What free time?

One of the things I've always loved about being a freelancer is the schedule.  Sure, sometimes it's nuts... "Can you work tomorrow?" "Hi Dave.  I've got a shoot tomorrow in Sweden - can you do it?"  As a freelancer, a lot of times, you don't know when your next gig will be so when that 10PM call about a 5AM shoot tomorrow comes in, we usually take it if we're free.  BUT WE DON'T HAVE TO.  In theory, there's always the option to just say "no" and take some personal time.  I have yet to really test that theory.

I remember the first couple of years of freelancing as being stressful, and work so erratic that any normal person might have thrown in the towel.  I took ANYTHING that came up, in case nothing ever came up again.

Things lately have been amazing, and "amazing" in freelance language, means "busy."  I've been scooped up into the sports department at the news station, which is very consistent work.  If I'm available for them, I can count on at least a few days a week there.  Add to that some work on a PBS-bound doc, an explosion of high-end corporate stuff in the first quarter of this year, and my own feature documentary (post to follow).  This is the kind of schedule freelancers dream of in the early years of their career.  I've worked hard to expand my network and I have the ideal consistency of work.

And no free time.

I realize that some independents don't have that sort of flow and I know I'm fortunate to have the workload, but I remember those scary times between jobs, and I think to myself, honestly, Dave, was it so bad?  You could use a week off...

But I never actually follow through.

Another Year In Review

Hello 2012!  2011 had some fun stuff going on... you've got some pretty big shoes to fill...

2011 Highlights:

*I got married.

*I worked on a nice variety of documentary, art, industrial and commercial work.  New territory included some great transmedia work with Kinetic Fin, and my return to commissioned film (doc for hire sort of stuff).

*I finished up work on a compelling documentary, "Different Is The New Normal."  This was a great film on a boy with Tourette's Syndrome and aired on PBS in the fall.

*I attached myself to a very important documentary-in-progress, "Coached Into Silence."

*I bought a home and subsequently set up a sweet gear storage setup in my new garage.

*I shot (2nd) an episode of Animal Planet's "Confessions: Animal Hoarding."

All in all, I had a great year, both professionally and personally.  Let's hope 2012 continues the positive trend.


CHIN CHIN!

A Founder's Vision

If you've been following this blog, you'll remember a certain star-studded video I shot last year for Philip Dolin of Particle Productions and the American Jewish World Service ("And Many Happy Returns...").  In March, Philip and I headed down to Florida to shoot a follow-up piece on one of the founders of AJWS, Larry Phillips (of the Van Heusen apparel company).  It's a simple interview-based piece, like the Ruth Messinger tribute, with a similar style to the previous video.  Enjoy.

Produced, Directed & Edited by Philip Dolin & Molly Bernstein
Cameraman: Me
Sound recordist: Roy Chase
Production Company: Particle Productions

A year in review

2011 starts off slow (I'm taking it easy because I'm getting married in 6 days)

So, 2010 in review:

* Budapest

* A feature film I shot in the spring, "Director's Cut" is produced (and is currently at the Hollywood Reel Independent Festival and other festivals)


* "One Night Only: Barbra Streisand and Quintet Live at the Village Vanguard" (which I was a key camera operator) is released on DVD and Blu-ray (and DVD/CD combo) and subsequently goes platinum.


* I shot a number of great videos with Kinetic Fin for Gevalia Coffee.




* I shot a very nice tribute video for Ruth Messinger featuring a pretty awesome interview lineup, including Mia Farrow, former NYC Mayor David Dinkins, NY Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof and more.




* I shot second unit and b-cam material for a nice series of videos for Columbia Business School.



* I became a HDSLR convert (I'm not a an evangelical HDSLR shooter but I've discovered it's an amazing tool for a lot of things).

* Some fun industrial work for Nokia, Wunderman, PwC, BBCAmerica, and Kraft Foods.

* Gaffed and shot NY material for a feature doc, "Small Matters" (currently in post-production, eying a PBS run).

* I lit a commercial photo shoot... for video.  That was different.  For designer, Ippolito.

* A whole bunch of other little things...

