Fun with food and video productions. Working two days and at least three cameras deep.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday working. I was the lead still photographer on a video project for the Texas Beef Council. I worked with a bunch of video professionals from an Austin production company called, Lamar and Third. And all of us worked in collaboration with Hahn Agency; an Austin-based advertising and public relations firm. 

The project was for Hahn's client, The Texas Beef Council. Basically an association promoting Texas beef. They are also headquartered in Austin... 

The project entailed making three one hour videos along the lines of "Iron Chef" or one of the competitive cooking shows where chefs compete for the top spot. We had two participants who would each cook three different dishes with.....you guessed it.....beef as a primary ingredient. Each dish was a segment of the overall competition and the "chefs" would have one hour in which to make each dish. With time in between for judging and, for us, resetting.

Concurrently the TBC's in-house photographer, Layla, would be working with food stylist, Yvette, to fashion the same recipes and plate them for Layla's in-house studio so she could create web images of all the dishes. 

There were three judges who would sample, critique and rank each dish and, at the end of the competition the three judges would decide on a winner. There was also a moderator/host for the video program. The agency and client picked well when it came to the judges. They kept the ball rolling, were funny, and would often step onto the cooking set to check on progress, give opinions and move the program along. 

I counted ten people on the video production crew. They brought along six broadcast quality video cameras using five on the live cooking production and reserving one more for short and medium length interviews in one of the conference rooms on the property. It really requires me to put on a different mindset when my role is peripheral to that of the video crew. They are expensive because of the sheer quantity of resources they require and I can only imagine with the rental cost of six high end cameras, tons of lights and Teradeks (wireless video transmitters that allow all five cameras on the production floor to send 4K video back to a central video system and monitor) for every camera costs per day. Not to mention the cost of the crew itself. 

The part of my job that revolved around making photo documentations of the show relied on me staying out of the way, out of the cameras' views and being silent on set. Tripping over cables and stubbing my toes on light stands was also frowned upon. 

I got to the location on Wednesday around 10:30 a.m. Happy not to have missed swim practice.  The video crew got there at 8 to start setting up lighting and to dress the very large set. While a big part of the crew worked at running cables, putting up truss, and getting big lights into bigger soft boxes, a smaller crew set up a studio on a different floor in order to get interviews with the three judges and the two contestants on that first day. By the time the first day ended there were 600 Watt Aputure LED lights, stands and sandbags just about everywhere.  They were overhead, on a big truss, on moveable stands, and also positioned over the edge of a mezzanine to create back light for the main set.

I was there to make fun portraits of everyone who would be on camera so the ad agency can then composite images together into playful backgrounds for posters and web advertising. I also had the task of documenting the BTS (behind the scenes) set ups, and interactions between the director, the agency people and the on camera "talent." But what got me in the door was my experience working with lots and lots of different kinds of people and being able to build a quick rapport with strangers. We did that all day long.

To do the nearly full length portraits for advertising I brought along two Godox AD200 Pro flashes, fitted one with a 45 inch umbrella and the other with a 60 inch umbrella and did a 2:1 lighting ratio. I brought a large (9 foot by 12 foot) white muslin fabric to use as my background. I put a Godox trigger on the Fuji 50Sii and photographed six people individually --- and also in small groups. I set up upstairs from the main set and out of the traffic flow so I could work one-on-one with folks and help them get into character without a lot of curious eyes looking on. 

I also worked with Layla, the client's in-house photographer, to shoot some examples of the finished food the contestants would be making over the course of the second day. Interesting that a food stylist was cooking and presenting from the same recipes. But the chefs sent their recipes along so we'd have samples to show on the website.  Wednesday was a short day for me and I wrapped and was out the door by 6. I headed home with my camera case in hand to reconfigure for the next day and also to charge the batteries I used. 

Day two was tightly scheduled and jam packed. There were more interviews and more rigging to be done. Two more talents needed to be photographed,  and the agency also decided it would be cool to have a bunch of different group shots of the judges and then the contestants. And a mixed set of both groups as well. "Herding cats" came to mind as I searched for missing subjects....

We got started with the live action video around 10 in the morning. The video crew had one stationary camera centered on the cooking area and then two cameramen with EasyRigs (kind of like a Steadycam) who moved around the front and sides of the set for close-ups and action shots. Two more cameras were aimed at the judges who sat at a long table set about 30 feet away and perpendicular to the kitchen and presentation area. So, all told, I spent the day staying out of the camera frames set across five different video cameras. Cameras that were being reset and re-aimed all the time. I felt a bit like Tom Cruise dodging a laser grid in a high security, evil sanctuary. Only nothing "evil" was happening in our neck of the woods. 

I got wide shots of the set, closer shots showing the two cooks competing and many, many shots of each individual contestant doing their best to finish and "plate" beautiful dishes before the clock wound down and the buzzer sang to stop the action. I also shot wide, medium and close shots of the contestants standing, one at a time, in front of the judges, listening to their feedback and then explaining why they made the choices they did. In total I shot about 3500 frames over the two days. Many are exposure brackets or slight changes in point of view or cropping. Our final deliverable was about 2,000 which will end up being used throughout the year in print ads, on websites and other collateral. 

