5 For the Fight Explainer
The Situation
We were tasked to come up with an explainer video to live on the 5 for the Fight website that explains what 5 for the Fight is and how people can join the fight. They wanted something that was a little more sharable and we wanted to do something that wasn’t your typical explainer video. After throwing around and concepting a ton of ideas we landed on a really interesting fun idea which was a dance called tutting or finger dancing. Our producer Janssen did a bunch of research and we found our dancer Jay Funk.
Next we came up with the script and custom music for the video which was slam poetry. We worked with Jay over the next week and a half to fine tune his dance so it would match well with the music and voice over track and we set the shoot date for Friday the 13th of September.
The Set Up
The final shot was going to be a one shot to really focus on the dance. We started wide then pushed in to a close and at the very end pulled out to a wide again. The other requirement was to have Jay Funk start as a silhouette and then the lights fade up to reveal him. We chose to film in Vega Studios outside of Salt Lake City and for the first time in a long time I got a full rigging and prep day. Which really paid off.
The camera move wasn’t overly complicated but it did need to be rehearsed a lot for time and framing. We set up about 20-30 feet of track with a peewee dolly on it. The most difficult of the moves was a crane up as Jay Funk stands from his chair. This proved to be very difficult and if the budget had allowed I would have just gotten a robotic arm to pull off the move because it was just luck that we pulled it off and even the final take that we used wasn’t perfect.
For lighting we used a bank of 8 quasar cross fade tubes on a dimmer rigged directly overhead with a half grid wrapped around them to give a nice soft top light. On the side for his key light we had 4 more cross fade Quasar tubes with a half grid 6x6 in front of those to help fill in the shadows on his face. The back lights were 3 Astras. Two pointed at the back wall for the silhouette shot and one pointed at the floor to give a little separation from the wall. All the lights needed to be able to fade at the same time and our Gaffer did a great job fading up the Quasars and down the Astra back light all on the cue.
The last piece of the puzzle was camera and lenses. The director, Janssen Weeks, wanted smoother motion and the ability to do some speed ramps if wanted. He also wanted to film in at least 4K. So I ended up renting an Ursa Mini Pro G2 and we filmed in BRAW 4.6k at 60fps. For the lenses we wanted a very sharp clean look so I opted to rent the Zeiss Otus lenses that were cine mod. These were fantastic lenses and we stayed on the 28mm the whole day.
The Shoot
After a day of rehearsals and set up we felt good about showing up on the shoot day. For the first half of the day we refined and practiced with Jay Funk all the camera moves and dancing. We wanted to make sure that was perfectly dialed before the 12 extras arrived. It was such a different experience than I had had in a long time. Typically I am filming documentary style films and trying to get all the shots and running around like crazy. This was so refreshing because most of it was fine tuning a single shot. Once the extras arrived we got the blocking down and we filmed five or six takes all the way through and that was the day.
In post there was some major work in set extension and removing markers from the ground and back wall but I was incredibly proud to have worked on this video. It is such a great cause and one that is very near and dear to my heart. So check out the video and visit 5forthefight.org and join the fight against cancer.