Just a few random jobs

Above, Cox Communications spots. We spent a few days doing several of these.

























Above, a job for Tinactin. I'm not sure what you'd call this, except it was for the web, and it was all green-screen. Is this what they mean by "viral" marketing? Probably. Here's the finished show, with its own website:

http://www.meettheburns.com

It's different! Kinda trippy.

Well, this was different

You just never know what you'll end up doing sometimes. This was actually enjoyable. I can't take credit for the moving lights in the concert stuff, that was all done at the Nokia theater with their regular dimmer board op, and their existing lights they had on hand. We did add a few things mainly to have a consistent key. The classroom stuff was ridiculously simple, which was good, because we didn't have much time to cover the heck out of that. Lots of steadicam.

Resume? What's a resume?

So I was sorta up for a job where I actually had to send in a resume. I cannot remember the last time I had to actually write a resume, so it was kind of interesting to put one together. Since it's just deadly slow right now in our business (and I didn't get the job, a feature where production brought in their own guy), I thought I'd post the same information here, then I can link to it if I need to send one again. Why not? So here goes:

A gaffer for over ten years, Phil Badger's numerous credits include television commercials, music videos, feature films, and television. Local 728.

Narrative Television (recent):

“Boldly Going Nowhere”, 2008, pilot for Fox, single camera, Stage 10, 20th Century Fox

“The Sarah Silverman Program”, seasons 1-3 (and pilot), single camera, two stages and location shooting, CBS Radford (2008), Hollywood Center Studios (2007), Sunset Gower (2006)

Commercials include:
Konica/Minolta
McDonalds
Sprint
Wendy’s
Avis
Quizno’s
Verizon
EA Sports
Lennox
Coffeemate
Crest toothpaste
Alaska Airlines
Southwest Airlines
Crispix
Chili’s Restaurants
Mattel
NEC
Southwest Airlines
Roundtable Pizza
Clorox
Washington Mutual
Shell/Mastercard

And many others, for production companies such as Ridley Scott Associates, Tool of North America, Oil Factory, Japanese Monster …

Music Videos include:
Tenacious D, Foo Fighters, Reba McIntyre, She Daisy, Brooks & Dunn, Alabama
And many others ….

Features and "other":
“American Hustle” with Katt Williams, feature film
“Jesus is Magic” with Sarah Silverman, feature film
“The Bachelor” seasons 1 and 3 (Reality show for ABC)
“Natural Selection” aka “The Monster Hunter” feature film
“Scrapple” feature film
“Purgatory County” feature film
“Snake Tales” feature film

"Art and Copy" gets into Sundance

So a buddy of mine, Doug Pray, an extremely talented and accomplished documentary filmmaker, just got his latest doc, "Art and Copy", into Sundance for 2009. It's not his first time, but it's always really cool to get in. And this film I actually worked a few days on, although I sure can't claim any credit for anything whatsoever. I helped out for a couple of days here in Los Angeles and a couple in Portland. I lugged a few Kinos around and took some nice stills. I really enjoyed the time I put in on it, especially meeting Lee Clow, the guru of Apple's advertising for many years now. Just a great, inspiring guy. My friend Michael Nadeau is one of the producers, and my old friend Timothy J. Sexton helped with the writing. Peter Nelson was the DP and his work on it is absolutely beautiful. The guy has an amazing eye, and he knows how to pick out a really fantastic restaurant.

Here's a shot I took of Lee Clow running down the beach.

Video, or actual digital cinematography?

So I finally had a shoot with the much vaunted RED camera. This thing seems to finally be what "digital cinematography" is supposed to be. I was never a huge fan of "video" and while even the latest HD manifestations of "video" were compelling, they're still kind of a pain in the butt. Being the slave to the DIT station is one thing that I really don't like about HD, and try to find a monitor you can trust that isn't in the DIT tent! But the RED seems to be to film cameras what the DSLR is to the SLR'sin the still-photography world. And the monitor on the camera is pretty trustworthy, making it far easier to light. Also, it shoots RAW, so it's more like film, in that you can go back to trusting your eye more than the DIT monitor. I'm pretty sold on this thing.



Here's the thing, dangling in space (as a bungy-cam) read for hand-held mode. Seems like a lot of people want "The Office" look these days.

The last time I was here ....

The last time I worked on the Fox lot, we did this:



Which is still one of my favorite lighting setups ever (from a Wendy's commercial). What's funny is every time I step out of the stage we're in right now, I'm exactly in that same spot. Often, some other show is setting up to shoot there as well. Walking up the street, when nobody else is there, and looking up at the fake buildings, I get a deep sense of familiarity, a very primal one, and I realize it's from seeing this view over and over again, in movies and on TV, since I was a little kid. It can give one a sense of walking through a dream. Very strange.

We just completed our first week of shooting. We do three more days tomorrow, then we're done with this pilot.

I just discovered it's listed now on imdb.com.

"Boldly Going ....."

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything here, and there's a reason for that: it's been slow. After our last show, I remember thinking "gosh, I sure don't want to work for a while." Well, it was "be careful what you wish for time." Things pretty much just went dead for a while. Finally they're picking up again.




Here's our new home for a little while, Stage 10 on the Fox lot. It's a pilot for Fox, and I'm sure I'm not supposed to talk about it. Although I did notice that it's on imdb.com already. At any rate, we're spending two weeks pre-lighting it, then we're shooting for seven days. It's all on stage, which will be nice, actually. I used to love location work, but the more I do it around Los Angeles, the less I like it. Stages and backlots were built for a lot of very good reasons.

Right before this started, we did a commercial for Amica insurance. It was a fine job, one of those commercials which made me wish I did commercials all the time.