Hi all!
Hope this finds everyone doing as well as can be. Not only is the Corona virus still raging across the world but now the West Coast of the US is on fire. We film all over in Oregon and Washington and the skies are choked out with smoke turning everything sepia toned in Portland or flat out like Mars or hell in other parts of the state. It looks biblical.
The Fires
Even worse - lots of our friends and families have to evacuate or pack up and be on notice to evacuate. Here in Portland we're lucky to only be dealing with the worst air quality in the world. :X
We have a shoot lined up for Jason Rising this weekend - it's been for something that's been really tricky to schedule due to complicated makeup and the people that need to be there that day. It's 99% likely to be cancelled which is crushing........but keeping people safe is the priority.
Also, the owner of our primary filming location Oregon had to evacuate, which is heart breaking. Please send positive energy their way as their home is very much at risk. It's frustrating not being able to do anything to help.
Because of the current dry summer and a horrible wind event (50mph gusts) Portland was proactively shutting power off to help prevent fires. Here's a shot I took at 10pm when it was dark with a slow shutter speed to capture the sky color.
Thankfully the power wasn't out long - this was on Monday 9/7/2020.
Tuesday night I went down to Albany, OR to meet up with some Vintersea peeps. That was an eye opening experience. The skies ranged from blue in Portland to yellow/orange, and then a horrible shade or red:
I know, not safe, but this was....uhhh....crazy and unique. Along the way to Albany the skies went black as night, then opened back up to sepia.
In Albany Riley snagged this - a pic of me with my new Ibanez EHB bass!
In the following days it continued to worsen. A friend named Alex took this photo:
And on Thursday we have this at my favorite restaurant in town. That red dot in the sky is the sun.
Today, 9/11, we have continued fires in the state and horrible air quality in Portland and lots of other areas. Things have not appeared to continued to worsen at breakneck pace so hopefully the firefighters are able to get things under control. It's been a horrible situation and they've been working tirelessly for days or weeks in some cases. I hear in California people regularly buy the fire fighters drinks. Let's make than an Oregon or even worldwide thing too.
Corona virus
The Corona virus isn't a new thing at this point but keeping people healthy should always be at the forefront of our minds.
We shut down all productions for at least a month - no music videos, no movies, nothing.
The first video we made was a green screen video at Cobalt Studios in Portland for the band Jiva Sakti and thier song, "I Music".
Setup the green screen and this pic was testing the lighting - too harsh of a shadow! Got that all dialed in (using Godox/Dracast lighting) and I had an amazing green screen setup.
Super smooth.
See that green on his paint?
Here's what happened to it when I keyed the screen - it sucks up the green in his paint too.
So I got creative with it and went ballistic coming up with rad color schemes. I loved how this turned out. It was so fun to work with Nomad/Huwy on this video!
Got some clap action going on here:
Even a small set with only 4 people has risks. We wore masks the entire time, and had everyone but Nomad wear a mask. Here's Freddy wearing his V1 mask.
And me!
I bought multiple things of hand sanitizer and we sanitize our hands like crazy throughout the shoot. I'd hate to catch it or worse, unknowingly spread it.
We've been using this model of masks/sanitizer for all the other shoots throughout the summer.
Also some shoots have been postponed or cancelled - not everyone is OKAY filming during a pandemic, which is totally fine. Sometimes we have people with family that are at risk, or the person themselves is at risk. So why risk it? Just wait until things are safer.
I've also been trying to screen people / keep up on their activities to make sure they aren't a fucking anti-mask idiot or doing activities that put them at a greater risk.
Recently we snagged one of these from Amazon so we can easily do a non invasive temperature check just to double check for fevers.
And last but not least - FOOD!
You have to be careful of packaging - you don't want everyone touching the same sandwich fixing or touching anything else that multiple people will touch. So individual packed items, opened, and spread out on a table (without being touched). Or pre-pack everything for people and give them individual bags of food.
The whole idea when shooting is to assume that other people have Covid-19. Seems weird or drastic but if someone did have it you're limiting everyone else's exposure.
So yeah. What's the next biblical thing we'll have to deal with? Frogs raining from the sky?
Jason Rising BTS.
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