From root to fruit…
Our series for Hasselblad, “The Taken,” has won 5 international awards. We’re all particularly proud of this series, because the entire campaign was handled internally.
It truly shows our ability as a production team to execute a project, concept to final content interdependently.
Explore the production from inside the studio, and how we brought this project to life!
The Challenge
Demonstrate The Power
Our team here at Ruby Bird Productions was in the process of planning an event with Hasselblad and Broncolor to demo new gear and show off our amazing studios in the Greenpoint Terminal Building in the Historic Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. The concept was Ruby Bird Studio x Hasselblad and Broncolor Space Voyage, and would take place on an alien planet. We were asked by Hasselblad to create a series of images for the event using their latest Medium Format H6D 100MP camera and their super fast flash duration Brocolor Scoro packs.
We wanted to document the power and brilliant color space of the new digital back, as well as the new Phocus software and wifi capabilities to transfer these impressive raw captured images in real time. Along side of that, we’d showcase the new high flash duration Scoro packs and their ability to freeze motion.
Our team at Ruby produced the entire shoot, from root to fruit - concept, art direction, production and retouching. The portraits were shot over two days here at Ruby Bird in Brooklyn in Studio 510 and the backplates were shot over the course of a week in our Greenpoint neighborhood. Jim Reed over at Hasselblad was kind enough to let us shoot the entire project on the new H6D100MP medium format camera, and Scheimpflug hooked us up with all the grip & lighting to produce the entire job and event.
The Approach
Aliens, man…
The series concept came to us late one night at the studio during a discussion on how to make the event a memorable and visceral experience, and let remind everyone of the power behind this cutting-edge technology. we jokingly considered using a spotlight as a tractor beam to randomly abduct members of the audience. This idea made us consider, “How would the everyday person react to being abducted by aliens?” We began to sketch characters associated with everyday archetypes.
The Brief: We want to create a feeling of drama, action and tension that surrounds each character as they are taken from their highly cultivated and controlled routine. Almost a Norman Rockwell vibe of storytelling/slice of life. Each portrait will be a split second after the alien beam of light reaches them - rendering them a few feet off the ground and in the middle of a fight or flight response.
Main Cast: 5 everyday city characters (see each individual image brief for details)
Images: Images will be shot in studio. Atmosphere will be created using fog and a hazer. These are portrait moments in motion that will have a hint of an environment composited in post. Each subject will be photographed jumping on a trampoline mimicking getting beamed up into a spaceship. Each character will have a few items augmenting who they are (see each individual image brief for details).
Lighting: A cool blue beam of light coming straight down the top of the frame will be the same in each image - this light will be augmented with lights mimicking city and for one particular image, moon light.
Background: Each image will be shot on a black background in studio and have separately shot backplates composited in. The background will be subtle and suggestive, not necessarily creating environmental portraits, but just placing the subjects in a moment in space and time.
Tone: Dark and high contrast, with the subject having a high tonal range. Cool blue and dark backgrounds mimicking night in the city, and moonlight. A strongly shaped beam of light will take up most of the frame, glowing until it fades out the edges to darkness revealing the location.
PART 1
Sketches and Concept
Image 1: The Submissive
Character backstory -Take me to your leader/Sci-Fi nerd/UFO seeker
You've always known they'd come for you - all those weekend get-aways from the city lights, sending your homemade satellite signals to the stars…It’s finally paid off. This planet is whack and you're the one special human an advanced race was looking for. Trust + Fear = Submission
Image 2: The Resistant
Character backstory -Upper East Side Socialite/Materialist
It's a material world and you're a material girl - Your attention lies in how the world perceives you and no designer outfit is complete without being armed with your everyday accessory, a tote bag for your dog! Everybody's so fucking lame. Except for you, my little Tinkerbell! Remember to party, and be super-lame to everybody - K' BYYEEEE!
Image 3: The Surprised
Character backstory -Blue Collar / City Maintenance Worker
You were raised to work hard, keep your head down and you provide your family with a good life. You like thrive on predicability and a good routine helps keeps any surprises at bay - Anytime you cross the street, it leaves a couple variables open that are our of your control, but never would you ever consider this!!! Surprise!!!!
Image 4: The Distracted
Character backstory -Tech/Software Developer / Electronic Addict
You’re young and successful, you’re grandma tells her friends that you’re a wunderkind! Growing up privileged, smarter than most, and socially awkward, led you to spent hours on chatrooms and programming to the nostalgic light of 90’s hackers flicks, you knew one day you’d gain the upper hand. Now, society will always see you when you stand on your wallet. Old habits are hard to break though... Instead of making eye contact on the street or bar to find your sexual prize, you turn to the cool glow from your phone (it’s the only thing keeping your anxiety in check.) Headphones bumping and face lit - make sure you look both ways when you cross the street!!!
Image 5: The Fearful
Character backstory - Preachers Daughter / Christian
The world is full of sin and the only truth or rules come from our good lord and savior Jesus Christ. Academia, secularists, the gays, evolutionists and science fiction writers are just some of the many who will hear your judgments and feel the burn of your church eyes. Maybe you can spread the word of the lord across the universe? Hallowed be thy name!!!
