Those of us who live in New York are treated each fall to a Whitman’s Sampler of world cinema, a curated selection of highlights from some of the year’s most prestigious international festivals. It’s hardly a large sample size, given the annual output of theatrical films worldwide, but it’s a weathervane nonetheless. Which way were the winds blowing this year? Take what I say below with a grain of salt. I saw 27 feature films at NYFF 61, out of the 44 selections programmed in the Main Slate and Spotlight sections. A modest sample within a modest sample, in other […]

At NAB I had a mission: find out what new products are making virtual production more affordable, more accessible, and not require a master’s degree in Unreal. Fortunately, I found a few options. Plus some new tools that are blending generative AI with virtual production. Let’s dig into what’s new in VP from NAB. Budget-Friendly Virtual Production First is the VIVE Mars CamTrack—a complete package for creating an affordable virtual volume. HTC’s VIVE has been in the virtual reality space for a while, with some of the top VR headsets. They also make the VIVE Tracker, a palm-sized puck that can track […]

From uploading to the cloud to editing in the cloud to collaborating across the cloud, there was no shortage of new tools and workflow ideas at NAB to help shoot and edit quicker regardless of where your team is located across the globe. Let’s dive into a few of the most interesting updates, from remotely collaborating to remotely working. Camera to Cloud First up, let’s talk about camera-to-cloud workflows.  The biggest update from Frame.io was the extension of the C2C workflow to still photos.  Now, unlike video where you can use an external device from Atomos or Teradek to add […]

In “The Body is a Tool,” I talked with DPs and camera operators about the routines they developed to maintain their bodies against taxingly long days on set. When even film workers’ unions provide few resources to prevent bodily harm, crew members create their own devices, so methods of self-preservation tend to vary greatly. This was true of both the four camera people I talked with for the article and many of the set workers I’ve encountered in production. In this environment, a Steadicam operator might recommend a vest for no reason other than it worked for them personally. There are […]

2022 was a quiet year for camera technology, thank goodness. The decade plus I’ve been covering camera breakthroughs on this website has been a rocket ride. So much velocity, so little time to stop, catch one’s breath, smell some roses. Ask yourself, who can any longer tell the difference between film and digital origination on the big screen? Be honest. No less than Roger Deakins declared film a dead issue half a dozen years ago. His latest, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, shot using Arri Alexa Mini LF (large format) and spherical Arri Signature Primes, is a loving paean to […]

A perk of living in New York is the arrival each autumn of the New York Film Festival, which this year marked a milestone, its 60th edition — kudos to The Film Society of Lincoln Center. I’ve long thought of NYFF as a sampler of what’s happening in world cinema, a box of fine chocolates à la Forrest Gump. New Yorkers attending NYFF are privileged to enjoy choice selections from Cannes, Venice, Berlin, even Sundance. Which is to say, if there are new winds blowing somewhere in Cinema, they will be felt at NYFF. This year, the drained-color look of […]

Since forever, I’ve gotten the question, “What camera should I buy?” This always comes from someone not in the market for an Alexa Mini or 8K RED, but instead something recent, capable, and cheap. Did I mention cheap? There’s no slam-dunk answer to this question, obviously, and never will be. No single camera is right for everybody or every situation. But among the wonderments of our 4K moment is the fact that virtually all 4K cameras make good pictures, taking into account their intended markets and price points. To wit, you only have to reach for that iPhone Pro in […]

In the early days of the global shutdown, even before the canceled NAB would’ve taken place, Blackmagic Design had some product announcements that ended up being very appropriately timed: Updates to their Pocket Cinema cameras and the ATEM Mini, and the release of the brand new ATEM Mini Pro. I had a chance to chat with Bob Caniglia, Director of Sales Operations in North America for Blackmagic Design, about the new updates, as well as some thoughts on the new ATEM Mini Pro after using it for a few weeks. Turning Cinema Cameras Into Broadcast Cameras Working our way down […]

Evil was one of the best new television series of the 2019-2020 season, a thoughtful consideration of a vast array of moral, spiritual and sociopolitical issues in the guise of a supernatural procedural. The show follows Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), a clinical psychologist with a complicated family life who teams up with David Acosta (Mike Colter), a haunted ex-journalist who works for the Catholic Church as an assessor; he investigates – then confirms or debunks – incidents involving miracles, demonic possessions, and the like. Series creators Robert and Michelle King (the husband and wife team responsible for The Good Wife […]

Over the last several weeks, since the middle of March, Daniel Eagan reached out to a number of cinematographers all over the world to check in on their personal responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic and the resulting quarantine. From Los Angeles to Hong Kong, Copenhagen to a Poland lakeside, they respond with reactions encompassing their own personal coping strategies, their current professional activities (or lack of them) and the thoughts the lockdown has stimulated about not only their profession but filmmaking in general. Find the links below, and stay tuned for future roundups of more cinematographers as well as […]

