Me @ NAB

Here’s where I’ll be in Vegas, baby:

On Monday, 4/20, I’ll be speaking at the Independent Filmmaking—A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget: 2009 Edition panel. 11:30am–12:30pm in Room S222/S223.

That afternoon I will be signing copies of The DV Rebel’s Guide at the NAB Bookstore in the Central Lobby. 3–3:30pm. Copies will be on sale at the store at 15% off retail.

That night I will be at the fxphd party, so if you are enrolled, look for me there.

Tuesday (4/21) afternoon I’ll be signing and even giving away a few copies of The Guide at the Red Giant Software booth. 1:00 pm, booth SL2529.

That’s it for scheduled appearances. The rest of the time I’ll be watching Twitter for recommendations for cool gear to check out.

One spot you’re sure to see me is at the Redrock Micro booth. I’ve been playing with a new DSLR rig from them that combines light weight with single-operator follow-focus capability. Here’s a sneak peek:

It’s hard to see in this shot, but my left hand is wrapped around a horizontal grip that matches the vertical one on the right. I can cradle the grip and operate focus at the same time. Schweet!

If this rig looks weird to you, blame me, not Redrock. Look for more information on that in an announcement from them soon! Redrock is at booth C9544.

Update

on 2009-06-12 22:37 by Stu

That rig, called the “Captain Stu-bling,” is now available directly from Redrock. It may look weird, but it’s a joy to use, and quite affordable as this stuff goes.

Fact, Moment, Light

I once was asked to describe how I think about photography. In response, I used a stick to draw a Venn diagram in the dirt. I labeled the three zones Fact, Moment, and Light.

You can characterize any photo, and any opportunity for a photo, using this model. It won’t surprise you to learn that I believe the best photos occupy the intersection of all three zones — but first, let’s look at each zone individually.

Most of us live our entire photographic lives in the Fact zone. We take photos of people, events, and places that are important to us. It’s Timmy’s Birthday. We Went To Paris. Cousin Sally Got Married. These are facts, and most people take photos to document facts. They are not seeking to capture emotional truth, they are simply trying to preserve their memories of what happened.

This is why most people are disappointed with most of their photos. They want to preserve memories, but what they really mean by that is that they’d like to create an image that makes them feel like they did when they were there. Crappy photos rarely fail to document the facts, but they inevitably fail to capture emotion — because they ignore the other two zones of the Venn diagram.

Here’s a photo that I made years ago when new gantry cranes were being moved into the Port of Oakland. The mere fact that a boat is carrying the world’s four tallest cranes under the Bay Bridge with only 18 inches of clearance makes this photo interesting — but it ends there. This photo totally fails to capture how I felt seeing this stunning event in person. The Fact Zone is the domain of the snapshot. At its worst, it’s the picture you take with your phone to help you remember what floor you’re parked on.

After being repeatedly disappointed with our factual, emotionally-bereft photos, we eventually figure out what the next zone has to offer our photos. We tap into the Moment zone when we realize that it actually matters when we release the shutter. That Timmy’s anticipation of blowing out his candles might be a more vivid moment than his exhalation. That out of a dozen photos of Sally reciting her wedding vows, there’s only one that brings a tear to your eye. We often start by noticing that some of our Fact Zone photos have accidentally encroached into the Moment Zone—we’ve captured not only the facts, but the perfect expression, the ideal pose, the most dynamic framing.

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In this photo, I got lucky with the moment. I had framed up a nothing-but-the-facts shot of Flaminio Vacca’s Lion in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man walking into my frame — just the foreground element my boring shot needed. My Fact shot was about to graduate to an F+M, if an unimpressive one. I released the shutter as he entered the shot, and only later realized that he had been looking right at me, and that he was a dead ringer for the lion.

You’ll notice that there’s no zone for composition. Good composition is, of course, a necessity for any great photo. But good composition is, in my opinion, attainable in any situation, whether you have all three zones in effect or only one. There are such things as unique opportunities for great composition — file those under the Moment Zone.

When we discover the importance of the Moment Zone, we begin to despise our point-and-shoot cameras for how painfully slow they are to respond to our fevered finger-pressing. When we graduate from a sluggish pocket camera to a responsive SLR, we awaken a love affair with the Moment Zone. We now aspire to the Fact + Moment shot, where we’ve got both the subject matter and the timing nailed. With this aspiration in our heads as we snap away, our photos are pretty good.

