I decided that I want to share my first big assignment with my fellow FM family--from conception, planning, to execution. You guys have helped me so much, and are always so kind and supportive. I wuv you guys. *sniff* !

So, here's the premise:

I've agreed to take a on huge assignment--partly to help out a friend, and partly to gain more experience--I didn't bother quoting them a price, since the guy's a fellow film director and a good friend who's now a creative director at a local CG imaging/animation company that specializes in architecture/real estate visualization and animation. They want to print a new company ad/brochure and need a bunch of photos of the interior of the company and the employees. Basically, they want me to take shots that look like high quality corporate stock photos, but with a bit of an edge--since they're a CG visualization company.

Today, I went to check out the place and took some shots of the offices--so I can go home and think more about how/where to place the lights and how to pose/capture the employees. They want a sense of a busy enviroment where creativity is constantly exploding--artists brainstorming, directors giving directions, people being hip and cool and all that jazz. The shoot will happen the day after tomorrow, so I have a day to plan for it. I'll be shooting for the entire day, while they coordinate with employees to empty out rooms that I need, or pose for me when I ask.

The rooms I'll be shooting:

The boss/creative director's office:






The 3D department:






The secondary studio area:


The design department:


The meeting room:


The post production room:




The guest area:






The lighting equipment I'll be using:
I have 4 lights: one 1200 WS, two 600 WS, and one 400 WS.
I have 3 softboxes: one 80x120cm, one 80x80cm, and one 150cm octagon.
I have 2 brollleys: one transparent white, and one reflective silver on the inside.
I have 3 sets of light accesories: 3 snoots, 3 honeycomb grids, 3 barndoors, and colored gels.
I have 5 light stands: 3 regular stands, one with boom arm, and one lightweight stand that I only use to clamp the reflector in place.

My initial idea is to use colored gels to portray a sense of liveliness of the workplace--enough to give the place some colors, but not too much so that it looks like a dance club or a bar. I plan to have shots of employees crowded behind a computer, all discussing and brainstorming a particular idea. I also have a shot in mind of the director framing a shot with his fingers and explaining it to the artists, and them taking notes on their sketchpads.

The post production room will be shot with much darker ambient light, but with more saturated colors (reds and purples, with yellow as the rim light), since people associate post production with compositing and editing--which are usually carried out long into the night and done on gallons of coffee, illuminated only by the glow of the monitor screens.

The meeting room will be lit with big softboxes through those three glass panes on the left, and probably one with standard dish and yellow colored gel for a warmer look.

The boss/creative director's office will be lit in that posh style. Just standard dish, warm colored gels. The big desk will get popped out more for emphasis--you know, the big boss's desk and all that.

I haven't figured out about the other rooms yet. The 3D department is particularly problematic as it is a long shaped room with lots of crap in it. There aren't many places to hide the lights for a panoramic shot, so I'll have to think hard on this one.

Tomorrow, I'll try to replicate the look I want in my head at home--you know, practicing and figuring out what color gels and how bright and all that. If I take practice shots, I'll post those too. Like I said, I'm going to share every step of the way here. Hope I won't bore you guys to tears!





Edited by Lunatique on Oct 28, 2004 at 11:52 PM GMT

I can't really help you with the lighting or ideas. Sorry about that. What I'm here to ask is...... what in the world is that guy doing with a full roll of toilet paper on his desk??

Natron wrote:
I can't really help you with the lighting or ideas. Sorry about that. What I'm here to ask is...... what in the world is that guy doing with a full roll of toilet paper on his desk??

Reminds me of a joke I saw a while back with the "new productivity enhancing chair"...combination office chair/toilet. Maybe Rob is trying to pick up on that?

God, that looks like a horrible place to work.

I remember well a D.H. Lawrence poem I used to read with my students -- this was back in the day before computers took hold, and the poem was written in the early 20th century! Gotta love his prescience.

Let us be Men

For God's sake, let us be men
not monkeys minding machines
or sitting with our tails curled
while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone.

Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

-- D.H. Lawrence


============
May none of your children end up working in front of a computer all their lives. Better to work in a soup kitchen, with real people in front of you, wearing real emotions.

Good luck on the job. I have to say that jobs like that are indeed why I have no desire to *work* as a photographer.

In addition to what Guy suggest--in particular using a shift lens and direct connect to your pc for realtime light and composition correction, make sure to have the rooms very clutter clean and perhaps introduce some flowers/plants to give them a warmer look. They are very plain and need something to pick them up--otherwise your shots will look cold. this is a tough assignment because you are working with rooms that aren't naturally attractive. Can't wait to see your end product!!

Guy - I think you can only tether to a laptop if you have firewire connection? My laptop doesn't have one, so I'm kinda screwed there. Unless I can connect to the software via USB, I'd have to shoot a few, take out the card and feed it into the laptop and view it on DPP.

