Trounce Alley Lighting Company

Offical Video for Scatterheart’s “More Than A Man”

Scatterheart’s love letter to Vancouver: Filmed in front of Vancouver’s landmarks: Science World, Sunset Beach and the SeaWall in the summer of 2009. From the album, ‘The Masterplan’ AVAILABLE ON ITUNES and at WWW.SCATTERHEART.CA

Credits:

Produced and directed by Scatterheart • Edited by Mike Southworth • Filmed by Randy Che • 1st AD Masayo Takada
Lighting and Grip Josh Alkoff • Colour Timing Miles Forster • Assistant Brian M Calvert

We’ve just wrapped an independent action thriller feature, “Transparency“. The film is produced by our friends at Qube Films. It is directed by Raul Inglis with cinematography by Michael C. Blundell who is known from Stargate: Atlantis and Jeremiah television series. It stars Lou Diamond Philips, Estella Warren, and Deborah Kara Unger, among others.

During the show we picked up a few tricks from Stargate veteran key grip , John Zulisnki, while sharing our TALCO package truck with his team of grips. Many of the cast, crew, and stunt people were also from the Stargate universe making this an enjoyable feature to work on with a tightly integrated crew all around.

We will have more on this film as Qube Films publishes more information in the upcoming months.

We are pleased to hear from Rugged Media the aboriginal short film “The Cave” by Writer/Director Helen Haig-Brown of the Tsilhqot’in tribe has been selected to screen as part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Top Ten (TIFF).

Set in 1961 in the Chilcotin Territory of Western Canada, The Cave recounts the story of a bear hunter who discovers a secret portal to the spirit world. This beautifully crafted film provides a powerful cinematic rendering of an authentic Tsilhqot’in oral story.

Helen Haig-Brown is an award-winning Tsilhqot’in director, director of photography and teacher who is in love with experimental documentary filmmaking. The Cave is her first dramatic film. She resides in her traditional lands in the interior of British Columbia.

A television spot we did with Director/Cinematographer Shawn Lawless last January.
Produced by Bear Studios, the BC Canadian Red Cross built an entire website around this “We Answer” Campaign to raise donations for their cause. The video can be streamed below:

Here are two corporate video we did with Director Cliff Prowse from Pin Point productions over a year ago:

Click the teaser images above to view them. Safari Man Dan | Dinosaurs Unearthed

This first is a childrens promo spot funded by the BC Chicken Marketing Board which us on a week long tour of the British Columbia chicken industry. We wore bio suits and hosed down our lighting equipment in chemicals to pass bio security checkpoints in order  bring cameras and lights into places nobody but chickens go. The spot was narrated by Adam Groves who coincidently plays Amir in Under the Apple Box the feature we recently completed earlier this year.

In the second we did the camera mounts for Dinosaurs Unearthed a promotional video showcasing the traveling animatronic dinosaur event which was installed at Metropolis at Metrotown.

We have discovered two more videos by premiere 35mm country music video production company — yes this is probably our 15th one with them – Arkadia Pictures the collaborative duo, director Stephano Barberis / producer Alex Galanis.

As with all of Arkadia Picture’s beautiful country videos, much of the magic in the cinema is brought out by senior Technicolor Creative Services colorist Gary Shaw in a 2K film to digital transfer session. The details are extracted from the 35mm work print. The end result is delivered digitally to the TV networks. The film latitude and the extensive digital timing allows us to get by during the shoot with more available light and less time consuming setups then typically on a feature film shoot. This helps offset the huge time constraints of trying to cram an entire narrative story and live performances into a single days shoot.

Above: The charming (dare I say sweet) “If I Fall” by Doc Walker – cinematographer Ron “Rocket” Williams presiding.
Below: Another timeless combination…girl’s and power tools!  Greg Hanna – “It’s a Man’s Job”:

The first was filmed with an Arri 435 by Rocket and lit with a 6k HMI Par and some custom string lights. The background was a 20×20 painted backdrop suspended on location in a barn. The second video was filmed by producer Alex Galanis himself using an antique Arriflex 35 film camera with a rotating turret of prime lenses. We shaped available light with grip gear and did not require a movie generator or HMI for our interiors to produce a quality video on a tight budget

The intensive studio course followed the success of another workshop we did at BCIT Film Flex program for graduating students who — prior to us — felt that they were lacking in hands on education and real world experience.

At both schools we brought in our 5-ton lighting and grip package truck for a week and helped provide the students a crash course in cinematography, Danny style…

It started with overviews of the truck, the equipment, and essential lighting principals such as: a) the inverse square rule for fall-off of light and b) the relative size of a light source as it relates to the softness of the light a.k.a. the importance of a large bounce or diffusion frame; we then built sets and put them hands-on through the process of shooting a scene.

Teaching was a very rewarding experience –The indigenous people at Capilano for example were grateful of our filmmaking wisdom and eager to apply their newfound knowledge to complete their film studies at the university. They will soon return to their native lands to become filmmakers and story tellers for future generations.

The BCIT Film Flex students began their final practicum following our workshop and worked for 30 days in the industry.

Currently Danny Nowak C.S.C and TALCO are looking for more opportunities to take the workshop on the road.

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These photos were taken at the Capilano cinematography workshop.