Archive for the ‘Video Shooter (Book)’ Category

The color, people, and texture, of Zanzibar are unparalleled anywhere else in the world.

This week I am back in Zanzibar at the ZIFF festival leading a one-week camera workshop with local filmmakers. ZIFF is  now in its 15th year of hosting mostly African film and music events inside a decaying 17th century fort. It’s a spectacle of spectacles witnessing the local residents in robes and traditional Muslim garb partaking of the offerings in an ancient amphitheatre that once housed legions of pugilistic Omani gladiators.

This is the second year that I’ve had the honor of leading a workshop. In Zanzibar, a mostly conservative Muslim enclave two hours by ferry from the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, there is little point training in the use of pricey lighting instruments like HMIs and PARs. Instead the required skill is lighting via mirrors and reflectors and white board, delivering high quality light to dark difficult-to-reach interior locations. I became adept at the mirror trick in Uganda several years ago and have since adopted the strategy in all of my work, whether I have a 5-ton lighting and grip truck at my disposal or not.

The point here as it is everywhere else is to work small and fast. Efficiency is the key not only to meeting budget and schedule demands but to inducing the best performance out of the crew and the  actors, who hate interrupting their presentation for an hour or more to reset lights for an alternative angle or close up.

In East Africa especially in Tanzania and Zanzibar the filmmakers focus intensely on their stories and the actors  who propel them, the casting and performance of these players being front and center of their filmmaking efforts. There is little talk about the relative merits of the RED camera versus Alexa versus C300. What matters here is what ought to REALLY matter to aspiring filmmakers everywhere, and that’s the strength and the compelling nature of their scenarios, and the characters who populate them.

That’s not to say there aren’t serious craft issues here  that need addressing. The lack of qualified audio recordists and DOPs undermines the watchability, indeed, the viability of programming in the region. Cameramen need more intensive training in understanding the basic tenets of the cinema, regarding point of view, use of close ups, and the discipline that goes into the every aspect of the craft.

A large mirror measuring a meter square reflects the intense tropical sun into a bedroom on the set of Mdundiko in Dar es Salaam 4 July 2012.

For sound insulation this TV studio in Dar es Salaam utilizes discarded egg cartons in place of expensive acoustic tile.

From the workshop: John Kallage’s THE NETWORK 27 June 2012

My current two-week preproduciton workshop in Tanzania is revealing a tremendous amount of latent talent about to emerge in this rapidly growing East African country. My sessions sponsored by Swahiliwood MFDI were not mere trivialities but honest to goodness mini-productions, captured with minimal lighting and equipment, but packing a huge emotional and storytelling punch. In particular I wish to cite director John Kallage, young and extraordinarily gifted, and though lacking formal training, has nevertheless amassed a formidable arsenal of camera and directing skills. He is perhaps THE most talented young filmmaker I have EVER encountered in my workshops conducted around the world.

The chase scene is a staple of my camera and storytelling workshops. Indeed I have assigned such an exercise inclusive of a detailed shot list to my classes in over 20 countries. This sequence by John Kallage in Dar es Salaam this week is one of the best. It was captured in a mere 30 minutes, and that includes the time it took to conceive and storyboard the approximate half-dozen scenes.

Race by Network

Barry Braverman at Singapore Broadcast Asia 20 June 2012

This week I’m in Singapore at Broadcast Asia where I’m presenting a series of mini camera workshops from the Panasonic booth on the expo floor. It is obvious to everyone that South Asia and Southeast Asia have emerged as the new epicenters of technology implementation and future growth. It is just as clear based on my professional work and recent workshops in Asia and Africa that the quality of media education in the United States is failing and that professional opportunities in general in the U.S. and Western Europe will continue to diminish in the next decade. It could be simply due to the current economic malaise in Western countries, but I believe it is due to something else, something more insidious.

About six months ago I was invited to conduct a workshop at a prestigious university outside of Paris. My invitation had to apparently clear a number of daunting obstacles including requisite permissions from the dueling teachers unions that are currently wreaking havoc in universities across the country. Ultimately my invitation was denied due to my insufficient qualifications, most notably my ongoing lack of a PhD. It’s bizarre that with thirty-five years of experience on high profile feature films and documentaries, three books, extensive teaching experience in camera training workshops around the world that a PhD from an insolated acadamic institution should rule the roost.

In America a near-comparable level of bullshit applies as academics and their allies conspire to deny their students the media skills they so desperately need.  No such restrictions exist however for film and TV schools and universities across Asia.

