the importance of low light performance, but adding the additional insight that the increasing dynamic range in the new crop of cameras will bring deeper shadows (as well as highlights) into range even when iso is not quite there, cinematographer Ryan Walters shares is view on how this will change how he works:

“Going forward I do see a decrease in the lighting budget, but it will not disappear. Instead of having to rent larger lamps, smaller lamps can be used. However, at the same time, I will be renting more flags, nets, silks, and other modifiers to control and shape the existing light in the location. And there will be an even greater savings when lighting night exteriors. With these kind of DR capabilities and speeds of the sensors the available light will play a much greater roll in the lighting setups. So in the end it will be a balance between using existing sources, modifying those sources, and supplementing those sources when needed.”.

See Ryan’s full essay “Preparing for 18 stops” here.

The killer app for new video cameras is low light performance and high ISO capability.

Budgets are collapsing for advertising. They have been minimal for a long time in music videos, documentaries, and short films. Feature film production is dividing into studio mega-blockbuster special-effects spectacles on one side, and low budget character-driven films on the other — the middle is vanishing.

Working on a low budget film or video means finding ways to reduce shoot days and get more done in less time. Every hour or day of production time is burning money. One of the most time consuming parts of prepping a set is typically lighting, particularly if there are more than one setups with multiple lighting transitions. The ability to use small low-powered lighting, often mixed with ambient light, is among the most effective strategies for delivering on a tight budget.

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Popular Photography Magazine has run a beauty story on how I lit the image below – I walk through the entire lighting setup. Full article here.