AOL Gangnam Style
in december of 2012, i had the opportunity to take part in the AOL sales team's yearly team video, showcased at a national corporate event. this was particularly ironic as i spent 10 years of my life working for AOL before deciding to make creative content for a liveing.
the brief was to do a parody / interpretation of the (at that time) smash hit "Gangnam Style" by Korean artist Psy.
we had a day to shoot at the AOL Beverly Hills HQ, and the AOL employees involved in the shoot made it pretty easy. they had coordinated outfits, choreographed dance moves, and were ready and willing to go above and beyond to make the video something unique.
i took advantage of a few relatively amazing opportunities during the shooting, one of which was the use of AOL's presentation theatre, which we used for one of the scenes, lit with both the existing projector as well as DEM's workhorse LED fixtures which added a bit of a festive feel to the theatre shots.
BTS shot of our quick and dirty lighting setup for the AOL Gangnam Style theatre shots.
the two egg-chairs that the "Miami Vice"-themed characters face off in (they also feature in one of the shots where th"Psy" character arm-wrestles an executive) as well as the orange wall were AOL office fixtures that worked perfectly for some of the more colourful shots. the blue in the outfits (a coincidence, in fact) was evened out in DaVinci to make those sequences extra snazzy, considering the whole affair was lit with two daylight-balanced LED panels.
those same LED panels made for some trickier lighting setups in the garage sequences, as the garage was lit with the obligatory fluorescent lights, making colour temperature a bit tricky. hopefully the cadillac, aston martin and dancing girls distract enough from that.
evidence of a challenging colour temperature environment.
we wrapped up the day doing the car shots, courtesy of a matthews car mount.
strapping the scarlet on the bonnet of a 1980s-vintage cadillac eldorado.
the remainder of the hot tub / pet shots were picked up the next day at a couple of additional locations.
i heard it went over well at the event. the whole thing was a pile of fun, to be honest.
DIRECTOR: chris morgan
1st AD: taylor smith
POST: darkenergymedia
CAMERA: RED Scarlet
COLOUR: DaVinci
