Cinematography
Filmmaking - Cinematography
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Why Ed Lachman Chose to Shoot Carol in Super 16mm
Carol is getting raves not just for Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett’s subtle performances, but also for Ed Lachman’s cinematography, which was inspired by mid-century street photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier. In a first-person story for Indiewire, the veteran cinematographer, who has worked with Werner Herzog, Sofia Coppola, Todd Solondz, Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh, writes about why he and director Todd Haynes chose to shoot the film in 16mm in order to achieve the look of 1952. “We wanted to reference the photographic representation of a different era,” Lachman said. “They can recreate grain digitally now, but […]
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Sony Shrinks the FS7, Announces PXW-FS5 and the a7S II
Today at IBC Sony announced a smaller version of their popular PXW-FS7 4K camera. The PXW-FS5 takes most of the features of the PXW-FS7 and shrinks them into a box that’s less than half the weight and almost one quarter the volume. While it takes away some features — there are fewer recording options, no extension arm or LCD loupe — it does include an interesting new feature; an electronically variable ND filter that lets you select any position between 1/4ND and 1/128ND with 128 steps. Adjustment from one level to another should be fairly smooth, enabling you to adjust […]
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As 4K Expands, Now Might Be the Time to Buy an HD Camera
The world of inexpensive 4K cameras is expanding rapidly. For $8,000 there’s the Sony PXW-FS7, and Panasonic will soon start shipping the fixed lens AG-DVX200. At $4,195 the DVX200 takes the sensor from their GH4 and puts it in a more traditional video camera body. If the fixed lens of the DVX200 is too limiting, you could always buy the GH4 itself, which at $1,400 is one of the cheapest ways to record UHD video. And if the sensor size of the Panasonic camera’s is too limiting, the $3,200 full-frame Sony a7RII is the current darling of reviewers. Yes, it’s […]
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For Cinematographers: A Chart To Quickly Set Hyper-Focal Distances on Digital Cameras
Earlier this week, I posted my interview with The Creation of Meaning director Simone Rapisarda Casanova, in which he mentioned a solution he came up with to save time on finding hyper-focal distances: I decided to use micro-four-thirds lenses from Panasonic and Olympus. They’re really small, the only drawback is manually focusing with them as they’re really made for auto-focus. I mostly shot in hyper-focal to keep the biggest depth-of-field possible. The marks on those lenses are kind of useless if you shoot like this, because then you have to have your smartphone to calculate the right hyper-focal distance every time. So […]
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Rachel Morrison Talks Dope, Her Favorite Shot and Career as a Cinematographer
As the second largest film festival in Germany, Filmfest München programs a large German slate and a range of international titles. In addition to the Alexander Payne retrospective and homage to Andy Warhol’s cinematic experiments, this year’s festival highlighted an assortment of U.S. films. Picked up by Open Road Films and Sony Pictures at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope had its German premiere in Munich. Below is my conversation with cinematographer Rachel Morrison. Filmmaker: How did you decide to become a cinematographer? Morrison: I grew up with a still camera in my hand, determined I could freeze […]
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Going Mobile: The Alpha1 Mobile Film Lab
In 1932, the Russian filmmaker Alexander Medvedkin convinced Soviet authorities to give him three decommissioned train carriages to turn into a mobile film studio. The “film-train” would travel across the USSR’s expanse, bringing with it 32 spots to sleep, six editing tables, a projection room and a film-processing lab. Equipped to handle all aspects of production and projection from beginning to end, the film train would record local issues and expose problems that the people would need to solve: in Medvedkin’s words, the portable facility would act as “a kind of special fire brigade to put out problem fires.” These […]
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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 […]
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Test Footage of the GoPro HERO4 Session
Today GoPro announced the release of their first brand new camera in nine years: the GoPro HERO4 Session. The reviews trickling in thus far are fairly positive, despite noting the trade offs that accompany a design that is 40% smaller than the current HERO4 line. (For starters, the camera will reorient itself based off a 180 degree axis, but it cannot rotate at a 90 degree angle.) On the plus side, the Session comes waterproof (up to 33 feet) straight out of the box, and has an in-camera microphone that drains as you move from liquid to air. It’s available July 12 for […]
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Digital Motion Picture Cameras in 2015: The Dust Settles
Have you heard? The United Nations designated 2015 the “International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies,” and cinematography made the cut. But is IYL 2015 finally the year in which the dam burst of innovation subsides, and new digital cameras and techniques no longer threaten to drown us? Surveying the latest advances in large-sensor digital cinema cameras for Filmmaker’s fifth annual round-up — written, as always, on the eve of NAB — gives me pause to consider how far we’ve come in the five years since Sony’s F3 and FS100 were cutting-edge… since Panasonic’s AF100 stirred passions, ARRI’s Alexa represented a bold choice, and RED’s hand-assembled Epic-M […]
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PolarPro Has Tons of Clever Rigs for the GoPro Action Shooter
I know, another company with more GoPro accessories. At first I was skeptical that I’d see something new, but as someone who dives and hikes, just about everything I saw from PolarPro solved a lot of mounting and accessibility problems I’ve had in the outdoors, from keeping the camera quickly accessible to adding extra power. It’s not much of a surprise these are well thought out accessories. Company founder Jeff Overall is an action sports enthusiast himself and was looking for a decent polarizing filter for his GoPro for snowboarding. When he couldn’t find one he made it and started PolarPro during his […]
