Case Study: Eastern Music Festival

Each summer, the Eastern Music Festival brings students from around the world to Greensboro to study with outstanding professional musicians in classical music. In addition to classical performances, EMF offers events in a variety of musical styles, through EMF Fringe, Jazz & Blues and Kids programs. As the Eastern Music Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary season, we thought it appropriate to celebrate our partnership with the festival.

Mark has always loved live music, both as a listener and a performer. So it was natural that he had an interest in documenting and promoting this unique musical event. For 15 years, Mark has contributed to EMF by photographing classes, students and performances for use on EMF's website and print pieces. He has worked closely with Director of Education Nana Wolfe-Hill to cover the events and people EMF wanted to highlight in their promotions.


Mark Wagoner is creative, talented, and professional. He has been working with Eastern Music Festival since 1996 and brings innovative and thoughtful ideas to our team. He has initiated several projects to help promote our Festival and follows through with each one, working with us during each stage so that the final product is just what we need. Mark goes “above and beyond” for EMF and we are deeply grateful for his commitment.
~Nana Wolfe-Hill, Director of Education

In addition to still photography, Mark has created multiple videos documenting and promoting EMF. In 2009, Mark proposed that these short films could became the foundation of EMF TV, a YouTube channel dedicated to videos featuring Music Director Gerard Schwarz and other students and staff of the festival. Through this venue, the public and EMF donors get a closer look at the amazing experience the festival offers to young musicians.


One other fun note - Mark once performed at EMF, as part of an ensemble of drummers performing traditional African music!

This summer, the Eastern Music Festival continues until July 30. Visit their website for a schedule of the many different events, and to purchase tickets online! Please visit our website to see more of Mark's video production and photography: www.markwagoner.com.

Christmas Magic... behind the scenes

In the beginning, there was an idea. Mark had an idea for a scene of an enchanted forest, perhaps at dusk or in the evening. Over the course of several months, three days of shooting, 720 still photographs, and 500 snowflakes, this idea developed in to "Christmas Magic," a stop-action animated short that we are very excited to share. We were pleased to have Natalie Jester and Kelly Swanson at Ink Production Services collaborate with us, and you can see their artistic touch throughout. You can see the video on our Blip.tv channel.

Although the final product is only one minute and 30 seconds long, months of research and planning went into creating this piece. One of the most difficult parts was finding the right elements for the scene. Trees from model train sets and miniature villages were tested for size and shape. Also, arranging the trees to create the perspective of depth in the forest took careful planning. The snowflakes in the scene were arranged on three different planes, also to give the illusion of distance. Finding tiny decorations to fit our hero tree was another challenge. Eventually, lights and ornaments intended for a dollhouse Christmas tree were located. (and the transformer required to provide electricity for them, without burning down the studio!)

Finally, our deer was assembled by Kelly and Natalie, with articulated joints to let him walk, jump, angle his head to look at the tree, and of course, wiggle his ears and tail!

We hope you enjoy viewing the final result as much as we did creating it!

Letters to Santa... behind the scenes

"Letters to Santa" includes footage shot for a series of commercials with our friends at G-Force Marketing. Mark wanted the results to show "classically beautiful lighting and camera movement" to give it a traditional, yet timeless, feel. He re-cut the footage to showcase the results into this short film, which can be viewed on our Blip.tv channel. Here are a few production stills from the shoot, showing all the work it takes to make something look natural and effortless!

Mark shot the film using the Letus camera attachment, which combines still camera lenses with the video camera. This allowed for the shallow depth of field and critical focus pulls that give the video a very intimate feel.

The crew rented a real, lived-in home for the day, rather than build a set, for a variety of realistic environments. It made it a tight squeeze for the dolly and track, but they were necessary for the camera motion that contributed to the classic look.

Actors don't always appreciate the time it takes to get everything set just right... But we think it's all worth it in the final film!

MWP wins the Greensboro 48 Hour Film Project

Mark Wagoner Productions and Monkeywhale Productions teamed up to produce a short film titled "The Adventures of Martin Dockery, Horologist" under the MWP Collaborative moniker, for the 48 Hour Film Project. This is the third project for MWP this year. In addition to winning best film, we won best costumes, best acting, best graphics (this was for the stop motion paper animation work), and best directing.

The story is told in the serial film format; it is a good verses evil science fiction film, with touches of western movies and a nod to the late Ed Wood. It will be shown in Las Vegas in October, and if it wins there, it will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Teaming up with Harvey Robinson and the Monkeywhale crew has been a very rewarding venture, not only because of awards, but primarily because of the experience. Film making is a team project, and the goal that we have as a team is to create a space for us all to produce work at a level that surprises us. For the 48 Hour project we put together a team of 35 people, which produces its own logistical problems but opens so many possibilities. I am very grateful for all of the hard work that the MWP team put into this film.

MWP has several more projects in the works right now, stay tuned...

