This weekend we shot a music video for Angelina Chavez’s song “I will remember.” She wrote this song in honor of her cousins who passed away from suicide. It was a very touching and sad song which deserved equally as touching images. Angelina directed and starred in the video. She was great to work with because she did extensive pre-production, made fantastic storyboards and put a great crew around her. Diana Deaguinaga was her DP.

Here’s what we did:

We had two locations: A lonley road through a field in Ribera, NM and the kitchen of a small house in Villanueva, NM

We started off along the road where Angelina walks into the sunset holding a picture her late cousins. We lit most of these shots with a round bounce skinned with roscoflex gold. The gold was similar to the setting sunlight as well as it complimented her espresso skintone.

There was no power and no generator at this location.

We had to get several shots with the setting sun and feared we might not have time to get them all before sunset, but with our great, fast crew key gripped by Joss Mulligan we were able to get all of the shots except one. The sun dipped behind the horizon before we got our last close up. What to do? The sun was gone so we lost that beautiful golden backlight. We did not have any power so we could not break out the big lights but not to fear. We had 3 Dracast daylight LED panel’s, we popped on some batteries, added half CTS and Joss, Zac and I hollywooded them to “bring back the sun.” Diana said it looked perfect!

Our next scene was in the same spot after dark. There were candles all around the cross. To create moonlight to light up the background and edge Angelina, we bounced the same three daylight led’s into a 4×8 sheet of beadboard. This created a really nice soft edge on her but did not really do much to the background as Diana was mostly on a 100mm and DOF was very shallow.

Our key was a china ball with a 100w globe dimmed to about 60%. This light was motivated by the candles. If you have been paying attention you might be asking “if they had no power how could they use the china ball?” Im glad you asked. We had a 150w power inverter that we plugging into the cigarette lighter of a crew members car.

Day 2

The next day we shot the interior kitchen scene, Angelina is popping pills and drinking while looking at pictures of her late cousins.

Angelina wanted to recreate this lighting we saw in another music video.

We used two 1.2k HMI’s with quarter CTS, one outside the window behind her an one through the window on the left of the table she is at. A grip cut a foam core cookie to get the shutter streaks, which initially worked, until we realized that it was the sun shooting through it not the 1.2. We really needed bigger HMI’s to pull off the streaky window thing. The sun was directly behind our light so it was casting the heat wave onto the guitar that was in the shot. We put up a 2×3 solid above the light to block and disperse the heat wave. Eventually as the sun moved to an un helpful position, we put up a 4x flop to cut it out completely. Inside we had a 400w Joker with a chimera shooting into the ceiling to bring up the ambient in room very slightly. We used a fog machine to create a soft ambience as well as bring out the light rays. We used that setup for most of the day, moving the Joker Chimera in for the close ups. As the sun came around and started shooting in though the back window in cast the window panes onto the table. While this light looked beautiful, it did not match our earlier wide shots so we had to lose it. We put up a 4x silk in front of the sun to keep the light but get rid of the shadows.

It was a great shoot and Angelina was very happy with the images she got. Because she made storyboards, we were all on the same page and knew what the shot was going to be without having to look to a monitor and this made all the difference.

Remember, keep your meter in your pocket and know the circuit of your socket.

Is that catch phrase to cheesy?

All screen grabs are slog and ungraded.