director of photography Archives - Christo Montes Freelance Cameraman Cinematographer DOP

Auckland cameraman Christo Montes lighting a blue screen set for TVNZ

Saving Christmas: Technical Cinematography for TVNZ

Working as a freelance cinematographer in New Zealand, I’ve shot everything from high-end corporate interviews to run-and-gun documentaries. But every now and then, a script lands in my inbox that requires a distinct blend of creative lighting and rigorous technical discipline.

I recently teamed up with TVNZ to shoot a Christmas TVC for Woolworths. The premise was high-stakes holiday drama: Santa’s reindeer were out of carrots, and alarms were blazing in the “Santa Control Center.”

The Challenge: A Fixed World

To transport our talent into the high-tech digital world of the Control Center, we utilized a 12x12ft blue screen frame.

Why blue instead of the industry-standard green? Simple physics: our Elf was wearing a bright green costume. If we had used a green screen, he would have become invisible, blending right into the background. So, blue it was.

While this solved the wardrobe issue, working within the confines of a fixed 12x12ft frame introduced a significant geometric challenge. We needed to capture the frantic interaction between Santa and the Elf from multiple angles, but the relationship between the camera and the blue background had to remain fixed to ensure coverage. If I moved the camera too far to get a side angle, I would shoot off the edge of the blue screen.

Moving the Set, Not the Camera

To solve this, we couldn’t simply move the camera around the actors. Instead, we had to rotate the entire set around the camera.

This required meticulous lighting prep. Before we rolled, I sketched out the lighting plan for the “real world” of the Control Center, determining exactly where the alarm lights and console glows would originate in the virtual space.

For every setup change, we physically rotated the actors and props relative to the blue screen. I then had to re-rig the floor lighting for every single angle. The goal was to ensure that even though the physical set had moved, the light hitting the actors’ faces maintained the continuity of the virtual background.

The “Cleanest Key”

Having extensive experience with visual effects (VFX) and chroma keying, I know that a composite is won or lost in the camera. It’s not just about lighting the talent; it’s about achieving perfect separation and even exposure on the screen itself to ensure the digital background doesn’t stick out as a sore thumb.

I applied strict technical standards to the lighting ratios to make life easy for the editors. It was incredibly validating to hear back from the post-production team that this was the cleanest blue screen key they had ever received.

They were thrilled with how effortlessly the footage keyed out, which meant they could spend less time fixing technical issues and more time polishing the final creative look.

Mission Accomplished

It was a technically demanding shoot, but delivering high-quality rushes that make the post-production workflow smooth is one of the most satisfying parts of the job.

Plus, I’m happy to report that the mission was a success. The carrots were restocked, the alarms were silenced, and the reindeer were fully fueled for the big night. Just another day at the office helping to save Christmas!

Here is the finished 30sec TVC

Production – TVNZ Blacksand
Creative Director – Shannon Addison
Creative Producer – Will Munro
Head of Production – Varsha Singh
Commercial Producer – Xanthe Price
DOP – Christo Montes
Gaffer – Paul Eversden
Technical Manager – Ryan Everitt
Sound Operator – Eugene Arts
Offline Editor – Will Munro
Online Editor – Nick Henderson
Grade – Gareth Pearce
Sound Mix – Roger Green

NZCS Awards

It’s been almost 2 months of intense work. But now that things have calmed down a bit I thought I’d write about one of the most exciting things that happened this year. It’s the highest recognition for a cameraman in New Zealand. And that is nothing else than being awarded with the Gold and Bronze awards in the News & Current affairs category of the annual NZCS Awards for the following stories:

Tagata Pasifika – Tongan chef Touvai Poloniati (Gold)
Tagata Pasifika – Samoan boxer Baby Nansen (Bronze)

Thank you

I can’t really express my gratitude enough to all the people that made this recognition possible. From my parents who gave me the grounding as a cameraman in photography when I first started, to my wife and children who very often have to go through long times of me absent on shoots. To all the people in TVNZ and especially John Robertson, who have given me the foundations in broadcast TV when I first arrived in NZ and who put me on the first shoot for a program called Tagata Pasifika back in 2011, which 8 years later I would be collecting an award for!

A big thank you also to the NZCS committee who recognized the work and who made possible the screening of 2 Pacific stories in front of the best of the Cinematography industry in NZ. And last but not least, a big thank you to my Pacific family. The people that for the past 8 years I have been telling some amazing (and to be honest… a couple of boring ones too!) pacific stories with. My Sunpix producers, Ngaire Fuata, John Utanga and Stephen Stehlin. And of course, their great team of reporters/directors that I have the pleasure to hang out with so often, because it never feels like work!

On a personal reflection, these awards are very welcome and a much welcomed boost in confidence in my work, it would not be honest to claim otherwise. However, I do think that there is very much beautiful camera work out there that goes unrecognized. Recognition just sets the bar and it’s always good to constantly try and set it higher, driving the quality of our work up. That’s what I will be trying to do in the next year for sure and in the process try to bring as many of my peers with me as possible.

Until the next one, stay safe and have a great and relaxing summer break!

TP+ Summer Series

For my next blog post I thought I’d try and do a bit of a project breakdown of something that was a bit of a challenge. And the TP+ series I shot for Sunpix is a perfect example of that. So let’s get stuck in…

The concept

At first let’s see what this project was and the challenges it came with.

Our presenters, Alistar Kata and John Pulu

The team at Sunpix wanted to shoot a few summer episodes for their Tagata Pasifika show. These episodes would be aired in the Summer time, instead of episode recaps or reruns and as so they should be able to be done on a limited budget. The concept was one of a 22min panel talk episode, between a select panel of 1-3 guests and 2 presenters.

The challenges

The concept sounds quite easy and straightforward for the broadcast world. However the challenges were quite a few from a DOP’s perspective. Let’s start with the studio.

The studio

Behind the scenes. 2 x Cineflex light mats, LED backlights and Dedo for presenter key. That’s my son/assistant Theodore, sitting in 🙂

The space we had to shoot this in, was an empty office space in the company’s premises, with a total size of 5m x 5m approximately and a ceiling height of no more than 3.5m. In this space we would have to accommodate the massive, curved background LED screen pictured above and our panel table for 5 people. There was no space for trusses or any kind of ceiling mounted lighting rig.

The coverage plan

After discussions with the producers, we agreed to shoot this with 3 cameras. One would be fixed on our main presenter, in order for this to accommodate an autocue, the other would be fixed on a wide shot of the panel and the 3rd camera would be placed in such a position that it would be able to rove between closeups of the guests and the 2nd presenter. When we agreed on that coverage, we also thought it would be good to have an extra option in post for the wide shot, so we decided to shoot that in 4k, giving us the option to push in or do some pans in post.
An important factor that also played a big role in our camera placement was that we didn’t have 3 FS7’s, but only 2 and an FS700. The FS700 could not shoot 4k 50p (see below) so that was assigned the safest shot, the presenter lock off.
So this is what the camera coverage plan looked like:

Cam 1 – Sony FS7, Sigma 18-35 f1.8 – Locked off wide shot, shooting in 4k (to reframe in post)
Cam 2 – Sony FS700, Nikon 105mm f2- Locked off closeup of presenter 1 – with autocue
Cam 3 – Sony FS7, Canon 70-200 f2.8 – Roving closeup of the of panel guests and presenter 2

One more thing I needed to consider was the fact that we were delivering a show for 1080i broadcast. And as much as it would be easy to just set all 3 cameras to shoot 25p, I wanted the show to have that TV look to it, hence I wanted it to be delivered in proper interlaced format. Because we are shooting in 4k on one of our cameras though and because the show will also live online, shooting interlaced was not an option either. So I decided to just go for 50p acquisition on all cameras and talk to post about how to work on the footage in order to get the best for both worlds.