I wish I can take all the time in the world, but one day is all I get. They initially didn't even realize how big of an undertaking this is--they just casually said, "take pictures of our offices and make them look good." Only after I saw the place in person did I realize just how complicated it's going to be (they didn't mention including people in the shots initially)--not to mention their interior design and ambient lighting sucks--not a well lit or designed place at all, with dirty floors, dirty walls, and beat up, cheap furnitures. I'd have to be really creative to make them look good.

I'll be drawing up some detailed diagrams of lighting arrangement before I leave for the shoot.

Natron - It's just people being too cheap to buy proper napkins and tissue boxes. The toilet rolls are the cheapest option. I suspect that's where they keep the entire office's supply--right in the boss's office. !

rbsimages - The plants are a great idea! I'll tell them to go guy a bunch and spread the love around. I can't buy or rent a tilt shift lens, because they are not available here in Fuzhou. I'd have to order one, and it can take days if not weeks to get here. The best I can do is the Sigma 12-24 and the 28 end of my Tamron 28-75 DI.



Edited by Lunatique on Oct 20, 2004 at 03:00 AM GMT

Another thing I hate about these tech places is that there are rarely many, if any, women in these places. Looking over your pics, I see (maybe) one. Get the girls in the pics, even if they're poorly represented.

Things I would watch out for

White Balance - While it is easy to set a custom WB, it does not really balance out the color temperatures of the different light sources. For example if the room is lit by tungsten and you want to use some flash as extra light, there will be temp. issues. You might look into color correction gels to even the light out.

Straight Lines - The 12-24 lens really isn't suited to this. I think it will distort too much (fisheye effect) and the vertical lines may not be verticle. Try to insure as much as possible that the sensor plane is at 90 degrees to the subject. This will minimize the distortion. Also leave room around the edges for you to straighten the lines in PS afterward. A canon TSE lens will help, but may take a lot of setup time.

Choose a suitable lens(es). Primes will distort the least. If you have to use a zoom then a 17-40 or 16-35 would be better. Maybe a 24-70 as well.

Shoot RAW and tethered is possible.

Rob, I will be very interested in how you are going to transform those settings into your final images. Congrat on your big assignment!

Natron,
As for the toilet paper on the computer, it is just their way of using it instead of regular tissues.

Are you going to be shooting after hours when everyone is gone, or while they are working, like a fly on a wall? I think one cool shot would be in one of the rooms where there are a lot of people working at once, would be to setup the camera on a tripod and do like a 15 sec exposure so that you get all the static things sharp but the peoples faces and movements are blurred.

Another cool shot, would be to have a room completly dark, with only the light of a computer screen and have one person working on the computer to show like you said, people working late into the night.

Natron wrote:
I can't really help you with the lighting or ideas. Sorry about that. What I'm here to ask is...... what in the world is that guy doing with a full roll of toilet paper on his desk??

Hell, people do that in corporations here...
Seriously, it doubles as paper towels, believe it or not. Like Kleenex. When I graduated my first job was in an Asian treasury environment in HK. I saw the same thing and thought it was weird. Until I realize it's a cheap alternative to company ordering paper towels and tissues. I had one on my desk.

In the asian team I work for here, I have the paper towel version behind my monitor. When co-workers have the sniffles or eat stuff at their desks, they keep asking for it.



Edited by mchan1000 on Oct 19, 2004 at 02:34 PM GMT

JoeArndt wrote:
...I see (maybe) one...

I would recommend they spend a full day cleaning the place up and painting a few of the rather grungy looking areas. That place looks like a pig stye at the moment - certainly would not be showing that to any perspective clients if I was them.

I'm not sure if I really got it. Is your task to shoot the rooms or to shoot people working? The offices look horrible and I wouldn't really know what do do about them. If it's more the people working, this would be my idea:
Try to tell a story in each picture. Put one person in the forground doing something in connection with the companys work, lit her/him properly and use all the rest only as backdrop. Create a busy atmosphare by using motion blur. Have people running in the background and freeze only you model in the forground with a flash on the rear curtain. Do NOT lit the room evenly but try to create "islands of light" highlighting the nice/interesting parts of the room and leaving the ugly parts in the dark...
Just my 2 cents..
Good luck,
Matthias

Accent lights, long lenses , shallow DOF. Bright wash of light on back walls to chase away the gloom. Avoid any wide overall shots. Emphasize the people first, find a couple new and clean computer stations and use them in your semi wide shots.

Maybe jiggly half strobe lit half ambient "edgy" would help hide the look of the dismal location.
Maybe all lights off and monitors glowing in the dark with some judicious accent lights on people.
Or, fix it all in PS later!

Other than the lobby area, the place looks like a midwestern trucking company (and I have been in a few trucking companies) whatever you do, don't show the stinky and stained carpet.

