As digital cinema cameras continue to evolve, will pulling focus become an obsolete skill? At what point do the cameras start doing it for you? And if that’s the case, what are you — as a camera assistant — left to do?
Filmmaking Tips and Advice
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Discomfort Comes Easily to You on a Film Set
One thread I’ve seen weaved throughout my career is the appearance of – to borrow a term from caving – “squeezes.” Squeezes are the nearly impossibly thin gaps between two large rocks cavers have to experience.
How Shooting On Location is Like Summer Camp
This is something many of you may have felt before and just not articulated it, or you didn’t even realize, but it’s definitely true – there’s a lot of similarities to going to a summer camp or going on location for an extended period of time to shoot a feature film.
What “Deadliest Catch” Can Teach You About Persistence
For those who have never caught an episode of Discovery Channel’s flagship show Deadliest Catch, it’s a reality series set deep within the world of Alaskan crab fishing. For every 100,000 people that set out to do the job, about 300 never return mostly due to drowning or hypothermia.
Three Ways Camera Assistants Have to Adapt to Digital Cinema in Order to Survive
If you want to survive in the digital cinematography future as a camera assistant, there are a few things you’re going to need change. These adaptations may be easy for you, others may not, but all of them will play a crucial role in your career path.
Useful Cinematography iPhone Apps (Part 7)
For filmmakers, the right apps morph the iPhone into an indispensable part of their toolkit to help calculate everything from depth of field to overtime rates. So here are five more killer cinematography apps waiting for you to download and utilize on set.
What Functions Do You Use with ARRI Alexa?
With the ARRI Alexa, you only have five customizable buttons with different options. With limited real estate, choosing which functions you customize can speed you up — or slow you down. So how do you decide what functions make the cut?
How to Share Your Opinion on a Film Set (If Asked)
The art of giving your opinion treads a fine line between brutal honesty and delicate lies. So here are five steps for whenever the director of photography (DP) walks up and asks you, “So what’d you think of the shot?”
Big Lenses Will Speed You Up & Weigh You Down
“Should I shoot with a big zoom lens to save time/minimize setups?” Like most questions that start with “Should I…” there are pros and cons to each answer.
RIP Steve Jobs: A Creative Legend for Filmmakers
When Steve bought and ran a small computer graphics company, now Pixar, he began to change animation. When Steve shephered Apple back from the ghostly depths of bankruptcy, he began to change entertainment. And then when Steve Jobs died last night, he took with him all of the intangible assets he embodied, including his imagination and inventiveness.