one shot music video at ONe shot Studios
Late November, 2023;
After a brief phone call with my former bandmate, Brittany Danielle, it was on.
My first shoot of 2024 was going to be a music video!
The Problem
Brittany Danielle is gearing up to release her new album and needs to develop her media in anticipation of the launch. As a touring musician, Brittany also needs to have content to show bookers and promoters to help her land gigs and start to tour the album. Having worked with Brittany before in previous music videos, I was naturally her first call once she was ready to film.
The vision
Her vision was to capture a three song performance in-studio something that feels like a live show. Budgets are tight with indie music so instead of a large, multi-camera production. I suggested we keep it tight and knock out each song in one shot. That way we save time and money in production and in post.
The key to executing this well would be in preproduction, my first task would be to fine tune my camera setup. There were a few different options to weight out, the first one that came to mind was using the RS2 gimbal, but the simpler option would be to rent an easy rig and shoot handheld.
Pre-Production
It took a lot of tinkering, but I was able to make the KX work nicely on the RS2. The only parts I needed to make it work cost less than the rental of an easy rig, so I figured that was a win. In total the weight of the build was about 12 lbs, I knew my body would be in for some work if I had to do too many takes.
The V1 Setup, by removing the mattebox, iris motor, camera baseplate and some counter weight I was able to shed 2.5 lbs. Bringing the weight to just under ten pounds.
So I cleared my office and walked through some simple movements. Floating around, racking focus between my coat hanger, the chair in one corner and some objects on my workbench in the other corner. Listening to each song. I rehearsed some movements while running through each of the three tracks. My arms were a little tired but I thought If we could keep it to two or three takes per track, with breaks in between, I’d be just fine.
Location // One Shot Studio
Getting a feel for the location would be crucial to keeping everything within our tight schedule.
By using Polycam and Cadrage on Iphone, I was able to get a floorplan of the location and some rough pre-visualized stills of what my lensing and framing would be.
Lights, Camera, action!
BTS shot of me operating the RED Komodo X on the gimbal rig. Photo by Brandon D. Ove IG @steampressed
What an experience, all the musicians were spot on, the vibe was good and my lighting plan worked perfectly thanks to my careful pre production. Shooting all day with this rig handheld was brutal, we filmed a total of 3 songs and each one took about 5 takes to nail the movements, focus and rhythm. If I were to do this over again I’d rent an easy rig or go without a gimbal all together, shoot at 16mm and use the internal gyro stabilizer to smooth out the footage in post. But it worked and the results speak for themselves.
POST Production
Our plan for a smooth post production worked out, after aligning with Brittany on which performances to go with I was able to spend my time finessing the color and graphics of each song.
This being the first creative project I’ve shot with the new RED, the 16 bit compressed RAW color space of the footage opened up a creative opportunity. We had originally shot each song with a dark blue and warm lighting look. But for the song titled, “Sticky Greens” I was able to sample that color and pull the hue over to green without having the image break down. It looked like we had originally shot it that way, manipulation this heavy would have broken down if we had shot with any of my previous Canon or Sony cameras as they were limited to 8 and 10 bits.