About the project

This project was a large undertaking that was so much fun to create. I played the role of director of photography, colorist, audio mixer, sound design, drone piloting, lighting, and more. The crew on the day of shooting consisted of my partner (Shirin Felfeli) , my best friend (Mack Trumble) , and I. We shot primarily at the Vaile Mansion, but the shooting called for a lot of creative shooting outside of the mansion to complete our story. We even traveled to St. Louis for pickup shots with some of the actors. This entire production was filled with amazingly creative people who I am so happy I got the chance to work with and meet.

Location

We primarily shot the film with our core cast at Vaile Mansion in Independence, Missouri. They were great to work with and we were able to do a lot of our exterior shots without rental fee, which was super helpful to the final product.

Gear

The entire film was shot on the Red Komodo (Mavic 2 pro for drone shots). For glass, I used DZO Vespid 75mm, 50mm, and 24mm. I was really happy overall with the DZO Vespid series. I didn’t run any matte boxes or filters for this special. I tried to run as lean as possible.

Lighting was a beast on this production. We shot all of our Vaile interior shots in 8 hours. This included loading in and out of the Vaile Mansion. I lit both from the inside and out and often multiple rooms. I ran my GVM 500B’s for exterior day light coming through the windows in most of the shots. Inside I used the GVM 2 by 2 Flexible light mat, aputure mcs, gvm 300ws, Neewer 220w rgb, Neewer fs300c and other smaller lights.