...I learned a lot this year, as a cameraman and gaffer and filmmaker in general.  When I was assisting, my years tended to yield lessons on practice - new lighting principles, methods of operating, craft-based things like that.  As a working cameraman (and occasional gaffer for other D.P.'s), my years have brought about fewer and fewer new technical lessons.  This year was sponsored by... "Compromise."

• While working on the Ruth Messinger piece, for the higher profile interviews, the crew went in with the mentality that the subject could walk in any minute and demand to do the interview then.  Working faster that we'd have normally liked was the compromise for having access to these folks.
• On "Director's Cut" the production had much less time and money than ideal.  We compromised on setups to get the movie finished.
• For the BBCAmerica videos which took place in real, functioning focus group sessions, we had to have high production values in terms of lighting and camerawork, but at the same time, we, the crew could not infringe upon the participants' comfort levels.  Usually, what's out of frame doesn't matter (leading to forests of c-stands, messy rigging contraptions and stuff like that just out of the camera's view), but for this, it had to be pretty.  Even a clean-looking large Chimera overhead was too "movie-set" for the clients liking.  But they loved when we rigged a very large chinese lantern overhead (it felt "homey").  Meanwhile at the PwC industrial I gaffed maybe only a month or two prior, the client insisted we use the Chimera for it's "expensiveness."  In that situation, meanwhile, it would have been a LOT easier to rig than the large Chimera.  Compromise...

2010 was a great year and there's some pretty fun stuff on the horizon for 2011, not the least of which is getting married.  More on that (and the great video team I hired for the event) and other stuff in February, when I return...

Current, recent and upcoming projects.

"AJWS" (doc short) in production
lighting cameraman
Dir/Prod - Philip Dolin, Particle Productions
     A short interview-based video celebrating 25 years of the AJWS.

"UB Ideal" (promo) in post-production
lighting cameraman
Dir/Prod - Larry Locke, Larry Locke Films
     Video about the Ideal program of the University of Bridgeport.

"NELP" (promo) in production
lighting cameraman
Dir/Prod - Immy Humes, The Doc Tank
     Video for the National Employment Law Project

"Velvet Noir" (commercial/promo) in pre-production
director of photography
Dir/Prod - Bradley Farrell, Kinetic Fin/Gevalia
     A choose-your-own-adventure style video for the release of Gevalia Coffee's new flavor.

"Columbia Business School" (promos) in post-production
cameraman, 2nd Unit
Dir/Prod - Philip Dolin, Particle Productions
     A series of documentary promos for the Columbia University Business School internship program.

Karma?

So in my last post I mentioned something on the horizon that would be very exciting.  That something was a trip to Sweden for the Gevalia work.  Well, unfortunately, that trip fell through about a month ago.  It's still happening but for a variety of reasons, the director has to now do it on his own.  So I was a little bummed for a bit.  Then, less than a month after Sweden went away, I got an opportunity to go to Budapest, Hungary for a shoot with a different client.  I was reminded of the "even steven" episode of Seinfeld - it all tends to work itself out.

So Budapest was last week and it was cool.  It was a very brief stay, arriving Wednesday afternoon and leaving for home very early Saturday morning.  Thursday and Friday were shoot days and we did a lot of shooting.  It was an industrial for an ad agency, Wunderman, involving one of their big clients, Nokia.  Same sort of idea as my Texas trip last November.  Anyway, all in all, it went well but it was definitely an eye opener.  Early Thursday, about 40 minutes before we were due to roll, some of the producer's gear began acting up - a wireless mic that was do be on a key player in this shoot.  Needless to say, this was a serious problem.  Luckily, we had a great P.A. on board (a local) and within minutes, she was on the phone to a rental house arranging to rent a replacement wireless system.  By the end of her conversation, we figured out the problem with the producer's gear and the P.A. arranged to have a replacement part also sent over.  Within 20 minutes, the gear was there and we were rolling.  The next day, we were presented with another issue - as it turned out, there would be two key players in that day's shoot (which was not the original plan).  Luckily our system was working again and we had the rental on hand so yet again, things worked themselves out.  Had we not had the unexpected and somewhat stressful mic failure occurred the day before, we wouldn't have had the second wireless system.

