To a healthy, lucky 2020

2019 was a great year for me.  I’m very thankful for everything that came my way.  I’ve always been very fortunate, in terms of my career, but seemingly my health too.

Disclaimer of a history of my health ahead.  There is a reason I tell it all.

When I was 3 of 4 years old, I broke my left arm.  There was a chance that after the surgery, my arm wouldn’t grow at the same rate as the rest of my body – I would have a forever 3 year old arm, but that didn’t happen, I was lucky.

During my marital arts years, in 2003 I dislocated my left shoulder after landing on it on a failed back flip.  I was lucky, it popped right back in and all I had to do was rehab.

In 2005, at a Christmas party, I drunkenly got onto a trampoline and started doing some layouts (A type of back flip).  I ended up falling 15ft and landing on concrete stairs.  I cracked my head open, but I was ok.  I was lucky.

In 2007, I tried to stop a fight at a club.  I didn’t know any of the people in the conflict, I just saw someone getting their ass handed to them and wanted it to stop.  I got bottled in the head and kicked in the chest. 5 staples and 3 stitches.  I was lucky it didn’t hit me any lower, it could have scarred my face instead of my hairline, and actually there were some people that were much worse off than I was.

In 2008, I tore 50% of my Achilles’ on my left ankle doing some flips. I was lucky I didn’t need any surgery and rehab was all I needed.

In 2009, I tore 90% of my PCL in my right knee, doing a gainer (a backflip whilst moving forward) in a rehearsal when some kids unexpectedly ran in front of me.  Again, I was lucky I didn’t need surgery and it was just my PCL and not my ACL.

In 2013, I herniated a disc in my spine moving a cart full of gear, I was lucky that rest was all I needed, and no major surgery was required.

In 2015, I tore my right rotator cuff snow boarding, again, I was really lucky that the damage wasn’t that bad, and all I need is a harness and some Physio.

In 2019, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  I shot a feature, a short, a web-series, and a bunch of commercials all throughout the preparation toward the surgery.  I’m lucky that it’s a very tame cancer and is very curable.  I’m lucky that my brother is a radiologist with clout to expedite my needs, to keep my family level headed and calm and to really explain everything to me in layman’s terms.

January 17th, 2020, had my thyroid and left lymph’s removed. I was lucky.  The surgeon said it went really well. The left side of my neck and ear is permanently numb, and my left arm will need rehab from the nerve damage.  I have a scar from the middle of my neck to my left ear, but to be honest, it’s not too bad, I was lucky.

I don’t know what I did to deserve all this luck. Maybe I’m a ‘glass half full’ kind of guy, but I really think of what the other outcomes could have been, and it leaves me in bewilderment of everything that I’ve had easy.
All the times I’ve dodged major surgeries or significantly life changing things.  I have a very fortunate life. I’m not trying to brag here, I’m trying to be thankful.

In 2020, I have a 3rd season of a cable tv sitcom, a few spec shoots, and a webseries; it’s only early February.  Not to mention I got nominated for best cinematography in the International WebFest,  I’m extremely lucky.

I guess this post was to hopefully let people know that things aren’t always as bad as they seem.  There’s always a silver lining to everything, and, not to discredit any issues at hand, but things can always be much worse.

I know this isn’t a post about film & television, but I feel like this is my way of getting this thyroid cancer out there, at least for me.  I also have a terrible memory…. and hopefully this cancer thing will be insignificant enough for me to remember 10 years from now, and this will be how I will remember it.

Thanks for reading. Big thanks to Lise Hosein for giving me the courage to talk about this – it’s not something I would normally broadcast – but it does feel good to get this out there.

Extremely Big thanks to my brother and my wife – my brother has literally saved my life three times now (broken arm, cracked head & cancer).  And actually big thanks to my friend Barry Cheong, he was the first person I told outside of my family, and it was a big relief to confide in him, even though it might not have seemed a big deal.

P.S. – I have photos and videos of some of the injuries if you’d like to see, just message me haha.

Prepping for a small shoot

 

I was just sitting at my kitchen table eating some cereal and on my phone, making a list of things I need to bring to my shoot tomorrow and I figured I’d make a short post about it too and kind of go through my thought process for one of these things.

