Jason Lew Photography » Video

SYTE: Time Cocoon

Jason — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 04:08:40 +0000

I created this short promo video for Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble’s concerts at ODC theater. It was their last performances with two of their founding members: Jimi Nakagawa and Kallan Nishimoto. It was also one of their best shows. I’m looking forward to seeing SYTE grow and can’t wait for the new endeavors that Jimi and Kallan explore.

SYTE TEN DVD Trailer

Jason — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:04:07 +0000

Ok, so I finally got a clip up of the video I’ve been working on. It’s been a long project with one almost disastrous computer failure in between, but it should be wrapping up this week and then going out for replication. The project seemed to grow and grow but luckily I had the privilege of working with many great people during the two day shoot and during the many weeks of post production. The concert was shot on 3 Panasonic HVX200′s. All editing was done with Final Cut Pro and graded in Color.

Somei Yoshino Taiko – “Ten” Concert Rehearsal

Jason — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:06:30 +0000

Here is a short video clip from some footage I shot with the Nikon D90 during a rehearsal. I’ll be working one of the three video cameras for the live concert recording next week. I won’t be using the D90 for that though, I’ll be shooting a HVX200 with a P2 card.

The D90 is an interesting animal. You can get some really great looks from the camera and the right lenses but it is very limited. The 5 minute recording limit per clip is normally not a problem when you have a planned shoot, but for something that has to be shot in one take like this rehearsal, it gets to be a little annoying having to work around this. I was using it for about an hour and a half and it definitely was getting pretty hot, but still kept going.?The lack of manual controls is also something I just have to accept and try to make the best of.

I used a tripod and video head most of the time. The lighting levels were very low and came from available light through a bank of windows and tungsten room lights. Nothing fancy here…it was a rehearsal! I shot a gray card to get a color balance in camera and it did a very good job. For this video though, I wanted something a little edgier and played with the colors a little in Final Cut.

The sound from the little mono mic on the D90 is ok and useful for syncing but in a high sound pressure situation such as this rehearsal, it is unusable. Instead I used audio courtesy of a live recording by Darcel Walker who will be doing the sound recording for the concert video. He was using 4 wireless lav mics for this rehearsal. I didn’t process the audio at all and only gave a few tweaks to levels and panning.?

Validation

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:22:27 +0000

Sometimes I come across things that I just want to share with everybody. If you have not seen this short yet, you must watch it. Yes it is 16+ minutes long, and that is a long time to devote to anything found on a blog post, but I have to tell you that it was the best 16+ minutes of my day today.

While this video is not exactly photo related, it does make you think a lot about interaction with your subject. How do you get the emotion or expression that you’re looking for from your subject? How do you change the mood of the shoot when things are not going as planned? One of the most important things is to make the subject feel comfortable. Sometimes they’re nervous and this tenseness will show up in the image. Try to keep the mood light and have a little conversation with them. Get to know them a little, even if you only have a couple minutes. Be enthusiastic and let them know that you’re both there to make them look good. If all else fails… you could just say, “you, are great!”