I spent most of the nineties worrying about whether a roll of Kodak would last the afternoon, so watching people today treat a digital sensor like a magic wand is exhausting. There is this pervasive, expensive myth that if you just buy the right $500 LUT or the newest color-grading plugin, you’ve solved your problems….
I spent three hours last week watching a kid on a YouTube tutorial explain how to shoot dialogue simply by listing the dynamic range specs of a new cinema camera and the bit-depth of a specific codec. It’s exhausting. He made it sound like the secret to a good scene is a bigger sensor or…
I spent three hours on a documentary set in a rented villa outside of Naples, watching a kid with a brand-new cinema camera try to “fix” a flat, washed-out face by adding a third light. He was convinced that more lumens equaled more quality, but all he was doing was drowning the subject in a…
I remember standing in a muddy field outside of Cork, watching a kid half my age frantically unboxing a three-thousand-dollar weather-sealed cinema rig while the sky turned a bruised shade of purple. He thought the “weather-resistant” badge on the spec sheet was a magic spell, but he hadn’t accounted for the wind driving the rain…
I remember a shoot in a cramped, windowless studio in South London back in ’08. The client had just dropped fifty grand on a cinema camera that could supposedly see in the dark, but we were staring at a flat, lifeless mess because the lighting rig was too big for the room. We spent three…
I spent three weeks on a documentary in the Highlands last year, watching a kid with a brand-new cinema rig try to fix a mismatched scene by downloading yet another LUT. He thought he could buy his way out of a continuity error, but you can’t fix a fundamental misunderstanding of light with a software…
I once sat in a darkened edit suite for six hours, staring at a sequence of beautiful, high-contrast shots, only to realize the “dreamy” haze wasn’t a stylistic choice—it was a fingerprint on the rear element. I’d spent half the budget on a prime set only to ruin the delivery because I was too impatient…
I once spent three days in a damp edit suite in Bristol, staring at a drive of corrupted files and unlabelled clips, wondering why I’d spent six weeks chasing the perfect backlight only to lose it all to a single, cheap SD card. People will try to sell you a “complete guide to media management”…
I spent most of the nineties lugging heavy tripods through mud and praying the dolly tracks wouldn’t catch on a stray pebble, back when “smooth” meant you hadn’t tripped over a power cable. Now, I watch kids walk onto a set with a motorized stabilizer and a look of pure confidence, convinced they’ve mastered the…
I spent a week on a documentary shoot in the Highlands last year, watching a kid half my age stare at a monitor, cursing the “clinical” look of his sensor and praying for a miracle. He was convinced that if he just bought the most expensive, high-end glass, the image would suddenly feel more cinematic….