This was a fun shoot for director Phil Hawkins. A cage-fighting ring with a large back projected screen added instant visual interest to the usual ‘warehouse’ location that seems to crop up in a lot of promos.

We shot on Epic with a set of ultra primes and a Duclos 11-16mm for the jib stuff. Everything was shot with the camera rated at ISO400 and with a 2mm blue streak filter.

The introductory section of the video where Kyrie is walked through the ‘lobby’ of the club was backlit with two PAR64s with CP61 narrowish lamps stacked vertically for some extreme streak filter action. There was a bunch of 2K and 1K tungsten fresnels gelled a medium blue hidden around the space to side and backlight the cast as we tracked backwards (handheld) with them. A large china lantern (a Lantern-Lock with a 1K lamp inside a large Ikea paper lantern) was dimmed down and walked along with us by one of the electricians, just outside the right edge of frame, for a nice soft key light giving circular reflections in eyes.

Lighting plot for Kyrie London Rooftops promo – intro

Lighting plot for Kyrie London – Rooftops

For the main space I had two 6-light minibrutes acting as 3/4 backlights on either side of the large projection screen. Both had 4×4 flags on each side to reduce spill on the projected graphics. The two rows of 650W lamps in each unit gave a nice double streak from our trusty filter in the mattebox :

Added to that were some more PAR64s, low angle from behind the cage – I tweaked the height and angle of these shot-to-shot to either bring out the wetted-down cage floor or flare the camera even more for the jib shots. We also had PARs above each team of DJs.

Kyrie’s keylight was a Briese 180 Focus reflector fitted with the 5K tungsten head. This is an exceptionally lovely light although I do wish it was a tiny bit brighter as it does fall off quickly.

I also used the china lantern a fair bit throughout as an additional bit of fill or beauty light on closeups/crowd shots etc.

A Joker-Bug 800 with a Source 4 narrow lens on a scaff tower was operated throughout to give Kyrie a followspot style backlight; although really it wasn’t punchy enough and I wished I’d had a proper xenon theatrical followspot.

Finally I had a handful of 1K cyc lights (just simple floods really) that were gelled blue and dotted around where needed to light the walls or uplight the DJs.

There was no hazer available from the rental co so we gave very short bursts of a smoke machine every few minutes and made sure the smoke was very dispersed. I really hate over-hazed sets and it’s incredibly easy to go too far. A little goes a long way just put some depth into the space without turning into a Queen concert.

Everything was on dimmer racks for convenience and powered by Pixipixel’s fantastic new 60K generator.

I think we even finished 20 minutes early

KYRIE LONDON – “ROOFTOPS”

Director – Phil Hawkins
Producer – Oly Dempster
DP – Ed Moore
Focus puller – Ben Oliver
Loader/DIT – Lucas Lytra
Jib – Sam Alkad
Gaffer – Simon Olney
Spark - Dominik Pałgan

This music video to promote the launch of a new management company featured a cover band performing Robert Palmer’s “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On”.

We only just wrapped yesterday so this is just a few notes from the shoot, no footage to see just yet.

I’ve had very good experiences with the Sony F65 over the past few months so we went with a two camera F65 package from Filmscape. A camera had a 16-42mm and B camera had the Optimo 24-290. The F65 is hardly a small camera but if you have the crew to handle it I believe the results are unparalleled at present, and I’m a big fan of the mechanical shutter. I rated the camera at 640 and shot in the slightly reduced bitrate F65Raw format to save a little on offloading time.

Jason adjusts the cinetape on the F65 “A” camera

“B” camera with Optimo 24-290

Both the director and I wanted a lot of camera movement so we kept A camera on a Louma2 crane and B camera on a dolly. The Louma2 is an extraordinary bit of engineering with a telescopic range of 8-32′. All axes are encoded so the software can do some really nifty tricks. With smartpan and smarttilt engaged, the head automatically pans or tilts to keep the camera pointing the same way whilst the crane arm is moving. And in planing the telescoping axis automatically adjusts as the arm is swung around to keep the camera travelling over the same horizontal or vertical plane. In this mode the camera can travel along a straight line with no arcing. The head is the predecessor to the KeyHead and as such is a joy to operate.

The Louma2 with its arm almost entirely retracted

The Louma2 in flight

It really is one of those tools that can effortlessly handle anything you throw at it.

You can see all the Louma2′s capabilities on show in their showreel:

On the lighting front I wanted to try and mix in theatrical automated lighting with film style equipment. The director wanted to use all the space available in the location including a balcony area so there was a lot to cover.

Lighting plot

I had two basic states – one for the “fashion shoot” sections of the video that was brighter and more conventionally-lit, and a state for the performance sections that played with the automated lighting to good effect.

The location had no easy access to rig above the space so I used an 8K helium lighting balloon from Airstar as a soft overhead key. This was supplemented from the front by a 10K into an 8×8 bounce for fill (for some shots I used the 10K direct just over the camera dimmed right down for a traditional beauty light).

8K tungsten balloon light

Front fill from a bounced 10K behind B camera

We couldn’t rig anything to the existing photography cove in the location so my gaffer and his team had to construct a goalpost rig from square truss across a 7m span for backlights consisting of 2K fresnels and Source4 spots. We also had 2 x 2K zap lights on the truss with a matching pair underneath to light the cove itself for a blown-out “photoshoot” look.

Shot showing the backlight truss (note the balloon light was in the process of being packed away!)

The balcony area was backlight by five 2K fresnels gelled half CTB rigged to the roof beams. I didn’t really put any front fill in for this section as it was more a mood setting piece to open the video.

My lighting programmer Simon Horn suggested we go for Robe Robin 600E spots for our moving light source – this is a highly versatile fixture based on a 575W MSR lamp which punches more like a 700W. They have a variable CTO filter so could be integrated into the “fashion” state without standing out as a daylight source, and beyond that there’s a tremendous range of parameters to play with including pan, tilt, zoom, focus, color mixing, iris, gobos and more.

We had two Robins on the truss, three on the floor underneath (with a central one for low backlight beam effects centered on our singer), three in the balcony with two below that.

Combined with Simon’s excellent programming we got some fantastic animated beam effects for the performance stuff. We kept the room hazed up to maximise the beam visibility (this inevitably lowers contrast a great deal which I’ll dial back in during the grade).

With a ton of footage in lovely F65Raw from the camera I’m very much looking forward to the grade! Will update this post as the process continues.

Huge thanks to the crew for what was inevitably a big and complex set up in not much time!

Here’s a few more pics: