Just a portion of the footage that I shot of the Glamour Women of the Year event this year in NYC I missed posting. There are other ones posted on the site, but this gives you an overview of the mayhem.
My favorite interviews (which are missing from this segment and some altogether) were Gloria Steinem, Debbie Harry, and Cindy Sherman. Gloria Steinem gave her thoughts on where we’re at as women in the world, “…we’re about 40 years into a 100 year change” then graciously gave her thoughts about Kim Kardashian’s divorce when asked, “It’s a waste of air time and those 2 peoples’ lives” Ouch.
While it’s not my favorite type of thing to shoot, there was an undercurrent of charged energy being in a room filled with women of so many different talents and accomplishment levels. It’s not often you get to see the Bush ladies AND Donatella Versace within minutes of one another. Well, unless they’re DIFFERENT kinds of bush ladies maybe. Huh?
" I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect, and it is these things I'd believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions she wasn't all she should be. I love her, and that's the beginning of everything." F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Yes. I will be making these for Thanksgiving. You're welcome Morenos.
From Katharine Hepburn’s 1981 interview with Barbara Walters: Hepburn: “I have not lived as a woman. I
have lived as a man…I’ve just done what I damn well wanted to and I made
enough money to support myself. And I ain’t afraid of being alone.” Walters: “Is that why also you wear pants?” Hepburn: “No, I just wore pants because they’re comfortable.” Walters: “Do you ever wear a skirt, by the way?” Hepburn: “I have one.” Walters: “You have one.” Hepburn: “I’ll wear it to your funeral.”
(via/photo via)
I had a fantastic week! One of the best days was Operating on a spot for Sesame Street. Specifically, we went with some Sesame Street workshop researchers to a pre-school upstate. This was good for 2 reasons: 1) Fall is in FULL swing here so the ride up was gorgeous! It was all warm colors and trees of texture, my favorite. 2) These kids at the pre-school were freakin a-dorable. Honestly, if I was allowed to post some stills of these eatemup cuties yet I would and THEN you would understand. I also worked with fantastic people including one of my favorites, Ben Bloodwell. So I guess that’s 3.
We were able to see the start to finish process of how a Sesame Street episode comes to be. Children’s capacity for information absorption is always impressive to me. The researchers will do what they call a pre-testing in which they show them various pictures. One of which was a pulley. Some of the 3.5 year olds knew what it did even if they didn’t know what it was called. To me = impressive. Then, of course, they show them a mock episode teaching them about the pulley and the language for the pulley and voila! they know more about pulleys than your average tot. I digress about the pulley, you get the gist. :) pulley, pulley, pulley.
Yesterday, I Operated on a spot for a woman talking about her book, Bonding Over Beauty. There was a very green PA on set who I ended up spending a lot of time with when a few of us went to Quality Meats (where we had 18oz sirloins. For real) after the shoot. She is the epitome of green, but in a good, refreshing way. Everything is still new and wondrous. What she lacks in knowledge, she fills in with aptitude. She’s comfortable with her inexperience and invites the opportunity to learn. It’s always a pleasure to teach someone like that.
She asked me what my first job was and I honestly couldn’t remember. I’m pretty sure my first paid job (outside of college jobs etc) was a rap music video that I don’t remember the name of. Ha. It was in St. Louis after all so the odds are pretty good.
Prodigy Interview
I got to operate with my good friend Zachary Galler (we shot with my F3, rented a 2nd one and a set of Super Speeds) on these interviews/promo footage of Mindless Behavior: a cute,
well-mannered boy band ala 21st century. They really did seem genuinely
enthusiastic about all of it and enjoyed hanging out with one another.
They still seem grateful, talented and excited. It was fun watching
them interact. And they really did talk about girls all the time.
Some sample lyrics from one of their hit songs:
“Hey, my girl, my girl,
she loves me. She hit me all the time, she be texting me. Hey, my girl,
my girl, she loves me. She hit me all the time -
[Spoken:] Yo Prod, let ‘em know.
When I say hey, then
you say what’s up? And I’ll be like baby, do you miss me? When you say
yes, then I’ll say ditto. Then you hit me back, with the less than
symbol number three.
I
got a clue how you feel for me. 1-4-3 a smiley with a wink. That’s how
you feel baby that’s what’s up. A hundred forty characters, is more
than enough.”
The lyrics are what they are. By no means groundbreaking, but I guess I'm not their target audience either.. I suppose I feel like our parents felt when they heard “Shoop” for the first time? And anyone in my generation knows that song is the best. Just ask any of my friends that have been to karaoke with me.
Welp friends, Facebook told
me to check this out. Low and behold, I DID want to check this
infomercial out. I Operated on this commercial and believe it or not it
was good fun! Yes, that’s Lisa Rinna. Yes, this is an eyelash growing
serum that does not turn your eyes different colors. Intrigued, aren’t
you? I knew it.
I got to use a gear head on
this job (which as any of you production people know is not always a
given) and for a portion of it (one of the product shots that’s all
twisty turny and some of the twisty turny Lisa Rinna beauty shots) I got
to combine the gear head with a dutch head. Now, doesn’t that make your brain question which way is up? (The answer is, yes, it does)
A few of my favorites so far from a photo shoot I did a couple of
weeks ago. It's been a lot of fun fine tuning these now that I've got
some time on my hands. And we did them just in the nick of time...she's already had her baby!
There are times shooting when you know you've captured that moment.
You know it before you see it play back. The top image was definitely
one of those moments. It's a real treat when it happens. :)
After working yesterday on a dental
commercial from the AAO encouraging adult braces to boost your
self-esteem, this was sent to me by a colleague. Perfection.
...is hard to do! :) September has gone by in a blur. A good, busy,
fun blur. After living in NYC for about 5 years now I had my first real
in-depth run in with Fashion Week. I've shot FW before, but never the
whole thing and so extensively. I now know everything there is to know
about Spring 2012. This is what I was busy doing the first part of
September:
Ladies, there be a HOT trend of tribal themed pieces, pastels, and um...from MJacobs...cellophane.
Perfect for those muggy April days. :) Seriously though it was a fun
experience and the nicest part was probably the camaraderie amongst the
photographers and shooters when in the pit. Well, at least the ones that
have been doing this at least 10 seasons and know not to get all up in
arms and start fights.
Here is an example:
Yes,
this is real. Yes, this is really how it is. The man in the front (yes,
the one that looks like a RnR roadie) is the pit guy I saw most often
during the big shows. These guys are serious and this one in particular
takes great pride in his job. They also have the authority to kick you
out on your keester if you're out of line. What you can't see is the
barrier sash strung across the front. Keeping the pit from the show
goers. No one is allowed to sit on the floor. All the front row people
you see are sitting on boxes or "turtles" - a very smartly designed
collapsible stool. (The week had reached its most absurd point for me
when I heard a 50+ yo man yell out in anger "She stole my turtle! And
now she's just sitting on it!"
You will notice the difference between the pic above - a big professional show - with a professional pit crew and the one below.
Notice
the floor sitting and the lack of barrier and allll those feet just
sticking out. These are all the other things I learned during Fashion
Week. :)
The best part of the week for me? Meeting Lauren Hutton.
I managed to make it out to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden the other day (it's Free on Tuesdays you New Yorkers!) and I really have no excuse since I literally live across the street. The sky was beautiful (pre-Hurricane Irene) so I thought I'd take my camera along. I did a little HDR using a simple version of Photomatix on the photo of the statue. Yes, that's corn at the BBG in the 2nd photo.
And I couldn't leave without subjecting M to a portrait on a tiny bridge.
I managed to find myself surrounded by a room full of talented filmmakers last night when Alexandra Roxo organized a Women in Film career night at G.E.M.S., Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a much needed organization for girls in NYC who, through different circumstances, found themselves caught in the brutal commercial sex trafficking game. There turned out to be more speakers than girls there, but hopefully our messages of 'You can realllly do this too if you want' came through to those girls that might be interested. Each of us were able to briefly tell our stories and what it is we do. I found myself really wanting to make them FEEL that this is hard, but possible. No one in your family has to have done anything in film before, you don't have to go to film school. You just have to have the desire and the perseverance to keep working towards it, to keep asking questions, wondering and paying attention. And I'm sure most of these girls have had to overcome more difficult tasks already.
I must say it was fun and inspiring for me to sit and listen to my colleagues. The vibe was warm and encouraging and the interests were varied. Afterwards, there was dinner and a bubble blowing contest (amongst some of the filmmakers, not the girls mind you). All in all it was an excellent night.
A run down of the wonderul women there so maybe you masses of people following me can also be inspired:
These were taken a few years ago near my old apartment on a snowy night with my ol digital Olympus EVolt500
I was sprucing up my hard drive today and came across some old photographs and thought I'd play a bit with photoshop again. There's something about old photographs that I respond to (No, these aren't ACTUALLY old...they're from 2009 maybe? But they're also not Hipstamatic. Thank you.). There's something in the format of old photos. There's something in the grain and desaturation and in the impromptu snapshot. The framing isn't perfect; one couldn't see the final product of their efforts until long after. There was no deleting a picture that wasn't perfect. Pictures reflected people who weren't smiling perfect smiles, there was less than perfect exposure, and there was a real documentation left after all of it. I remember taking these pictures and the one I like the most now (the first one of the handles in a bus) is one that I was very frustratingly trying to get in focus while the bus bounced down the street hitting more bumps in the road than it was missing. It's a good reminder that everything is relative, right? The right photograph presented in the right medium in the right instance can make all the difference.
