ASSITANT CAMERA • MOTION GRAPHICS
My involvement with A Dark Halo began through work!
Dave Lowmiller, the lead singer of the band and also coworker, asked if I’d like to help them film their upcoming music video. Being in charge of the A/V department at CA, he knew well of my affinity for playing around with cameras and setting up equipment. I agreed and the rest is history.
Three videos later and I’ve done quite a bit in the production of the videos since I started. I’ve done everything from setup stands and greenscreens to operating the camera. We’ve become super efficient at the build out/tear down for our videos and utilize tons of equipment, rented for the specific needs, so I’ve gotten to play with things I didn’t think I would’ve, like the newer Black Magic 4K PocketCam, and the very old style spotlights that get way too hot and burned my thumb upon time to strike.
I, REVENANT
For I, Revenant, our Lead Camera Op, Brad Bussell, was out of active commission with a back issue, so I manned the camera for most of these shots and played DP while he directed and set the shots. This shoot included tons of in-cam camera shake and lots of natural light play. The B-roll was a similar situation as myself, the lead singer and Melissa DeVarney , Assitant Director/many things walked around in a local wooded area and just captured whatever struck our fancy. We rented the studio out for two days to film everything, so combined with the B-roll shoot, this was a crazy 3 day shoot that was a lot of fun!
I, Revenant was filmed on the Blackmagic 4K Pocket Camera.
VECTOR UNKNOWN
For Vector Unknown, we wanted to just go with a lyric video, and moreover, we wanted to mimic a chat function between the two dueling singers. With a creative direction from Becca Wallace, I mimicked the style of her chat box in After Effects and from there, it was the process of synchronizing the song with the type-on effect. The main challenge with this one was having the blinking cursor, finding just the right technique to invoke the style of command inputs we wanted to.
After a few weekends of playing around and noodling, I’m really happy with how this one came about!
AFTERWORLD
Much like “I,Revenant”, I played Assistant Camera Op/Grip for Afterworld. However for this one, Brad was up and running so my main tasks once we actually got started was keeping track of the different lenses, stepping in when Brad needed to break off for a bit, and shooting any Behind the scenes using an extra Canon DSLR we had.
Afterworld was filmed on the Blackmagic 4k Pocket Camera