And then we notice that some are accidentally coming out great. We see that some of our photos actually capture the emotion we felt when we were there. And not just for us, but for others as well — a stranger looking at this photo would feel exactly as you did when you made it, or as your subject did. This is the apotheosis of communicating with photography, and it happens when your shot of the right fact, at the right moment, also has beautiful light.

Photos are nothing but light — it’s literally all they are made of. Timmy’s birthday and Sally’s wedding are reduced to nothing but photons before they become photographs. So getting the light right is more meaningful to a photo than anything else. Yet this is often the last zone we discover. It’s also the hardest zone to control, but not nearly as hard as most people think. Turn off your flash. Ask your subjects to move. Guide them with your body language. But most of all, notice when the light is doing something amazing, and then wait for the other two zones to happen on their own. What you’ll discover is that any photo in the Light Zone is going to be pretty dang good. All the better if you can get an Fact + Light shot, or a Moment + Light shot.

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Here’s a Fact + Light shot from my recent trip to Italy. This Duomo in Siena is interesting enough on its own, but it was the light that made me reach for my camera.

Here’s a Moment + Light shot I made in San Francisco’s Union Square. I like the way this image looks, but the photo doesn’t have a reason for being beyond looking pretty—I don’t know these people, and this photo isn’t helping me learn anything about them. Moment + Light with no Fact means a pretty, but empty photo.

Here is a FML shot I made last year near my home in Emeryville. I was returning from an unsatisfying photowalk when I bumped into a group of guys about to hitch a ride on a freight train to attend the Democratic National Convention in Colorado. They were pumped up about their trip, and I offered to commemorate it for them with a photo. I gently guided them toward the best light and made a couple dozen exposures. Of them, this one makes me the happiest. It’s full of fun facts (is that a joint in his hand? Is it so important that he keep it lit that he’s tied a lighter to his wrist? What do those tattoos say? Caution tape?), it’s the right moment, and the golden-hour light is glorious.

I suppose I could have made this shot at 12 noon, or on an overcast day—but the truth is, that light is the only reason I was out there with my camera in the first place, and the only reason I stopped those guys and asked where they were going. After years of working my way through the zones from Fact to Moment to Light, I now start at the end and work back. Light is what gets my camera out of the bag. Moments I know I can find if I’m patient. And Facts matter to me least of all now. The mere fact of being at the Eiffel Tower is not enough reason to make a photo, but the challenge of finding the light and the moment that help capture exactly how I feel at the Eiffel Tower is what makes photography endlessly rewarding to me.

Update

on 2013-07-16 22:45 by Stu

If you enjoyed this post, you might also want to take a look at the Prolost Presets for Lightroom.

Update

on 2009-04-14 01:22 by Stu

By the way, I'm not a professional photographer, or even a very good one—so you can take this all for what it's worth to you. I've described my personal progression toward being happier and happier with my own photos. I have the great luxury of requiring nothing more from my photography than that.

You can see my favorite flickr photos here. You can see more photos from my Italy trip here. You can see the other shots of the Colorado-bound gentlemen here. My 12 "most interesting" (according to flickr) shots are here.

Happy Birthday Red Centre

The 30th episode of RED Centre marks its one year anniversary, occasion enough to point out that it is one of my very favorite podcasts, despite my not owning a Red. Mike Seymour, of fxguide and fxphd, and director/shooter Jason Wingrove consistently turn out snappy, entertaining and thoughtful episodes. They follow my rule of great podcasting: rather than imagine what they think an audience might want to hear, they simply have conversations about things that interest them. In other words, they make the show they would want to listen to. When Jason and Mike think out loud, we all learn together. And their interviews are not journalism as much as they are opportunities to eavesdrop on the bleeding edge of digital cinema.

Someone asked me recently why I'm not more of a fan of RED, which was a surprising enough question that I want to clarify something here: I am a fan of RED. There are now 35 posts on this blog tagged with RED. By comparison, there are 31 tagged with photography. Yes, many of those RED posts are critical, but understand this: if I take the time to post critical essays about something, that means I like it. If I'm not interested I won't waste the keystrokes or your time.

I like the RED One camera—what it represents, and what it has the potential to be. I like it so much that I desperately want it and RED's future cameras to be as great as I see that they so easily could be. This is why I encourage RED to develop industry-friendly standardized workflows, to be honest about their dynamic range claims and provide a way of shooting that acknowledges the requirements of film delivery, and to keep their priorities on the filmmaker when designing new products.

I am also cautious about getting swept up in the excitement that RED is so masterful at generating, and I encourage you to be as well. I am lucky enough to get to share my tempered excitement and thoughts directly with Jim Jannard himself. I can't get anyone at Canon to return my calls or emails (not even when I post in Japanese) despite owning a closet full of their gear.

