It doesn’t get much cooler than shooting for the UFC. With a fight coming up, we spent the day with UFC fighter, Johny Hendricks. Armed with an HDX-900 and a MYT Slider, I got cookin’.
We spent the day at a fitness center that is also the home of a traditional UFC octagon-fighting ring. I lit the ring using two 400w Kobold HMI’s. We killed the house lights to give it a dramatic look. Johny then hopped in the ring and did some training exercises. I shot this b-roll at both 24p and 60p with a resolution of 720p.
Next, we began to setup for a sit down interview while Johny went for a run. It wasn’t long before we had Johny in the hot seat. I used a Kino Flo 400w as a key and a Kino Flo 200w as a greaser. “Countdown to UFC” likes a very cool temperature look. I used HMI’s to light the background. All the Kino Flo’s bulbs were changed to the 5500k. I set the white balance temperature on the camera to about 4300k.
After the interview, Johny Hendricks left to meet up with his family at Chuck ‘E’ Cheese. This gave us plenty of time to set up for some “hero shots” using the slider. I brought out the Arri 1K and attached a CTB filter. This light was pointed up at the ceiling. I used 1 400w Kobold HMI to hit the left side of our subjects face. A scrim was used to diffuse this light. We were shooting from an extremely low angle. I used two pelican cases as a foundation for the slider. Once we had Johny back in front of the camera we did a variety of framings with the slider movement. My producer added that cloudy affect you see to the right by clapping two pitcher rosin bags together.
Our day ended with Johny Hendricks participating in some more training. This was a pretty cool shoot. It was a lot of fun attaining this cool temperature look that they wanted. At one point I showed the producer the monitor and I asked him, “Is this too blue for you?” He smiled and responded, “The more blue, the better.” Yup, this was a good day.
