I remember sitting in a dim edit suite back in ’04, staring at a timeline that felt like a graveyard of expensive mistakes. We had the budget for a decent crew, but we lacked the scale, so we tried to patch the holes with early digital clips that looked like they were shot through a…
Read More “Cutting Stock Into Your Own Footage Convincingly” »
I spent most of the nineties worrying about whether my light meter was lying to me or if the gel on a 2K Fresnel was going to melt, not whether I could fix a boring sequence with a flashy digital overlay. Nowadays, I see people staring at a monitor, trying to figure out how motion…
I spent three hours last Tuesday watching a junior editor try to “fix” a keyed shot using a magic plugin that cost more than my first car. He was staring at a subject whose hair looked like it had been dipped in radioactive lime juice, convinced that a better sensor or a smarter algorithm would…
I once spent three days on a documentary set in a cramped basement in Dublin, fighting a single, flickering fluorescent tube that refused to behave, only to realize the fix wasn’t a new fixture—it was a piece of black foam core and a better understanding of shadow. Most people approaching how to set up home…
Read More “Home Cinema Lighting: Why You Don’t Need More Gear, You Need Better Placement” »
I remember sitting in a cramped studio ten years ago, watching a kid spend three grand on a high-end cinema camera just to shoot against a wrinkled, poorly lit piece of polyester. He kept asking why his edges looked like they’d been cut out with kitchen shears, as if a better sensor would magically fix…
I spent three weeks on a documentary in the Highlands once, watching a kid half my age try to fix a jittery wide shot by mounting a three-axis gimbal that cost more than my first car. He was sweating, fighting the motors, and still looking like he was filming from the back of a runaway…
I spent three weeks in the High Atlas mountains a decade ago, lugging a kit that felt like it was designed by someone who had never actually walked more than ten feet from a studio power outlet. I had the best specs on paper, but by day four, I wasn’t looking at the sensor readout;…
Read More “Stop Buying Gear You Don’t Need: the Truth About Choosing the Right Camera for Travel.” »
I spent a good chunk of the nineties sitting in dark suites, nursing lukewarm coffee and watching editors struggle with hardware that had less processing power than your current toaster. Back then, if you wanted to cut a sequence, you didn’t browse a curated list of “top ten” YouTube influencers; you learned the machine or…
I spent most of the nineties watching light meters dance while my hands were stained with celluloid, back when every foot of film was a literal line item on a budget. Nowadays, I see kids staring at spec sheets, convinced that the best ways to record high quality video involve upgrading to a sensor with…
I remember sitting in a dark edit suite at three in the morning, staring at a timeline where the audio and video were drifting apart like two ships in a fog, and realizing I’d spent six hours trying to fix a disaster that could have been prevented with ten minutes of discipline. People love to…