Sony Shoot

Last week I went on my first location shoot with my new job. We were shooting promo videos for Sony's new 3D TVs. Mark (my new boss), Roy (a freelance cameraman) and I headed to San Diego early Wednesday morning. We met up with Jennifer from the PR firm the owns my company and made it to Sony headquarters that afternoon. The set designers and gaffer had been there most of the day, so the engineering space where we were shooting already looked like a mad scientist's lab when we arrived. It was great; there were waveform monitors and vector scopes everywhere, along with a ton of props brought by the set designer and of course the Sony TVs. We spent the next few hours tweaking the lights and finalizing the set design.

Before we left for the night, Ray from Sony gave us tickets to a professional woman's tennis match that his company was sponsoring. Most of us had never been to a pro tennis match, so we headed over there. It was really exciting. The #2 ranked woman in the world, who I had never heard of before that night, Jelena Jankovic, was playing. We settled in with some food and drinks and watched her lose.

The next morning, we arrived early and made the final adjustments to the set and lighting. Ray and Arturo (one of Sony's 3D TV engineers) were the stars of the show. They went through three half-improvised, half-scripted demonstrations about the features of Sony's 3D TVs. At lunch, we came up with some funny "that's what she said" jokes to go into the segments and filmed them at the end of the day, but I doubt they'll be seen outside of my edit suite.

The TVs themselves were really amazing. The image quality was, in many ways, better than what you see at the theater. The image was bright and clear and it really looked like things were popping out of the screen. Now I've got to start saving up for one.

Overall, the shoot went well. I really enjoyed working with a larger crew. When I was shooting news, I had to bring all the lights, camera and sound gear myself and I had to be the set designer and sometimes the makeup person. It was nice not having to worry about everything.