SeeingEyeBlog

Yesterday Was a Lie recently won the top prize at the 2008 Park City Film Music Festival, and recently screened at the SSG screening series in Beverly Hills, at the Fine Arts Theater. Here’s a shot of the marquee.

First and foremost, I have seen a cut of Broken Windows, and I must say, I’m excited for the film to be released. I think it was well acted and well directed. As for my own work, it was one of the most fun experiences of my life, and I took as many risks as I did shots.

When I wrote my original post on the brick wall bounce, I hadn’t seen the dailies, let alone a cut of the scene. Now that I’ve seen it, I am all the more eager to build my portable 4×4 brick wall bounce surface.

The scene is lit with a 6k HMI bounced off the architectural brick of the location we were shooting at. I was using 1/2 CTO on the light, and LLD on the camera. What I got was a really nice look that I can’t really put into words. I remember it being nice on set, but the scene rendered beautifully on film.

I really can’t wait for the online and color timing. Stills coming soon.

I just recently watched a movie called Mademoiselle, a French-language film from 1966, about a schoolteacher in a bucolic French village, who fancies a man who doesn’t feel the same. So she starts doing things….bad, bad things.

The film was shot in 35mm anamorphic, and was black & white. There is something about the anamorphic format that, when rendered monochrome, creates a better representation of reality than reality itself. I say this about a film which has zero camera moves. No pans, no tilts, no dolly moves, no cranes, no zooms. Yet the photography is stunning.

I’m not sure I would say the same thing if the widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio were achieved with a spherical lens format. There is something richer and more textured about the anamorphic squeeze. An anamorphic lens has the field of view characteristics and depth of field characteristics of two different lenses in one. Vertically, it has the characteristics of itself (50mm for example). But horizontally, after the 2x squeeze, it has the characteristics of a lens half its length. This is a departure from reality, and an anamorphic image is a unique way of viewing the world that only really has a place in cinematography. On top of that, black and white is already a big departure from reality. This gives black and white anamorphic cinematography a truly unique vision in the world. A vision I think we should see much more often in films today.

Before Broken Windows begins shooting, I am shooting some behind the scenes footage of the Girls in the Directors Chair program, which empowers young women who want to be filmmakers. Ten girls write, direct, shoot, and edit a 10-minute short film in the span of one week. They are in a friendly competition with another group of ten girls, and the two films will end up online for a public vote. I’m not sure where my footage will end up, but I’ve heard some interesting possibilities. So far I’m impressed with what they’ve been able to do within their tight schedule.

I watched the first three episodes of Planet Earth last night on the Discovery Channel. I thought it had some of the best looking cinematography of nature I’ve ever seen. What I couldn’t stand though was Sigourney Weaver constantly reminding us in her narration that we were seeing never-before-seen footage, or the rarest of all animals, etc. It seemed like everything featured on the documentary was extremely rare or never-before-seen. I would have liked it better if Discovery didn’t find it necessary to blow its own horn every two minutes.