Authors — Jamie Stuart
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Outside the Box (Or, New York Is Not the Place to Be for Filmmakers Anymore): Jamie Stuart on His Move to LA.
Filmmaker Jamie Stuart has contributed to this publication since the mid-aughts. When he told me he that after completing his NY-set one-man independent feature A Motion Selfie that he’d be moving to L.A., I asked if he’d want to contribute a final Gotham piece in the “Goodbye to All That” genre. Below, he writes about not just his move but the changing independent film culture in New York over the past decade-plus. — SM The day before the move was literally the worst day of my entire life. Popping half tabs of Valium every five hours, I spent 7:00 AM […]
by Jamie Stuart on Nov 13, 2018 -
Blackmagic and More: NAB in the “Post-Breakthrough Era”
The NAB Show at the Javits Center is a great place to get lost. Row after row, booth after booth, you’re surrounded by catchy company names and logos: ALT Systems, Inc., Primestream, Calrec, Voxnest, Snapstream, multiCAM Systems, Digital Nirvana, Wowza Media, Adder, BB&S Lighting, Live X… There are tons of video monitors, storage units, software displays, brightly colored control panels and studio cameras overflowing to the point where it all starts to blur together. You can casually stop to figure out where you are, realize you’re standing in front of the CueScript setup, and the next thing you know, their […]
by Jamie Stuart on Oct 19, 2018 -
An Evolution in Shorts: Jamie Stuart on Five Films Leading Up to A Motion Selfie
Longtime Filmmaker contributor Jamie Stuart premieres his debut feature film, A Motion Selfie, direct to Vimeo tomorrow. To mark the occasion, he’s written this guest blog post about five of the short films he made for us over the years, using them to trace his progression as a filmmaker. 1) White Plastic Flower (2007) This short was really significant for me developmentally. Web video was still a relative novelty (YouTube had launched only a year before), so prior to this, most of my work maintained an offbeat comical vibe. For whatever reason, I went into this one without caring what […]
by Jamie Stuart on Jun 12, 2018 -
Color, Crews and Shooting Digitally: Ed Lachman and Vittorio Storaro at NYFF 2017
One of the highlights of the 55th New York Film Festival was the Master Class with Vittorio Storaro and Ed Lachman. Hosted by Kent Jones, the 90-minute presentation covered a wide range of subjects and also included key clips from the work of the two great cinematographers. Storaro and Lachman have been friends for over 40 years. Lachman claims that he was Storaro’s first American fan, after seeing both The Spider’s Stratagem and The Conformist at the 1970 NYFF. He subsequently worked with Storaro on Luna, when the Italian DP began shooting American movies but had not yet secured a […]
by Jamie Stuart on Oct 13, 2017 -
Blackmagic NYC: Shiny Happy People
My biggest takeaway from this year’s New York Blackmagic Event is that the people at Blackmagic are really, really happy. I could dive into a detailed rundown of all the tech specs of their latest products, most of which are easily available online, but, honestly, having gone to this event for the past three years, the most important thing I got from it all was the tone. After five years of hard work, they know they’re nearing the point where it all comes together. Over the next several months, we’ll see the releases of Da Vinci Resolve 12, Fusion for […]
by Jamie Stuart on Jul 23, 2015 -
Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth on Gone Girl, Digital and Working with David Fincher
Gone Girl marks d.p. Jeff Cronenweth’s fourth feature film collaboration with David Fincher, a stretch that began with Fight Club in 1999 and has continued through The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (He also worked 2nd and 3rd unit on Se7en and The Game.) It’s a partnership that has transitioned the pair to digital cinematography, with Cronenweth creating cool, precisely visualized environments for stories plumbing the complexities of life in our globalized, media-saturated information age. To speak with Cronenweth, we asked Jamie Stuart, whose short films have frequently appeared on this site, and who has interviewed […]
by Jamie Stuart on Oct 27, 2014 -
The Blackmagic Production Camera and Pocket Camera: A Review
I’ve been shooting exclusively with Blackmagic cameras for the past year. Their three primary offerings, the 1080p Pocket Cinema Camera, the 2.5K Cinema Camera, and the 4K Production Camera, to my mind, are the most practical low-cost/high-quality cameras currently available for DIY filmmakers. Are they perfect? No. In fact, many people prefer going with the Panasonic GH4, the new low-light sensation Sony a7S, or even the Canon 5D Mark III. The truth is, there is no perfect camera, just personal preference. There’s always been a specific camera at a specific time that works best for me. In the prehistoric age […]
by Jamie Stuart on Sep 2, 2014 -
The Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera: A Review
The Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera is pretty much the perfect post-DSLR camera. I spent a month with it, shooting a short film around the New York Film Festival, running around guerrilla-style, putting it through its paces, and I had a lot of fun. I liked the size and the touch screen functionality. And I liked the DaVinci Resolve 10 workflow. The BMDCC is a camera that introduces itself from a distance. Everywhere I went with it, people either knew what it was and wanted to ask me about it, or they didn’t know what it was and wanted to ask […]
by Jamie Stuart on Oct 23, 2013 -
Adobe Premiere Pro CC
The first project I used Adobe Premiere Pro on was a short film called “Masterpiece” that I created for Filmmaker Magazine at Sundance 2011. Prior to that, I’d been a Final Cut Pro devotee for a decade — and even reviewed the two previous generations of Final Cut Studio for Filmmaker. My history with digital editing goes back to late 2001. I was working on a short film, shot on 16mm, which I’d initially intended to cut on an old school Steenbeck. But when that fell through, I tracked down and installed a bootleg copy of Final Cut 2 on […]
by Jamie Stuart on Oct 21, 2013 -
A Look at the New Blackmagic Design Cameras
Yesterday I attended a Blackmagic Design event in NYC at the New Yorker Hotel and got to check out all three of their new cameras. I can officially report that the rumors of their existence are more credible than those of the Sasquatch. My initial response to the cameras was that in theory they’re the perfect post-DSLR choices. I say, “in theory,” because I didn’t actually shoot anything with them — and until that happens, I can’t offer an opinion of any greater authority. All three cameras (the Cinema Camera, Production Camera and Pocket Camera) were set up in a […]
by Jamie Stuart on Aug 9, 2013
