American Cinematographer - March 2007 - 76

Bittersweet Video

Brings Artworks to Life

by Elina Shatkin
A Lichtenstein
comes

to life in

Bittersweet's
"The

Mating

Game" music

video, which
takes
a

framed

place in
gallery of
vignettes.

Director Jason

Cook and

cinematographer
Joshua Reis had

backgrounds in
graphics,

motion

which aided the

design of the
video.

The video for Bittersweet's loungey pop

| song "The Mating Game" begins and
1 ends in an art gallery, and in between,

viewers tour such diverse

settings as a
Spanish galleon, a World War ll-era
aircraft hangar, a smoky jazz club, and a
landscape inspired by Roy Lichtenstein.
As the video's gallery patrons coolly
survey the works of art on the walls, the
vignettes within the paintings come to
life, buzzing with stories and richly
detailed backdrops.
The effect is even more impres¬
sive given that the video was accom¬
plished on a low budget, all of which
went into production. It helped that both
director Jason Cook and cinematogra¬
pher Joshua Reis had worked as graphic
artists. "The reason I got into motion
graphics was because of my love for live
action," says Cook, who primarily works
in commercials, television and film as a

motion-graphics artist.
"I think my motion-graphics back¬
ground enables me to have a better
74 March 2007

dialogue with directors," says Reis, who
graduated from the University of South¬
ern

California in 2003 with

a

B.F.A. "I

didn't get

into cinema school, but I was
always interested in filmmaking. During
my time at USC, I became very inter¬
ested in motion graphics and largeformat photography."
When it came time to plan out
"The Mating Game," Cook used story¬
boards that had been drawn by artist
Geoff Oki to create

an

animatic of the

video in After Effects. "The animatic

wasn't

really used for camera angles,"
explains Cook, "but it was really helpful
for determining the pacing of the video
and timing out each shot."
The budget required that the
video be shot on a digital format, one
that would hold up to extensive digital
compositing. Also, Reis needed a
camera that would shoot at multiple
frame rates and could be mounted

Steadicam

on a

rig. "On projects with heavy
post work, you have to be careful about

choosing a format that will allow you to
meet all your deliverables and still be
within your budget." The filmmakers
chose

a

Panasonic AJ-HDC27F VariCam

equipped with a Fujinon HA16x6.3 Berm
HDW lens, which has a focal range of
range of 6.3-101 mm and an aperture
that opens to T1.8. "I knew production
wasn't going to be able to afford a set of
primes, and the wide-angle zoom lens
worked well," says Reis.
The gallery footage was shot in
one day at the Asian American Heritage
Community Center in Los Angeles; the
space features a large, L-shaped gallery.
"We knew most of the shots in the
a moving camera, and
debated whether to lay down track

gallery required
we

Steadicam," says Reis. "Because
was going to have a lot of CG
elements, which are very clean-looking,
or use

the video

we

be

wanted the
so

with

cinematography to not
geometric, so we decided to shoot

a

enable

Steadicam, which I knew would
us

to

keep

up

with

our

schedule.
American Cinematographer - March 2007

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