This is a food shoot I’m prepping for, kind of like those tutorial viral food videos you see everywhere now.  This is a one day shoot, and to me, I don’t really know what to expect.  This happens to me more frequently than I’d like for these one day shoots, so I’ve gotten the hang of rolling with the punches and just having a plan for lighting and camera setups.  To be honest, I’ve gotten more info than I sometimes do for this shoot.

On my iPhone’s notes, I make a new note with the list of gear to bring.  I own quite a bit of gear, so it’s mostly going through my brain picking items that I think will help (But still fit in my car).

The list looks something like this so far:

FS7 kit
– batteries, media, card reader
Monitors
– 502, 702, 1700, teradek, cables
Lens kit
Tripod
A6500 kit
– batteries, media, card reader, spigot

Quasar Science Kit
Versitile Kit
Q500 Kit
Stingers
Dimmers

Collapsible Frame Kit
6x C-stands w/ arms and heads
2x combos
8ft Pipe
Monitor roller Stand
fabrics

2x Goal Post adapters
Sandbags
4x Cardi
Safety Chains
Pony clamps
fuzzy balls

Laptop
Harddrive

—————

So again, I don’t really know what to expect, so I’m only bringing bi-color LED lights to cover me.  A hard light, a soft light and some in-betweenies.  It’s mostly just watching hands work, so we probably won’t need too much lighting, I can just walk it right in.

Goal post is for the a6500 to do an overhead shot and maybe put some lights on if necessary.

We’re shooting in someone’s house, so i’m bringing some tennis balls (fuzzy balls) that have a slit cut in them to protect their floor from my stands.

I also have to transport one of the producers, his red camera and his lens bag – so this might be a tight fit in my Subaru Forester – but I will try!  Wish me luck.  I’ll do a follow up afterward!

Center Pinch Lens Caps

I just ordered a few of these and thought I’d share – you never know who might be interested, even if it seems like an insignificant thing.  I’m buying these to replace the lens caps on the lenses I brought to Arizona for my shoot on DeepSix – the lens caps I had (which were also center pinch) are jammed now due to all the sand stuck in them.

I prefer these center pinch lens caps over the side pinch lens caps – it just gives you a more positive lock that the cap is on, and it’s harder for them to accidentally fall off or get knocked off.

They’re cheap and free to ship, it just takes a while to get here (they come from Hong Kong).  I’ll let you know the quality when they arrive and update this post!

http://amzn.to/2pLsm2s

Deep Six

Once again, like a broken record, I apologize for the lack of updates.  I recently wrapped up shooting a science fiction web series called Deep Six.  It’s one of the best series I’ve worked on recently, as a DoP.  The director/producer/creator, and good friend of mine, Davin Lengyel, pretty much let me have full creative control of everything camera and lighting!  And this felt great!  Especially since I’ve shot so many other things recently that had so many “do’s and Don’ts”  This one had none.

Spoiler Free:
The web series follows a group of scientist who research a signal out in Tau Ceti (a real place!).  An accident occurs and they have to find a way to get home with the resources they have, among other dangers that they could encounter.

Here are a few stills from the shoot, AND the very first VLOG I’ve ever done.

photo by Kim Sakamoto

photo by Kim Sakamoto

photo by Kim Sakamoto

Here’s a rough lighting plan I had drawn, it was super rough because they were still building while we were shooting.  I can’t seem to find any stills from the actual sets, so this lighting plan might difficult to understand in terms of visual space.

Everything in the space station was shot on a FS7 with a Ronin.  We stuck to rokinon primes to reduce the weight on the Ronin, as I was flying it for pretty much 12hrs, for 15 days.  The decision to shoot on the Ronin was pretty simple – we could have a dolly/jib in every shot without taking the time to set up a dolly or a jib.  This added so much to every single shot that we had in the space station and I’m glad we decided to use it, even though my body wishes we didn’t.

Something I’ve never tried before was doing some rear projection this close to the subject.  It was extremely difficult to control the spill from my lights and not washout the projection.  In the end we decided to use the projection for just reflections on any glass we had on our subjects, and we would most likely replace anything projected with the original files that aren’t washed out.  We used a 500w bare bulb on a jib to simulate starlight for all the space craft scenes.  It would rotate around the ship to simulate any rolls or tilts the ship might be doing in relation to the projection.  It actually worked out very well.  The interaction of the shadows moving with the characters as the projection moved really sold it.

