Lighting "Something Strange"

 

     This weekend we wrapped up shooting the feature film "Something Strange," written and directed by Bryan Kramer. The film is a series of interviews which will be intercut with various imagery. Each personal story is told by an individual in the first person. What ties these stories together is their intention to explain the unexplainable such as coincidences, phenomena, pure chance, and scientific theory.
    Since these stories are all conducted in an interview style with the character seated speaking into the camera, we decided to keep the lighting identical for every character. To create interview style lighting, I went with a simple three light set up of a key light, fill light, and hair light. Instead of going for a realistic, even, and flattering look, I lit the subjects to emphasize their human qualities. Considering the film will be in black and white, the facial shadows will help bring more dimension to the final look.
      Compared to my usual lighting experiences, this project felt like I was designing on a very micro scale. Usually I am working with the look of a scene with multiple people rather than focusing on the type and placement of catches in one person's eye or the shape of the shadow from their nose. I very much enjoyed this new challenge, and found that this experience greatly appealed to my tedious nature. The film will begin editing stages soon, and is expected to be complete after the new year. I had a great experience working on this project and I am very eager to see the completed film.

Le Switch at The Satellite

Photo By: Angela Holtzen

       Last Friday, August 19th,  I had the opportunity to design the lighting for one of my favorite local bands, Le Switch. This was to be their last performance together, so it needed to be special and celebratory. The set list was eighteen songs in length and ranged from their fun upbeat country numbers to their somber and gritty emotional tunes. The band has a great range in their songs which allowed for me to play around with mood and color. And, for this final performance, mood was a greater factor than usual. Even though Le Switch has many upbeat rock and roll songs, many of the cues within the songs require cross fades between lighting looks rather than purely quick 1 or 0 count cues. This allowed for there to be more range in the timing of the cues within each song requiring me to be more creative and strategic with programming on a scene setter lighting board.
     This final performance was certainly one to remember. This was my first chance to light Le Switch and unfortunately my last to light them as a whole band. I am grateful to have been part of their last performance to enhance to overall experience that friends and fans can remember for years to come.

Soon a video of this final performance shall be released online. Though Le Switch has called it quits, you can still hear their music on their website or Facebook page.

To view more photos from this show, you can visit photographer Angela Holtzen's online album.

C-Horse "Tongues" Video Shoot

Photo By: Courtney Olsen

    
          Last weekend we wrapped up shooting the latest music video for the band C-Horse. Directed by Sean Johnson and shot by Micheal Guerena, "Tongues" is a performance based video which highlights the band's fantastic style and the overall mood of the song. For this shoot, I designed the lighting and much of the scenic elements. We used a Downtown LA music rehearsal space in the industrial end of town as our location. The rehearsal space was transformed twice for two different looking setups for the chorus and verse portions of the song. Due to electrical limitations, I decided to gel the large windows to use the daylight as a significant light source. Luckily this east facing window illuminated the room throughout the entirety of the day. C-Horse was a fun band to work with, and I look forward to seeing how everyone's hard work translates to screen. 

To stay updated on the release of this video and any upcoming live performances, you can visit C-Horse's Facebook Page.

Looking Back to 2006

Trader Joe's at 3rd St. & La Brea Ave, Los Angeles

      
      Since I had completed many projects before I began this blog a few months ago, I will be taking occasional opportunities to look back on some of my career shaping highlights. This August marks the five year anniversary of my first commercial mural. I painted this mural at Trader Joe's in Los Angeles during an incredibly hot summer in 2006. The painting was a colorful montage of local city landmarks totaling nearly 480 sq ft! This mural still stands there today in it's original state, which is somewhat surprising considering the massive change this store location has gone through during this time. This Los Angeles montage remains one of my favorite works to date even though my painting and composition has developed significantly over these years.

That's a Wrap on "Last Look"

     Last week we wrapped up shooting the feature film "Last Look," Directed, Written and Produced by Hernando Bansuelo. This was my first experience working on a feature film! The shooting for this psycologically twisted and horrific drama spanned two weeks of shooting at a few locations. One location was in the Hollywood Theatre District inside a small black box space.  Here we shot nine scenes where we created an intensely surreal theatrical environment.

Photo By: Brigitte Bartholdi

     As the Theatrical Lighting Designer, I collaborated with Director of Photography, Aaron Torres, to illuminate a world of distorted reality through the use of dramatic colors and steep key sources from the lighting grid above. Gaffer, Corrin Hodgson, stepped in to create even fills from the ground keeping with the visual goals Aaron and I had set. Being in a theatre space, we were able to use the dimming control console to adjust the intensity levels for optimum balance in our exposures. The lighting board also came in handy for some cues and simple effects we used in a number of scenes to enhance the theatrical feel.
    I had a great time working on this film in collaboration with Aaron, Hernando and the entire team. Having the opporotunity to use my theatrical style in an art form that is often more realistic was an amazing experience where I learned a lot. By using my knowledge about light and combining it with what I know about photography, lighting for digital cinema began to really click for me. I hope to be able to work on another project with this level of creative lighting again in the future.

A New Look For An Old Store

Glendale's Trader Joe's has been around for many years. Currently, I'm working on the task of re-designing the artistic visual components of the entire store. When I arrived at Glendale in late March, I was starting with literally a blank "cedar" canvas. Now with a new visual theme in place, the store is transforming one project at a time. It's been our goal to bring color, fun and the feel of the community into the new look. This entrance mural is a 3D picture inspired by the nearby foothills and native Californian wildlife. Every plant, letter, and animal is cut from mesonite panels and layered for a dramatic effect. The goal of this mural was to display color and neighborhood into a fun and easy to absorb piece. There is still a lot of work ahead of me in this design overhaul, but I expect that it should keep me occupied for the remainder of the year. Come by to see for yourself!

The Californian June Residency!

Photo By: Mikey Slipko Photography

     This past month I was designing the lighting for the local indie surf rock band, The Californian at The Satellite club in Silverlake. All four performances were a lot of fun and every night I was challenged with overcoming the limitations local venues can present.
     Now that I have designed a few shows at this venue, I am learning how to make their scene setter lighting control console work in my favor rather than against me. I also found more challenges with this space where just plain old science is to blame. Given the size of the venue and the unique L-shape of the audience area, photometrics like to play tricks here.
     It is difficult to decide intensity levels in a space such as this one. The people in the front are practically on stage, so it gets very bright for them while it can seem very dark from the back of the venue. I decided that despite the photgraphers and fans in the front, lighting for the largest percentage of the audience was the most appropriate choice. Therefore I lit many of the songs somewhat brighter than a standard show at this venue.
     My favorite thing about lighting for The Californian is the range of mood and intensity throughout their songs. Many have an eerie and surfy quality with upbeat choruses, while others are more dream like and pleasantly catchy. Nearly all their songs have wonderful dramatic builds and both powerful and soft vocals which really appeals to my theatrical side. Because of their musical range in their songs, I was able to make an equally large range of lighting looks using mostly color and intensity to achieve this since rhythm in not easily controlled on the venue's console. This time, I also had some festive scenery to consider in the over all illumination.

Photo By: Levent Leo Buyukgural

     Lighting for The Californian was a great experience and incredibly fun.  Keep an eye out for their upcoming album release later this year. To view more photos from the fourth night of performances, you can visit Photographer Mikey Slipko's Website. For photographs by Levent Leo Buyukgural from the third nigth performance you can click here  or The Califronian's Facebook Page for fan photos throughout the month.