Shooting Can’t Get It Up

By DTL
Posted September 27, 2012

Written and directed by Josh Rimer. With Josh Rimer and Tyrell Witherspoon. Comedy / musical, 2012, 3:35, colour.

And do check out Josh’s other comedy videos on his YouTube channel. Josh posts one comedy sketch a week on his channel. There’s a good lesson there about productivity. As I’ve often said, creativity is like a muscle: it gets stronger the more you exercise it. Josh posts 50 short movies a year; he’s a lot better now than he was a year ago, and I expect I will be saying that again a year from now. How many movies have you made this year?

I met Josh Rimer at a meeting of the movie-makers’ group he hosts, “Independent Film & Video — Vancouver”. If you’re new to Vancouver and want to meet some people who are interested in making movies, you might check out this group. There are online message boards, and meetings are usually the evening of the last Wednesday of the month; check the site for details.

Shooting the video

At the beginning of this month, Josh invited me to be Cinematographer for his latest comedy sketch. In this song parody of Chris Brown’s “Don’t Wake Me Up”, a horny young man encounters an unexpected setback upon getting home with his hook-up from the club.

Josh had Mike of Mik’S Music recreate the music track, and Josh himself sang the parody lyrics he wrote. He prerecorded him singing, then played back the song on his iPhone and lip-synched to it while we shot.

We shot the movie in Josh’s apartment in Burnaby. We lit the location with Josh’s Inspiron 3-Light Kit. These use multiple compact-fluorescent lamps per light head to give a powerful wash of light through the softbox. We set them up to mimic the natural sources of light, usually the sun through the apartment windows.

We shot using Josh’s Canon XL-A1.We didn’t need to record sound — except for the opening shots, where we used just the on-camera mic.

I hand-held the camera using my Manfrotto Fig Rig. I’m a big fan of the Fig Rig. It allows hand-held shooting, which is quicker for setting up and framing a shot, while permitting you to hold the camera steadier than by just grasping the camera body itself. You can see throughout the video that the stationary and panning shots are nicely smooth and steady, while maintaining a hand-held aesthetic that makes the video seem dynamic and off-the-cuff.

The shoot went smoothly. Writer / Director Josh had a good idea of what he needed to shoot to tell the story, and welcomed suggestions from his collaborators. We shot in one location at a time, moving through Josh’s apartment.

We were there for less than a full working day. Josh thoughtfully provided a meal break of pizza and fresh vegetables, and soft drinks..

In the evening, we bid each other adieu and left Josh to the editing. The finished result is the video above.

We were fortunate to have Graham Cliff on the shoot. He suggested gags, hauled gear, and shot this behind-the-scenes video:

Watch on YouTube