Though this shoot didn’t stress me out, it was very challenging, as all things are with a limited budget.  Our sets were constantly being built, saw dust flying around getting everywhere, time always running out, the Ronin acting up (because of all the saw dust haha), and tight spaces to shoot in.  Despite all this, it was a fun shoot with great people.  Everything looks great.  I can’t wait to see the final project!

Second Jen

Hey Readers, Sorry for the super lack of updates!  It’s been crazy busy and I’ll talk about it all in this post!  A buddy of mine, Fergus Lowrey, told me to keep my blog going, so I’ll try to do it!

In my personal life, I’ve gotten married and am in the middle of a move to a new house.  But this is a Cinema blog, so we don’t care about that haha.

In terms of film work, I shot my first prime time TV show!  On CityTV, Thursdays at 8:30pm (plug that).  The series is called Second Jen, about two Asian female Millenials with immigrant parents who move out on their own for the first time.

We shot that on my Sony FS7 on S-Log3, cineGamut3 with Rokinon Primes.  The budget was slim and we were limited on time and space, but we made it work and I’m pretty happy with what we came out with.

You can watch it all here: CityTV

The show was shot over 18 days in Toronto.  I teamed up with director, Romeo Candido and creator/actor Samantha Wan again (where we worked together on Sudden Master – you can read the article about that in November Issue of Canadian Cinematographer).  And the production company Don Ferguson Productions, who took a chance on an unknown cinematographer on their project.

For prep, I had made lighting plans to base off of, and we augmented as needed.  We pre-rigged everything in one day, and crossed our fingers that it would all go well.

Here are the lighting plans I made.

I had a long 4 kino above most of the sets and that was our main toppy light.  Our keys mostly came from a larger source from the exterior through a window and I supplemented a bit more fill from small battery powered LEDs.

I kept more to high key lighting and planted some unflattering hard light in the backgrounds to give the show a sense of reality.  Everything was lit pretty evenly, with the waveform generally at 60 IRE.  Because it was a comedy, there wasn’t a need to create much drama in the looks so the general 60IRE across the board was perfect.

Some more difficult scenes to shoot were the exteriors and the board game cafe scenes.  The exteriors because of the constant changes in cloud coverage and not having a frame large enough (we only had an 8×8).  The board game cafe because we didn’t have a pre-rig day and it was difficult to light some of the wider shots where I couldn’t hide lights.

If you look at the screen shots attached, I would have loved to have given the background a little more love.  For this shot, I had an LED on a scissor clamp above them, with two more LEDs acting as backlights and fills, respectively.  I asked production designer, Aaron Noel, to help me out with the incandescent in the background.

Another difficult area to shoot was the girls apartment.  I had the long 4 kinos mounted to the ceiling, so we could only tilt so far up before we saw them.  At times we would remove the light or angle it another way so we had that extra inch or two for that headroom (some of the actors were very tall).

We usually had the camera higher than the actors and shoot down at them to help hide the lights.

An ask from the network was to have mostly static shots, which was refreshing to me as I’m more used to doing a lot of handheld work.  It allowed me to notice things that I normally wouldn’t have because I was busy trying to frame something out, or following the action.  Because I don’t get to work with other DoP’s often anymore, it’s hard for me to learn anything new, and I’m glad that this show allowed me to do that in this aspect.  It’s always a goal to keep growing.

In general this show was really fun to shoot.  This helps when you have a great team working along side with you and no egos.  Watch this show and you could potentially give the amazing actors and crew members a job next year for season 2!

Comment if you’d like me to expand on any of the lighting designs or specifics on the technical aspects of this, and I’ll try my best to reply.

DEAL: Shelving Unit

Sorry for the lack of updates, it’s been super busy!
I saw this deal and figured I should share it!  It’s a great price and I literally just purchased two. $80 each and it holds 800lbs per shelf.  I already have one, and now I have 3.

