FS7: "Glorious Old, Needs a Lot of Work" | short architectural documentary

[mattmealer]

I co-directed, shot, and edited this short architectural doc with my friend Evan Christensen for the 2019 AIA Film Challenge:

https://aiafilmchallenge.org/vote/?contest=video-detail&video_id=2378

We'd appreciate your vote at the above link for the People's Choice award! Only caveat is that you have to log in to FB/Twitter/LinkedIn to participate (which you can do at the above link). You can vote once an hour, so hey, knock yourself out

The goal of the contest is to tell stories about architects and city governments partnering to build "resilient and sustainable communities". Our subject, Kjirsten Harpain, along with her husband and brother, renovated a century-old building in downtown Kingsburg, California that had sat largely vacant for 50+ years. It's now home to several thriving locally-owned businesses on the ground floor and five residential apartments/lofts upstairs. A really cool repurposing of a long-disused space!

 

[mattmealer]

Thought I'd share some more details on the production that I posted earlier on the "Cinematography" subreddit:

...

This was a self-funded personal project, so the gear package was pretty minimal. We shot primarily on my FS7, with a few shots done on my partner's FS5 (including the Ronin-S gimbal stuff toward the middle). We used a hodgepodge of EF stills lenses -- mainly a Canon 24-105/Speed Booster combo along with a 28 (for the gimbal), 70-200, and a Tokina 11-16 -- with 1/4 Black ProMist.

I pushed to shoot as much as possible in late afternoon through magic hour since we were relying on available light for nearly everything. Thankfully our subjects were very understanding of our unusual (to them) schedule! We did use an Aputure 120D light dome and a couple of bounce boards for the indoor interview with Kjirsten.

My original goal was to shoot primarily on sticks or the gimbal, and while we ended up doing more handheld for expediency's sake than I first envisioned, I think everything cut together pretty smoothly. The Netflix series "Abstract" was a major influence on our visual and editorial approach.

The primary difficulty, of course (other than the San Joaquin Valley summer heat), was to find an interesting way to film an already-complete renovation project with very few "before" photos or video available to us. We wanted to avoid the typical talking-head/b-roll approach as much as we could, so we did our best to shoot sequences wherever possible -- our subject revising blueprints at home, the city manager at work in his office, a new tenant receiving her keys, etc. Hopefully this comes across in the final cut.