Working In The Lab - Vin Thomas
It’s hard to think of a video shoot or client project where lessons weren’t learned along the way. Sometimes it’s a simple as making sure your white balance setting isn’t set to auto. Other times it can feel like a real breakthrough moment of understanding lighting. So while our work inherently builds in opportunities to learn and grow as creatives, it can be a nice change of pace to take on that learning and experimentation away from clients and deadlines — to create just for the joy of creating. With this goal in mind, we hosted our first “film lab”.
This project was inspired by a video produced by the Norwegian film company VJUS. When a musician reached out to VJUS to produce a music video, the company took on the challenge to see how they create multiple different looks and moods within one space to illustrate the song. We didn’t have a music video to produce, nor did we have much of a crew or a large space. But we were struck by the same idea: “Working with what we have in our studio, how many different scenes and moods can we create?” It just so happened that we do have a member of our co-working space who is a phenomenal guitarist — Fixel founder and owner Vin Thomas.
We were inspired to throw a few more variables into the mix of our experiment. Is that good practice for scientific inquiry? Pretty sure the answer is no. But we are artists, not scientists. So our challenge became this: Using the equipment and space we have, create three different scenes of Vin playing his guitar that vary in terms of their lighting/feel, their camera movement, and their optics. Technically, a fourth variable was the camera switch for the last scene but that was a product of incompatible lens mounts.
The final result was the video you see above. If you haven’t yet, give it a watch!
No experiment is complete without completing an analysis of your lab results. So in that spirit, here are a few takeaways from the process — some technical, some not — that we will take with us into future projects.
There is definitely a difference between vintage glass and modern cinema glass. The “vintage” aesthetic seems to be all the rage these days. One of the lens sets we played with in this film were old Minolta MD photo lenses. There are some very soft, pleasing characteristics to the image they produce and the flares they throw can be exciting unpredictable and unique. But we wouldn’t say that means it’s the right aesthetic for every project no matter how “trendy” the look may be. The lenses generally have very noticeable focus breathing. They definitely lack contrast. And the flares can become annoying and degrading to the images just as much as they can add pleasing character. Conversely, the IRIX lens that filmed all the black and white footage has a sharpness and richness that was unmatched. It feels life-like. It has a noticeable pop to material and texture. I would argue it much more closely resembles how we experience life through our eyes and, therefor, can create a more relatable and less distracting image. The answer here is that there is a use-case for both. The lens types do create a different image and can evoke different feelings, and intention behind the project and film should be the guiding choice in what gets used.
Bounced light can be some of the best light. It can be some of the cheapest light, too. A $5 piece of white foam core from Office Supply ended up doing the trick on our black and white footage against the garage doors. Clamped above and at an obtuse angle to the light source, it worked beautifully by casting an even spill of directional light across Vin’s face. With a bit more time and set-up (and likely a little more light power), putting a piece of large diffusion for that bounced light to pass through would have softened up the shadows. But that $5 foam core has definitely earned it’s place in the kit bag as a cheap and easy modifier to use.
Production design can make a huge difference. Due to time and resources, we were only able to dip our toes in the deep pool of production design. Traditionally, we work as documentary filmmakers where action is often recorded candidly and locations are generally left in the way the subject uses them. There are certainly opportunities in the doc world to pre-light or preset the space where your action will unfold, and we find ourselves looking for those more and more. But this was a somewhat unique chance to create a scene of our own choosing and use what we had available to help sell that concept. Even our small amount of effort helped to really change the space and feeling of each shot and it helped peel back the curtains on what grander scale and intentional production design can do.
Plan meticulously, and then be prepared to throw it all away. This lesson was more reinforced than learned for the first time. It’s a scenario that pops up often when you are chasing events in a doc, or having to operate in unpredictable and changing environments. In this context, we put a solid chunk of time into planning this shoot ahead of time. The moods, the concepts, the lenses, the camera movements, it was all determined ahead of time. But as the furniture started to move and the light started to change, we responded to what we say. “This scene is feeling more like a dingy basement than an old nostalgic locker-room.” Great, let’s figure out a lighting effect to help sell the basement vibe. “Creating a GOBO for this light to cast shadows isn’t working how I want.” Alright then, let’s change the lighting to be motivated by the ambient source instead. This is a mindset and skillset that’s always so important to practice so that on-set and on paid projects, we feel comfortable adapting and changing to the circumstances in front of us.
Our goal is to create time and space for more of these “labs” in the future! Cheers to always learning, growing, and challenging ourselves as creatives.