Naive
"I am originally from Chicago you see, so I have a lot of family who lived down town working in hotels. So they have a lot of really good connections when it comes to getting great locations across Chicago. Ryan was excited about doing this shoot in Chicago for the next two days."
"It was a pretty simple setup, I was using back then. I had a Canon 7D and a Steadicam Merlin, which I tell you, completely fried my arm. After holding that damn camera over two days straight, I swear that my arm failed for the next three days! At this time, my gear was real bare bones and simple. I only had a Kessler Pocket Dolly, as I said, my Steadicam Merlin and a couple of prime L series glass."
"In fact, this was actually one of the first projects that I ever shot with a DSLR. I had just sold my prized motorcycle for this Canon 7D and some pretty nice Zeiss lenses, so I was pretty excited to try it out on a project. And, then Ryan McDaniel and his music video ‘Naive’ turns up, which was absolute perfect timing."
"The whole shoot was a really big challenge, because DSLRs like the 7D, have to be stripped down and put back up properly, in order to get a so called cinema look out of them. The color profiles incorporated within these cameras are just presets for someone wanting a good looking image and not for someone like me."
"So I really had to do a bunch of study before I could get this thing to work the way I wanted it to using the Technicolor CineStyle type of profile. At first, I didn’t like this camera at all, because it was really hard for me to get a look out of the 7D that I kind of liked. "
"I now use a Blackmagic Camera for most of my stuff, but if I ever did anything with that DSLR, I would always do it as CineStyle. I really wanted something that would make my job a little easier in terms of flexibility, latitude and dynamic range. Using Technicolor CineStyle just helped me play around a little more during the grade in post."
"Before I got Resolve, I used Magic Bullet in Final Cut to do the color grade, which gives you the basic tools to get a pretty good image. I knew all about scopes for grading, but honestly I just went crazy on this film clip. I just totally graded it by eye. I was so sick of trying to pull and push the images off that DSLR, that I just thought to hell with it, I am just going to hope what looks good will work!"
"I soon found out that Ryan Mc Daniel had some really good industry connections and when we were shooting this music clip, he was on the verge of signing with a major label. Imagine my surprise, when his label took my film clip shot on a Canon 7D and ran it on BET 106th & Park. That was a very big deal for me to see my work on a TV show like BET 106th & Park. Even more amazing was being able to finally see my color grades on a network like that. Seeing it playout on air like that, gave me a lot of insights into what I was doing wrong with my grades in Magic Bullet. Seeing some of my earliest work on a national broadcast network really helped me understand that I needed to get far better monitors to grade off in the future!"
"The whole time this music video was being aired, I kept thinking ohh gosh, I hope that no professional colorist will see this thing. Well it all looked great in the end and you soon learn from your mistakes when your work gets onto a network."