All in all, it was nice.  With the work schedule, I didn't get to do much touristy stuff but I had some fantastic local food every day, saw a great gypsy band and stayed in a very nice, historic hotel (the Hotel Gellart).

Anyway, the weekend before Budapest, shooting commenced on a feature film I'm working on, "Director's Cut."  It's a low-budget film with a rather small crew and the weekend was a great icebreaker.  My frequent cohort, Bret Scheinfeld, is aboard as sound mixer and I've got a pretty nice support crew.  Marcus, my gaffer, is cool, and I've got a couple of G&E-dedicated P.A.s that are really into it and very quick learners.  I think the Spring shoot will go pretty smoothly.

So the most important rule we've got to follow for this shoot is the K.I.S.S. principal ("keep it simple, stupid").  There's just so much to get done on such a short schedule, so the setups need to be versatile and quick to change.  So we're lighting things in broader strokes and keeping things relatively high key.  It's a comedy, anyway, and the director definitely wants a brighter feeling for most of the film.  Below is a still from one of our scenes.

A 4bank fluorescent for the key and a large diffused window for fill and ambiance.  Behind the actor, a small HMI for edge.


We're shooting on the director's camera, a Panasonic HMC150.  It's a prosumer model that shoots 1080/24p video to SDHC cards.  If time and money allowed, I'd shoot 35mm for this - or at the very least Super16 or RED.  But the budget is what it is and the schedule is tight so the best format available to us is what we've got so that's that.  Besides, I'm a pretty format-agnostic cameraman.  I really believe that with the right lighting, composition and settings (including digital tweaks and optical filtration), you can make great images no matter the format.

Coming up later this week is another shoot for Gevalia with director, Bradley Farrell (again with Bret on board for sound).  It's a tasting party for a new blend and apparently there will be some "celebrities" there.  3 camera shoot at Gevalia's corporate kitchen with a Canon 5D and two HVX200.  With the amount of coverage and the fact that at any one time a camera could be shooting in any direction, the lighting approach has to be pretty simple (and of course, good).  The available light is pretty nice there - high ceilings with warm fluorescents for an overall base level.  Accent lights under the cabinets and these small frosted pendant lights positioned over the granite islands.  I'm thinking I'm going to fly a couple of 250w fresnels (flooded) crossing as back/edge lights (they'll be attached to the drop ceiling).  I'm hoping that'll be enough but I'm prepared to bounce something into the ceiling from the front of the space if necessary.

So that's all for now.  Pictures from Gevalia to come.

Bye!

Everything is bigger... except the lighting setups...

So Dallas was cool. Didn't actually see much of it (working, you know?) but what I did see was nice. The hotel was SWEET and the food was great.

As for the shoot, the producer managed to get together a budget to fly me down there and put us up in a nice place, but other than that, the production's hands were sort of tied. So we had to make do with only what we could bring with us (which wasn't much) - no rentals or anything. As for lighting, all we could manage was a softbox setup (daylight and tungsten) and a small fresnel. And you know what? It turned out pretty darn well. I've always said you can make great images with very little more than skill and Dallas really drove that home. Sure, we fought a little with the finicky sun and didn't have much to work with location-wise, but I think I was able to get some really nice lighting and composition for our interviews. I should really start taking pictures on-set.

Also, the PAs in Texas are awesome. There are great ones in New York, but there are also a ton of people who are just "trying to work in film." It seems like in Texas - and other non-NY locales - that the PAs are not trying to do anything. They're working and that's that. This is what they do and they know their stuff. The first day, we had Ben - young guy with a lot of camera and grip experience. The second day, we had Tom - a real veteran. He's done it all, from being a stand in for Chuck Norris on two seasons of Walker: Texas Ranger, to producing an indie feature and even a string of large-scale live events. What a guy! Nice, totally knowledgeable, and constantly one step ahead of the game. On top of all that, after we wrapped, he found us a great Texas BBQ joint. Wow.