Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Fun project for Starz On Demand



I had an interesting project recently for Starz, creating images for Starz On Demand video spots, currently running on the network. Working over three shoot days, we produced a set of images from five scenes that were cut with movie clips, and edited into the final 30 and 60 second spots. The idea, was to convey images of people living their lives without concern over when their favorite movies or shows are airing, with on-demand, they are in control.

Working closely with the in-house creative team at Starz, we broke down each scene into a series of stills, so that different parts of the still frame could be animated and move independently against the background clips. Starz art director, David Kammerzell did a beautiful job editing the spots and adding the star power with the movie clips.

Each of the five scenes presented it's own set of challenges, most of them the usual technical sort, but the skateboarding shot presented the most unique challenges. We shot at the crowded Denver skatepark on a beautiful, warm spring day. Our biggest obstacle was dealing with the hostile local skaters who didn't like giving up any park time to our skater Kody Wright. After each pass in front of the camera, Kody had to head back into the crowd of pissed-off skaters to start his next run-up before launch. No punches were thrown, but a few members of crew had some pretty heated exchanges with Denver's finest street rats.

My favorite image is the office scene where we combined three light sources (strobe, tungsten and L.E.D.) to create the late-night office environment.










Friday, June 4, 2010

Pants on the Ground


Here's a funny outtake from a recent Sports Illustrated assignment. I was down in Lamar, Colorado working on a college baseball story. Between the two games of a double-header, I was walking past the dugout when I noticed the team from Central Arizona was doing there best to cool off in the 98 degree heat. Simple, but effective.