Chad Michael Ward
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[Wednesday] From the Archives: Mika Lovely
🕑 Added 2015-07-22 15:49:59 +0000 UTCMika found me via ModelMayhem.com in late 2012 to let me know that she would be coming from Miami to Los Angeles and very much wanted to shoot.
Most of 2012 had been spent dealing with a family tragedy, being forced to move by a crazy roommate and some serious time devoted to the scriptwriting of my first feature film.
Needless to say, I hadn't been shooting much at all.
Mika changed that. I very much wanted to get back into shooting, but wasn't quite sure where to begin. We set up a shoot date, and I figured we'd just wing it.
I had the house to myself on the shoot day and we spent most of the afternoon shooting nudes on my patio, then on my balcony and eventually wound up in my roommates room, which was beautifully lit by the late afternoon light. We snapped some Instax and some digital then I decided that I wanted to try and capture some video of her.
We weren't sure what to shoot, so I told her to just hang out by the window and smoke while I filmed it in slow motion. The end result, as you'll see in the link below, wasn't bad at all!
I haven't had a chance to shoot with Mika again since, but I'm hoping our paths cross again one day.
"An Afternoon with Mika" video:
Technical Details: Shot with a Canon 7D with a 50mm 1.4 and 85mm 1.8 lenses. Lit with natural daylight.
![[Wednesday] From the Archives: Mika Lovely](https://img10.runfaps.com/storage/12/wj/rf/e9630c-019e86c0-b46f-7a19-b4ec-706c3699c00d.jpg)
Comments
Chad Michael Ward
If you like this, wait until you see my "Mort de Druantia" video, which premieres here on August 15th featuring an original score by ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK composer Scott Doherty. Video and still photography are very much cousins. Similar approaches but in a completely different way. With stills, I'm telling a story with a single, composed shot. With video, I'm still composing, but I also now have to add in movement to tell my story. Honestly, it can be a bit overwhelming, especially if I'm behind the camera doing the actual shooting, like this video and the next. With music videos, its a little easier, because someone else is operating the camera under my direction. I feel like I still have a metric fuck-ton to learn about creating stories with video, so I'm excited to have the opportunity to experiment with it every month. Like most of my work, even videos like this are more organic and in the moment than they are planned out. It's "easier" in a sense to do it this way, but I think once I start actually planning these out a little more, they'll be better, especially in the storytelling department.
Craig Young
Sigur Ros! How simple is that video yet works so well. Love the little details - plaster on her knee, pigtails. I like the spontaneous nature I find a lot of my favourite photos are just like that. How different is filming to still photography for you? Do you have to think differently when it comes to setting up or working a shoot out? I've never been into film to be honest, not like photography even when it comes to others work. Rather waste two hours reading a book then watching a film. They are exceptions of course.