The Framework
The Eleventh Hour
When Kit and I drew our lighting diagram, we knew we would have to make some adjustments once our hypothetical idea got put into practice.
One thing we didn’t think we’d have to do is replace all our light sources in the 11 hour as The Gap moved in to a studio in Manhattan for their latest campaign (which is brilliant BTW), and rented EVERY SINGLE BRONCOLOR SCORO PACK IN NYC.
That foiled our plan of show casing these brilliant power packs with crazy high flash duration and 3200 watts of juice, to freeze every single bit of motion for our series of nano-second alien abductions. We thought about rigging a pulley system on the beams in the studio and suspending people, but I insisted on a trampoline. NOT a small kids or cross fit kind, I wanted a 10′ or a 12′ backyard trampoline - one that could support adults flipping around and turning themselves upside-down. (see my over zealous sketches) Photo shoots are all about the energy and I look for the pulse of the room and I exploit it to get the shots I want. No pulley system was going to showcase the animated backstories I’d created for the actors. Plus, how could I get the anti gravity lift-off I was seeing in my head?
I stuck to my gut and kept on path, even when during the shoot the entire crew wanted me to compromise the upside-down, falling up a flight of steps, slipping on a banana peel caricature because of a slight - lets say indiscretion that caused the trampoline to side 2 feet with every jump.
We had to scramble the night before pre-light to figure out a new plan to light the project and get the gear to do so - Our buddies, the two John’s over at Scheimpflug came to our rescue with 5 Profoto 8a packs and heads, a Joleko 1600 and a monster fog machine so we could augment our lighting and not have two weeks of preproduction come to a screeching halt.
Scheimpflug sponsored the Profoto lighting, continuous lighting and grip.
The spot/overhead strobe with fog and the trampoline The 20x20 in the background also make a great staging area, hence the light on coming from behind it.
We had to shift our goal of showing the performance of both Hasselblad and Broncolor together, and solely focus on Hasselblad.
Image Quality, High Performance, Phocus software, 16 bit color, high-speed wifi, higher ISO range with the 100MP CMOS sensor, and the touchscreen display would keep us plenty busy - all that and a 1/800th sync on the leaf shutter gave us a fighting change of freezing the motion of our subjects with the less powerful (and longer flash duration) Pro8 Packs without bi-tube heads.
This also gave us an opportunity to expand the subjects environment a bit more than we had originally planned, as these images were initially thought of as portraits with a hint of an environment, and not an environmental portrait.
That being said, we should’ve shot it on grey or white rather than black to make it easier to comp the subjects and background during retouching - The fog helped make it a bit easier than if the background was a deep black, but still cutting hair out like that is a nightmare. I’ll talk more about this later on…
On to the lighting!!
Our set up was pretty basic - we needed to have a top light to mimic the alien beam that would eventually be lifting the subjects - and we needed to have accent lights/kickers around to mimic ambient light of the scene they’re in.
View from behind the H6D 100mp - this is before the flag have been added to block the rear kickers from firing directly into the camera.
Since this was a hyperreal and a stylized series of images, we weren’t trying to make the light “real world believable”. A top lit scene that would look heavily contrasted, something like this;
Kiera in the 1600 Joleko that we used for the plates of the beam.
Good for pissing about and making funny videos late night, but not great for what we were trying to do.
We had to bring the overall light reading of the room up so the shadows were getting hit with flash, filling in the details and helping freeze the subject as they were in motion. We decided on building a 12′x12′ light bank out v-flats and a 12′x12′ china silk. This would live behind me as I shot and act like a parabolic umbrella, but would allow us to add more lights inside if needed to, and we did…
Inside of our 12′x12′ homemade soft box fill light - 4 V-Flats and soon to be a pro-8 pack and one head to keep the flash duration fast to freeze motion - it definitely wasn't enough power for the flash duration needed.
Video still inside of the finished 12'x12’ - We had to add two D1 1000s at a lower power setting to bring up the fill - two more strobes than we planned on. We also had to lower the Pro-8 pack to increase the flash duration.
The finished light bank behind me during day 1 or shooting - there’s a Carmine’s pizza box in the lower right of the frame and now I want pizza.
We wanted to give the face and body a pop of light so there would be detail in the shadows, so Kit and I decided on a hand held strobe with a snoot. Kit would follow the subject as they jumped around so no matter where they ended up on the trampoline, they were lit.
Kit on a ladder.
Kit at a safe distance.
Kit doesn’t always need a ladder for height to get around the boom.
That coat was a few thousand dollars - Amy has good taste.
Add fog, an FX fan with random probability and a badass crew, and that’s basically how we created the portraits for the series.
Mica getting subbed out.
Becca running the fan, fog, computer and basically anything that needed solved. #rockstar
Everyone made fun of my outfit, but why would they expect anything less?
Part -3 Image Construction
Here’s a quick timeline video of the image being constructed in post.
Composite Video of The Surprised from “The Taken”