A few months ago, the Cleveland area boys from the dynamite band Bessemer Saints had a smoking new number from their all original album This is BS Too named "Like I Care" that they wanted to get immortalized on video. Since I had worked with these awesome bunch of guys for their killer number "Another Night with Whiskey" off the same album, I was of course way pumped to do this for them. They had their mastered 2 track mix ready to go so we were on! Here's a quick and dirty of how this night rolled out.
Bessemer Saints
Old-school original rock out of Cleveland, Ohio. Basically, if we dig it, we do it! And we dig a lot of different stuff.
Terry “Bull” Johnson-The Skins
Tommy "Whiz" Packard-6-String
Dave "Shags" Snodgrass-The Low End
Cory "Pipes" Wooten-Soulful Sounds
We had an allotted time of around 3 hours to shoot this video at this rented venue. This was definitely pushing right up to my comfort level to get what I'd need. So I knew we had to work fast (more on this below). We really hit the ground running with load-in and setup and before you knew it, I was shooting performance footage. Special thanks to my assistant Adam for keeping things moving along. The proprietors gave the patrons little notices that a live video crew was going to be there shooting video.
The Scene
An actual live laundromat with active patrons bustling about doing their laundry. Miscellaneous antics and imagery taking place all in one shoot location.
The Concept
Live performance of the song in a local west side of Cleveland laundromat with sequences of mild story and miscellaneous B roll conceptually tailored for Like I Care.
"I did actually fall straight on my ass shooting backwards at one point. Terry caught a drum stick in the chops..."
Main Performance
The band's footprint occupied a nice little nook surrounded by washers and dryers to minimize patron overshoot and maximize the vibe. The existing lighting was fairly intense dropped 8' leds with a cool color of around 5k kelvin. The existing lighting was ample but I did use a frontal kicker which I matched to color to give a slight frontal fill and have a little eye sparkle on the frontman. I used a single, low 4' Nanotube for this. I ran through 5-6 passes on the song covering each band member individually and the frontman twice. I used my favorite 2 lenses for this type of work, the Sigma Art 28mm f/1.4 and the Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4/ which I shot wide open. Given the ample light, I was able to shoot with low ISO with minimal noise. Every take was shot mounted on the DJI RS Pro 3 gimbal which is such a fantastic stabilizer and for good reason, you see them used everywhere. The guys gave an excellent performance as usual with exceptional vigor. We had mild concern about being too loud especially with the drums in a large, tile floored space. Cory's lip sync was spot on despite the PA's sync track being absorbed into the endless reverberation in the room. Shaggy was driving low & thick, Tommy was blazing the fretboard in a frenzy of hair and Terry was all energy behind the kit.
Camera / Technical
Canon R5
Format - 4K DCI 4096x2160, 2.39:1 aspect ratio, 59.94fps, ALL-I 10-bit, S-LOG 3
Rendered to 4K 30FPS
Ronin RS3 Pro gimbal stabilized, handheld
Sigma Art 28mm f/1.4, Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4 lenses, Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8
Principal shoot & B-roll - a mere 2.25 hours!
There was a quick walking and singing scene where Cory is pulling along a laundry cart that for some reason I only shot one verse, I wish I had covered a bit more than that. I used that one run completely. I had a hot flash to break the camera down to fit into one of the washers and shoot out and have the guys walk up to it. It was a little tricky getting the balance & horizon set. We low tech piled some laundry in there to level the camera up. I had to use my Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 at 16mm to cover this close space. In one of the takes I had to set the focus to manual so that the guys would walk into the focus field. Pretty cool and fun shot. I shot a ton of low floor gimbal runs to get all the perspective viewpoints with all the machines. We ran through a quick sequence of laundry skits and slow motion sets. On one sequence I had to go non-stabilized handheld and really did not like how it looked, good thing there are tools in post to smooth the shake out.
Grading
The color of the venue had a tremendous red paint in the background that can be a challenge when it comes to photography and video color grading. It's important that during challenging color scenes you have properly color calibrated editing monitors to accurately gage your color tones. I went with an orange/ blue cast to mute some of the strident reds and blue to project a clean theme appropriate vibe. Ultimately a blend of two different LUTS.
The Wrap
So about 90 minutes into the shoot Terry tells me we have to vacate in like 40 minutes. For whatever reason, we have to button it up! My mind went straight to estimation & abbreviation. Easily the fastest video I've ever shot. From that point on, it was a feverish shooting frenzy. Instead of 3 takes I did one, instead of extra lighting, I went with none. I went handheld instead of stabilized. I did actually fall straight on my ass shooting backwards at one point. Terry caught a drum stick in the chops (at 2:54). So as a result, I have no bts imagery for this blog but we did manage to get in some customary ending high test bourbon shots right outside the laundromat. Mr. Booker calmed the frenzy. In the end, possibly because of these time constraints, we ended up with a very high energy, spastically paced video that I think worked out great for this driving number.
