Archive for May, 2009

- Atticus Culver-Rease

About a month ago I was approached to shoot and edit a new branding video for Stryker, Corp.  Director Jonathan Gruber and I started close to home in San Jose, then headed off to Atlanta, New Jersey and most recently Hong Kong to capture the stories of Stryker employees, customers, patients and partners.  So in the past two weeks of shooting I’ve spent about 40 hours on airplanes, and I still have one more continent to hit.  Right now I’m on a plane en route to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and next week we head to London, England.

Jonathan and I were excited about the idea of giving this project an engaging visual style that would feel more like a documentary than a typical corporate piece.  We decided to shoot in HD with a 35mm depth of field adapter and prime cine lenses, which has let me get nice shallow focus for a more dramatic look.  If it were up to me, I’d love to shoot every interview this way from now on.  It just gives your shots so much more visual impact than you can get with regular lenses.

Hong Kong has definitely been the highlight of the trip so far, both because it’s a great city that I’d never been to before, and because it’s such a great place to shoot.  The buildings, the markets, the insanely busy streets, and the people all make for some fantastic shots.  I could have shot there for days and days, but I tried to restrain myself since I knew I was the one who would have to cut down the footage later.

Which reminds me, I was going to do a bit more editing on my laptop before the plane lands, so I should get back to it.