FIFA 21 X Karski & Beyond
“I had shot some of Karski and Beyond’s murals in the past, so they asked me to capture their creative process for this indoor project. All of this happened a couple of years back when I was first starting out, when I had a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K.”
“Back then, money was super tight for me. All I had for this project was my 4K camera, a couple of Sigma zoom lenses, a Flycam stabiliser and one cheap LED light tube. So when I walk into the space where Karski and Beyond where painting, my first thought was how I could possibly shoot in this place. The scale of the murals was huge and the light was utterly terrible.”
“It was super dark with hanging lights that were fluorescent with this weird green color. It wasn’t daylight and it wasn’t tungsten, it was just ugly light. And all I had with me was one LED tube light to fill the whole space.”
“The next thing that struck me was the amount of paint fumes and droplets in the air. There was no ventilation and the air was completely filled with paint mist. So every time I was in that space I had to wear a paint and chemical fumes safety mask. By this time, I was having serious doubts as to whether I could even film anything decent in this kind of environment.”
“I guess the main thing that saved the shoot, was being able to shoot in Blackmagic RAW. I could safely shoot under exposed at only 1250 ISO, with the wrong color temperature for these shots and still make them look great in DaVinci Resolve. What I didn’t know at the time, was that by using my BMPCC 4K MFT mount camera with Sigma EF lenses, I was actually achieving a much faster f stop. So instead of my lenses shooting at f1.8, they were actually much faster, which helps when shooting in such low light.”
“I later found out that shooting on EF lenses with a MFT mount camera, can get you a faster f stop with the correct type of mount adapter. When you’re shooting with the BMPCC 4K, it crops into the lens’ field of view by 1.88. With this crop factor, on say a 35mm lens, it now has the appearance of being narrower with a 65mm field of view. Which was definitely not what I wanted.”
“In order to correct the narrower field of view, I used a focal reducer (speed booster) of 0.71X magnification. Instead of my lens looking like 65mm, with a speed booster it makes it much wider, closer to 24mm. Although the depth of field doesn’t change, the magnification does intensify the light that passes through to the sensor, with the benefit of the lens now being much faster. With a 35mm lens using a 0.71X focal reducer the lens went from f1.8, to a field of view of 24mm at f1.2. With a 0.64X focal reducer the same 35mm lens would go from f1.8, to a 22mm field of view at f1.1.”
“So shooting in Blackmagic RAW with my Sigma Art zoom lenses on the BMPCC 4K, turned out to be the perfect combination for this shoot. If I had my time again, I would have used three LS 1200 D lights to bounce up into the ceiling with something like a snoot, to improve the quality of light.”
“The other thing that was crazy about this shoot, is that it was a race against the clock to shoot and post everything. I had just finished shooting for a couple of days, and was back home starting the edit and I just couldn’t get the opening scenes to work for me. Whatever I did, looked ugly and boring to me.”
“I then asked the founder of StreetKings if I could shoot him doing some tricks. Edward van Gils is not only the godfather of street football, he is just the this super cool guy. What he can do with a soccer ball is really amazing. So I asked him to meet me at the indoor stadium where we knocked out all of the lights to make the space pitch black. I then setup up a back light using my one LED tube light and just recorded Edward messing around.”
“I think his scene at the beginning, really makes the whole piece work. Every time I look at this project, I can’t believe it works as well as it does. Because it really was the worst environment you could very try to shoot something in. And, yet worked. Some of the projects you do when you are first starting out, can be the most fun. Because you start out with low expectations and then surprise yourself when it works out great.”
