I spent three weeks on a documentary in the Highlands once, shooting on a camera that felt like it was held together by prayer and electrical tape, only to realize the footage looked like absolute garbage because I’d ignored the way the overcast sky was flattening every single shadow. I spent the next forty-eight hours…
I spent most of the nineties worrying about whether I had enough 16mm stock left to finish a scene, not whether my sensor was capturing a specific mathematical curve. These days, I see kids spending thousands on the latest cinema bodies, convinced that a complete guide to log and grading is the magic key to…
I spent most of the nineties watching the light die on set while a producer screamed about the hourly rate for film stock, and if there’s one thing those years taught me, it’s that you can’t fix a fundamental misunderstanding of physics with a software update. I see it every week now: someone buys a…
I spent a decade watching kids walk onto sets with six-figure camera packages, only to spend three hours arguing about which sensor has the best dynamic range while the actual light in the room was dying. They treat a lack of illumination like a technical failure that requires a bigger purchase, when in reality, they…
I spent three hours last week watching a kid on YouTube explain why he needed a $2,000 RGB tube light to make his talking head look “cinematic,” when all he really needed was to move his chair three feet away from a window. It’s the same cycle I’ve seen for twenty years: people treat a…
I spent most of my twenties watching people blow entire budgets on high-end LED panels, only to produce footage that looked like a cheap dental office waiting room. There is this pervasive, exhausting myth that if you just follow a “complete guide to lighting for video” found on a gear review site, you’ll suddenly start…
I once spent four hours on a corporate shoot in a windowless boardroom, watching a kid half my age try to “fix” a muddy, flickering image by swapping out a cinema camera for the third time that morning. He had a sensor that could probably see into the next dimension, but he hadn’t even bothered…
I remember sitting in a damp basement in South Wales, staring at a monitor that looked like it was filming through a bowl of oatmeal, praying that the single, flickering fluorescent tube overhead wouldn’t kill the interview. I didn’t have a lighting kit, a stabilizer, or a prayer, but I had a story that needed…
I spent three hours last Tuesday watching a kid on YouTube explain how a $5,000 lighting kit is the secret to a professional interview, only to see him film a subject who looked like they were being interrogated in a basement. It’s the same old story: people think they can buy their way out of…
I remember standing on a street corner in South London, the sun finally hitting the brickwork exactly where I needed it, only to have a local council officer walk into the frame and shut us down in thirty seconds flat. We had the best lenses money could buy and a lighting setup that would make…