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"Hard blue filter one" was a term born during Hurricane Dennis last
summer. Curfew to be inland on the legal side of the intercoastal
waterway was 7pm. I was shooting the evacuation at the only bridge leading
from the beach to interior Wilmington. Cars sat in gridlock,
some people with every precious possession in the world packed in their
SUV, others only armed with a few cases of beer and a change of clothes.
The rain bands were starting to hit and I was in too much of a hurry to
go back to the car for a coat. Sunlight was fading fast and I was
soaked to the bone. I did not know what we would need this video
for, but I shot every shot twice. Once on Filter 3 for daylight,
and once on Filter 1 for artificial light. I did not know which would work
better, the Filter 3 shots with heavy grey skies and orange tinted
light or the Filter one shots with hard black silhouettes against cobalt
blue sky. When I got back to the satellite truck to edit, Jim Axelrod
and his editor Craig from CBS News were waiting for my video. As
Craig dubbed off the evacuation I informed him in an airline stewardess
manner, "Those shots are available with grey sky and orange evening
highlights from filter 3 preset or in hard blue filter one, except the
shot of the boat behind the truck, that is filter 3 only". Lori
Foushee, our field producer laughed, "Hard Blue Filter One, sounds like
the name of a porno". Since then I have adopted "hard blue
filter one" as part of my shooting style and try to fit it in
whenever possible. A quick lesson on TV cameras: Filter
one is for indoor light which in the color spectrum is orange, yellow
and green or 3200K (these same laws of physics apply to stars at night).
Filters 2,3,and 4 (0n most of the cameras I have shot with through the
years) are for daylight which is blue and violet or 5600K. Filters
2 and 4 are just like 3, except they have photo grey filters in them that
makes the focal length decrease and gives your pictures more depth.
If you shoot artificial light on Filter 3, it looks nuclear orange or
yellow. If you shoot daylight on Filter one, it is a vibrant blue.
Generally you do not want these effects, but on odd occasions they work
in your favor. I can make sunsets run redder, the sky glow
bright green or people feel blue without being sad.
But tonight I am the one who is blue and I do feel sad. My
story today was the world at it's worst. An 85 year old grandmother living in
a nursing home in a wonderful little North Carolina town was
raped so severely authorities cannot yet determine if it was done
by a human penetration or an object. The woman suffers from Alzheimer's
and has not been able to tell authorities what happened. Every time
I think of how scared she must be and how much pain has been inflicted
on her, it makes my stomach turn and my head buzz with disgust. As
much as I know how much Alzheimer's disease robs from people, I hope
this little scared, hurt woman cannot remember this part of
her life.
This was a very difficult story to shoot, not only from an emotional
standpoint, but I honestly don't want the viewer to visualize the brutal
act committed against this woman. The only physical elements
we could shoot were exteriors of the nursing home where the woman lived.
We had about 15 minutes of daylight left after we interviewed the
director of the nursing home in the parking lot. He agreed to speak with
us on camera, which was quite shocking to me, but I was very glad
to have his side of the story, even if it was just that they are investigating. Even
though he implied we could shoot from the parking lot of the nursing
home, I felt better shooting from the public right of way due to
the nature of the story. Honestly, I don't care how creative
someone is, there are only so many ways you can shoot a building with
a lighted sign infront. I shot the sign from a few feet away,
from the ground through the grass, from across the street, but it was
missing something. With the five minutes of light left, I switched
from the daylight filter to Filter one. Even though my
viewfinder is black and white, I could feel the look of the video changing
to a much darker, bluer, harder sky that matched my mood as
I secretly hoped the woman would forget how bad the world can be.
The building went from being soft and orange to barley recognizable with
it's shroud of azure at the edge of black. The tiny window
of opportunity to create "hard blue filter one" was soon gone and we had
to keep moving on the story to make our 10 o'clock deadline.
There was absolutely nothing pleasing about this story, not the subject,
not visually, even the liveshot did not have a nice look to it.
It was just hard, and blue, shot on Filter One.
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