Hip Hop Awards '22

BET needed a short segment with Fat Joe for the Hip Hop Awards, and it was shooting at his house rather than a studio. A home gives you none of what a stage gives you: no lighting grid, no control over the space, no room built to hold a crew.

The problem was logistical before it was creative. We had to find the right room inside the house and build a working set in it, to a standard that would hold up on national television, in someone’s home and on a limited window.

As director of photography, I led the camera, lighting and audio teams and worked with the producers to plan the shoot around the space we actually had rather than the one we wanted.

I scouted the house for the location that would read best on camera, then designed the setup around it: where the lights would go, how the crew could move without being in frame, and how to control sound in a room never built for it. Making those calls before the day is what let us turn a living space into a mini studio and still finish on schedule.

The segment aired nationally on BET.

Not every story is found in the edit. Some are made possible by the plan: knowing what a space can give you, what it cannot, and how to lead a crew through the difference. That is the part of the job that never shows up on screen, and it is the reason the footage exists at all.