Celebrity portrait and video sessions are an absolute blast, and it's something we love doing here. As is the case with most celebrity sessions due to NDA restrictions, it's been nearly a year since the Schneider Productions team had the opportunity to work with one of television's most well-known personalities: Guy Fieri.
Guy was about to open a new movie theater/restaurant combo in Dubai and needed to put together a sizzle reel to advertise the coming attractions. Because it was a new concept, and also came together very quickly, we were tasked to produce a high-end deliverable with limited time and resources.
This is the kind of task where the Schneider Productions team excels. We went to Guy's home town of Santa Rosa, CA and set up shop in a local hotel meeting room with everything we would need for our very limited time with the busy celebrity chef.
Our extremely skilled cinematographer Karaminder pulled together the below setup in under an hour, and the result was bright and clean light that would provide a crisp image and avoid a green hue you might get when shooting in a cramped space by giving the shot enough separation despite the close quarters.
The client requested high quality video, but they didn't want the burden of a large cinema camera like a RED or an Alexa, the norm for something like this. Instead, they asked for a solid option that would be faster and more nimble to operate. For that, we opted to trust our Canon 1DX Mark II with the job which was able to provide high quality video without much setup or teardown time.
We wired Guy with both a lavalier microphone and a boom microphone as backup to assure we accurately captured his booming voice. In the image above, the monitor to the right of our camera was specifically set up to allow the client to approve each shot.
If you look closely, you might notice in the images above that we were oriented vertically rather than the traditional horizontal frame. Guy's team informed us that they wanted the option to use the footage for a wide array of purposes, and since Guy would be cut out of the green screen anyway and horizontal space wouldn't be necessary, we suggested this orientation so that the footage could be used from 6K to even 8K resolutions.
But, we also made sure to capture it in traditional framing as well, as you can see below.
Guy was an absolute pleasure to work with, and his charisma you see on television is 100% genuine. On set, Guy joked and interacted with everyone and seemed to genuinely enjoy working with other professionals.
Guy, we wish you the best with your new restaurant!