Abstract

Director: Dan Denegre of Space Race Studio

My Role (Aaron Almquist): Director of Photography

In November of 2017 I was brought on to DP a shoot for the company Abstract. Abstract offers a cloud based solution for when multiple designers are working on the same project file. It helps organize and keep track of changes so we can avoid the all too familiar naming conventions, (Final_FinalFinal.sketch), we as creatives sometimes resort to using. I would love to find a solution like this for video production based workflows!

Dan Denegre of Space Race studios was leading the charge and had an ambitiously awesome concept in mind. Dan’s vision was to create a chaotic boxed-in world filled with physical files for the actors to portray the challenges designers face. Dan worked with an awesome company, Props2C, to create the set walls and custom foam files.

Dan wanted the lighting to match the character’s stressed nature, something that gave our actors a slight shadow under their eye and chin. Since we were shooting in a square enclosure with one wall removed the only option was to light from above. It was great having these conversations early during the pre-production process as that helped us narrow down Peerspace locations that fit our needs. 

Since we were lighting from above I knew we needed a space with a ceiling that I could rig lighting to. I wanted to avoid placing the actual lighting fixtures above our tallent’s head as safety is always my priority. If we had a bigger crew and a full grip team I wouldn’t have hesitated, but since it was just myself and Tanner, the 1st AD, setting up lighting I chose to play it safe. We also chose this location because the ceiling was vaulted and painted white. This allowed us to run a very efficient lighting package. I blasted these into the ceiling which gave us what we needed to achieve the look. The blue files that surrounded our actors gave a slight blue return to their faces which I think was a nice touch and brought them into the “Shared Folder” world Dan created. 

Using my trusty Jib arm again proved to help speed the process along. It allowed us to keep the actors in their element as I could boom in the camera without disturbing the set. I connected my camera to an Ipad to remotely set focus and initiate recording. 

That was 2017’s Abstract shoot.