Here the demand for proficiency and storytelling skills in the media trumps all other considerations. In Bangladesh five new Dhaka TV stations are coming on line in 2012, and station managers are lamenting the lack of sufficiently skilled workers to fill the exploding number of jobs. These days from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka I can assure you no one is asking a PhD from skilled film and TV professionals willing and eager to share their expertise with students and others aspiring to join the burgeoning media workforce.

Perhaps economic desperation in Europe will help motivate the necessary changes in education and the teaching of media crafts. Any way you look at it the the current state of media education in the West is not a pretty scene to behold.

It isn’t too often I have the opportunity to walk the red carpet and hobnob among the industry elite, and, to tell you the truth, with the nearby likes of Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Jason Schwartzman and Tilda Swinton, I received something less than zero notice strolling up the stairs into the Palais. I shot second unit camera on Moonrise Kingdom, specifically aerial work from the seaplane and several other scenes, and was in Cannes to support my long-time friend and director Wes Anderson, with whom I’ve had a mutually inspiring relationship ever since our first collaboration on Bottle Rocket over twenty years ago.

In many ways Moonrise Kingdom was perfect to open the festival. Owing to its strong artistic underpinnings and Alexandre Desplat’s very French musical score, the film’s European sensibility is amply reflected in the director’s imprimateur, which is evident in virtually every scene, frame and composition.

Inside the Palais on a sixty-foot screen the digitally projected film appeared breathtaking, and the Super 16-originated production held up extremely well at high magnification, thanks mostly to today’s superior film stocks and Zeiss lenses. In fact, virtually the entire show was shot with Zeiss Super Speeds, specifically the 9.5mm, the beauty and versatility of this now vintage 16mm format lens being apparent throughout the production.

If you’ve never been to Cannes let me just say the festival can be WAY over the top. Between the swarming crowds, screaming paparazzi, run-amok star worship, and the world’s rudest waiters brought in from miles around to man the local cafes, the festival can be a challenging ordeal to navigate and somehow enjoy.

Still the presentation of Moonrise Kingdom in such a venue, before an adoring and appreciative international audience, was a joy to behold. My minor role in the production notwithstanding, it helped restore my faith in the industry, that it is still possible to produce compelling film art exhibiting a high degree of craft and grace.

I spent most of March and April in Bangladesh where the market and opportunities for filmmakers are growing exponentially. There is excitement in the air as the country’s rapid growth is producing a shortage of skilled shooters and program producers. Four new TV channels in Dhaka are coming on line this year.  In this scene the production grip “crew’ inclusive of several volunteer beach children help force the camera crane through the deep sand at Cox’s Bazar on March 26 Independence Day.

Assessing the industry landscape, the effects of lingering recession, and the massive losses suffered by the major Japanese players it’s easy to see how NAB 2012 could feature a dearth of new products. Sony, Panasonic, JVC, will offer little if any new gear, while Canon, flush with cash from its high-flying DSLR business, is primed for yet another surge of sales from its ersatz still-and-video cameras and flagship EOS C300.

With the notable exception of Canon the Japanese manufacturers have proven themselves unable to adapt fast enough to changing markets. While the companies’ managers in the U.S. and abroad are in a mad scramble to develop products that consumers and professionals will actually buy, they still cling to the hope that the television stations and the broadcast market that long sustained them will somehow miraculously reappear.

Not a chance.

Of course a spate of innovative new products will be the key to resurrecting the fortunes of Panasonic, Sony and the rest. But so is recognizing the inescapable fact that the broadcast market has substantially disappeared. Other markets will need to be recognized and embraced. The education market is huge and growing, yet Sony in all its wisdom recently laid off or transferred its entire education staff.  Go figure.

Canon continues to be the one bright spot in this area. The company just opened a state of the art education facility in the heart of Hollywood, with plenty of room for customer service, cleaning of cameras, classes and workshops. Wow.

It’s nice to see one major Japanese company doing something right. It should give us all a modicum hope. 🙂

That’s a tall order these days. If you’re shooting HDCAM, XDCAM, HDV, AVCHD or, heaven forbid, standard definition DV, you are capturing the world in a mere 8-bits. In all its sophistication and wisdom your camera’s processor outputting 8-bits to the recording medium can only assign one of 256 possible values to each sample; which can severely limit the color fidelity and smoothness of gradients in your images.

Ten-bit recording formats like the pricey HDCAM SR and Panasonic’s more economical AVC-Intra ought to be where we are heading. Manufacturers have leaped full bore on the high resolution sensor bandwagon, but for our bread and butter assignments upon which we depend every day, the 10-bit capture formats offer far better performance with fewer headaches at the end of the post-production rainbow. Our NLEs employing Apple ProRes or Avid DNx are already supporting 10-bit workflows so it simply makes good sense to utilize this greater bit depth and precision from the outset.

