DanTakesPhotos

Somadrone - Providence

2010-01-20T12:49:00.004Z

Somadrone - Providence from ξοgΙιαη κιdηεγ on Vimeo.

The Providence video for Somadrone was my second time working with Mr. Eoghan Kidney (the man who cleaned house at the Irish Music TV awards )and has worked with delorentos, Fight Like Apes and when we last worked together I shot a chunk of the Underworld - Downpipe Video.

This video was shot by eoghan himself on a Camera similar to my trusty "clarence" also known as a Canon 5d mk ii..his twin brother perhapse

My job on this video was a pretty basic colour grade, the reason I didn't go too crazy on the over all look (apart from me doing this all in one night till about 3am) was that I love the perfect whites of the snow and didn't want to play around with it too much.

My main focus was on getting rid of the tungsten / orange hue in the shots where they had used a fill light.

Thanks to the trusty Avid DS System I was working on (I love flame for commercials but you can't beat the DS for anything over a minute or two) I could just use a secondary colour correction which in simple terms means I can isolate his skin and change it to green or purple if i want to but in this case i brought it back to normal colour.

Once i had the corrections established I went after working on the overall look which in this case was just tweeking the levels and adding some blue into the shadows.

I'm hopeing to get involved in more music videos in 2010..no money involved at all but great fun.

Arnotts January Sale Commercial

2010-01-19T12:20:00.003Z

Just before Christmas I shot my first commercial with the Canon 5d mk ii.

The brief was quite a quite simple set up, One 10sec shot of a good looking girl getting out of bed and then track/gib down to the sheets for the end text to appear.

The main problem was she was lying on red satin sheets which are very difficult to shoot as you want a nice shiny highlight but if you're not careful you'll end up with blown out detail and the whole shot was ruined....the solution was two HUGE silks to double diffuse the crap out of the light seen below.

This gave a lovely soft key light that really worked with the sheets.

Over all it was a pretty basic shoot but I'm more than happy to how the canon performed under a proper commercial setting

Check out the finished piece below.

Thanks to the sexy Stevo MacStiofáin for the stills of the setup

Mark Knight & D.Ramirez V Underworld - Downpipe

2009-11-22T20:44:00.007Z

The music Video for Underworld has just gone online. Directed by Eoghan Kidney and shot by myself and a couple of other dudes around Dublin City.

This was my first adventure into the "High budget" world of music videos...We all got paid 50,000 euro for our time and partied with countless celebrities all night.....

.....or not

In reality music vids are a lets do something cool and spend as little as possible from the record company end so kudos to Mr. Kidney for having a bad ass idea.

The video was based around the daft play house :

http://www.daft.ie/playhouse/

Which featured 1000's of tiny led's on every window to light up the building in user programmed patterns.

We shot the video over two nights as we only had access to the giant screens for an hour at a time and had to work when people would be least likely to see the animation running, which ended up being around 12 on a wends night/Thurs morning & 2 on a Saturday night/Sunday morning and I can tell you filming at 2am on a Saturday night is an adventure. I brought a person to watch over my back as I filmed just in case any drunk people were in the mood to take a starring role.

Before we went out we had a production meeting and were given our specific locations and some sample shots of the view of the building eoghan was hoping to get. I loaded up on some lucozade sport, munched me snickers, threw on my gloves and me and Clarence my trusty Canon 5d mk ii Camera hit the town.

Here's an Idea of some of the shots I got while out shooting :

From The Roof Of The Jervis Centre w/400mm Lens

From The Same Position w/50mm lens

Down to the Ha'penny Bridge

Down The Backstreets we're fun...avoiding junkies...trying to keep all the hot woman away from me etc.

Ran into a few fun harmless drunks on the way..he was wearing a fluffy pink hairband with hearts on springs

And back to O' Connell St. in time for the building to be turned off.

I filmed most of my shots using either my Canon 24-70 2.8 L or my 50 1.8 except for the up close shots of the text which were an adventure. I was shooting from atop a ladder with a tripod balanced on the wall of the roof of the Jervis center car park using a 400mm lens fitted with a 2x converter which ended up being a f9 manual focus and the slightest adjustment shook the picture.

The footage is not the most film like footage with lovely shallow focus etc.. but without the Canon 5d mk ii this video never would have happened for the cost. The ability to use fast lenses that let in a lot of light and being able to turn up the iso/gain so high is a major advantage.

For the nerdy I shot all the footage at a minimum of 1600 ISO

Enough rambling from me...I present the finished video.

Drum roll Please :

So what the hell am I up too ?

2009-11-17T21:50:00.007Z

I thought I'd kick off things with a nice what the hell am I up to post....

Right now ?

I'm listening to the Prodigy, thinking up some ideas for their song Run With The Wolves (more on that later) drinking a beer and getting ready to edit some photos of Aimee.

I'm also getting ready to cut a performance video I shot on Friday night of The Spikes over the next few days, It was me and Clarence (my trusty Canon 5d mk ii) running around like idiots shooting in the Village on Friday night. We recorded the audio for the last song Showman and I'm gonna cut it up and make it look pretty.

You should check out the Spikes myspace page www.myspace.com/thespikesmusic

their a handsome and very cool bunch of dudes. Here's the first Video I Cut For The Guys :

Directing music videos is always something I wanted to get into and here's my chance. If this video goes well I'll be on to doing a full scale music video so fingers crossed!

Back to the Prodigy, they're running a Run With The Wolves music video competition where I make what I want submit it and hopefully it gets picked. I can only imagine how much airplay this video will get so it's such a great opportunity to get kick started.

On the photography front I'm just finishing up work on Aimee / Jem The Rockstar.
It was my first time in the studio so i was a little nervous / unsure of the lighting but here's the results so far. I'll post up the rest of the shots as I finish them.

Contact Me

2009-11-17T21:09:00.001Z

The Best Way To Get In Contact With Me Is

Email : dantakesphotosdublin@gmail.com

An Example Of My Work Can Be Seen On

www.flickr.com/dantakesphotos

About Me

2009-11-17T20:19:00.005Z

I'm a 22 Year Old Photographer / Colourist / Compositor.

I Work in The Element Post Produciton.

I hope to become a music video / film director.

This blog is about my adventures / photos along the way