Recipe for Lemonade

When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade.
Photos By John Reynolds

The week before shooting a sports medicine spot for Roper St. Francis Healthcare in Charleston, SC, the client called to express concern about the weather forecast for our all-exterior shoot. It seemed that a major rain event was shaping up, especially for the day we had scheduled our football shots. After reviewing our options, we decided to move forward with the shoot. The shots (for another spot) requiring beautiful weather were moved to our scout day.

As the day for our football shot drew closer, it seemed that an unusual rain was going to occur: more or less steady heavy rain all day. This was pretty much a day that most of the crew dreads, naturally. But as for me, I got really excited. I was going to get a high dollar "rain shot" for free. and so was the client.
It's really unusual to have steady heavy rain with little wind for a long period of time in Charleston. The worst thing that could happen for a "rain shot" with real rain is for the rain to blow through quickly. That's why most times rain is created with rain towers that can be controlled at will. In our case though, there was no budget for that. So we rolled the dice. And won!


It was a perfect day to shoot a day-for-night shot. We did have enough lighting firepower to make the effect happen: an 18K Fresnel HMI and a 4K Molebeam. Even with the large lights, we could only light a small area, especially due to the fact that we were shooting 120 fps with the Red One at 320 asa.

As is always the case with rain, it must be backlit to show up. In the photo above, if you did not see the light in the shot or the rain on the lens, you wouldn't know it was raining hard.

Looking now from the Red camera angle, you can see the day-for-night effect. The 18K Backlight gives the impression of a stadium light and overpowers the directionless daylight, which adds a perfect ambience.

The rain continued and we got our shots. As the sun went down I got the bonus shot I had planned, which you can see at the end of the spot.

The guys were delighted when they saw playback. I hope they enjoy the finished spot!

Our client is happy and I've got something new for the reel. All in a day's work...

Ahhh, I love lemonade.

Roper St. Francis Healthcare "Sports Medicine" from Dempsey Film Group on Vimeo.

The Zwivel, Now New and Improved.

Some time back I ordered a Red viewfinder mount from Zacuto. When it arrived, I decided that I wanted it to swivel in the vertical axis as well as horizontally. So I ordered the parts from Zacuto. They were curious why I would want to do that, and I tried to explain best I could. I told them I'd send a picture once I put it all together. I sent the picture and didn't get a response. I started using it and forgot all about it. Never heard from them again and didn't think anything about it... We're all busy after all.

Then one day, months later, I got a text from a camera assistant friend. Apparently my new improvement had been named... the Zwivel. And they made a video about it. Check out my comments below the video on Vimeo for more information about that story.

After a year of working with it, I've made another little improvement.



I call it the "Zlide".

It's the part that says "Zacuto USA" plus the rod to the upper left. It's basically a Minimount.
The difference is a set screw on one end to allow clearance from the camera body.

It allows you to move the entire assembly front to back without interference from any mounting brackets or other things you may have attached to your rod on the top mount. In this case the rod is 15mm but I'll bet there is a way to make this happen for 19mm as well.

The Zlide is also pretty handy because it allows you to adjust how close to the camera the vertical rod is. Sometimes you need a bit more clearance than you can get without it.

Another feature is that it allows placing the whole thing farther forward or back.

So just call up Zacuto and order your Zlide. Well, maybe you should call it a Minimount with a rod for now.