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NAME:
Frey Hoffman
TITLE / ROLE:
Director of Photography
COMPANY:
Freydesign Productions
www.freydesignproductions.com
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
"Jesus Walks" Music Video
See the video: CLICK
HERE
LIVES:
Chicago
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Head over to MTV.com and you'll find the channel's website prominently features
a new video from Chicago hip hop superhero Kanye West called "Jesus Walks." The
film is part of a new-fangled tri-powered video release strategy, where the best-selling
West had three different videos for the same single – one of which plays
on MTV, another on MTV2 and a third on MTV.com.
Chicago area Director of Photography Frey Hoffman shot the third video along with
directors Coodie and Chike of Channel Zero Productions in a couple of jam-packed
days, putting together a local film crew, shooting the action and editing the
video for super-fast runaround. The video is getting attention from the media,
recently garnering an article in the New York Times. We asked him about working
on the video and how to get things done fast and right in Chi-town.
How did you get involved with the Kanye West video? Kanye called
the directors Coodie and Chike late one Thursday evening in early June and told
them he wanted to shoot a music video on Sunday. Ten minutes later I got a phone
call from them asking me to get a camera, film stock and crew together to shoot
a music video for Kanye on Sunday.
What were the biggest challenges with such a tight timeline?
Finding a camera, film stock and crew...I wish I was joking. Buying the film stock
was actually fairly straight ahead except that it had to be shipped from L.A.
and the wrong name was put on the box. This meant that when Coodie and Chike arrived
at their hotel on Saturday evening and were expecting to find the film waiting
for them it was nowhere to be found. So until the box was properly identified
there was about an hour on the night before the shoot when I was calling people
to see what short ends they might have tucked away in their refrigerators.
The camera was a challenge because we wanted to buy a camera so that we don't
have to keep dealing with renting cameras. The problem is that not many places
that sell 16mm cameras have them just sitting on the shelf ready to go and shoot.
They usually want to take at least a day to prep the camera and then for places
outside of Chicago you're looking at another day for shipping. We didn't have
that kind of time. Fortunately Man-Sung Son at SMS Productions here in Chicago
was willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that we had a
working camera for the shoot.
Getting the crew was also a bit nerve-wracking. At 9:30 p.m. on Friday night,
I got a call from the original 1st AC saying he was going to take another gig.
So I went into Saturday (the day before the shoot) without any camera crew. In
the end it worked out for the best because I ended up working with Bob Sanchez.
In addition to being an extremely experienced and knowledgeable 1st AC, who was
willing to climb over barbed-wire with me so we could get a shot from a garage
rooftop, he also happens to drive an immaculately maintained Lincoln Town Car.
Given the last minute nature of the shoot his car ended up being driven in the
music video and to his great pleasure got a specific mention in the New York Times
review of the video.
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007: Frey Hoffman
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