I spent three hours last Tuesday watching a kid in a coffee shop try to “fix” a muddy, flat-looking interview by scrolling through sensor specs on his phone. He was convinced that if he just upgraded to a body with more stops of dynamic range, he’d suddenly understand how to work with available light. It’s…
I remember a documentary shoot in a cramped apartment in South London back in ’04. We had three people, a heavy tripod, and enough cables to wire a small village, all crammed into a kitchen that barely fit a toaster. I spent half the morning apologizing to the talent for bumping into their bookshelf, while…
I remember standing in a muddy field outside of Galway in ’98, watching a producer stare at a weather app like it was a holy text, convinced that a high-end weather-sealed sensor would somehow stop the sky from falling. We had spent three days prepping a lighting plot for a sunset that never came, only…
I spent three weeks on a documentary set in the Pyrenees once, staring at a script that was technically perfect—beat for beat, structure for structure—but it felt like reading a technical manual for a machine that had no soul. People spend thousands on masterclasses and software, obsessing over whether they know how to write a…
I remember a shoot in a cramped, windowless basement in South London back in ’04. We were burning through the last of a precious roll of 16mm, the producer was breathing down my neck about the daylight robbery of the rental fee, and the director kept asking if we could “just try one more angle”…
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I spent the better part of my twenties hauling heavy Arriflexes through rainstorms just to get a single usable shot, back when every foot of film felt like it was being pulled directly from my own bank account. Nowadays, I watch kids spend three months’ rent on a mirrorless body with a spec sheet longer…
I remember a shoot in a drafty warehouse outside of Bristol, ten years ago, where the producer spent forty minutes arguing about whether we needed a more expensive wireless follow-focus system. Meanwhile, the sun was dropping through a skylight that we hadn’t even accounted for, and the entire lighting plan was dissolving in real-time. That’s…
I spent most of my twenties watching kids walk into a room with a brand-new camera and a massive credit card debt, thinking they could buy their way out of a bad setup. They’d spend three hours arguing over the dynamic range of a new sensor while the sun was literally setting outside the window….
I once spent six hours in a drafty, derelict warehouse in South Wales, convinced I’d found the perfect “cinematic” location for a low-budget thriller. I was so enamored with the peeling paint and the grit that I completely ignored the fact that the only window was facing north and the electrical mains were held together…
I remember a shoot in a cramped studio in South London, twenty years ago, where the producer spent three hours arguing about which high-speed sensor we were using, while I sat there staring at a blank piece of paper. We had the best gear money could buy, but because nobody had actually sat down to…