Jesse Rosten

I’ve had few inquiries about how I did the light leaks in Growing Is Forever.

The process is simple. Take the lens off your camera and shine a light on the sensor until you see something you like. Or if you’re super lazy (like me) you can download a clip with all the light leaks I used in the film.

Drop it above your footage in your timeline, set the blending mode to screen or overlay, and season to taste. I used an LED light to make these clips so the footage is in the blue/magenta spectrum. Try putting a yellow tint on the footage for a more authentic look. Have fun!

I have a deep affection for the Redwood forests of Northern California. This is my best attempt to capture the reverence I feel when in the presence of these slumbering giants. My friend Kallie wrote this after our group’s annual camping trip to the coast. The words were too beautiful to ignore.

Presenting the continuing adventures of our wee beastie, Stella.

We shot this about 6 months ago for Sunset Magazine and have been keeping it on the down low while they used it internally. Excited to finally share.

Quick backstory: through the power of the Internets, Sunset Magazine (West Coast Lifestyle Magazine) found last year’s day-in-the-life flick of Stella and wanted something similar. The goal was to showcase a particular pet-friendly road trip in Northern California and Stella was just the dog for the job.

Since Stella responds best to her owners, I decided it would be most effective for Lyn and I to be out in front of the camera for this project. It was an interesting experience directing from the business end of the camera. Thankfully, I had the brotastic Tyler Faires lensing this one.

One of the unique challenges with this project was that all of the scenes needed to be in chronological and geographical order of the road trip (although I’ve deviated a little in the above “director’s cut”). It was a fun challenge to create something that is half narrative, half documentary, two-quarters music video, and seven-eigths social commentary on the proletariat exploitation of industrial unionism by the neo-Marxist class of socialist objectors. K, maybe not that last part. Just seeing if you were still reading.

I threw together a few behind the scenes clips since that’s what the kids do these days. Thanks for watching!

This was a relatively low budget project and I have many volunteers to thank for helping make this project happen.
Crew: Tyler Faires, Ryan Hutchinson, Foster Lovelace, and Daniel & Michelle Gallagher for helping shoot the last scene which was cut. Sorry guys, at least we got to hang out. Additional Thanks: Greg Dean from The Fly Shop, Sports LTD, Chester Chamber of Commerce, Treats Dog Company, Hat Creek RV and Resort,
Mt. Shasta Farmers Market, and Gawayne & Shelly, Chloe.

My first job out of college was working as an editor for a local TV station. Well, technically, my first official job was a short stint working the make up counter at Walgreens, but that’s another story for another time. I didn’t work at the TV station very long either. I quickly learned that the employee-employer model wasn’t my cup of tea and struck out on my own after a few months. But the experience was enlightening. I got to see how the station made TV commercials. Granted, the spots were quite awful. Picture your typical schlock pitching used cars, law firms, and furniture stores, but they were commercials none-the-less. And I got to see first hand that making a commercial is not really that complicated. Of course, making a good commercial is extremely hard, but you gotta start somewhere.

So, in the spirit of demystification, I’d like to deconstruct my latest commercial spot for you. If you think you might have the stuff to produce commercial work but aren’t sure where to start, maybe this’ll help. Maybe not. Dammit, Jim! I’m a filmmaker not a career counselor!

Have a look:

This particular spot can be broken down into 4 main elements.
1. The Copy – the words that are being said
2. Voice Over – the recording, or performance of the copy
3. Visuals – the stuff you see
4. Music and Sound – music bed and sound effects

If you’ve seen my portfolio you might correctly assume that I’ve worked with this client quite a bit. The message and branding have already been dialed in so I’m using those guidelines when developing the spot.

Now here are my secret weapons for each of these categories.

1. The Copy. I used to write all my own copy before I realized that there are much more talented people than I who actually LIKE writing scripts. After receiving the event details from the client, I wrote up some instructions and forwarded the details to my copy writer, Kallie. She’s worked with this client before and has the quirky Rolling Hills voice dialed in. By the way, Kallie is a pen-for-hire if you’re needing some deftly crafted prose or poetry for a project. You can find her on Twitter.

2. Voice Over. Once the script was approved by the client, I emailed it to Marketing Mania (mktmania.com). I’ve had the pleasure of working with this company for a few years now. They’ve done 95% of the VO work in my portfolio. Since we’d already cast a voice over artist for this client, the turn around was right quick. In less than 24 hours I had an MP3 of the final voice over. Use them. Tell Christina I sent you.

3. Visuals. No cameras were harmed, or even used, in the making of this commercial. This is all After Effects. Some artwork was provided by the client and the rest was created in software or sourced on iStockphoto. My goal was to create an interesting layout of content that illustrates the copy while leading the viewer’s eye through the spot in an engaging way. As you might imagine, this was the most laborious, time-consuming task of the process. The final visuals were assembled and timed in Final Cut Pro.