Beware of 8-bit cameras like the Sony F100, Panasonic AF100 and even the new Canon C300 that offer high resolution but at a mere 8-bit capture and meager 8-bit output via HD-SDI. This workflow is compromised from the outset, and can very well impair precise color correction and compositing downstream.

I’m currently in Prague working with students from FAMU, the national film school located here. While the workshop over the last week mostly covered 3D fundamentals and storytelling the class and I also had the opportunity to try out the Panasonic’s latest compact P2 camcorder – the AG-HPX250 – an economically priced 10-bit model that captures to AVC-Intra 4:2:2. Given the camera’s compact configuration and 22X macro zoom this is one powerful handheld beast. And the pictures captured in a wide range of conditions certainly bear that out.

Despite the camera’s diminutive size its performance can only be described as remarkable as my group and I shot around the old city in driving rain and sleet into the night and before dawn with startling results . I often fantasized about just such a camera that can perform this well in such a tiny package. Navigating across the historic Charles Bridge before dawn the camera supported by a Sachtler DV6 were the perfect combination: lightweight and flexible at a full-range of focal lengths and frame rates from 1-60 FPS.

The HPX250 with an MSRP under $6000 does entail a few notable compromises however, including several that are maddening: the bayonet lens-shade mounting system is needlessly imprecise and frustrating; the camera’s tiny flimsy controls, especially the menu selection toggle, are virtually impossible to operate with gloved hands, the rotating main power/mode switch is awkward to engage; and the miniscule release tab controlling access to the P2 cards is poorly designed and implemented.

Despite the operational tradeoffs the camera is sure to set the new benchmark in high-performance compact camcorders. Every camera of course comes with its own set of compromises. And this camera is no exception.

The HPX250 in Prague. December 2011.

Unless you’re Sony it isn’t too often that a camera manufacturer rents a Hollywood studio, in this case Paramount, and hires an A-list director, in this case, Martin Scorsese, to do the introductory honors. But that’s exactly the case on November 3  as Canon will announce its most professional large-format camera yet from its underrated and (until now) ignored video division.  Not another DSLR variant, the new camera is expected to offer very high resolution at 4K or greater, 4:2:2 intraframe compression, and practical recording to SSD onboard storage. Any way you look at the new camera, this is an aggressive upscale move, and a veritable shot across the bow to Sony’s best-seller F3 model, which has dominated the scene for most of the past year.

Given Canon’s propensity for excellent controls, rugged construction, and operational ease, this camera could quickly become a major player in the large-sensor  camera wars, especially given the quality of Canon optics that will surely go with it.  As Panasonic fumbles and Sony shakes in its boots, the stakes couldn’t be greater for the major camera manufacturers (and RED) as we near the moment of the great announcement amid the pomp and circumstance this coming Thursday.

Stay tuned. I’ll be all over this one.

I’ve always been a film guy. I cut my teeth on 16mm. My first child was an Arri 16SRII for which I traveled to the factory in Munich factory 30 years ago to take the delivery. At the National Geographic, that’s all we shot, day in and day out, and there was something reassuring about it: we could hear the film and sprockets chugging away, and we knew we were recording images.  With our many years of experience, we had absolute confidence in what those images actually were.

This month I’ve been shooting second unit camera for Moonrise Kingdom, directed by my old friend Wes Anderson. Wes and I date back to the pre-Bottle Rocket days, when I used to shoot commercials and industrial films for Owen Wilson’s dad in Dallas. In those days the film medium was all we had if we really wanted to make a movie. The digital thing was still at least a decade away for serious filmmakers.

Which is why this shoot for me on Super 16 was like a breath of fresh air.  The S16mm camera strapped to the underbelly of a 270-horsepower Cessna seaplane would be challenging enough for any imaging system, given the physical stress and massive volume of water pouring back over the lens on take-off.  Employing a digital camera however in this setup would be sheer folly, given the force and volume of water and the tight waterproofing required to protect the camera from the massive assault. A modern digital cinema given its thermal characteristics would likely not be able to sustain the heat buildup inside many layers of water-tight plastic – without substantial re-engineering with respect to the camera’s cooling fan and concomitant changes in the aerodynamics of the aircraft.

Here the simplicity and reliability of perforated film chugging over sprockets made the most sense, as the film camera was clearly the right tool for the job. The versatility and latitude of the Vision 3 7213 film proved to be just as critical; the lighting conditions aloft changing dramatically as we darted in and out of the thick clouds of an approaching storm.