You need 2 to 3 days, but since you only have 1 try to do fewer great shots than many mediocre ones.

What he'll need to do is pretty much the opposite of what he already did. He'll need to do tight shots of individuals interacting. You don't need to show much of the ugly effing place for that. You can snowball the public with the right people doing the right kinds of stuff.

gdstaples wrote:
I would recommend they spend a full day cleaning the place up and painting a few of the rather grungy looking areas. That place looks like a pig stye at the moment - certainly would not be showing that to any perspective clients if I was them.

Also, tell me the name of that place so that I know to warn people away from it.

I'll say this: the university is the only decent place to work in most countries.

Your first mistake was accepting the job without agreeing a price upfront, especially when doing work for a friend. I've learnt form experinece, freinds are the worst.

Your second mistake was accepting 'with an edge' as part of your brief. I banned the word 'edgy', a marketing executive favorite, form all cretive breifs in my agency. It is meaningless and trite. It's no better than 'cool'. What the hell is that? Get a written brief with 'real' decriptive words that you can agree on and that you will know what to deliver. You'll both think you know what you're talikng about until you deliver the pics and he'll just say, 'No, no I meant edgy. You know edgy.' It's then you'll realise that it's too vague a word to give you any real definition.

Finally, bloddy hell! What a mess. Get them to tidy the place up and go for more tighter shots. All those wide angle shots include far too much and show the worst of the office. Maybe get them to do a few 3D renders to merge with your photos if they want something different.

Natron wrote:
I can't really help you with the lighting or ideas. Sorry about that. What I'm here to ask is...... what in the world is that guy doing with a full roll of toilet paper on his desk??

It must be an agency thing. Rolls of toilet paper are dead handy for cleaning al kinds of things [insert dirty joke here] when you use glue and lighter fluid for mounting artwork [insert second dirty joke here].

As to price, I wouldn't touch that assignment for less than 5k per day.

To be honest, I'd probably do my best to price myself out of the job.

I do agree with Mick, too, about that "edgy" BS. Means nothing.

Guy, wow I can see you doing this in your sleep - not quite, but you have strong vision of what you look to achieve backed by good workflow. You present solid information.

Lunatique, it looks like quite a challenge. From the images you posted of the office it looks so uninspiring, hard to believe it’s a “creative” space. The only thought I can add is talk to the designer of the brochure to get an understanding of the number of images as well as the type and order of importance. Is the top shot an image of the CEO or the outside of their building?

Are they doing a 48 page annual report or a simple 8.5x11 sell sheet printed 2 sides and folded. Also they might have a certain color palette or colored logo they want to use in print so they might want you to carry that into your images. The more you understand how your work is being used the better you are able to do your job.

Good luck

First off, Rob, GOOD FOR YOU! Thanks for posting this assignment. I can't wait to see how it turns out.
BTW, I took a look at your website. (anybody else check it out?) Way cool! I like your composition and style.



Let's see here:
Assignment, friend, experience. We've all done it. Many regretted it. Definitely learned from it. Like the time I handed a friend four 220 rolls worth of final selects of 6x7 chromes to show "his" client...A week later he informed me, rather casually, "oh, I think I lost them." Fortunately, I covered all of the scenarios with my 1D, too--and we had the shots we needed. But I learned a valuable lesson. For the life of me I would never turn over that much celluloid to a client without a delivery memo assigning a value to the frames if lost. So why did I hand it to my friend?

The shots you posted are perfect! Without them, nobody would be able to help you and give the advice they've given. I wish I could remember to take such good overview shots when I do have the opportunity to see a venue in advance--or even while I'm shooting at a venue for the first time--in case I have to opportunity to return someday.

As for composition and straight lines--to heck with them. A few of the shots you have would be great with a little lighting tweaking and the right mix of action and people in them--conference room table, guest area, grey carped shot of the post production room.

Definitely lose the clutter. Get the floor out of most of the shots and you're half-way there. I'm guessing you don't have too much say on how much they tidy up, so shoot around it and emphasize your subjects with lighting as has already been suggested.

have u got the panotools plugin for photoshop? i use it as a poor man's TS-E. if you leave a bit of space round the edges it can be really handy.
good luck, i'm looking forward to seeing the results!

mickr7an wrote:
Your second mistake was accepting 'with an edge' as part of your brief. I banned the word 'edgy', a marketing executive favorite, form all cretive breifs in my agency. It is meaningless and trite. It's no better than 'cool'.


Edgy? http://www.clientcopia.com/quotes.php?cid=471

"... just make it look normal and tilt a few pics"

It is amazing how dark the work areas are. They need better lighting!!! I would be drooling on my keyboard while counting sheep!

spartan

Edited by spartan123 on Oct 20, 2004 at 08:40 AM GMT