Blog: Collaborators – Alex Stevens

Introduction

I first met Alex in film school and was very impressed with his 4th year thesis film script. When he asked if I had interest in shooting it, I didn’t hesitate for a second. Since then, I have worked with Alex on a few different projects and will definitely be working with him in the future!

About Alex Stevens

Alex is from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and moved to Regina for the Media Productions and Studies coarse offered at the U of R. After graduating, he co-owns/operates a company based out of Regina called Adjile, a subsidiary of Studio 10 Productions. His work speaks for itself.

Below are just some of the projects we have worked on together.

Belle Plaine: CD Release Party

Description: For this video, Alex helped with the live performance section.

I have known Belle Plaine (Melanie Hankewich) for about three years and have filmed her off and on since her decision to make music full time. Her sound is unlike anything I have ever heard. I was lucky enough to hear what she has coming down the pipe with her next album (not this one) and I personally believe it is some of the best stuff coming out of Saskatchewan, if not Canada!

For this project, I wanted to do a little film for the CD Release Party. Initially, I was thinking about doing a montage video from the CD Release Party but after viewing the footage, decided to contact Mel and get her to do a quick sit-down interview talking about the album.

I wanted to take a different approach to this video and limit it to the two events (Live Performance & Interview). I thought about overlaying BROLL over the interview but liked the vibe of it without so left it without the BROLL.

I shot the live performance with another 5D shooter, Alex Stevens. We shot with two 5D’s and one 7D. For the interview, I shot it with a 5D and a 7D. The sound for the interview is pretty noisy and I have finally decided to invest in a nice shotgun microphone so I can avoid the ambient noise you get for Lav’s.
WHAT I LEARNED

The shooting of both the Interview and Performance was pretty straight forward. In order to match the 7D to the 5D’s, I turned the sharpness up a two notches higher than the 5D’s but shot neutral profile settings.

In post-production however, I struggled with the colour correction of this piece. For some reason, (assuming it was my choice to shoot Adobe RGB) the image’s colour changed drastically when uploaded to vimeo. Everything looked over saturated and very red. I ended up re-doing the colour, compensating for the change that was occurring during upload. It was a game of trial and error which was so frustrated. I will be investigating why this was happening (as I am sure there is a simple explanation). What troubles me however, is that out of over 400 uploads, I have never had this issue!

Spring.

Description: A friend of mine, Alex Stevens, bought a new 5D Mark II with a bunch of toys. We spent 20 mins going over a few of the controls.

The Whyte Market Teaser Trailer

Description: A short film directed by Alex Stevens.

“Death of a Proletariat” – Short Film

Description: For this video, Alex wanted to analyze the techniques used by Godard and see how the viewer interprets these films. In this video, Alex tried to create an atmosphere much like the ambiance many of Godard’s films embrace — using available light, talking directly into the camera, and editing techniques to test the viewer’s perceptual experience.