‘One Night Only’

UPDATE- The One Night Only video I worked on is now up on their Youtube page! I’m also featured in their ‘making of‘ video. You can see me wandering through the frame.

-On Sunday, May 16th, I was once again able to work with Director of Photography Frankie DeMarco. It was on a music video for the up-and-coming British band, One Night Only. The actress Emma Watson and lead singer of the band, George Craig, were the main characters of the video. We traveled around most of the city shooting them, including Times Square and a rooftop in Greenpoint with a fantastic view. (Which is where the pictures seen below are from).

Monday, May 24th.

Today I found a whole slew of online gossip about the music video shoot. I’m so surprised that I’ve worked on something that is so gossip ‘worthy’. I find it pretty incredible and amusing. Here are a selection of stills that I found on various sites.

Emma with Alison Foster, a quick witted producer from LA. Right after this she was flying to Las Vegas to produce two rap videos.

The man in the center of this photo is Mecca Don Villain. He was an awesome AD and has been known to rap on early episodes of the Dave Chappelle show.

Emma and One Night Only outside of Gray’s Papaya Hot Dogs.

MARGARITAS

On May 1st I moved to Brooklyn, NY with the hopes of finding a job in the industry. To my great surprise I was contacted by my friend Shawn Schaffer, only two days later. It was for a position as 1st AC on an ad campaign for the Mexican chain ‘Margaritas‘. The shooting locations were in Providence and Newport, RI. It was really nice to spend the weekend in Providence. Despite having gone to college there it will always be one of my favorite cities.

The DP of this shoot was Frankie DeMarco, who’s feature credits include ‘Rabbit Hole‘, ‘Shortbus‘, and ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch‘. I’m a fan of his work an I feel as though I was extremely fortunate to have been able to work with him. I hadn’t worked with the RED in a while so I hope my AC skills weren’t too disappointing. Luckily I was able to bring my friend David Kruta to work with me and he really saved my life. There were a lot of new challenges for us to work through, but I think we did quite well and resolved them quickly. The whole shoot went very smoothly and we’ll hopefully be able to work with all of these lovely people again soon.

“The Story Behind the Still” Vimeo Contest

Chapter 2 submission for the short film contest, “The Story Beyond The Still.”

Written and directed by David Kruta

Here is a link to the contest page.

Cast (in order of appearance)

Jules: Jonathan Thomson
Mia: Colleen Leary
Bruce: Mark Boyajian
Boss: Andrew Fitch

Crew

Director of Photography/Steadicam Operator: Jeff Melanson

1st AC: Sarah Tricker

2nd AC: Zachary Crosby

Gaffer: Jordan Parrott

Key Grip: Teresa Rhinehart

Sound: Kevin Land

Grip: Fritz Ceriales

Production Manager: Mami Akari

Hair/Makeup: Rachel Ayars

Editor: Jose Reyes

Post production and original music by Enki Studios (enkistudios.com)

Here is director David Kruta’s commentary on the contest and the excellent shooting experience we had.

Apache Beat

Director Hunter Fairstone hired camera-op Jeff Melanson, cinematographer David Kruta, and 1st AC Sarah Tricker to shoot a video for Apache Beat’s newest hit single “Your Powers are Magic“.

We shot over the span of one night in the woods of New Jersey, just a half hour from New York. There were many initial technical problems with the lights that we had to work through and it was also very difficult to work in the cold weather. But in the end the footage turned out very nicely.

“The highly stylized sequence follows lead singer Ilirjana Alushaj lost in a forest and performing the song. We shot on the RED One with 16mm OI Ultra Prime lenses, and made extensive use of Steadicam and slow motion.” – David Kruta

Ilirjana wrote a blog for Nylon Magazine which includes coverage of pre-production: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Prospect Hill

“Roller Coaster” – by Prospect Hill.

Music video directed by Chris Bolarinho, DP – Jeff Melanson.

The video features MTV’s Real World Brooklyn’s “fitness guru” Scott Herman.

I was the 1st AC and Focus Puller. Watch the behind the scenes video and see me running after Jeff.

Shot on the Canon 7D, 17-35mm f2.8.

Smalltown

“Smalltown”

Feature Film written and directed by Mark Fogarty.

I was the 1st Assistant Camera. Watch the trailer to see my ‘focus pulling’ skills in action.

Shot on the RED ONE camera. DP – David Kruta. Camera Op – Jeff Melanson.

This was the first feature film I have ever worked on as a 1st Assistant Camera. What really made this experience great was being able to use the RED, as well as having Jeff and Dave as teachers. I learned the ‘ins and outs’ of that camera, along with focus pulling and how to set up a steadicam. ‘Smalltown’ was a blast to work on.

Here are some production stills: