I spent three hours on a freezing set in South Wales back in ’04, watching a young DP try to justify a sweeping gimbal shot that had absolutely no business being there. He thought the motion made it look “cinematic,” but all it did was make the audience feel seasick and disconnected from the actors….
I remember a shoot in a cramped, windowless studio back in ’98—no budget, just a single tungsten light and a crew that hadn’t slept in twenty hours. The director was obsessed with buying a specialized jib to get “epic” angles, convinced that a more expensive movement would somehow fix the flat, lifeless energy of the…
Read More “Raising the Camera Six Inches Changes the Relationship” »
I spent three hours on a freezing set in South Wales back in ’98, arguing with a director who wanted to shoot every single line of dialogue in a tight close-up because he thought it looked “intimate.” He had a beautiful Arri, but he had no idea how shot size communicates anything beyond a sweaty…
I remember a shoot in a cramped, dimly lit basement in South London—nothing but a single tungsten light and a crew that was running on caffeine and sheer spite. We had just finished a tense dialogue scene, and I was looking at the monitors, realizing the spatial logic was completely shot. It wasn’t a lighting…
I remember a shoot in a cramped, windowless studio back in ’98, where the director spent three hours arguing about which anamorphic lens would give us the “right” flare, while the actors stood like statues, completely disconnected from the space. We had a grip truck full of glass, but we had zero plan for the…
Read More “Blocking Decides the Shot List, Not the Reverse” »
I remember a shoot in a cramped, drafty studio back in ’98—no fancy digital monitors, just a frantic script supervisor and a prayer. We spent four hours resetting a single scene because the light from a window had shifted three inches, completely breaking the logic of the shot. People today think they can solve the…
Read More “Continuity Errors Happen in the Gaps Between Setups” »
I spent three weeks on a documentary in a damp basement in Cardiff, surrounded by enough high-end glass to fund a small nation, only to realize we had shot ourselves into a corner. We had the most beautiful, sharp, sensor-crushing close-ups you’ve ever seen, but we had absolutely no way to bridge the gaps between…
I remember sitting in a dim corner of a studio in South London back in ’98, watching a director lose his mind because he’d spent four hours obsessing over a slow-motion gimbal move, only to realize he had nothing to cut to. He’d bought the most expensive lenses available, but he hadn’t actually thought about…
I spent three days on a documentary in the Highlands last year, filming a craftsman in a workshop where the light only hit the shavings on the floor for twenty minutes at noon. I shot hundreds of beautiful, slow-motion, shallow-depth-of-field shots of his hands, his tools, and the dust dancing in the air. They looked…
I spent three hours last week watching a kid on a YouTube tutorial explain how to set up an interview shot using a three-point lighting kit that cost more than my first car. He was talking about lumens, color temperatures, and sensor bit-depths like they were the magic ingredients, but he never once mentioned the…
Read More “Interview Framing: Eyeline First, Background Second” »