An evening with Rian Hughes at the Art Director’s Club, New York

The Art Directors Club in New York was recently the venue for an evening of genteel design discussion and civilized refreshment with British illustrator, graphic designer, comics artist and typographer Rian Hughes. Client Veer needed a video for their website as a way of featuring the typography work of Hughes (which Veer licenses) and reached out to BCP to do this multicam shoot.

We shot in HD 720p on two Panasonic HVX200s, with camera tech Indio Martinez downloading P2 cards in the field via MacBook Pro equipted with Duel Adapter and LaCie firewire 800 rugged drives. DP Michael Pruitt-Bruun operated one camera on a skateboard dolly to give a little motion to the scene with the columns of the location passing in front of his lens. The choice for the other camera was to get a shot of Hughes directly in front of the projected slides he was referencing. The idea there, to stack the layers of the shot, was to create a dynamic relationship between Hughes and his work. To dynamically display his relationship to the art rather than to knock him off to the side in the composition.

In post-production, editor Michele LaTorre cut Hughes’ dialogue tight — as is our custom over here at Big City! Michele parsed out “ums” and “ahs” as well as pregnant pauses and repeated phrases from Hughes’ extemporaneous talk. In the Final Cut Pro color correct, Michele used the Sapphire Effects vignette to give shape and mood to the lighting, focusing in the viewer’s attention by eliminating unneeded distractions at the image edge.

About Rian Hughes

For over 20 years, Rian Hughes has been fusing visual design with pop aesthetics. His distinctive panel art revolutionized the British comic industry, and his modernist graphic design and illustration style have been widely copied. Since 1996, Rian has released an astoundingly diverse range of display and text typefaces under theDevice Fonts moniker.

See a slideshow of Rian’s work or browse the Device type collection.

Rian Hughes - Design, Tea, and Biscuits

We Did It: 11.15.07 Art Directors Club, NYC

BCP Tapped: Rian Hughes Live

BCP Location: Art Directors Club, NYC

Team BCP for Veer's Rian Hughes Design, Tea, and Biscuits

George Spyros, Executive Producer / Director

Michael Pruitt-Bruun, Director of Photography

Michele LaTorre, Editor

Indio Martinez, Camera Tech

BigCityPix Did It

We shot the cast of Gossip Girl in character in order to send a wink to already crazed fans, but more importantly to let newer viewers know that it wasn’t too late to leap feet first into the show and to get intimate with the personalities inhabiting the show’s world.

How BigCityPix Did It

We gallivanted over to Silvercup Studios with a union crew and nabbed the good cast in-between takes: Blake Lively as Serena Vanderwoodsen, Leighton Meester as Blair Waldorf, Penn Badgley as Dan Humphreys and Taylor Momsen as Jenny Humphreys.

Company Owner & Founder George Spyros Executive Produced and was the DGA member Director for the shoots. We shot 720p Hi-Definition video on the Panasonic HVX 200 to P2 card. 

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