Prepping an awesome gig, wish I didn't have an NDA. Prep includes HEP-A
shot, Typhoid pills, a hefty trip to REI, and Physical therapy.
When the embargo is lifted I promise to post some beautiful photos.
Bill Totolo: Director/DP
Friday, May 03, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Telluride, CO
Just got back from the EPIC shoot in Telluride. Nice part of the country. Biggest hurdle was overcoming the altitude, woke up with a migraine the first day and forced myself to work through it.
The house was gorgeous, scenery unbelievable, and the team assembled by the good folks at Tremendous! Entertainment meshed as though we had been working together a full season.
As promised here are some photos I took with my phone:
The giant living room pictured above looks out over a ski resort. The owner can take his funicular (railway car) from the backyard directly to the slopes. He can monitor video surveillance from his phone any where in the world, and can activate his hot tub from his jet while flying over India.
All this and he's a really nice guy who generously shares wine from his cellar with the crew lugging gear boxes around his house.
The house was gorgeous, scenery unbelievable, and the team assembled by the good folks at Tremendous! Entertainment meshed as though we had been working together a full season.
As promised here are some photos I took with my phone:
The giant living room pictured above looks out over a ski resort. The owner can take his funicular (railway car) from the backyard directly to the slopes. He can monitor video surveillance from his phone any where in the world, and can activate his hot tub from his jet while flying over India.
All this and he's a really nice guy who generously shares wine from his cellar with the crew lugging gear boxes around his house.
Monday, March 25, 2013
"EPIC"
Off to Telluride, CO this week to shoot a $15 million "Smart house" for a series airing on Destination America. The show is called "Epic" and covers things like Epic Houseboats, Epic mansions, and all things...Epic. Here's the official tagline: "EPIC features extravagant amenities and the people that make them".
You might think we'd be using "Epic" cameras (as in RED MX) but we're using Sony's (which I'm pretty happy with).
Pictures to follow.
You might think we'd be using "Epic" cameras (as in RED MX) but we're using Sony's (which I'm pretty happy with).
Pictures to follow.
Monday, February 18, 2013
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Lighting Plot for the NY commercial
As luck would have it, the client has temporarily shelved the NY commercial. They're very pleased with our work but are restructuring their ad campaign. So, since I have no images to show, I thought I could at least share my lighting plot:
A lighting plot, for me, is a lot like a screenplay. Once I have internalized the project, and have put something down on paper, I have the confidence to formulate a plan. That plan can change, but as long as I have my lighting plot, I feel grounded. Much as the structure of a screenplay can change, so too, can the lighting plot.
I drafted this in LA, after several conversations and what seemed like a flurry of e-mails. And of course things did change pretty radically once I arrived in New York.
The plot I have drawn is for two setups that would occupy the same 40'x30' studio space. Once I arrived we determined we would need much more room, and shooting the two setups wasn't practical. We created a splinter unit to handle the "B" shoot, and we focused on the bigger portion.
We settled on a 7,200' sq. foot studio in Brooklyn known as Brooklyn FireProof Stages (www.brooklynfireproof.com). This was a lot larger than I had anticipated, but I could extrapolate my lighting needs from the plot and still execute a plan.
We added two additional 5K fresnels stage L&R downstage and skirted the fall off from the back wall. I diffused these with LEE 250 and scrimmed them down so they would evenly illuminate the far corners of the stage so the performers could roam the stage without the lighting dropping off.
I removed the 5K upstage, camera left, because I added an additional camera downstage, camera right, with a 16mm lens from a low angle on a dolly. The 5K was in the shot and just didn't look like it belonged there. I replaced it with a 1K PAR with 216. It's a light that people are used to seeing at performances and just blended in better.
BTW, all 5K's were hung from the grid.
I scrapped the idea of using LED Versatubes because we wanted everything on set to be pure white. So I substituted Kino Flo florescent tubes of various lengths (2', 4', 8'). We stripped the florescent tubes from their cases and hung them vertically from the grid. Our director, came up with a neat idea to gang several of them together in clusters so they resembled crystals, or icicles. We didn't know how we were going to do this but simply tethering them with black trick line and flagging the back light off the line worked well and sold the gag. They ended up looking like they were floating in space.
As far as the Entour Mac movers, we ended up with 750 watt units, not 250, which for camera, is a lot of power. I asked the board op. to vary the output between 10-16%. I fitted the Fuji Cabrio with a mono-filament to create those flares that everyone loves, and the movers were on stage for that specific reason. I had four in the grid for texture and three on the floor to shoot into the lens intermittently.
