Shot Cut & Colored: #001 The Black Rep Theatre
Doing Free Work as a Cinematographer.
Shot by Stephen Greathouse, Cut by Rogers Townsend, Colored by Rogers Townsend
The 2020 St. Louis Addy Awards came around and I was pleasantly surprised to find two of the projects I worked on winning both Gold & Silver awards amongst various categories. Although I did not submit this work, I was a little caught off guard not seeing my name listed as apart of the talent behind the project. To this day I do not know how the award shows work but I figured my work as the Cinematographer should have been recognized. Below is the work I created for this free job.
The Black Rep - Season 43
This was a promotional spot for a local performing arts Theatre for their social media, print, and televised campaign. Here is a link to the agency that was behind the overall promotional pieces. https://rodgerstownsend.com/work/the-black-rep-2019/
The Gear & Location:
Although this was a free job, we were able to ask around town and too our neighboring city, Kansas City for some equipment. We shot on an old RED EPIC Mysterium X in HDR with a set of Vintage LOMO Spherical lenses. We lived on a Dana Dolly and shot in a borrowed location at a local college theatre room.
The Tech-Scout:
Starting with a few BTS photos of the location we were able to determine that we could pull the talent far enough off the wall to make the room feel bigger than it actually was.
The location at a near by College Theatre room.
Director on the left, gaffer sitting down…as normal, jk.
Producer doing Producer things.
After the tech-scout we were able to negotiate the support of the on-staff theatre employees to help us utilize the house par and leko lights for the shoot. They were very helpful and we couldn’t have pulled this shoot off without the generosity of everyone involved.
The Breakdown:
I like to sketch up a simple camera break down for every set-up to share with my keys so that we are on the same page. For this project we were a tight nit group and we had the freedom to create what ever we thought would look best.
The shot design.
Shot #1:
The Action:
The performer lifts his head on action, addresses the camera, and begins to deliver his dialogue.
The Lighting:
We were able to scrape together a few units to light this free project. We had (2) 1k Tungsten Fresnel lamps shooting straight into a 12x12 of 1/2 grid. For our top light/ambient light we took two kino 4banks rigged above the talent shooting through a shower curtain (similar to 1/2 Soft Frost). And as for the edge lights we gelled up 3 different Leko lights that were provided from the theatre. Lets not forget the shit ton of haze we used to shoot the backlights through.
Set-up #1 - Spell #7 performance
The opening shot before we started to dolly back and reveal more of the talents outfit.
The Medium shot at the end of Dolly about 10’ from the talent.
The Results:
The Tan color is the Key, the Pink is the ambient, the Orange is the back rim light, the Red & Turquoise are the two kicker lights.
Shot #2
The shoot only called for one angle however I was able to convince the director we should come up with an alternative angle for the edit just in case. This shot was on the 75mm Vintage LOMO Spherical lens parallel to the talent. Besides this particular shot from his performance we used this angle to shoot his hands and other actions for the edit.
We rotated the talent towards the key light and re-framed in order to get the shot we needed.
The Results:
This was a little trick that most working professionals know how to achieve quickly when needing to shoot coverage at fast pace. Some times all you need to do is rotate the talent towards the key and find your shot without having to adjust your lamps. The eye light in the talents left eye is from the 12’x12’ Half Grid about 12’ feet away. If you were to use a small Dome light for this same set-up you wouldn’t be able to have the same kind of spread from the face to his waist.
I love lighting with larger frames/sources because it helps me have more control over the nuances from the key to the fill.
Set-up #2 - Marie & Rosetta
Marie & Rosetta performance on the 50mm direct to camera.
Her same performance off axis with the 75mm and the talent slightly rotated/cheated towards the key light.
The Breakdown:
Not much changed form the previous performance other than the edge lighting colors. We matched these colors to the Directors photographic design for the promotions. As for the direction of the light,I was allowed to mix it up between each performances.
The Lighting:
For this set-up we swapped out the gels in-front of our Leko Lamps and changed the direction of a few of the lamps. We brought one lamp to the floor and up-lighted the talent with a few layers of CTO and cross light the up edge light with a full CTB.
The Results:
The Wide on a 50mm.
The Close-Up on a 75mm.
Set-Up #3 - Two Trains Running
The Breakdown:
The set-up was similar to the previous shots. However we changed the gels out to reflect the the promotional photography.
The Results:
Set-up #4: “Don’t Bother Me, I can’t Cope”
Shot on the 18mm LOMO Spherical lens about 3’ from talent.
Shot on the 50mm lens parallel to the talent shooting into the upstage rim light with a variety of CTO.
The Breakdown:
For the final set-up we re-introduced the middle hair/backlight with a few different filters in order to make each set-up feel different from the last. We added multiple Lekos to this shot placing one of the lights right behind the talent directed towards the lens. Let’s not forget that we had the staff kill the smoke detactors and we pumped this room full of haze in order to create the textures both left, right, and behind the talent.
The Results:
Thank You:
Thank you for taking the time to dive into this breakdown. If you have any questions regarding this project or other projects I have shot, feel free to leave me a reply below.