On location with Huckleberry Film Studios

I had an opportunity to do a ride-along with my pals from Huckleberry Film Studios last week on a shoot they were doing in Stratford.  This is the kick-ass crew that delivered the Steel Rails video we loved so much from June.  The 06:15 location meet time made for a very early morning and lent a dream-like quality to my shoot of their shoot…

My original connection to Huck Films is through my very good friend,…

Huck founder, director, and creative instigator: Von Darnell (above).  Back in the dot-com-boom days, Von played project manager while I played software developer.  We were going to be rich, which actually came true, but the payout was in experience and good friends rather than cash.  Win.

Earlier this year, after 9 years of various career explorations, Von and I bumped into each other during the lunch rush at Kismet (fate, indeed), and that led to a Cinq a Sept chat, that led to working together on BOX11, which led to me asking if I could tag along on a Huck shoot to see how modern day pro video works.

And that led…

to Balzac’s in Stratford…

which makes a great location…

to shoot scenes for The City of Stratford promotional video.

When I rolled in, the furniture had already been rearranged and the lighting was…

going up.

Erik bustin’ out the other tripod.

Balzac’s has a lot of character, making an interesting backdrop.

Von and Brennan (left) are blocking the shot with actor-stand-ins Laura and Kurt to sort out camera placement and tweak the lights.

Fortunately, it was so early that we were in well before the morning customer rush.

Y’all know what a gear-freak I am, so here’s some tool pr0n for you.  This Zacuto Cross Fire grip attached to the Canon body is beyond your casual user carry.  You’ll see Brennan shooting B-roll with it below.

Von was directing while Brennan was on camera.

The amount of planning that happens well-before the actors show up is amazing.

Brennan’s got lots to consider including various kinds of shots they want to get, what’s in the background, and working around all the gear and lights that are often just barely out of the frame.

Let me pull back and show you this awesome slider rig from Glidetrack that facilitates a smooth left to right tracking shot.  Brennan twists the tripod head, on which the camera is mounted, to stay on subject.  Huck Films is serious about set safety, so that’s why you see cords taped down with hot pink gaffer’s tape.  No tripping… well, not the *bad* tripping.

Video is half the story.  Erik, here, is working on the other half with this boom-mounted shotgun microphone and digital field audio recorder: sound.  This unidirectional mic has a cardioid sensitivity pattern, which is to say it is designed to be more sensitive to sound coming from a particular direction.  Erik monitored the recording with headphones to ensure he was getting clean sound.

Additional sound was recorded to this other field recorder that was wirelessly connected to the two lavalier (lapel) microphones on the actors.  The “lav” mics from Sennheiser have an omni-directional pick-up pattern meaning you don’t need to speak directly into them to effectively record the sound.  Handy.

Laura ran the sound recording on this second recorder…

keeping a close ear for undesirable background noise that would make any particular shot’s audio unusable.  At the end of any given shot the crew would look at Laura to confirm sound quality and she would say ok or “picked up the sound of the door opening” as customers started to roll in.  Laura also recorded some ambient sound from the room with nobody speaking, probably to provide fill or bridging sound for post-production.  I wouldn’t have thought of that.

Each of the cameras is equipped with a R0DE VideoMic microphone and records to local storage.  This mic has a super-cardioid sensitivity pattern that focuses on the subject in front of the camera.

So for sound sources (wow that’s 5!) we had: 2 x R0DE on-camera, 1 x boom, and  2 x lavalier microphones.  Serious.

Just one more light from the truck and we’re…

ready.

The actors arrive.  Stratford’s Economic Development Officer, Randy Mattice (right) gets a touch of makeup from Laura.

The Director reviews the game plan with Stratford Mayor Dan Mathieson.

And the Mayor gets a slight brush as well, and once the actors are mic’d…

sound is ready…

the Director calls…

action (and I paused shooting stills so my clicky Nikon shutter didn’t mess up their audio).  It’s obvious this team has done a lot of work together, because there’s a lot of unspoken communication going on between them all.  A coordination that comes from lots of experience.  Very cool to see how skillfully Von coaches the actors in delivering their lines with good energy, punching up the more important parts.  She is very chilled out and has a whole bag of tricks to help the actors relax and deliver.

Kurt, the account manager, took the background role of Customer #1, at a table behind Dan and Randy.

After the main scene was shot from the track, Brennan switched to camera #2…

to shoot what’s called B-roll.  That’s footage that can be mixed with the main line in post processing to add interest or illustrate a point or just give a different point of view.  I could tell the whole crew was mentally assembling the final product and were making sure they captured all the necessary building blocks on the set to achieve it.

Underneath all the accessories, the Zacuto Z-Finder viewfinder eyepiece and Cross Fire grip, and the Rode microphone: this camera (above) is a very recognizable DSLR.  I was surprised when Von told me Huck used DSLR’s, but on further research I discovered the whole world is using them for HD video.  And Canon is the leader in this domain.  I shoot Nikon because lots of my friends do and that makes borrowing lenses easy, but Canon is totally the way to go for video.  Huck was shooting on Canon 60D and 7D camera bodies.

With the Director’s vision realized…

and smiling…

clients, that must be a wrap and sunrise.

Big thanks to the Huckleberry Film Studios crew, Erik, Brennan, Laura, Von, and Kurt for letting me hang out with you guys and get a glimpse of how you do what you do so well.

Happy making,

DW