Cinematography
Filmmaking - Cinematography
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Good Things Come in Smaller Packages: Large-Sensor Cameras, One Year Later
Signs are everywhere. ARRI’s ALEXA swept TV series production in the U.S. Canon harnessed Hollywood pomp to launch its C300. RED placed an eight-page glossy fold-out to tout EPIC in April’s Vogue (“The camera that changed cinema is now changing fashion”). Sony shipped no less than 100 F65s, the first Super 35 camera with an 8K sensor. A year ago, in “Does Size Matter?” I surveyed the still budding field of large-sensor cameras for Filmmaker and described the industry’s growing embrace of the 120-year-old Super 35 format. Not only were existing cine and SLR lenses given a new lease on […]
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Sony Pre-Announces The NEX-FS700
Just when you’d think speculation about NAB releases would be starting to appear, Sony goes and ruins the surprise by pre-announcing a camera two weeks before the show! The NEX-FS700 is the big brother of the NEX-FS100, and it appears that Sony intends to continue selling the FS100, with the FS700 “fitting in” between the $5k FS100 and the $14k PMW-F3. The FS700 resembles the body of the FS100, but the barrel that the lens is attached to is much larger, and adds a hump on the side to accommodate ND filters. It continues to support Sony’s E-mount. The FS700 […]
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Video: Both Ends and Thoughts on the Canon EOS C300
I don’t have too much to say about the Canon EOS C300 as an objective review. Others have written detailed technical pieces. There’s no need for another. Canon recently allowed me to play with their new camera for a couple of days, and the result is Both Ends, a sort of noir-lite short film that I directed. My intent in using the camera was to apply it in a purely practical manner: a narrative short that takes place over the course of a single day in multiple locations with differing lighting situations — all photographed using entirely available light. The […]
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Changes to Sony S-Log Pricing for the PMW-F3
The last month has been a little confusing for the Sony PMW-F3. When the camera was originally announced, the S-Log Gamma option was an add-on which came on an SxS card and cost $3,800. But a month ago, Sony announced a “temporary” change for the camera that was to run through March 31st. The S-Log upgrade would be available for $899 for those who hadn’t bought it, but Sony said that you’d have to send the camera in to get the upgrade installed. For those who had already purchased the upgrade at full price, they offered a $2,500 rebate if […]
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Ten Tips on Shooting Low-Budget Movies from SXSW
At SXSW a panel titled “The Great Cinematography Shootout” gathered a group of directors and cinematographers to discuss independent film lensing in an age of proliferating formats and lower-cost, high-quality cameras, like the Canon 5D. The directors of photography were Jody Lee Lipes (Girls, Tiny Furniture, and also the director of Opus Jazz), James Laxton (Medicine for Melancholy, Leave Me Like You Found Me), Clay Lifford (Gayby, and also the director of such films as Wuss and Earthling), PJ Raval (Trouble the Water, Sunset Stories, and also the director of Trinidad); and filmmaker, editor and d.p. David Lowery (Pioneer, and, […]
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Canon 5D Mark III – Does More, Cost More
Last week Canon announced the 5D Mark III, and not surprisingly, it’s evolutionary rather than revolutionary. To recap, the 5D Mark II practically created the DSLR video revolution when it was announced in late 2008. Since then Canon has released a number of other DSLRs that rival the Mark II – several at lover prices – but none that set the bar higher or so captured the imagination of video and movie makers. Still, the video world has continued to evolve, and the past year has seen the arrival of several large-sensor cameras that more closely resemble traditional video cameras; […]
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Festival Cinematography Notes: Of Sundance, Berlin and the Canon 5D
Blogging from last year’s Sundance I wrote that “if I could give an award to the camera delivering the most impact on screen at Sundance 2011, it would go to RED One.” That was then. In the 12 months since, ARRI’s Alexa has all but conquered TV series production in the U.S., and now you can add a dozen low-budget indie films at Sundance too, like the bittersweet romcom Celeste and Jesse Forever, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg and photographed by David Lanzenberg. Sony’s new budget-friendly F3 made a splash at Sundance as well, responsible for Spike Lee’s Red […]
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DP David Kruta on Shooting the Movie Concussion
At the end of last year I interviewed DP Dave Kruta about shooting with the Red EPIC [See: DP DAVID KRUTA AND THE RED EPIC]. At the time I also talked to him about the independent movie Concussion, which he’d just finished shooting. The movie is currently in post-production: Q: How did you come to work on the movie Concussion? I was contacted out of the blue by the director, who’d seen my reel. She interviewed a whole bunch of DPs and I guess we just connected over the script and what she was trying to do. Q: Can […]
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An Interview with D.P. Martina Radwan
I started working with DP Martina Radwan about a year ago on the feature documentary, Mentor (addressing bullying and teen suicide in Mentor, Ohio) I further had the pleasure of working with her on a recent music video for the band Shearwater. It is a gift, as a director, to find a DP who you can quickly fall into a shorthand with, creating your own visual language, and trusting in the collaborative process. Radwan and I found this with each other. Her narrative work includes Flannel Pajamas, by Jeff Lipsky; Singapore Dreaming, one of the first Singaporean feature productions and […]
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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 […]
