the Becoming




Last night I shot a band called the Becoming. They've got a bit of dramatic flair, so it was fun to play off that. We started at 7pm and wrapped at 4am. My friend's Ben Frank and Jess Robin came to help with lighting and our newest mayhem intern Bucklee earned my respect by sticking with me till the bitter end at 4am. (we have 2 mayhem acolytes now, Bucklee and Notlee and the original quicklee is in charge) Abby art directed and brought the hair and makeup people. This is lit with 3 gridded softboxes (2ft by 2ft) and one alien bees backlight, although in retrospect I think I should have just skipped the backlight. I really like how you can get soft flattering light with a softbox and the grid allows you to control where it goes. I liked the the alien bees light, I think I might buy some. The softboxes were jtl everlights and they are the cheapest softboxes I can find, but seriously underpowered (even with the 575 watt HPR 1600 lumens bulbs). I need more light. Ah well, we made it work. Shooting groups is always challenging because it's not a group, it's a bunch of portraits in once picture. It's very challenging to light and pose everyone in a way that flatters them all simultaneously. That's why it was really good to have Abby art directing. She paid attention to the people and I paid attention to the exposures. Posing people is hard! I have a lot to learn about that.

Total budget on this shoot: Less than $100, $75 of which we spent on chair rental. The frustrating thing was we didn't even use the chairs we rented cause Reid had way better couches in his house. This is how I learned to do stuff, I would get friends together, a lighting guy here, a makeup person there and we'd do little projects together. Everyone would work really hard and at the end we'd have made a movie or some art project and we'd all have learned a lot. Abby had these friends who needed pictures and so we rallied all the people we know who like doing this stuff and we all got a chance to learn something. Now granted, not everyone gets the lead designer at CMT and the web designer for gotee records to come and pitch in, but everyone has friends. Bucklee didn't know much about photography when we started but after the way he picked up stuff at this shoot, I have no hesitation recommending him to assist on a shoot with a real budget.

So if you've always wanted to do something that you can't do on your own, find other people who don't mind coming along for the ride and enlist them. Make a movie, Start a band, Knitting circle.... whatever... just do it. Not having money is not an excuse. As for me, I'm about to get back into shooting music videos, so anyone want to help me build a model city for Godzilla to tromp through?

Posted: Wed - August 2, 2006 at 01:17 AM          

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