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It is always an honor to work with Wayne Hsu. He is an amazing artist and is not only a gifted singer songwriter but also has an excellent ear as a studio engineer. The three of us won a trailer contest for the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival with Wayne scoring the music for our little 60 second animated film.

Last March, I gave a call to Wayne Hsu late one evening and said, “Hey, do you want to shoot a Music Video tonight?” Hey said, “Yeah, sure. You want to do it now?”

It was already 10pm at night and I said, “No, I’m thinking at about 1am in Chinatown in front of the arch.” It was a very chilly night but he enthusiastically agreed since it was just around the corner from where he lived. I was itching to do a few tests with some c-mount lenses a newer industrial lens, a Computar 25mm f/1.3 and an older Kodak Cine Ektar 25mm f/1.4. I wanted to compare these lenses and see how well they work with just street lights and the light of the traffic driving by at night.

The concept was simple. I had Wayne sit on top of my Subaru Forester and we parked far enough so that he would be elevated above the traffic and we could see the Chinatown Arch in the distance. One of the challenges is that in order to shoot him I needed a rig that I could hold steadily on the back bumber of the car. A tripod would not do since the bumber was about six inches wide. To make this work I used the indiSYSTEM indiRAILSpro MP which is part monopod, part camera rig, and part follow focus. It fit very nicely with me standing on the back bumper of the car.

Rather than do a MV where we were syncing to the studio recording of the song I wanted to keep the real elements alive on the streets of Chinatown and just show the beauty and simplicity of his playing. I wanted Wayne Hsu to play live acoustic. Wayne is so good playing live. And in the “LIVE” I wanted to keep the environment a part of the piece so whatever happens in the moment happens. If we have a truck barreling down the road or loud late night pedestrian traffic so be it.

The results were very beautiful. This year the Chinatown Arch dawned new lights .So from the distance as Wayne played, the Arch was brilliantly lit as a a backdrop to his playing. Both c-mount lenses really gave this piece character. The Cine Ektar 25mm was a touch sharper and had this unusual crescent shaped lens flare from the street lamp right above. The Computar 25mm lens being the faster lens was able to do very well in street lighting soft and low contrast working very well on the evening city streets. One stupid mistake I made was that I taped the lav to Wayne’s shirt and you could hear the rustle of the shirt brushing up against the mic. It’s less noticeable as the song progresses but it is very pronounced at the beginning of the song. Next time proper, lav clip or vampire clip is a must. Other than that issue, we are really happy by the way the footage turned out.

Please visit Wayne Hsu’s site. His new album will be coming out very soon:

waynehsu.com

Filming Details:

Panasonic GH1

Computar 25mm f/1.3 lens

indiSYSTEM SNAP! Gear

indiRAILSpro MP

Kodak Cine Ektar 25mm f/1.4

Sound Devices 552 Mixer/Recorder

Director: Gary San Angel

Assistant Director: Serena Perrone

Camera Operator: Rocky Kev

This MV is the companion piece to Nothing is Right. This song is a nice little ballad and I pretty much kept it a simple two camera shoot capturing Wayne’s great singing and playing with the streets sounds all around.

When I asked Wayne to do an adhoc music video at 1am in the morning in the middle of March I didn’t think he would say yes at first but I’m really glad he did. What we attempted to do was a live street recording with two contrasting pieces. “Nothing is Right” being more upbeat would be the more polished MV. The limited b-roll I had by went to “Nothing is Right”. So “You Said” became really a documentation of a live street performance. For both of these two songs I really wanted to stay away form the polish of the studio recorded version. I just wanted to show some of the rough edges. Some of which was unfortunately a little more rough in the audio. My Sanken COS-11x which I had taped to Wayne’s shirt was not a good idea and we encountered a lot of handling noise. That’s one of the elements that I’ll learn from for the next time around.

I stuck with c-mount lenses on this shoot to experiment and see the kind of character they give to the natural street light. I’d say the Computar 25mm f/1.3 is a lens that really lends itself to the nightlife and low light street scenes. The Kodak Ektar 25mm f/1.4 also has that retro character with nice contrast and sharpness and interesting lens flares which we decided to just keep and use because it was halo-like and had a cool effect. Because most of the shots were static we only used the SNAP! Gear for b-roll and the opening shot. But it’s been really great to be able to pull focus with such small lenses using this gear. The SNAP! Gear and SNAP! Collar help in that regard giving the possibility of pulling focus on c-mount lenses. The combo of c-mount and SNAP! Gear is really so amazingly light weight it’s a blast to shoot with.