I spent a decade watching people mistake a pile of expensive adjectives for a coherent plan. I’ve sat in production meetings where someone spent forty minutes describing the “ethereal, cinematic quality” of a scene, only to realize they hadn’t a clue how to actually move the camera or where the light was coming from. If…
I remember sitting in a dimly lit production office fifteen years ago, staring at a spreadsheet that felt more like a work of fiction than a business document. I had just finished a three-day shoot where the light was so abysmal we spent six hours just trying to find a single window that didn’t blow…
Read More “Quoting a Project Without Undercharging Yourself” »
I remember sitting in a cramped production office in Bristol, watching a client point at a perfectly composed wide shot and tell me it felt “too expensive,” before suggesting we just make it brighter. They didn’t want better lighting; they wanted a way to feel in control of a process they didn’t actually understand. Most…
I once spent three days on a documentary set in a rain-soaked valley, waiting for a single, perfect sliver of light to hit a subject’s eyes, only to spend the next week fighting with an editor to make the silence feel meaningful. Fast forward a month, and I’m in a windowless Marriott conference room, staring…
I remember a shoot in a cramped, humid studio back in ’04—we had the perfect backlight, a soft wrap on the subject that looked like something out of a classic noir, and a take that felt like magic. We spent six hours chasing that specific glow, only to have the entire project mothballed three months…
I remember a shoot in a cramped, unventilated basement in South London, twenty years ago. The light was terrible—just a single, flickering work lamp—and the crew was exhausted, irritable, and looking at me like I was the one who’d decided to ruin their lives. I realized then that you don’t win a crew over with…
I remember standing in a drafty community hall in South Wales twenty years ago, clutching a camera that felt like a lead brick, watching a subject walk out of the frame because I’d spent ten minutes fussing with a tripod instead of watching the light. People love to talk about how documentary shooting differs by…
Read More “Shooting What Is Happening Instead of What You Planned” »
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 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 remember a shoot in a cramped, windowless basement in South London—nothing but a single, flickering tungsten bulb and a crew that was exhausted before we even rolled. The client wanted “cinematic energy,” which is usually code for “I don’t know what I want, so just make it move.” They thought buying a high-end gimbal…