Music Videos

Snow Droppers
Love Letters

Film clip for Aussie blues & rock band - The Snowdroppers track 'Love Letters’, part of their album ‘Business’

Love Letters was a labour of love — extremely small crew, single-day shoot in a warehouse — which meant I worked as DOP, gaffer and grip simultaneously, pulling my own focus from a Bartech RF rigged directly to the handle of the ARRI Alexa XT. On a bigger budget those would be separate departments; here we moved fast with three people doing everything.

Lighting stayed deliberately minimal — three units only. A 4K HMI on a dolly as the moving side key, sliding through a giant bookcase mid-take to throw shifting hard shadows across the band; a hanging practical bulb that swung in and out of the foreground for kinetic rhythm; and a small LED panel for fill on selective close-ups. Smoke threaded through the set registered every beam, giving the warehouse the depth and atmospheric volume the look needed. With only three sources, every cue had a job.

For coverage variety, I rigged a jib high on an overhang to grab top-down shots of the drummer — which leads to the music-video maxim every editor will thank you for following: cover the drummer. Whatever else you shoot, make sure there's enough drummer footage to cut back to. It saves the edit, every single time.