Dumpster Diving
Sometimes, one of the best things you can do, is close your eyes and jump. At least that’s what I did when it came to creating the background for this video. Literally.
Mike Breaux came to us with this concept of having people read the words written by Max Lucado about the Fruit of the Spirit. Now, I don’t know how a lot of creative people’s minds work, but here’s a little insight into my brain. When someone starts giving concepts about a video, my mind immediately starts throwing a ton of different looks at me and I can visually see the video, or at least parts of the video.
Visually, I knew I wanted the lighting to be somewhat dramatic. Use a side light with maybe a little bounce on the face. And in terms of shooting, I knew I wanted to shoot using a lot of negative space because that is where we could implement the words on the screen. Visual, visual, visual and then…. Blank.
I had no clue what the background would look like. With time constraints, we didn’t really have time to do an at location shoot, we knew it had to be in the studio. A lot of times, I’d make a quick run to Hobby Lobby to pick up some cool looking fabric to hang behind the talent. But this time, I wanted to be unique. Only one word came to mind.
Raw.
It needed to look raw. What in the world does raw look like you ask? Not a clue. So Derrick and I started throwing around some ideas and he had mentioned cardboard. Something raw.
Which is what led me to the whole closing your eyes and jumping. I literally had to climb into a big industrial cardboard recycling bin and jump in. For some reason, there is no access other than climbing up the side and hopping in, so, I did.
Hey, I’m not complaining, it was like cardboard heaven! There was light cardboard, dark cardboard, thick cardboard and thin cardboard. I threw as much cardboard as I could fit in my car, went back to the studio and started creating.
I’m pretty sure, I used a whole role and a half of duct tape to get this wall of cardboard to hold together. We then cut some 2 inch holes in the wall and put two Arri (650w and 300w) lights behind it to add little backlight shining through the holes. It looked unimpressive at first, but through the eyes of a 100mm lens at f/2.8 on a 5D mark III shooting at 60fps slowed down to 24 fps and attached to a jib arm?
BRILLIANT!
Sometimes you just gotta jump.
Want to see the whole video? Check it out right here.
