Filming in Philly

We love Philly! Even more than that, we love filming in this awesome city.

One of our recent shoots was something completely new for us, a parody music video of the song, “Take Me to Church’” by Hozier.

We started in the wee hours of the morning in a bar… not because we needed a nice Philly brew, but because that’s one of the sets for this unique parody piece.

Filming any scene on location is difficult. Our eyes and brain make the complex process of seeing the real world almost effortlessly. The same can’t be said for the camera, which interprets what our eyes actually see so much differently than what’s really there.

I’ll get to my point—Which is, a dim lit bar is a tough place to film.

How do you light a location that is meant to look dark? That explanation is for another post, but at the end of the day it’s no easy task.

In this instance, the building was old, so the floors weren’t level, surfaces were all different textures and space was tight, making moving and leveling equipment a challenge.

What was the most intense about this shoot was our race against time. The bar would be opening at its normal time and we obviously couldn’t have a full production shoot with lights, wires and mics all over the place.

So organizing extras and talent, while wrangling technical aspects was important to get all the shots we needed, within our allotted timeframe.

At the end of the day things turned out really well and we’re excited to enter post production.