Go Far 5K

On Saturday we started production on a short documentary film about GO FAR (Go Out For A Run!). With perfect weather after days of steady rain, it was a great day for watching 1,000 people run a 5K many for the first time.

We had a crew of 4 people, Maciek Krzysztoforski on stills, Zack shooting and sound, Harvey Robinson (of Harvey's Kitchen fame) shooting, along with me on a third camera. We shot 750 still photos and 3 hours of video footage. Watch for the film in a few weeks and if you have small ones sitting around, check out this program, 2 thumbs up, and then some!

Watcher, a short film shot with Pinhole Video

This short is the outcome of something I have been thinking about for a few months, video shot with a pinhole lens. Well, as you may know there is in fact no lens creating the image, just a very small hole made with a pin. Pinhole image creation is very old and started with the camera obscura. I have worked with pinhole photography a few times over the years, and this thought of video created with a hole in a piece of aluminum foil would not go away.

While this image is not suited to showing great detail in an object, it does have a very ethereal look and would work nicely for a baby's POV, dream state, or other-worldly kind of feeling.

This is my first test, and we plan to shoot with some different size pinholes to go for different looks. I liked this look for a horror film, so with a tip of the hat to Halloween here is "Watcher".

Irata-Eye of Ra music video

Last fall I served as DP on a music video for the band IRATA. The song "Eye of Ra" is from their first CD. Love the song and the band. Look here for a post about the shoot.

Going Green

We have made a commitment for Mark Wagoner Productions to go green. Yes we are painting our cyc wall "green-screen" green. It will give us 17'w, 14'h, 12'd, of flat Rosco green paint. This is the "official" green color so it should key out nicely. We will have it ready at all times with only the need to touch up the floor. We already have projects that are slated to shoot on our green stage area, nice! Book now, book often.

First coat done, it's like watching paint dry.

Car Rig

Last week we had to mount our HVX200 on my van for a time lapse shot for a TV show we are shooting. While it was mounted, I shot a little extra footage. Here are some production stills of the rig and the outcome of the second shoot of the day. Although we had done a test shoot a few weeks ago, on this set-up we learned a lot about rigging the camera to the car. Our next rig will smooth out the shots even more.

48 Hour Film Production, "Dance Again"

This past weekend we produced a film for the 48 Hour Film Project titled "Dance Again". It is about the stress of the mundane items of life and how chocolate cake makes it all better. We had a shoot of only eight hours, followed by twenty-five hours of editing. We had a great crew headed by Christian Parsons, and everyone did a great job. We got the film turned with four minutes to spare... damn, I could have gotten in one more cut!

Above are a few screen shots from the film.

Some people have asked me about how we got the look for the film. This is a very simple short film that takes place over six minutes at one small table. We do have one scene from the kitchen to help the "fantasy" aspect we needed to get in (one of the festival requirements). Anyway, we had set out to do a very simple film, but shoot it as beautifully as we could.

I had put a lot of thought into the look I wanted to achieve, and even before we arrived on the set, we did some critical work to achieve a clean image. A few days before the shoot, we brought all of the shoot monitors into the edit suite and calibrated everything as closely as we could. Here is a photo of that process. Then, our camera rig consisted of an Panasonic HPX500 - this is a 2/3 inch camera that I have spent a lot of time tweaking and setting up looks for. On the front of it, we used a Letus 35 adaptor with Canon zoom and prime lenses and a Chrosziel matte box. The lighting is a mix of soft window daylight, HMI, and tungsten lighting.

What this meant for post-production was that the color, contrast, brightness and overall look were achieved on the set. There was no correction done in post, except on the shot in the kitchen. This is big when you have a short deadline and need to edit, not spend time fixing exposure and color issues. I am coming to the place (perhaps it is back to the place) that we should create the look in-camera on the set whenever possible and change "fix it in post" to "enhance it in post".

Call me if you would like to know more about this process at 336.854.0406

Here are some production shots from Elizabeth Lemon.

These photos are from Bert Vanderveen.

And, from Tom Lassiter.

Popping Pills

These eye-popping images are part of an ongoing video & still project we've been working on with the good folks at Banner and Blue Zoom. For you techies out there - the movie was shot with the HPX500, and the stills with the Hasselblad H3D-39.
(For more video samples, check out our library on blip.tv.)

Proximity Hotel Documentary Update

Dennis Quaintance CEO of Quaintance-Weaver

Restaurants and Hotels

We are into the main parts of production on a new film about the Proximity Hotel. Recently we had the opportunity to do the first in a series of interviews with Dennis Quaintance. This interview was shot in the lower lobby of the hotel, where we talked about the formulation of the ideas that led to the creation of the only LEEDS Platinum certified hotel in the US.

The film will tell the story of how the Proximity came to be and look at the philosphy, the struggles, and the triumphs of the construction of this important American building. We had a great shoot with Dennis. Thank you's go out to all the staff at the hotel who helped us and to Christian Parsons and Harvey Robinson, who both did a great job shooting.

Director Mark Wagoner interviews Dennis for the film.

Harvey Robinson shooting.