4. Music and Sound. Right now my favorite production music sites are Pump Audio, Non Stop Music, and Dewolfe Music. You buy only the song you need and pay based on use and distribution – pretty simple. Sound effects were all sourced through Sounddogs.com. Same search and purchase model.

That’s pretty much it.

Obviously, I’m simplifying the process a bit but these are the basic components used to create this particular commercial spot. Now you know (and knowing is half the battle). Feel free to use these resources on your own projects.

One last note: some of the sound effects I needed for this spot were a little specific so we had to roll our own. Thanks for the vocal help, friends.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A restless mind… or maybe too much late night pizza has you laying awake in bed. You decide that if you can’t sleep you might as well do something productive, so you fumble in the darkness for your iPad for one more round of Angry Birds. You power up and are instantly struck blind by a beam of light so bright that it burns “slide to unlock” into your retinas. You squint, roaches scatter, wife stirs, “Damn, that’s bright.”

Sound familiar? This happens to me too often. Eventually, it dawned on me that, given the right context, the iPad screen is actually pretty bright. I know that for a fact because I measured it with my light meter (1/60, f1.4 at ISO800 from about 1.5 feet). You know once the light meter has come out of the bag, there’s no going back. Naturally, we needed to do a photoshoot using iPads as the light source.

Luckily, I have friends who are very generous with their time and electronics and was able to scrounge up nine iPads. I mounted them onto plywood using some cheap hardware store brackets. This gave me three lights consisting of three iPads each. The light from an iPad is quite soft and diffuse. This makes the light fall-off steep. Adding more iPads didn’t translate to more brightness, but did mean we could light a larger area. Since the ‘Pads would need to be used somewhat close to the subject to get enough exposure, a simple, portrait style shoot seemed like the best option.

Now before the haters start commenting let me first agree with you, yes, this is totally impractical (sidenote: most of my best ideas are often also my worst ideas). Nine iPads will set you back around $4,500. That amount of money can buy you a LOT of lumens in the form of a generic monobloc. This is not intended to be an exercise in excess, but rather a self-imposed limitation to help flex the creative muscles, and to make a point.

Think about it. One 60 watt bulb can put out more light that a truckload of iPads. And you don’t have to spend truckloads of cash to find a 60 watt. This whole making art thing is all about what you do with what you have. We just happened to have a bunch of iPads laying around so we went with that. Today’s dSLR sensors are sensitive enough that you could easily do this with some flashlights, headlights, headlamps, real lamps, or even – heaven forbid – real strobes! Now go forth and do!

Props:
Model – Miranda Hull
Make up – Michelle Gallagher
Hair – Joanna Montemayor
iPad Propagator – Josh Markle
iPad Wranglers – Derek Sine, Corey Jindra
Videographer – Tyler Faires
Miracle Worker – Lyn Rosten

See title. I’m not sure I need to expound on this idea since the title of this post perfectly sums up my thoughts. But since you likely arrived here via a link, I feel I should give you a little more substance to positively reinforce your click-thru behavior.

Let’s talk gear – cameras, lenses, lighting, software – we’ve got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty (and whozits and whatzits galore). I love gear. I really do. And it sure is fun to talk about. In fact, it’s easy to talk about because, for the most part, it’s objective. It’s easy to compare megapixels and millimeters because their values never change.

And talk we do! There are countless blogs and websites that review all the latest in filmmaking techowizardy and photographic doo-dadery. My Twitter stream is full of links to gear reviews, camera tests, and tech shoot-outs.

With all the talk about gear it’s easy to fall into the gear trap. It’s easy to believe that you’re being held back by not having the right piece of technology to tell your story or create your art. “If only.” If only I had an Epic. If only I had a 5DMkII. If only I had a new Mac, or a Steadicam Flyer, or that new plugin, or a tilt/shift lens… it’s a never ending, inexhaustible list of excuses for NOT making art.

But it’s not about the gear. I know that you know this. This is really just a reminder to myself. If you have a vision, if you have art inside you, it can (and will) find its way to the surface through whatever tool is available. Van Gough was not a painter, he was an artist. If he were alive today he might be a filmmaker. If Spike Lee was born hundreds of years ago, maybe he’d be a poet or novelist (idea credit: Godin). These guys used whatever tools they had available to create their vision. Today, we’re lucky that you don’t have to cut off your own ear to get access to inexpensive and powerful storytelling tools.

The truth is making art is scary, messy, and full of failure. It’s straight up hard work. It’s much easier to sit on the sidelines and say we can’t do it because we don’t have the right gear. But don’t fall into that trap. You don’t really need better gear, you just need better ideas.