WORKPRO 72-in H x 48-in W x 24-in D 5-Tier Steel Freestanding Shelving Unit

Photo Update

Sorry for the lack of updates, I’ve been super busy!  Just wrapped a feature as a camera operator working under the amazing Kevin Rasmussen and am now going onto shooting some more stuff.  Here are a few photos to give you an idea of what I’ve been doing.  All of these are on my Instagram account.

Photos from November.

SALE: P-Touch Label machines

If you’re a organization freak like me, or in camera department in general, you’ll want to get one of these.

Brother® P-touch® PT-H100 Handheld Label Maker from $39.92 to $19.92.  This is a 12mm label width, which is pretty good for just standard labeling, or putting your name on things.

OR this one:

Brother PT-2030AD Desktop Labeller from $69.86 to $34.86.  This one does labels up to 18mm in width which is good for larger visible labels – or barcodes.

I personally have a 12mm label machine as well as a 24mm label machine.  Each have their on function.  The 24mm label machine is great for putting clean text on slates as well, so keep that in mind!

These are only on sale till August 19, 2014 – so sorry for the late notice.

Other styles here: Brother Label Machines

SALE: Hand Truck

If you’re a gear head like me, you’re always looking for a better way to make your equipment moves easier.  I saw these on sale and its such a great deal I picked up two.

On sale at Canadian Tire for $32.99 CAD.  I don’t know how long the sale is going on for, but I intend to build some cases ontop of these out of plywood to transport my stands and some other misc items.

 

Rambles: Corner Gas Post Mortem

This post is more for myself than anything else. Normally I’m not a sentimentalist, but I want to share some of my memories with the people who might be reading this, or who are corner gas fans?

I will NOT miss the mosquitoes, the ticks or living in a hotel for 5 weeks. I will not miss most of Regina closing at 6pm when we don’t get back from set until 9pm… But I will try to remember this.

My 10 favorite moments during the 5 weeks of shooting of Corner Gas: The Movie.

10. Flying Digital Producer, Davin’s drone – which made me purchase one lol.

9. Going back to the gym. There was only one laundry machine in the hotel we were staying at and we had to be close to the machine while it was running – so I went running while I washed my clothes.

8. The 1.5hr commute from Regina to Rouleau (Dog River) with the digital team. Those were mini road trips with a fun group of people.

7. Being able to be the director of photography for the Digital commercials for the cineplex ad and the CTV ad, as well as all the other content.

6. Having such access to all the exec producers and actors. Fred Ewanuick (Hank) and Brent Butt spent more time on set than they did in their trailers. I shared a trailer with the head honcho, Virginia Thompson and became good friends with Rob de Lint.

5. Upon the first time meeting Tara Spencer-Narin (Karen), she got me a waterbottle from a low sitting cooler and opened it for me because I was carrying a camera on my shoulders. She was 7 months pregnant and didn’t know who I was.

4. Ken Krawczyk CSC, the DoP for the film and the series said crossing to my camera when he walked across my camera lens. It’s a sign of acknowledgement and respect I guess haha. He would come up to me and say ‘Hi’ to me everyday. I loved watching him work and learned a lot. He even asked me for some advice about some gear.

3. The cast and crew were amazing. They trusted us to capture good stuff and gave us almost free reign to do whatever we wanted as long as it didn’t interfere with production. One of the grips, Sonny Bowman, lent us his GoPro for the duration of the shoot and I was able place it almost anywhere I wanted.
Watching the cast go out to meet fans and seeing Fred and Lorne photobombing unsuspecting fans taking photos of the Ruby was hilarious. It was wonderful to work with such genuine and humble people.

2. Going out for drinks and meals with the digital team. Lee Ann Cotton, my boss (for lack of better words), had the most explosive laugh, and it was always great to hear it.

1. During one our 45minute rides out to Rouleau, I got to hear Fred Ewanuick sing and play a song with his ukulele. It was just 5 of us in the car and it was just a really nice moment.

Other things I want to mention are my thanks to the AD team for helping us out so much. They really made our job much easier. Thanks to Bill, the craft guy for keeping me alive, and a very big thanks to Davin for bringing me out on the job. I wouldn’t have been there without him. He’s a great producer.

Thanks for reading.