I have just finished working as Director of Photography on a small Web Commercial, directed by my good friend Jonathan Davenport. I had such fun making it so I thought I would share some of the process with you guys.
Johna is an actor friend of mine who works for a theatre company based in london called "Pants on Fire". Recently they have started making fun little web commercials for other companies as some work on the side from their main theatre shows. Johna hired me as his Director of Photography for their first commercial back in May when I was still studying at Staffordshire University. He had put together a bizarre singalong, superhero, 1940's themed advert for a web security company "Private Wifi". We shot over one evening in a restaurant in london with a crew consisting of just me and Johna. It was hard work, but great fun to be involved with, so when he gave me a call a few months later about a second one I obviously said yes.
The commercial this time was for a shipping container company called "Blue Sky" and was to be based around the idea "You always get more than you expect with a Blue Sky container". Johna outlined the script idea and i immediately knew it would be a challenge. It was a very ambitious concept, we had no budget to work with and the only kit we had access to what little we owned between us and anything we could beg borrow or steal from friends in the industry. But when is anything ever easy!
Ungraded Still from the Ad
CAST
Being a theatre company, cast was one of the simpler things to organise. Johna asked our friend Dan Quirke (Who you might know from the web series we made together 'Quirkology') to be the central character, and the other roles were filled from the wide selection of fantastically talented actors Johna knows from his acting career so far, including the lovely Sarine Sofair fresh from the set of 'Game of Thrones'.
CAMERA
Due to the budget limitations we sadly had no choice on which camera to use, it had to be my own trusty Canon 60D paired with my canon 24-105mm F4, Sigma 30mm f.14 and canon 50mm f1.8. It worked fine for the most part, I managed to avoid any serious Moire issues and the low light was good enough for the exterior night section. The biggest issue with the camera though (as always) was the codec, when we got to post and started grading the footage, pulling keys for skin in particular, it just fell apart. Even after wrestling with it for a good while there are still some bits in the final grade with nasty blocky artefacts.
Grading in DaVinci Resolve Lite
LOCATIONS
I wasn't involved with finding locations so I cant really share any insights with that, but the locations we had still very much fitted into our low budget diy approach. Even blacking out Johnas living room for one scene. As I said before, this was a very ambitious script to be trying to realise without some money to help things along, but we did it anyway. Cant find a casino? Never mind, lets use a living room a bit of camera magic instead.
This looks like a casino... right? Right??
LIGHTING
Lighting was the area that worried me the most when I found out we didn't have the money to hire anything. For the moment, I don't own any lights myself except for a tiny LED on camera light. Luckily I was chatting about the project with my friend and colleague Tom Hood from Spearpoint Productions and he kindly offered me his LED 1x1 panel for the week which was a huge help. Thanks Tom! This LED panel became my main light in the majority of the scenes, but one light fitting just wasn't enough. Luckily Johna also managed to some lights from a friend of his, two PhotoSEL 85W incandescent soft box units. I had never even heard of these light units before so I jumped online to have a look and found them on amazon for £129 for 2 whole units. I have to admit I was sceptical, that is so ridiculously cheap for a continuous light, a set of two LED panels for example would set you back at least £500 for the cheapest units out there. But after using them for a day, I have to say i'm impressed. Of course they are not up to the standard of more professional options, the build quality isnt good, they are fiddly to set up, hard to gel etc. But they are not that bad, not bad at all. They give off a decent amount of light for a small 85W bulb and they have very little green tint at all. Its a hard colour temperature to match to other light sources, but I lit a scene with just these and it looked great. For £129 you cant really go wrong with these!
PhotoSEL lighting Kit. Great value for money!
So all in all I am pleased with what we managed to achieve. Its a cheesy and fun little ad, exactly what we set out to make. I believe Johna is planning on setting up a film annex account for the company at some point soon, and when he does I will definitely share the finished film with you all. I cant wait for you guys to see it.
