Long time No Update

Just wanted to come on and update with some new work I've recently done.

A video I shot for Circuit Des Yeux just went up. It's getting a write up in French Vogue! It's amazing what you can get accomplished for very little money and just a lot of hard work. Much thanks goes out to John Sawyer and his amazing grading and editing.



The video was shot all on a Canon 7D with a 17-35 L series lens. Shot in 720p @ 60 fps to enable the slow to fast ramping without problems.

I've been shooting and producing a whole slew of segments for a wheels company down in Miami. Good people and great wheels. This is the latest and greatest:



And here's a little reel of interviews I put together:



All in all, feeling pretty good about my future.

Scion A/V Music Video

I operated the Arri Alexa, which is an amazingly fine camera, for this little gem here.

Bye Chicago, Hello Miami.

So I graduated and am moving on with my life. I'm at this weird crossroads trying to figure out what I want to do from here on out. I have been picking up freelance gigs here and there, one of which was a strange shoot for Davenport University in Michigan. It paid really well and was with great people, but I was stuck directing Staff and Faculty, who were all very wonderful, but very hard to direct. They wanted their employees to get face time on the video so they could get their proverbial 15 minutes.

In gear news, I built a "glidecam" out of pipe and weight from home depot. You can get a tutorial to do the same here. It works well enough and can be seen in my reel and the BAD CITY music video. We also ended up making a homemade jib, which worked surprisingly well. I guess it's all about doing it on a budget. I finally broke down and ordered a shoulder mount from BH Photo. It's a CAVISION and I'm hoping it's as good as the reviews say it is. I still need a dual audio set up for my DSLR, but I'll probably pick that up after my next job (I'm definitely getting a Zoom H4N).

In actual camera news, I really want to try out the new Nikon D7000 and see if their full 1080 video is any good. I'm about done with my 550D, but don't think I'll switch over to Nikon, just love the Canon video options so much. I think my next move will be to sell the 550 and pick up a real camera, the 5D Mark II.

Blah blah blah, camera gear, blah blah blah. Here's some stuff I've shot, and one I actually DIRECTED, recently:



Reading Group "Holy Kisser" (ALSO, I'VE BEEN PLAYING A LOT WITH AFTER EFFECTS.)

Not A Palindrome from Matt Hyland on Vimeo.

Directed by Matt Hyland

And I'm living in Miami now, testing out my freelance chops. We'll see how that goes.

Freelance and cameras and all that awesome

I've been traveling back and forth between Chicago and Michigan this past month to work on a really fun project for Davenport University. They're having a conference for all of their employees and wanted to do a couple narrative videos to project for them. The people involved gave us a lot of creative control and the pay was outstanding. I have two more gigs lined up at the end of the month.

Currently I'm working on a free job shooting my wonderful friend Logan's short film. I got my hands on the Zacuto FAST DRAW Rig with the follow focus, matte box, Marshall monitor and some 4x4 ND filters. It really killed it. I did a near 4 minute walking tracking shot and despite the weight and strain, was really happy with how it turned out. The Marshall monitor cannot be calibrated so it's use of previewing the imagery is a bit worthless, but it works well to pull focus with. We also had a set of Canon L Series primes and I was extremely pleased with the resolution of them. We ended up using a 17mm tilt shift on a "dream(y)" sequence and it turned out beautiful. I'll post some of the footage up when I can. I really dug the rig (you can see it below) and wish I could own one myself, but as of now they are a bit out of my price range.

I ended up picking up a follow focus from JAG35, which seems pretty well made, the gears are exposed and that makes me feel weird, and the lens gear is only adjustable by adding screws to little holders in it, but the price is PERFECT. I tried to pick up some rails from indisystem, but after a two week wait and no response to an email, I decided to get a refund, which came almost immediately. I'm not sure what's going on over there, but I was kind of bummed as they seem like good rails for real cheap.

In other news, I finished a new reel which can be viewed here:

Cinematography Reel Summer 2010 from Cory Popp on Vimeo.

Here's the rig:

Indian Wedding Trailers and Doc Stuff

I finally got paid for the work on the Indian wedding trailer we did. The stuff turned out really good and am super happy with how my 550d performs alongside the 7d. Not as many options in the ISO settings and color balance, but the quality is pretty parallel. Unfortunately I can't put up any of the footage as the producer of it doesn't want us stealing wedding gigs out from under him (yeah, i know, right?).

I'll be flying out the week after my graduation party to meet up with my brother who is a Purple Heart vet from the war in Afghanistan. We'll be shooting a doc there about his time in the Air Force, his work with the EOD and his injuries he sustained while stationed in Afghanistan. It's kind of some Hurt Locker stuff, but actually real. I'm hoping that it will yield a possible feature length project about EOD guys and the kind of war they faced over there.

On top of that I'm going to PA with my friend Logan to shoot a short film he has just finished writing. I'm pretty excited about it. After that we have some wedding gigs and I'm trying to drum up a few more music video projects then, who knows.

Stay tuned.

6 Weeks Away

I'm taking this really insane Mystical Consciousness class, which fulfills a writing intensive credit at my school, and it is really baking my noodle. I'm not sure how, but this class on meditation and eastern thought is causing quite a bit of internal stress. I guess it's just bringing up a lot of thoughts and feelings that I would otherwise ignore. Dormant things.

Anyway, I'll be a graduate in six weeks. I have been trying to apply for some pedestrian jobs, things on the side, but I can't really look too hard with full time summer school and my part time job. I picked up a gig shooting an Indian wedding "Love Story" with my friend Logan. These deals are like these strange music videos showcasing the couples love that they show at the their wedding. Either way, he might get more of them and bring me on. I'll throw up some footage of it when we get permission.

The Bad City music video was finished and after some weird copyright stuff with Atlantic it's on its way to god knows where. Apparently it might make MTV U or something, but for now it's just up on their youtube channel. Check it out:

Still not really sure what's going to happen with it, but I got quite a bit of good footage out of it to use for my reel. We'll see if it'll bring on any other jobs.

Music Videos

I've been trying to establish myself as a go to guy for visualizing and making music videos happen. So far I've had a few opportunities, one of which just finished up on Friday at a junkyard (B&H Salvage [who were insanely nice and crushed a few cars for us]). The first two I worked on were with my friend Ichiro Hino who I worked on some films with while shooting on 16mm in Production 2. Ichiro is a pretty amazing guy and has some really fantastic ideas. We shot the first video for The Gorilla Press on a shoestring budget using equipment Ichiro could salvage from his job (a dvx100 and an Arri 4 light kit), which you can see in the flagship post. Shortly after Ichiro decided to do another and brought me on, the result can be seen below. This weekend's was part favor and part audition for future work. Basically this band (Bad City) is about to release a single, which everyone is thinking will make them big time, and we were wanting an opportunity to shoot the video for it when that came around. A friend from school got asked to help and then brought me on to shoot it. So we did this out of our own pockets with equipment we had. It was shot on my 550d with whatever lights we could find at whatever locations we could manage. It's currently being edited by Sean and Steve who Directed and AD'd respectively. It's strange that these passions which drive us to do this kind of work, also drive us to do so much work for free, just to prove that someone should pay us to do it. It's kind of how the majority of the arts world work. I'm really hoping that once I've established a decent real and repertoire of music videos, that I will be able to shop myself around to do more. It's a really fun process and I've had the opportunity to work with two great bands full of really fantastic guys so far.

The Gorilla Press "Anger in the Drains"



Here is a little "making of..." video that was created for a local music press (excuse my extreme goofiness):