Day 313

313/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Today I shot a music video.  
It was the second shoot day for the video we started on Day 305. We  managed to get our hands on the sound stage and then we went wild. We had an awesome production designer by the name of Jackie Kay who went big and designed AND built a set for us to shoot in. I got an email with the floor plan and I immediately was excited:




I had worked out how I wanted to light it in my head, and I'm pretty stoked to say that by the time we set up what I had envisioned on set, not only did it work but it looked good. We were shooting a couple of scenes, including a poker table scene and some fight scenes. My idea was to set up a 12ft x 12ft silk over the top of the set and then shoot some 2,000W lights into it. I ended up using 2 of them, and it was enough to bring my base illumination in the room up to about an f/4 shooting at ISO640. Jackie and I had talked about putting a light above the poker table and she pulled through with this cool metal fixture. I popped the biggest bulb I could find on the stage in there, which ended up being 500W, and used that as a practical. It served as the key light for everyone at the table, and the soft light coming from above served as my fill. It looked good, but more importantly, it freed up the set. With all the fixtures coming from the top, it left room for some cool dolly moves, which added a lot of production value. 


This was my first time shooting on a set on a stage and while it was fun, it was also really hard. You are quickly forced to remember that you are missing a corner of the room, so you have to plan your shots around that and it can get tricky. It was definitely a challenge, but I learned a lot today, and the dailies look good, so I'm happy!


A big shout out to Roslyn Hernandez, our impromptu onset photographer, for taking today's picture!