A Week in New York for Travel and Tourism Production
The last week of August 2024 I was hired to be DP on a 10-day tourism shoot across 3 beautiful regions of Central New York. Deliverables included a mix of video, stills, and aerial imagery from the roughly 25 locations. The market is an older international travel crowd, so that informed our creative choices in talent direction, approach to capture, and equipment choice.
Video was primary with stills secondary. I chose a Sony FX6 as my Acam for primary video capture, and often had it setup on an Easyrig for a smooth, floating handheld look. The FX6 was great for quickly pivoting from dimly-lit museum interiors to bright, sunny exteriors. With simple button press I could switch the Base ISO, then change white balance, and finally activate the electronic ND for smooth adjustments to get accurate outdoor exposure. Bcam was a Sony a7sⅲ mounted to a gimbal for classic reveal and follow moves. Occasionally we’d mount an a7 to a car for POV shots as well.
For stills we brought two additional Sony a7iv cameras. Each of these bodies can record 4k Slog3 as well, so they served as backups in case something happened to our A or B video cameras.
Having a single-mount system across all cameras meant we could consolidate and share lenses for this trip. Sony G Master zooms and Sigma Art primes were versatile and covered every situation we ran into.
We had to keep things pretty mobile, so we were limited to what we could fit into backpacks and a single small rolling cart, which was mostly camera support gear, batteries, drone, etc. We brought a single bi-color LED with a softbox and two tube-style lights which ended up being really useful for a just a quick kick of light in dimly lit restaurant interiors.
A great team was both on set and behind the scenes on this one, who hustled and dug deep for 10 straight days! Below are some of the final images:
DP: Mike Wilkinson
Bcam: Hazen Woolson
AC: Kyle Cahall
Creative Producer: Amon Focus + Kris Wood
Field Manager: Hillary Federico
Prod. Manager: Kelby Miller
Line Producer: Missy Oberly
Agency: Miles Partnership + Odyssey Studios
Talent: Hayley Clover + Austin Rye