Cinematography
Filmmaking - Cinematography
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John Bailey A.S.C., on Shooting The Big Chill
John Bailey was a graduate film student at USC studying film criticism when he discovered a passion for cinematography while working on a school production. His first feature-length credit was for a 1972 horror movie Premonition, and since then he has accumulated a long and impressive list of credits, including such classics as: Groundhog Day, The Accidental Tourist, Swimming to Cambodia, Silverado, The Big Chill, and American Gigolo. More recently, he’s worked on projects as diverse as Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Must Love Dogs, The Producers, and Country Strong. I first heard John speak at an event organized […]
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Inside the Canon C300
When Senior Director of Professional Engineering and Solutions at Canon, Larry Thorpe spoke recently about the Canon C300, he talked quite a bit about the sensor in the camera. His explanation of why they developed an HD camera rather than a 4K sensor, and how the image is processed, is especially interesting. The following is an edited transcript of that part of his talk [You can see a video of his full talk here: Canon EOS C300 Pub Night with Larry Thorpe on 1.5.11 Vimeo] There’s also a Canon white paper, written by Larry, that covers this and other aspects […]
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Larry Thorpe on the Canon C300
Canon’s Senior Director of Professional Engineering and Solutions, Larry Thorpe, recently spoke at an event at Rule Boston Camera presenting the Canon C300. You can see a video of his talk here: Canon EOS C300 Pub Night with Larry Thorpe on 1.5.11 [Vimeo] Thorpe joined Canon in 2004. Prior to that, he was a major proponent of, and closely involved with, the evolution and development of High Definition television while at Sony. He is a Life Fellow of SMPTE I spoke to Mr. Thorpe briefly about the C300 after the event. The sensor in the C300 is 4:4:4 internally, but […]
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DP’s Discuss The Canon C300
The Canon C300 had a coming out party in Boston last week where Larry Thorpe of Canon presented the camera at an evening event hosted by Rule Boston Camera. A large crowd turned out to hear Larry speak about the camera, and to play with the four demo units that were present. When the camera was first announced I asked some local DPs for their reaction to it, and I took advantage of this opportunity to get their reactions after seeing the camera in person: Jeremy Traub is a DP based in Boston who is very familiar with RED […]
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Our Top Ten Posts of 2011
As 2011 comes to a close, here, based on Google Analytics, are this site’s top ten posts of the year. 1. 25 New Faces of 2011. I mean, of course — what else would have been our top traffic-getter of the year? As it does every year, the unveiling of our 25 New Faces list outpaced everything else on the site by almost three to one. And one thing I’m especially proud of — at the time we pick them, the people on this list are real discoveries. As I look at lists with similar ambitions on other sites, I’m […]
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DP David Kruta and the Red Epic
Dave Kruta grew up drawing and painting, but fell into cinematography in an unusual way. Working as a web designer, a job for a friend led to a video project. This eventually led to working as a DIT – he is a member of Local 600 DIT – but he says his passion is cinematography. He’s been doing more d.p. work this past year, perhaps helped by the fact that he bought his own Red Epic system earlier in the year. In this interview he talks about using the Epic and Alexa, the M and X versions of the Epic, […]
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Ten Lessons on Filmmaking From Terry Gilliam
“Billy Wilder once said that there are only two things aging directors can’t avoid…awards and haemorroids [sic]. I’ll stick with just the awards for the moment, please.” So says a recent Facebook post from the brain behind some of the greatest films of the last century, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Brazil to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Yes, Terry Gilliam has joined Facebook, as an experiment to promote his latest venture, the short film The Wholly Family, about Italian Pulcinella figurines coming to life inside a small boy’s imagination. (I highly recommend following his status updates). […]
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Jared Flesher on Doc Filmmaking with a DSLR: Part Two
In part 1 of this interview, filmmaker Jared Flesher talked about his latest project, Sourlands, and making the switch to a large sensor DSLR camera. In part 2, Jared talks about how he works as a one-man crew, other equipment he uses, finishing the project, and what future camera he might like to use: You were your own crew for this documentary? Part of my style of filmmaking is to be a one0-man film team. There are practical reasons for that. I’m working on a fairly limited budget, so if I don’t have to pay a sound man, or someone […]
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Jared Flesher on Doc Filmmaking with a DSLR: Part One
Jared Flesher is a self-taught filmmaker. He shot his first feature-length documentary, The Farmer and The Horse on a Canon consumer camcorder, shooting and editing the entire movie himself. With the success of that movie under his belt, he moved on to his second documentary, Sourlands, which he just finished shooting and hopes to complete by June of 2012. For this movie he decided to make the switch to a larger sensor camera, and chose the Panasonic GH2. In the first part of this interview, Jared talks about why he made the movie, and his experience making the switch to […]
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Is Shallow Depth-of-Field a Fad?
Most creative arts suffer from trends. Someone does something new or unusual, and suddenly dozens of others are imitating it; just look at Hollywood. Since the arrival of the Canon 5D Mark II, shallow depth-of-field has become almost a fetish. There’s certainly valid reasons to want to have shallow depth-of-field, as filmmaker Stu Maschwitz wrote on his blog: “With a 5D Mark II, its sensor double the size of a motion picture film frame, we can achieve cinematic focus at F4. We can get fetishistically shallow depth of field at F2.8. At F1.2, we can create abstract art in a […]
