Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Hanna Grace 'Red Lips'



I was on an Air New Zealand flight recently, and as we were boarding this clip was playing. The boys around me were all staring at the screen, the flight attendant commented 'If only you would pay that much attention to the safety video!' The irony was that as the DP I was responsible for the images!t if it is disabled in your browser.

Produced by Fish n Clips, the video was Directed by Sally Tran. This was our first project together. After this video we went on to shoot a short film called "Toi La Who" in Wellington. The film is not out yet, but it again showcases Sally's unique visual style.

alex-mcdonald

We shot the Red Lips video in Auckland on location in one day. We used a Red One camera from Metro Film, and I was lucky enough to have Alex McDonald as my Steadicam Operator.

dolly

Spencer Locke-Bonney was my Gaffer and we made full use out of his fantastic combo truck. The art department and wardrobe were also instrumental in the look that we achieved, along with Sally's great choreography.

5d-still

I find having a decent digital stills camera on set really helps me with my exposures. I have pretty much replaced my spot meter with a Canon 5D2, and a Zeiss 50mm prime. I am now setting the exposure using a combination of incident meter, stills camera, HD monitors, waveforms and histograms.

hanna-dancers

For this video I went with classic beauty lighting. Using big soft sources inside and a lot of daylight control outdoors. I used a little diffusion on the lens, and the grading was done at ToyBox.