Lighting

This was the most challenging part. With a low ceiling and no truss the options were limited. The main challenge was to handle the reflections from the background screen panels. The amount of them and the curved nature of the array would create light reflections in at least one of the camera angles. So the only solution would be some ambient, soft lighting that would come from sources high enough and to the sides, at such an angle that they will not produce reflections on the wide shot.
So we set the background screen to warm and decided to shoot it all in 3200K.
For the key, totally up to the task proved to be my 2 Cineflex 100W mats with soft boxes sitting on 3m stands almost all the way up. These provided the main panel lighting. I also rigged 2 LED panels with diff gels on the top of the screen in order to backlight the guests and fill in for my side-lit presenters. The only thing missing was a bit of punch on our main presenter, which I achieved with a couple of Dedo’s, one for key and one as a backlight.

Result

Here is the finished result

Hope you enjoyed this article. I’m always open to discuss ideas and answer questions so please feel free to get in touch, either via email, Whatsapp or Instagram DM.
Thanks for reading!

Welcome

This is my first blog post and the intention is to make a post every few weeks in order to give out a bit of information around recent shoots, techniques, challenges and solutions that I have come across as a cameraman.

As a welcome post I just want to throw out there a bit more info about me so you can get to know me a bit better.

So, I am originally from Athens, Greece. Born and bred in the land of philosophy and tourism from a Greek dad and a mum that was raised in a farm close to Te Kuiti. If you wonder how she ended up in Greece, that’s another story, probably a post on it’s own. So, having 2 nationalities was quite tempting and my family and I decided to give Aotearoa a go by migrating to New Zealand in 2010.

During my time in Greece, I ran a small video production company with my brother and we specialized more in the wedding and low budget corporate video area. Business was good, but one day we both decided to drop everything and f off to the other side of the planet. When we arrived in NZ and having no idea whatsoever about either trade or food, we decided to start up a food importing company. Talking about a massive leap and learning curve! We had to figure out how business works in this part of the world, the relationships, the jargon, legislation, accounting, etc. Everything was totally different and very hard to adapt to, leading to a few tough years to start with.

My restless creativity though didn’t let me focus only on the importing business, so I started seeking work in the area I loved most, which is being behind a lens. So after getting to meet some people I gradually started to shoot some weddings for Creative Video (thanks Craig, you’re a legend) in New Zealand. Then, through some networking and cold calling I was fortunate to connect with TVNZ in 2011. I will not forget the day John, the TVNZ Production Services manager, took me down into the camera store, handed me a camera and said:

“Here are our production cameras… You have an hour to familiarize yourself with them and in a few days we’ll send you out on a shoot”

At the time, although very confident around cameras, I had absolutely no experience in shooting content for broadcast, hence my stress levels were running quite high. So after exploring the camera for an hour or so I left the camera store and waited for the call. Sure enough a couple of days later I got my first broadcast job for TVNZ, for a program called Tagata Pasifika. At the time I had no idea that until this day and after 8 years of a constantly evolving broadcast environment, I would still be working with the Tagata Pasifika team helping them produce some very inspiring Pacific stories.

TheTVNZ logo used back in those days!

One of the first gigs I did for TVNZ. Phone cameras were pretty crap back in those days.

So TVNZ aside, I kept on building more local experience and in 2014 I decided to go full freelance and get out of the food importing business. I bought my first large sensor camera, a second hand Canon C300 and gradually started building a shooting package. As everyone knows this is a never ending process, which has lead me to today own a Sony FS7 with a full range of lenses, sound gear, a full lighting package, a small b cam (a6300) on a gimbal, on set monitors, accessories, and it goes on and on.

And that’s where we are today. Where I start a blog and put myself out there with no real idea how this is going to pan out. But hey, winging it has kind of worked so far, so why not keep on with it?

See you in the next one.

All the best.