Had the pleasure of shooting a profile piece for the talented Lou Shields. Shot on the RED Epic Dragon, at the Norskedalen Nature and Heritage Center, in the Driftless region of Wisconsin. Lou plays Americana, Old Time Blues, Folk and American Roots, and tours internationally.
The location was sublime, and the weather was perfect, affording a nice Time Lapse in the early morning, then clearing to a beautiful sunny Wisconsin day. This was shortly after my Dragon sensor upgrade, so I was definitely ready to put it through it’s paces.
This was a “one man band” day, save for my Audio Engineer, and two producers in order to work within budget. Shot on location, over an 11-12 hour day – the pace was challenging, but that’s something that I love, and there’s nothing like the satisfaction of getting what you need with a skeleton crew. Shot on the Epic Dragon with Zeiss ZE primes, on sticks, and utilizing the Seven Jib.
The most challenging part of this shoot was utilizing live sound for each song. I had discussed with Lou, utilizing a pre-recorded version of each specific song, so that sync would be a breeze. Lou wanted to do each take live, so we opted to take that route, with multiple takes from various angles. This made editing more of a challenge because of natural variances in musical takes, but it turned out quite well, and you’d never know the difference. There were a couple of challenging sections, where matching the edit between takes was a bit more challenging, but overall, the difficulty was minimal.