Based in Los Angeles, Danna Kinsky has worked in a wide range of genres and formats, from independent features and documentaries to music videos, concerts, commercials and aerial cinematography. She is affiliated with several groups: The International Female Collective of Cinematographers (ICFC), The American Society of Cinematographers’ Motion Imagine Technology Committee, and Women in Media. Since the COVID-19 lockdown, Kinsky has been shooting drone footage of a deserted Los Angeles. Filmmaker: How have you been coping with the lockdown? Kinsky: Generally, as a filmmaker, I always strive to keep costs low. Finances are a problem, just like they are for […]

Cinematographer Łukasz Żal received an Oscar nomination for his first feature, Ida, and well as for his second collaboration with director Paweł Pawlikowski, Cold War. Last year he worked on his first US production, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman and based on the novel by Iain Reid. Żal spoke with Filmmaker by phone from Poland. Filmmaker: How are you? Łukasz Żal: I’m good, I’m staying in my parents’ house by a lake. I don’t feel comfortable because the whole world is suffering. Hopefully it will end well. But this time honestly is not so […]

Natasha Braier has worked on a wide variety of films, from Claudia Llosa’s intense 2009 drama The Milk of Sorrow / La Teta Asustada to Nicolas Winding Refn’s ice-cold 2016 feature The Neon Demon. In 2018 she shot Gloria Bell, Sebastián Lelio’s English-language remake of his earlier movie Gloria. Last year she was director of cinematography on Alma Har’el’s feature debut Honey Boy. Braier’s work is distinguished not only by her vivid imagery but also by her acute psychological insight into characters and narrative. Braier was in preproduction on Don’t Worry Darling, director Olivia Wilde’s follow-up to Booksmart, when the […]

Scheduled for this year’s Cannes Film Festival was a 20th-anniversary screening of Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love. Along with awards for actor Tony Leung Chui-wai and editor, costume designer, and production designer William Chang Suk-ping, the film received the Grand Prize of the Superior Technical Commission for directors of photography Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bing. Doyle had hoped to present his latest films, including Love After Love, at the festival before it was postponed on April 14. Directed by Ann Hui, Love After Love is a period romance adapted from a work by writer Eileen Chang. […]

Cinematographer Jasper Spanning’s debut feature, Den skyldige / The Guilty, won several awards during its international run. Directed and co-written by Gustav Möller, the movie followed one character, primarily on a single set, as he deals with a mounting crisis. Spanning spoke about it in a Filmmaker interview with Chris Doyle. He followed it with the May el-Toukhy’s controversial drama Queen of Hearts, about a charged relationship between a wife and her stepson. It was a World Cinema audience award-winner at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, with Director of Programming Kim Yutani called it the most provocative film she had […]

Since Sean Baker’s Tangerine hit the scene as the first feature film shot on iPhone, more filmmakers have embraced mobile production as a viable filmmaking tool. Steven Soderbergh shot Unsane and High Flying Bird on an iPhone 8. Claude Lelouch shot over 30% of his latest film, The Best Years of a Life, on an iPhone and loved the experience so much that his next film (not yet released) was shot entirely on an iPhone. Behind all these iPhone-lensed features there has always been one go-to app: FiLMiC Pro. FiLMiC Pro unlocks professional-level control over the phone’s camera, including exposure, […]

Fred Elmes invited me to a DI Theater at Harbor Picture Company, a post-house bustling around the corner from Film Forum, to talk about his work on Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die. There was just an hour left of the allotted time to finish the HDR version of the film when I arrived at the DI suite, but Fred retained his cool as he lulled us to the finish line. In my time there, he liked to vignette the edges more or less, and bring faces up or down a level or two. Usually down.  Our meeting there was […]

Most of the big news that comes out of NAB you’ll hear about, whether you’re there or not. Where NAB gets interesting is when you wonder around the cavernous Las Vegas Convention center, especially towards the back or perimeters, and stumble on some interesting gems of tools that might a unique solution or make production life just a tiny bit easier. Here’s a round-up of some of the smaller finds from NAB (as well as a few bigger ones), all focused around production (post-production is coming up next).  Litra Litra has some amazingly clever battery-powered portable LED lights. The LitraPro […]

For five years, I’ve been rounding up the previous year’s US theatrical releases of films shot, in whole or significant part, on 35mm—yes, this year’s tally is lower than any of my previous totals. The total number is unlikely to soar above 40 anytime in the foreseeable future, and every film loyalist taking the year off makes a large difference. Part of the low tally can be attributed to lack of new films from J.J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Ken Loach, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Zach Snyder, James Gray—directors who simply won’t budge on working from film. That aside, […]

Announced towards the end of last year, Nikon had their two new full-frame mirrorless Z mount camera systems on full display at NAB, which ran April 6 – 11 in Las Vegas. The Nikon Z 6 and Z 7 can both shoot full-frame 4K Ultra HD, can output a 10-bit N-Log signal via HDMI, can record up to 120 fps at 1080p, and contain standard video recording functions such as autofocus and timecode. While the Z 6 obviously has a lower ranking model number and is over a third less expensive than the Z 7 ($1,995 vs $3,399, body only), […]