This past April or May a friend of mine (who would like to be known by her web identity “Lady Estrogen”) said she had an idea for a music video. I said lets do it. She said o.k… nearly 10 months later, said video gets done. We actually shot in August and I just found time to edit it this past week. Not having an actual deadline kind of lends to slackin’ off a touch.

Technical details… Shot on the Canon 5D MkII, primarily with the 24-70mm L/f2.8. All run and gun, natural/available light except in the club/bar scenes. There we had one cheap work light (the kind you buy at Home Depot) on a stand, blasting through the white screen of a Westcott 5in1 Reflector. Not ideal, but it did the trick. Editing was done in Premiere CS5.5, with Mercury Playback and a Blackmagic DeckLink HD Extreme 3D card. Colour was all done with MagicBullet Looks 2… so pretty nice and easy.

Anyway, it’s a great song, it was fun to shoot and edit. Check it out if you must. Hangover Square by Michelle Rumball.

Hangover Square by Michelle Rumball

Produced by Cakevans Productions & A.J. Leitch
Directed by Lady Estrogen
Director of Photography/Editor – A.J. Leitch

Featuring Mara Finn & Nathan Kyght
Special thanks to Kevin Quain & The Cameron House

www.adventuresinestrogen.com
twitter.com/ladyestrogen
twitter.com/aj_leitch

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These are shots from Erie Beach (or Waverly as its known now) in Fort Erie.  The place used to be known as “Buffalo’s $2 million playground.”  It had a dance hall, open air theatre, the “world’s largest outdoor public swimming pool”, and other attractions all along the Lake Erie shore directly across from Buffalo, NY.  It was a pretty popular place from around 1885 until the 1930 when the Great Depression took its toll and forced the park owners to close it down.   All that’s left now is what hasn’t been dismantled by fire and time.

Here are a couple of sites that cover the history of the park in a lot better detail than I…

• http://eriebeachbook.blogspot.com/
• http://cec.chebucto.org/ClosPark/ErieBech.html

As for processing… all the shots were taken with the 5d using the 24-70mm.  Brought the RAW files into Lightroom, did some minor correction in there, then exported to Nik Silver Efex Pro II to convert to black and white.

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I just finished the on-line of the “first” episode of a new series that will air on a number of networks around the world including CNBC World.  I say “first” because we did an earlier episode on China, but I think this will be the first episode.  The series is called Going Global and it’s “a business lifestyle travel television show that focuses on the needs of the most important sector of the international travel market, the business traveler.”  Find out more about the show over at Re:Source Media’s web-site.  It’s an interesting show with lots of great footage.  Here’s a look at the first segment of the recent episode.

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My buddy Jordan is getting set to unveil his new clothing label “Ivy” this fall.  So about a month ago we set up a promo shoot for the line and grabbed some shots in and around the Ivy factory on the west side of Toronto.  The shirts are completely stylin’ and are of ridiculously awesome quality.  The Ivy site is going to go live soon, but for now here’s a couple of shots from the shoot.

Technically speaking, everything was shot on the 5D, with one softbox and a reflector… for the most part.  Off camera flash was controlled by a Pocketwizard FlexTT5 and MiniTT1 set up.  For lunch we had some amazing sandwiches.  That’s as technical as i can get.

Thanks to Jesse Dunphy, our rockstar model.

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I had a shoot last week with Francesco Comito. He’s a Toronto Chef and all around cool guy and currently working on getting a new show off the ground called “Make It Raw.”

I was hired to get some publicity shots of him, in the market and in the kitchen, so we started off in Kensington Market and eventually landed in a beautiful kitchen in High Park.  Francesco’s site is MakeitRaw.com which you can check out if your into the vegan scene. He’s got a ton of good info over there, so why don’t you take a look.

In the meantime, this is the second time we’ve worked together and here are a few images from the shoot.

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I was shooting an episode of Let’s Shop (letsshoptv.com) in Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit last week. One day we stopped in a glass shop in Puerto Vallarta, and the shop has a few artists sitting around creating some incredible stuff. This was one of those artist… but i didn’t get his name. I’m lame.

Anyway, this is just a very quick edit of the man’s skills. (…an edit that doesn’t come close to showing how talented the guy is!)

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I went out this past Friday with Dave & Olivia for an engagement shoot. It was raining all day, but around 5pm the rain rolled out of town and by 6pm it was an awesome spring evening and great weather for shooting. Here’s a few of the shots and if you know the password, the full gallery can be found here.

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I’m just wrapping up the graphic design of a documentary series called “The Science of Sin”.  It’s a series that examines the scientific reasons why we sin… (hence the title).  It airs every Wednesday throughout May on VisionTV, starting tonight, about 20 minutes ago actually.  I’m not apart of the promotion team. After broadcasting on Vision, it’s apparently hitting other networks, i’m just not sure which ones.  You can check out all it’s broadcast info here.

The whole concept of the design was to give it a DaVinnci feel.  It felt science and sin-like to me, so that’s what i went with.  I created the intro, lower 3rds, bumpers and about 90 seconds to 2 minutes worth of CGI for each episode.  But why type it to you… here’s some moving pictures that illustrate what I made a little better.

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