RED is great enough and frustrating enough that it needs a great podcast to help us sort it all out. Fortunately for all of us, we have exactly that. Thanks for a great year Mike and Jason—here's to many more.

Subscribe to RED Centre in iTunes.

Browse all RED Centre Episodes (including the couple that I've been on, 17 and 22).

Follow Mike and Jason on twitter.

Film at Half the Price

I write a lot about accessible, i.e. "cheap" filmmaking. But as I explicitly mention in The Guide, filmmaking does cost money, and often the camera and what's in it comprise the least expensive aspect of a shoot.

And while we all know (and I don't say it enough) that color negative film is still the gold standard for motion picture image quality, we also know that it's expensive. Usually, if I eschew film for digital acquisition, it's for workflow reasons—but sometimes it's purely due to cost.

But what if film stock and processing was half price?

Panavision sent me this press release today:

PANAVISION PROPOSES TWO-PERF FILM SYSTEM FOR INDIE FILMMAKING IN TROUBLED ECONOMIC TIMES

Venerable Film System Provides High-quality Images Coupled with Significant Cost Savings

April 7, 2009—Woodland Hills, Calif. — While there is no easy antidote for the effect of the recession on independent filmmakers, Panavision suggests that the venerable two-perf film system may prove to be both an artistic and economic godsend in these troubled times.

Three recent productions – “Curve of Earth,” “Shoot First and Pray You Live” and “Gallow Walker” – are examples of films shot in 35mm two-perf that delivered the artistic vision of the production team, and saved roughly 50 percent on film negative and processing costs over standard four-perf, full-frame production.

Panavision now offers modified 35mm Panaflex cameras with two-perf movements available for rental. All handle Panavision’s range of legendary spherical film lenses from super speeds to Primos.

(For those unfamiliar with two-perf, the term refers to a modified film camera’s ability to record two images within the space usually inhabited by a single four-perf frame. “Perfs,” short for perforations, are the holes on either side of a piece of film that a camera sprocket engages to advance the film past the camera’s shutter.)

According to Andy Romanoff, Panavision Executive Vice President, Technical Marketing and Strategy, two-perf provides filmmakers with the ability to shoot 2.35 wide-screen images, usually attributed to higher-end systems, at reduced costs. It delivers a widescreen viewer experience but slices film stock and negative processing costs by 33 to 50 percent.

“In today’s difficult times,” said Romanoff, “filmmakers want the unique qualities of film, but find themselves daunted by cost. Using digital technology is a viable alternative, certainly, if you are using a sophisticated digital cinema system such as the Panavision Genesis. Using a less robust digital system will produce less robust images, and can compromise an artistic vision.

“With two-perf, no compromise is necessary. The two-perf system delivers true film images, allows creatives to lay down the images they imagined, and still create their film affordably.”

For more information, contact your local Panavision representative.

There's nothing new about 2-perf 35mm—George Lucas used it on THX 1138, back when it was calld Techniscope. No mention of whether the modern incarnation might use the full width of the 35mm frame (Super Techniscope?). The OG Techniscope used Academy width, which, when split horizontally created a perfect 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

This kind of smart use of film is very digital-friendly. Formats like Techniscope and 3-perf never really caught on before the advent of the DI, because they required an optical process to convert to projectable film. But now that every film image is likely to be digitally processed in post, such duplication is unnecessary.

What I like about 2-perf over 3-perf is that it brings some of the cajones back to 'scope filmmaking. There's no post-reframing or full-screen unmatted video versions of a Techniscope film. What you shot is what you got, much like anamorphic 'scope.

Stu at NAB 2009

I'll be at NAB this year, because if there's one thing I love more than conventions, it's Las Vegas.

Actually, I hate both with a passion, but since you wil be there, I'm braving the crowds and logo shirts to be on a panel moderated by Redrock Micro's Brian Valente:

Independent Filmmaking — A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget: 2009 Edition

Monday April 20, from 11:30–12:30 in Room S222/S223.

I will be premiering my Stunt People short there, the one I shot on the 5D Mark II against my own advice. As my Twitter followers know, the short is called Chapter 12: After The Subway. As you may have guessed, it's my contribution to the proud subway short tradition, with a twist of course.

Update

on 2009-04-07 01:57 by Stu

Also on the panel is cinematographer Rodney Charters, who was the guest on the brief-but-bitchin' Red Centre podcast episode 29. So, in addition to myself, there will actually be someone on the panel who knows what he's talking about.