Texas Cameraman Reunites with Chip and Joanna Gaines for The Today Show

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Jenna Bush Hager chats with Chip and Joanna Gaines at the Silos in Waco, Texas.

I had the chance to shoot a Today Show interview with HGTV stars, Chip and Joanna Gaines. For those of you who may not know, I used to be the Director of Photography on “Fixer Upper.”  I left the show after we finished shooting season three. Since then, I’ve kept in touch with Chip and Jo. As soon as I found out I was going to be working with them again, I sent Jo a text. We were all pretty excited about the mini reunion.

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We had tons of space to work with. It made lighting this interview a breeze.

We set up for the interview at the Silos. They gave us a great big room to work with. The room even had shiplap! I used one Canon C300 for a two-shot of Chip and Jo. The other C300 was on a single-shot of Jenna Bush Hager.  I used one 5D for an “over the shoulder” shot of Chip and Jo and the other 5D was on a super wide shot of the entire room. The room had so much natural light coming in that I only needed to use a couple Lite Panels and a 400w Kino Flo to light the interview.

After the interview we headed to the roof top deck to do a “walk and talk.” We ended the day with some B-roll of Chip and Jo tossing Magnolia Homes t-shirts and hats to fans below.  It was so much fun to be working with Chip and Jo again.  I also had a blast working with Jenna Bush Hager. She was so down to earth and very professional.

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The Odyssey 7Q plus makes for a great field monitor too.

I spent the last hour of the day transferring footage to the producer’s hard drive and packing up my gear. The day went by really fast. I can’t wait to check out this piece on The Today Show.

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Luckily, Chip did not take his shirt off during this interview.
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Canon 5D Mark 3 with an 85mm f1.2 lens attached.

Below is the video that aired on The Today Show: