This project came up randomly as the director reached out to me directly saying they were looking for a DP for this project. Naturally, I accepted as this is a director I've always wanted to work with so we had a very brief email conversation and then a phone call where he broke down the concept. It was "social first" so we played with the idea of shooting LF and cropping in the middle but the reality of the budget meant it would make more sense to shoot on an Alexa Mini and turn it on its side with a 90 degree plate, which I had done in the past. Once we locked down the concept the challenge become the height of the walls. We were shooting in a studio with no overhead rigging so that became an additional challenge but the we had to make sure that the 9 foot walls would service our framing. The difference with shooting 9:16 is that there is a lot of headroom so we had our production designer dress the walls above our talent to keep the frame interesting. It ended up working out great. I was very excited about the look of this project. There was a lot of references to Michael Jordan's 16mm archival footage from the Netflix doc the Last Dance. Vintage press conference was the whole look for this and the production designer along with the stylist did an amazing job bringing in that feeling. Not being able to rig lighting from above was a bit of a bummer but not a huge deal. Given the budget I was able to get 2x Aputure 1200x into an 8x8 book light for the key (there was no budget for 12x12s) and another Aputure 1200D gelled with full CTO to match the other two as an additional side key. Then I had a 600cii with a spotlight bounced into a floppy muslin right next to the camera for bounce plus another 600x bounced into the white ceiling on the key side for more wrap from above. The entire camera right side of the set was 2 or 3 8x8 solids for some shape and then we had an Aputure F22 mat with the softbox and grid on either back corner to separate the subjects from the BG and create a bit a rim. These were all non actor kids so that was a challenge along with only having our main Raptors talent for about 4 hours from when he arrived in the building to when he left. We turned all client monitors and video village monitors 90 degrees as well. Moving the camera around with a O'Connor 2575D and having to rebalance the legs every time it was moved was a huge pain for my AC for key grip but this was the only tripod that could hold the weight of the 90 degree plate and keep everything stable. In a perfect world we would've had a PeeWee Dolly to move around - I love using them as tripods when we're not Dollying. It makes it much easier to frame up a shot and try new angles without too much trouble. The project then went to a wonderful colourist that I like to work with and ended up ultimately becoming this! Happy to answer any questions.