On Set as a Director / Cinematographer - Behind the Scenes

PRODUCTION
Executive Producer: Aya Karadzhova
Director/DP: Ryan Kao
Sound Mixer: Diego Romero
Colorist: Ryan Kao

📽 My Camera Gear: (Updated Oct 2022)

🔴 My Sony a7sIII Rig Breakdown:

🔴 My RED Komodo Rig Breakdown:

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► Snapchat: @justaskryan

Did you actually read the description?

[DeepStateofMe]

Loved this BTS breakdown! Thanks for sharing. Would love to see more videos like this!

[KofiYeboah]

Love the transparency, sometimes as filmmakers, we don’t always “win” and things go exactly how we want . Glad you made it out 🙏🏾

[danbrockettDOP]

I think you handled the situation well, the film looks and sounds good. As a producer though, IMHO, this project had a number of red flags that would have made me uncomfortable going in, at least based upon what you mention in the video, the shoot was quite under budgeted. Not in money necessarily, you had a decent sized crew for a small promo, but to me, in time, which of course ties back to money. This was easily a two day shoot. Too many shots and sequences in too many fairly difficult to access locations spread around the winery for one day. A good portion of the shots were outdoors, which means you are losing time when the sun is in the wrong position for the shots you want or the look you want. Can be overcome, but to figure it out sucks away precious time.

It seems as if you had enough crew but if you could have done a full scout, you would discover things like no AC outlets for your gaffer in the cask room, noise issues, logistics with the winery, access to areas needed to do your job, etc. Things that can be overcome, but slow you way down, put you behind and make you look bad to the client. Just know that in the end, the purpose of the director and crew is often as a blame mechanism for the client/agency. Clients and agencies sometimes are total pros and know exactly how resource allocation of crew, budget and time work, but more often than not, the person or committee deciding these things are clueless about production and underestimate what it will take, on the ground, in the real world using the wild ass guess method and then need someone to blame when things take longer or cost more than they guesstimated. Anything drone sucks up time. Flying and coordinating two drones sucks up more time.

I would have made day one drone/beauty shots early AM, interviews, some sunset b-roll late PM after interviews and then day two would have been pure b-roll. Conversely, if a second day was impossible, they needed to give you budget for an interview team and a second unit for b-roll if it HAD to be completed in one day. I just shot a promo at a fancy country club and even though it was two days, we had to shoot 12 interviews over the two days and we needed a metric ton of b-roll so we had a second unit of a drone, shooter and producer riding around in golf carts all day shooting hours of b-roll while the Interview crew was shooting six interviews per day (long ones with challenging subjects). Sure, it cost more budget but it was the only way to do what the client wanted in two days. And luckily this client knew this and had no issue budgeting two smaller crews, two person for interviews and three person for the b-roll crew.

I've worked with lots of agencies and agency producers over the years and like any other area, some are super knowledgable pros and some are politicians who have great people skills but lack production allocation skills. Same with client teams if there isn't an agency involved. Sometimes you get lucky while other times, no matter what you do, things are set up to fail and it won't be the client team or agency team that will take any blame. Who does get blamed? Right, us or more precisely, the director and or producer.

It's the producers job to push back and tell clients when their shot list, sequence list and amount of b-roll needing to be shot in a single day exceed the time and resources that their budget support. Of course, we want to be diplomatic and positive when letting them know these things and it can be difficult as a video team because there are dozens, if not hundreds of others out there who will just nod and say "yes" to almost anything the client wants so it can make you seem like adversarial when you advise them of the realities of budget/time/shot list/crew resources and access to location.

If you have a good relationship with the client, they trust you. If they trust you, they will listen to what you tell them and believe you, especially when you use logic and facts. But I get that often, its a new client or contact for you and they don't know you and you don't know them. All you can do is be very intentional, and as you posited, be optimistic, nice, confident, but you do have to be a realist and often have to tell clients what the limitations are in realizing their vision. My best clients are the ones who meet with me, give me a budget, brief, possibly a shot list, the purpose of the video and desired rough running time and then tell me, "let me know how the shoot goes, can't wait to see the first cut." I had one of these in October, client did just that and when I delivered the first cut, they absolutely loved it and then we collaborated to add in a few branding things and then they showed it to their entire team who were absolutely blown away. I realize these clients are rare, but they do exist. This client I have done three other productions for over four years so they are comfortable with me and my storytelling.

I find agency projects where there are lots of different teams and people involved, often with clashing ideas about what the project should be can be very difficult to deal with. We've all had more than our share of those. The battery dying thing, not to assign blame, but either you as the interviewer probably should have babysat the camera more or your AC. It looked from the BTS that you were in deep interviewer mode, which is wonderful, that's how you get great bites, but having the camera die and possibly corrupting your file could have definitely hurt your rep and career. Once again, as a producer/DP/director, if I am doing the interviews, I need a camera op. If I camera op, I don't want to be the interviewer. IMHO, those two jobs don't work very well with multi tasking. If it's a prompter read, I'm fine directing and operating, but for interviews, where you need to make eye contact and draw out the responses, it's almost impossible to babysit the camera as much as it needs to be as you learned. I'm surprised a camera touted as advanced as the RED are don't have an automatic file footer close out function before it shuts down due to lack of voltage from the battery. It appears they have the file writing into different folders which saved you but I know at least some cameras, once they reach minimum input voltage, they stop recording and write the footer before powering down. I guess Red doesn't do that, but all cameras obviously should.

Thanks for the video, it's a good lesson for many.

[caoviton]

My heart just stopped w you at that moment 😭 I am a wedding filmmaker and you know we can never reshoot the wedding moments

[madridsmedia]

Definetly the Director has to be able to hide those emotions and keep them inside while still reflecting confidence in order for the rest of the team to keep pushing.

[brandonylee]

Congrats Ryan on making it through every filmmaker's worst nightmare. looks like things turned out great.

[migbrgd]

Really appreciate the transparency in this! Not a lot of people would point out what went bad on a shoot like this. Otherwise, I think the shots you guys captured looked sick!

[YCImaging]

That book light setup was a gem, fire breakdown bro!

[hunterhawkins]

Lmao this is the only time a storyblocks advert has actually been compelling, they really came through

[shadowshapers]

I almost didn't click on this video because the title seemed too click-bait-ey but I'm glad that I did. These kinds of videos are the best kind of content for professionals made by other professionals because it helps us to learn from each other's mistakes and become more skilled professionals ourselves. Thank you for taking the time to go through what went wrong, how you felt, and how you were able to recover from the setback.

[krystiankrzewinski]

The final video looks amazing. Congratulations for pulling this off!

[JasonMorrisphotocinema]

Super experienced Armando for a bts 😂 love this ❤

[michaelheritage]

Great message of being unshakeable and to keep a cool head regardless. Best use of stock footage I have seen 🙌🏼

[JacksonHayes]

my heart DROPPED when you said the camera died mid-roll

[unpackedmoments]

great video. thank you for all the bts commentary

[johnniedeeatkinson]

Thanks for the BTS and a look at what it really takes to execute under pressure and communicating with every team member and over sight to help keep the trust and relationship together

[Jadesfishing]

I felt the anxiety when you thought the card was corrupted!!!! Glad it all worked out good!

[androidfighter]

I had this exact battery scenario happen to me. No playback option on the Komodo. Plugged it in to my laptop and the footage was there.

[nobelgomezvideo]

Man, i felt your pain when you were talking about the files not showing, nightmare fuel

[GeraldBrahimaj]

I really appreciate the transparency! Filmmaking is not that easy, especially when you have a lot of boxes to tick on a tight schedule.