Here’s what I’m talking about. Below is a video of New York band Atomic Tom performing a catchy tune live on the subway. They’re not using their traditional tools (guitars, drums, piano), just iPhones. The band is talented and clearly has a vision for the song. Take away their instruments and they’ll find a way to make art. And if you take away their phones, I bet they’d still find a way to play the hell out of that song. Talent, not tools, my friends.

Here’s a :15 spot I recently finished for local lifestyle magazine, Enjoy. This is the first of a series of seasonal spots that we’ll create throughout the year. The goal was to find a creative and simple way to showcase the Enjoy aesthetic while capturing the “emotional content” of the magazine.

My solution was to recreate a moving version of a typical Enjoy magazine cover. It’s a little different than moving covers I’ve done in the past. This is more like a “cover shot prequel” – a look into the life of the cover before it was a cover. Now the cover not only has a backstory, but a reason for existing. The visual message is that all of the sights, sounds, and (implied) smells of the season are magically locked up inside the magazine. You can experience the sensation of Northern California Living simply by thumbing through the pages of Enjoy. Simple, tidy, boosh.

This shoot was relatively simple. I think we did about 7 or 8 takes to get a couple keepers. For the camera nerds, this was shot on a Canon 5DMkII with a Glidecam in portrait mode. I found that mounting the camera in portrait would mean I’d have to crop less to get to the final cover composition.

A little side note: I live in California. We don’t always have what the rest of the world refers to as “seasons.” For example, two days ago (middle of October) it was over 90 degrees. Finding fall color around here is possible, but not always easy. For this football spot, we shot in a park that was a lovely, late-summer green. A few clicks from Colorista II’s secondaries transformed the park into an autumnal wonderland.

While playing around with Mac’s Universal Access settings, I came up with a new voicemail.
[Sigh] Ok Computer. Best. Album. Evar!

Summer is upon us. It’s been well over 100 degrees the last two weeks with no end in sight. The secret to beating the heat is to never, under any circumstance, leave the pool. You want your photo taken? Sure! As long as I don’t have to get out of the pool.

Here are a few pics from a just-for-fun shoot with Amanda, aka Salamanda. I had one day left on an underwater housing rental and wanted to try something different. We didn’t have time to put together a wardrobe so Amanda pulled something from her closet – a wedding dress.

Light came from a single 1.2Kw HMI. It was pointed into some painter’s plastic that we pulled tight across one section of the pool, just above the water’s surface. Light falloff in water is much stronger than air and I definitely noticed the HMI didn’t have the same reach under the surface. Could have used an extra stop or two but we made due. The hardest part was getting the light where I wanted it. Due to the obvious consequences of mixing electricity and water, we couldn’t put the HMI *in* the pool. With a heavy top light I was limited to a deep shadowed look. So we just went with it. By the way, the housing was an Aquatech from Borrowlenses.com. Check ‘em out. They’re good people.

Kudos to Michelle our MUA and Lyn the bubble wrangler. Lyn also shot some pics of another model and from what I’ve seen so far they will be epic.

If you want to see what a really deep underwater shoot looks like, check this out this underwater stage at Pinewood Studios.

If you’ve purchased a DSLR within the last year, there’s a good chance that your camera also shoots video. With the push of one little button, photographers now have the option to bring their photos to life, to add motion and sound, to create a dynamic story with their cameras. It’s great to have options, but as the saying goes, mo’ options, mo’ problems.

If you’ve been wondering how the heck to transition from shooting stills to shooting motion, might I suggest a little reading – Vision in Motion: A Photographer’s Introduction to Digital Video. This wonderful resource was written by none other than filmmaker, photographer, and friend Trevor Meier.

So what’s in the eBook? Well, I’ll tell you what’s NOT in the book. This is not a step-by-step gear guide. Pixel peepers look elsewhere. As the title suggests, VISION IN MOTION is about vision. Trevor suggests ways to help you find your vision and the best practices for communicating that vision through the medium of motion. Don’t underestimate the importance of vision. In both photography and cinematography, you need a vision, you need a direction. But the added complexity of time when shooting motion makes vision crucial. Motion implies movement and time implies change. If your characters aren’t moving toward some goal and changing over time, then you’ve got a story about…well, nothing. You’ve got to have a vision. This book will help you discover yours.

But the eBook is not all theory. There’s some technical talk, too. If you’re coming from a photographic background, there’s new lingo and techniques to learn. For example, in photography you can use shutter speed to control exposure. Video is different. Try shooting a whole film with the shutter at 1/8000 and see how long before your audience walks out. If you don’t know why this is a bad idea, you need to read this eBook.

Check it out here: VISION IN MOTION. You might even see a familiar face or two in the pictures!