everyone's lost but me...

Day 5: 41 Rolls shot today. On our last day we ventured out to The Lighthouse. The walk was great. The location was amazing. It was a great way to end the shoot. The sky was bright blue and nearly cloudless. The remaining rolls of Portra 400 would more than likely have been overwhelmed with a 3-stop overexposure if not for the Polarizer filter that I taped on the front of the LomoKino. 1 2/3 stop worth of light that I didn’t have to worry about. I grabbed a couple of wide shots while Kyle and Lesley-Anne got ready. The barnacle covered volcanic rock is going to look amazing on film. The small patches of grass and little purple flowers that carved out an existence in the little hollows of the rock added some unexpected color to the scene. The Sun gave us a nearly perfect side light. Kyle sat on a set of concrete steps in front of the lighthouse. The names of several kids who’d made the journey before us littered the wall behind him. Brilliant. We opted for ...

Day 4: Shot 30 rolls of Portra 160. Today. A bit cold, a bit windy and a bit awesome! We began the day at a rocky outcrop overlooking Scalpsie Bay. This particular vocal piece was the crest of the song. The shot started low and progressed up the hill, past Kyle to the wide vista behind him. Lesley-Anne set up her "office" with the computer, speakers and camera log a short ways down the hill. She's been great, pulling triple-duty as Production Coordinator, 2nd Assistant Camera and Chauffeur.  She's been indispensable. This shoot wouldn't have been possible without her. Kyle was a trooper, barefoot for the first 2/3 of the morning, freezing and covered in fluttering feathers. He pulled it off brilliantly.   As he and Lesley-Anne packed up our kit,  I cranked out a few more wide shots for the open. We warmed back up in the car on the way to The Musiker Café’.  By the end of lunch Kyle was able to feel his toes again. After lunch ...

Day 3. Cut short by rain. We started the day with a B-Roll shot of this huge amazing tree in the middle of this empty field. (I say empty, but for the herd of grazing cattle who were kindly keeping completely out of the shot) The tree is surrounded by a stone circle and an old wooden fence. The grey clouds and misty rain made for an amazing shot. The wind was moving the bare branches of the tree slightly, so I cranked the LomoKino as slowly as I could and then varied the speed to slow down the movement of the branches slightly. Onto The Lighthouse? The trek to the Lighthouse is no mean feat on the best of days. It's about an hour along the coastal cliffside trail. The wind and spitting rain would make the walk (let alone the shooting of an important vocal piece) difficult, if not dangerous. We decided that we would go back to the house to see if this weather would pass and make a decision later. On the way back to the house, we stopped at Kerrycroy to grab a shot of t...

Day 2 was a real treat. We shot the first vocal synch segment and several B-Roll shots. We started at the Cement House. While Kyle was getting ready, I took some wide vistas and establishing shots. The 2-Perf Super 35mm format really makes these wide shots much more stunning. The first shot in the vocal sequence had Kyle, sitting on a rocky outcrop on the extreme right, the Cement House in the background and a huge rusty old winch in the foreground on the extreme left. As the shots progressed I moved Kyle across the frame, ending up on the extreme right. The results will be very dreamy as each shot dissolves into the next. I’ve been asking a lot of the Portra 400. It’s latitude for underexposure is legendary, but I’m asking it for 2 stops over exposure in some instances. Negative Filmic emulsions have always handled highlights better than any digital format ever could. I’ve always put a tremendous amount of faith in Kodak films and have only seldom been disappointed...

A couple of days before Kyle arrived; we had been talking over Skype about changing the song for the video. He felt that “Fireworks” was more representative of the album as a whole. This really wasn’t a problem, since the video had no narrative element. His costume had been created by a local costume designer and ready to be picked up the next day. --- Monday Shoot T Minus 1: My prep has been done. Lists were made and gear gathered. Kyle got into Glasgow today with no problems. He showed us the costume. It looks amazing, consisting of several pieces of fabric, feathers, tassels and dangly bits. It’s brilliantly coloured and will look amazing on film. We talked a bit about the scheduling. We think that 2 locations per day will be a nice easy pace. Kyle has broken the song down into 113 pieces. It’s a few more tracks than the previous song, but about half the song is instrumental, so we don’t have to worry about syncing as many vocals and therefore won’t hav...