mattmealer
Member
Today my wife and I premiered Episode 1 in a series of four abstract mini-docs honoring the work of historically influential female chefs and food writers. We call it "Women Belong In The Kitchen". It's a passion project that began over a year ago.
Episode 1 features Pamela Strobel, a 20th-century African-American chef. She ran an underground NYC restaurant called Princess Pamela's Soul Food Kitchen for decades. It closed in 1998, when she disappeared in mysterious circumstances, her ultimate fate unknown. Her only cookbook has recently gone back into print, and it was from this book that we adapted the voiceover in this piece.
Voiced by Rosa Howard (http://www.rosahowardvo.com/)
Starring Ivette Ledesma
Produced & directed by Emily Mealer
Shot & edited by Matt Mealer
Graphic design by Jessica Aby
This was shot on my FS7 with a Sigma 18-35 Cine zoom (wide open at T2), and a 1/4 black pro mist. I used an EasyRig Minimax for just about everything, with some regular handheld mixed in.
We primarily shot in a midcentury home in Fresno, CA. We were looking for a kitchen with a vintage look, something that could reasonably represent a 20th-century urban high-rise apartment (which...good luck finding in Fresno). I wanted a dim, warm, nighttime ambience with colored light shining through the windows to suggest neon signage outside the ‘apartment’. At the time we shot the kitchen sequence, we didn’t realize that we would later find the perfect neon-lit apartment exterior elsewhere in our hometown...so the colors between exterior and interior don’t quite match up, alas.
Since I was working alone, shooting doc-style, I wanted to ‘light the room’ to minimize changes once we rolled. I lined the ceiling with unbleached muslin and bounced three 750W lekos to create a general room tone. I supplemented this with a single 4’ Quasar Crossfade tube, draped with muslin, to add a soft, wrappy edge on our chef. Lastly, I replaced the stove hood light with a smaller incandescent, probably a 15W. This setup required just one lighting change during shooting, when we moved from the peninsula to the island for the recipe’s final steps.
Outside I used a mishmash of LED fixtures with colored gels to create our ‘neon’ look -- a Hive Wasp 100C, an Aputure 120D, and an Astra 6x bicolor.
We shot the opening exteriors & grocery store sequence guerilla-style in Fresno’s Tower District. We got lucky with a dramatic cloudy sunset that evening!
I'll update this thread with each new video as they are released. We have three more to come, every Wednesday through July 15.
Episode 1 features Pamela Strobel, a 20th-century African-American chef. She ran an underground NYC restaurant called Princess Pamela's Soul Food Kitchen for decades. It closed in 1998, when she disappeared in mysterious circumstances, her ultimate fate unknown. Her only cookbook has recently gone back into print, and it was from this book that we adapted the voiceover in this piece.
Starring Ivette Ledesma
Produced & directed by Emily Mealer
Shot & edited by Matt Mealer
Graphic design by Jessica Aby
This was shot on my FS7 with a Sigma 18-35 Cine zoom (wide open at T2), and a 1/4 black pro mist. I used an EasyRig Minimax for just about everything, with some regular handheld mixed in.
We primarily shot in a midcentury home in Fresno, CA. We were looking for a kitchen with a vintage look, something that could reasonably represent a 20th-century urban high-rise apartment (which...good luck finding in Fresno). I wanted a dim, warm, nighttime ambience with colored light shining through the windows to suggest neon signage outside the ‘apartment’. At the time we shot the kitchen sequence, we didn’t realize that we would later find the perfect neon-lit apartment exterior elsewhere in our hometown...so the colors between exterior and interior don’t quite match up, alas.
Since I was working alone, shooting doc-style, I wanted to ‘light the room’ to minimize changes once we rolled. I lined the ceiling with unbleached muslin and bounced three 750W lekos to create a general room tone. I supplemented this with a single 4’ Quasar Crossfade tube, draped with muslin, to add a soft, wrappy edge on our chef. Lastly, I replaced the stove hood light with a smaller incandescent, probably a 15W. This setup required just one lighting change during shooting, when we moved from the peninsula to the island for the recipe’s final steps.
Outside I used a mishmash of LED fixtures with colored gels to create our ‘neon’ look -- a Hive Wasp 100C, an Aputure 120D, and an Astra 6x bicolor.
We shot the opening exteriors & grocery store sequence guerilla-style in Fresno’s Tower District. We got lucky with a dramatic cloudy sunset that evening!
I'll update this thread with each new video as they are released. We have three more to come, every Wednesday through July 15.
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