I shot a bunch of different cameras and have some basic observations. I started out using two Leica SLs, one with a 35 and the other an 85mm lens but I didn't like the way the noise profile looked when I started getting up into the nose bleed ISOs of 3200 and beyond. I switched to the Fuji S50ii. I used that camera for all the portraits done with flash. All the stuff on a stationary background. And also for a lot of the images on set that called for close-ups on food. Areas where the lighting provided by the video crew was more than sufficient. But the two cameras I ended up with for almost everything on the second day were the Leica Q2 and the Leica SL2 with the Leica 24-90mm lens. The winner for flexibility, beautiful files and operational speed was the SL2. With the Q2 close behind. 

All the images were handheld. Both the Q2 and the SL2 have decent image stabilization. The SL2s become better when used with the 24-90mm zoom and that's the camera and lens combination that I liked best. It was heavy but the density makes for a more stable shooting platform. The Q2 was great for the times when, just after the director yelled, "cut!" I would want to step in for a wide but tight crop of something like the group of judges conferring together. The SL2, even at ISO 1600-3200 was well behaved and the files were clean --- as long as I didn't underexpose too much. The focusing locked on like a badger on a snack --- but that's not too surprising since I generally shoot with the center focusing sensor and S-AF. I like to get that focus confirmation when I shoot. It's comforting.

A quick social media interview before the main event....

The calm before the storm. 

Chefs Johnny Stewart and Danielle DuBois on the set stirring up ingredients. To my right is the stationary camera which I must not cross. To the far right a camera operator on the move. To the left of me is a second video camera operator and to the far left the in-house food photographer

getting coverage for her projects. Behind me are a whole crew of sound engineers. Four or five people from the agency (director, art director, creative director, executive creative director and copywriter) looking at the monitors positioned all over behind the active set....

Shooting plate shots of the website in Layla's on site studio. 

 I learned years ago to do a custom white balance for each part of the set. 

There are three presets on the Fuji camera I can set up to "park" a different 

custom white balance setting in. An auto white balance would have gone a bit

nuts with all the red/magneta light in the background. 

big lights everywhere. 

The director of photography, Tony. Calling all of the camera moves during the live filming. 

Just an amazing amount of energy as well as a keen memory for all the moving parts. 

He seemed able to visualize what every camera was seeing and how to move them

in real time for the best effects.

It's always interesting for me to watch a multi-camera production where all the cameras are synced in via wireless transmitters to a centralized system that shows all five feeds in real time on huge monitors. When I first started making TV commercials in 1985 most productions worked with one 35mm film,  movie camera. If we wanted three or four different angles on a shot we did the shot three or four times. Each time trying to match the master action and moving the camera into a new position for each new angle. "Continuity" was crew position. Shooting that way took a lot of time. It's so much better to be able to get up to five angles on each shot. 

On the main food stage the crew was getting three and sometimes four angles at a time. So much the better. 

The drudgery of a shoot like this, for me, has nothing to do with the shooting days ---- which are always very much fun ---- but hits me on the following days when I have to do the post production. The first part is the most agonizing. It's narrowing down the big pile of images into something more manageable. You'd think I'd just select the ones I like and toss the rest but on a shoot like this, where images might be used in lots and lots of different media over a year's time, I can't always imagine exactly what my art director or creative director might want. I give them choices. There might be twenty shots of the same basic action that make my first cut and I might have preferences but they don't always agree with client preferences. Better to give them more than what they need than to presume and come up short. 

I got through the edited (which means = which to keep and which to toss) files and then color corrected in batches. Since I am shooting with custom white balances and manual exposure ten or twenty similar files, shot at the same time, can be globally corrected (batched) and tweaked for exposure and color. Once everything looks good to me I upload really big, low compression Jpeg images for the clients to download and start using. Each large Jpeg file is about 20 megabytes. All shot at the full camera res of around 50 megapixels. 

There always seems to be some part of the project that's needed on a short deadline. If it's really "hot" I get those files done first and send them along. Then I get back to work on the bulk of the content. Yesterday, at the end of the day, I had sent along about 40 gigabytes of files to WeTransfer so the agency folks could download them and get to work. Today, just for my own convenience, I am backing up the same files into galleries on Smugmug.com. I'll share the galleries with the agency so they have a convenient way to look at all the images from anywhere. Convenient for meetings and such. 

When I do another live show like this one I have a few changes I'd like to make. One is that I'd like to use a Leica SL2-S or a new Panasonic S5ii camera so I can take advantage of the lower noise at very high ISOs. Optimally, I'd like to be shooting under the video lights at something like ISO 6400 to 12500. I'm happy with the 24-90mm Leica Vario-Elmarit but I would also have liked a very fast 135mm lens for tighter shots from various vantage points. Not a big issue on this week's project as the three cameras I used most have ample extra pixels for cropping. It's just a "want" and not a "need." I wish the Sigma art series 135mm f2.0 focused faster on L mount cameras. That's a lens I'd like to see them update....

After I finish getting the last files uploaded to Smugmug the job, or at least my part of it, will be completed and we'll be ready to bill. 

Final thoughts? It was fun to be around so many skilled, smart and high energy people for two days. Loved being able to use my favorite cameras with....intensity. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. 

But swim practice this morning was fun too. Maybe I just think most everything is fun. That's not such a bad attitude to have, right?