I learned a new term, what I refer to as Palace Lights are called "Groundies" in New York. These are small units placed on the floor that fill in the shadows created by spotlights, or lighting at a high angle in a grid. I had six of these in two banks controlled by a pair of variacs.
My biggest gag was creating the 8 foot Hype Williams Starlight, but I think this article is getting a little long so I'll go into that one another time.
Cheers.
I drafted this in LA, after several conversations and what seemed like a flurry of e-mails. And of course things did change pretty radically once I arrived in New York.
The plot I have drawn is for two setups that would occupy the same 40'x30' studio space. Once I arrived we determined we would need much more room, and shooting the two setups wasn't practical. We created a splinter unit to handle the "B" shoot, and we focused on the bigger portion.
We settled on a 7,200' sq. foot studio in Brooklyn known as Brooklyn FireProof Stages (www.brooklynfireproof.com). This was a lot larger than I had anticipated, but I could extrapolate my lighting needs from the plot and still execute a plan.
We added two additional 5K fresnels stage L&R downstage and skirted the fall off from the back wall. I diffused these with LEE 250 and scrimmed them down so they would evenly illuminate the far corners of the stage so the performers could roam the stage without the lighting dropping off.
I removed the 5K upstage, camera left, because I added an additional camera downstage, camera right, with a 16mm lens from a low angle on a dolly. The 5K was in the shot and just didn't look like it belonged there. I replaced it with a 1K PAR with 216. It's a light that people are used to seeing at performances and just blended in better.
BTW, all 5K's were hung from the grid.
I scrapped the idea of using LED Versatubes because we wanted everything on set to be pure white. So I substituted Kino Flo florescent tubes of various lengths (2', 4', 8'). We stripped the florescent tubes from their cases and hung them vertically from the grid. Our director, came up with a neat idea to gang several of them together in clusters so they resembled crystals, or icicles. We didn't know how we were going to do this but simply tethering them with black trick line and flagging the back light off the line worked well and sold the gag. They ended up looking like they were floating in space.
As far as the Entour Mac movers, we ended up with 750 watt units, not 250, which for camera, is a lot of power. I asked the board op. to vary the output between 10-16%. I fitted the Fuji Cabrio with a mono-filament to create those flares that everyone loves, and the movers were on stage for that specific reason. I had four in the grid for texture and three on the floor to shoot into the lens intermittently.
I learned a new term, what I refer to as Palace Lights are called "Groundies" in New York. These are small units placed on the floor that fill in the shadows created by spotlights, or lighting at a high angle in a grid. I had six of these in two banks controlled by a pair of variacs.
My biggest gag was creating the 8 foot Hype Williams Starlight, but I think this article is getting a little long so I'll go into that one another time.
Cheers.
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
It's too early to show you any screenshots from our shoot at Brooklyn's FireProof Stages last week, so here is a classic on-set photo of the DP posing with his camera.
I'm extremely satisfied with how the shoot went and the looks we achieved. This was truly an example of collaborating with your team. The director conceived the look, the CEO improved our blocking and framing to feature his corporate logo, and now we're "working" with post to insure an integrated look. On this shoot our footage doesn't need to match existing footage but it appears after 20 seconds of footage shot simultaneously by another team in L.A.
The client owns a Sony PMW-F3, as do I, so the decision to shoot with that camera was made early on. I used a Fujinon Cabrio 19-90mm lens (provided by Blacklist Productions in L.A.) on my "A" camera, and my Duclos cine-modded Tokina 11-16mm on the "B" camera, mounted on a Western dolly.
Both cameras recorded out to AJA Ki-Pro mini's to 10bit ProResHQ 4:2:2 files using Sony's S-Log.
When I can release some screen caps of our footage I can go into further detail about lighting and other fun exercises such as the zen art of laying Marley board.
I'm extremely satisfied with how the shoot went and the looks we achieved. This was truly an example of collaborating with your team. The director conceived the look, the CEO improved our blocking and framing to feature his corporate logo, and now we're "working" with post to insure an integrated look. On this shoot our footage doesn't need to match existing footage but it appears after 20 seconds of footage shot simultaneously by another team in L.A.
The client owns a Sony PMW-F3, as do I, so the decision to shoot with that camera was made early on. I used a Fujinon Cabrio 19-90mm lens (provided by Blacklist Productions in L.A.) on my "A" camera, and my Duclos cine-modded Tokina 11-16mm on the "B" camera, mounted on a Western dolly.
Both cameras recorded out to AJA Ki-Pro mini's to 10bit ProResHQ 4:2:2 files using Sony's S-Log.
When I can release some screen caps of our footage I can go into further detail about lighting and other fun exercises such as the zen art of laying Marley board.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
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