Whats up tumblr its your boy! i say that like i have tons of followers, i do not, this is to the 150 of you who have been following. i use to post directly from IG but my link isnt working. so from now own im gonna be posting articles on the work i do, with the exception of the stuff i cant contractually talk about.. ill be going over the project, from shoot to edit and post some BTS when available, as well as the camera, and lenses i used. hope you guys enjoy and without further ado i bring you the first post.......
Location Edinburgh, United Kingdoms
Director/Cinematographer: Douglas Ferguson
So a bit of back story i met THE HONEY FARM while i was in Scotland working on my documentary entitled “beats and bagpipes.” I met them through a mutual friend of theirs who i connected with on Tinder of all places. It really was fortuitous, as i was shooting this doc i kept running into alot of male artist, and couldn't find not a single female rapper and then boom i found three. Went to interview them and knew they had something, they reminded me of a female version of the beasty boys.
and its not intentional on their part its just their swag.. seriously
that was not on purpose, it wasnt till after i edited the music video that i saw the similarities between that shot and the one from the beasty boys video.
So fast forward a few months later i was coming back to Scotland, to give a lecture on being a working filmmaker and to hang out with my friends. the girls contacted me about shooting the video for this song and the concept they had and i thought it was brilliant. The song deals with Toxic masculinity LAD/BRO culture in a satirical and sometimes sadly truthful manner, as a man its hard for us to see the dumb and often hurtful things we do and say to women, and so to that effect the ladies thought it would be a good idea to do some gender reversal where they dressed as the titular LADS and they had some guys dress as ladies, the results were hilarious take a look at the full video:
While i would love to take credit and say it was the way the video was shot and edited that makes it worth watching, it was really all them, i gave very little direction and just worried more about blocking and camera position, my job was easy. the only footage that wasnt originated by me was the club footage which was shot after i came back to the states.
I shot with what has become my favorite combo.
Camera Black Magic Cinema Camera 2.5k with metabones speedbooster
Lens: Sigma Art 18-35mm 1.8
this is hands down my favorite and go to combo for most projects, i rarely shoot with any focal length over 35mm, with my sweet spot being between 21-28mm on cropped sensors on a full frame id be between 35-85. with my sweet spot being 35-50mm. but for the bmcc you cant get any better. Sigma has stepped its game up with its Art lens series giving you clean crisp slightly cool images from end to end. i shot in RAW because when it comes to this camera you wanna use all 13 stops of dynamic range, one of my biggest concerns while shooting were the weather conditions in Scotland which can go from sunshine to cloudy with the drop of a hat having that full dynamic range available meant that i didnt have to worry about my highlights, the trick to shooting with the black magic is really getting as much light to the sensor as possible or exposing to the right side of your histogram or ETTR:
This process allows you the best image quality and the most color range, its not something i always follow, but its good rule of dumb when shooting with this camera.
the editing of this music video unlike others i shot was fairly simple mainly because i didnt really need to any kind of special effects like you would for most hip hop music videos, i just let the images and costumes dictate my cuts, for this video thought i wanted fast cuts and for the performers to be often mid sentence.
by adding edits mid sentence it makes the audience feel like they are going on a journey and apart of the narratives being told, my first edit actually had a cut every 4 seconds but i thought it was excessive and instead went for a 4-8 second ratio.. the song is unusually long for todays hip hop standards, with most songs falling in the 2-3 minute range lads clocks in at just over 4 minutes, so my plan was really to treat the video like an action scene in a movie, it really did help with the overall flow it. The coloring process was easier. i used one of my own LUTS(Look,Up,Tables) based on KODAK KODACHROME 64
You can purchase the package from me if you like it: https://sellfy.com/p/BhI7/
and i combined it with Red Giant Universes Retrograde
but before i that i had to color correct the footage and i wanted to do it based off the final look...so in Davinci Resolve i went:
using resolves LUT feature in a node i was able to adjust the RAW footage bringing down the highlights and the shadows boosting the midtones, to create the best footage to match the final look, this was the tedious part of the whole process as it required me to toggle on and off the LUT to make sure the footage would look great and the skintones were fine.
This was probably the funnest video i ever had a chance to shoot and look forward to shooting another with the honeys, hopefully stateside. hopefully you found this post informative ill try and keep them breath but no promises. hopefully someone reads these things. goodbye and good luck shooting.
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