I remember a shoot in the Highlands back in ’04, standing in a downpour with a production assistant who thought he could save time by shoving a $4,000 prime lens into a padded case like he was packing a sandwich for lunch. We spent the next three hours cleaning grit out of the focus ring…
I remember a shoot in a damp basement in Bristol back in ’98. The generator had died, the client was breathing down my neck about a schedule that was already a fantasy, and the only light we had was a single, flickering tungsten lamp that made everyone look like they were decomposing. I spent forty…
Read More “The Day Everything Goes Wrong and You Still Shoot” »
I remember a shoot in a drafty warehouse outside of Bristol back in ’04. The light was coming from a single, dying 2K through a silk, and the mood was even worse. We were twelve hours in, the heating had failed, and the AD was trying to motivate a tired grip by promising “great footage.”…
Read More “Feeding and Resting a Crew Is Production Planning” »
I spent three weeks on a documentary in the Highlands once, working with a camera that had more scratches on the body than I had teeth, yet the footage looked more intentional than most of the $50,000 digital setups I see on YouTube today. People spend their entire lives chasing a specific “look,” convinced that…
I spent three weeks on a low-budget indie set in the rain once, staring at a script that was technically perfect in its formatting but completely unfilmable. The writer had spent so much time obsessing over the “correct” way to use industry-standard software and font sizes that they forgot to actually write a story that…
I remember a location shoot in a crumbling Victorian warehouse outside of Bristol where the light was perfect—a single, bruised purple dusk bleeding through a cracked skylight—but the floor was a graveyard of rusted nails and loose floorboards. We spent forty minutes arguing about the dynamic range of the sensor when we should have been…
I remember a shoot in a damp basement in Bristol, twenty years ago, where a lighting stand slipped and took out a client’s vintage sideboard. I spent the next three hours not worrying about the light or the frame, but staring at a crumpled piece of paper, trying to figure out if we were actually…
I remember sitting in a dark screening room ten years ago, watching a beautifully lit, perfectly composed sequence that should have broken my heart. Instead, I spent the entire runtime distracted by a low-frequency hum that shouldn’t have been there and dialogue that sounded like it was recorded inside a tin can. It wasn’t a…
I spent three weeks on a documentary in the Highlands once, working with a kit that was essentially held together by gaffer tape and prayers, and I still got better coverage than half the kids I see today with $50,000 cinema rigs. There is this pervasive, exhausting myth that your talent is locked behind a…
I spent the better part of last week watching a kid on a YouTube set struggle with a three-point lighting kit that cost more than my first car, yet he still couldn’t stop his subject from looking like a flat, lifeless cardboard cutout. It’s the same cycle I see every year: people think they can…