Well, my apologies for my absence. I have been dooooing things I swear.
1) My Sony F3 came in to Abel Cine early so I was buying that (and dealing with convincing the bank to let me have access to MY money. Ugh.) With many thanks to Mark Schwartzbard for tips and DBA/ EIN details. It is a fantastic camera and I am really really happy with it so far! I'm eager to keep playing with it so if you have any projects you wanna do LET ME KNOW!
2) The first part of July was spent navigating the 7 day short film I shot "TIED UP" with Jose Venutolo Directing, a project of Brady Kirchberg origins. We had a lot of, ahem, things thrown at us...an eastern European building super who started carting our equipment off premises and eventually cut the power to the apartment we were shooting in - a nice, reasonable man ha...lost actors and lost locations. Some of the wrenches thrown were par for the course, some seemed to require superhuman patience and ingenuity. Nonetheless there are always lessons learned, we persevered, and we wrapped at about 430am on a Friday morn with some really great stuff!
Brady and Jose are working on the editing already and the plan is to head to NICE DISSOLVE for post. The producer set up a demo session with them last week and their facilities are pretty great! They're tucked away in a rather booming side street of Bushwick. While the studio itself is small, the package is extensive. We'll be using their DaVinci Resolve suite with real-time playback. I'm looking forward to it. Here are some quick stills from the TIED UP footage:
3) Other updates include Beach going! My fantastic friends and I headed to Jacob Riis for a much needed cool off! Beach, snacks, beers and vodka slushies are good for the soul.
4) This is probably obvious, but I love Netflix. More specifically Netflix Instant Play. I watched "Carnal Knowledge" (1971) a few nights back and it is a gem I knew nothing about. The cast alone is reason enough for you to watch it. If you love relationship analysis and gender studies then you've got yourself a golden ticket here. Jack Nicholson, Arthur Garfunkel, Candice Bergen (Yes, she was a full blown sex symbol in her day. For those of us that only grew up watching her in Murphy Brown this is fun to see), Ann-Margaret (wowza), and Rita Moreno power pack this film. The style of Mike Nichols' direction (The Graduate, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - so he has some experience with this genre :) adds an element of flash without taking away from a strong cast that can carry a heavy film and still come out as a bit of a comedy. Here's the original NY Times review from '71 (I also love the internet):
There are many great scenes, but this is definitely one of the best:
Another film I saw during my absence on the ol' blog was "Bad Timing" (1980) on a recommendation of a friend. Another astute, but slightly more abstract, relationship study starring Art (he lost the -hur by this point) Garfunkel (Some say this film might have helped end his acting career as his character is pretty dark here. I mean it's not like HE'S ACTING or anything here people. Guffaw.) and Theresa Russell. Harvey Keitel also plays a key role as a suspicious detective. This Nicolas Roeg flick needs 2 watches at least.
It's definitely not my favorite of Roeg's, but it's engrossing and fun to decipher. If you like Roeg's structure in general, it seems one would like this films as well. Theresa Russell gives a really great performance, but I grow tired of female characters (which is of course not her doing) that long to be free while having a connection with someone sans being controlled by them. Yet, they keep succumbing to the "need" to please said person and so do what they know they cannot sustain. They stay. I suppose this is one aspect that makes the film engaging, though many times it just seems a byproduct of the desires of the writer.
This gem came up on set yesterday, well technically at lunch in the park by Highline Stages. I was able to tell a few people who'd never heard of it before! It's always exciting to get to give someone a treat like this one. I can't tell you how much this movie rocks! It's Diane Lane's near debut (there was some awful comedy "Six Pack" with Kenny Rogers. Well, maybe it's not awful if you're a kid watching it instead of in your mid20s). She is quite captivating and engages you in her badassery pretty fully. And I mean, the makeup and skunk hair DO help. It's such a perfect teen angst movie that I found myself wanting to steal someone else's songs and become a huge touring band. I DO already have the pink eyeshadow.
Laura Dern is also in it, but Lane really does make the whole film. Or maybe I'm just biased. There is something about her onscreen presence that makes it unsurprising she is still a working actress. Not long after The Stains, due in large part to her role in that movie actually, came:
The Outsiders
and
Rumble Fish
These 2 Coppola movies are visceral and make you feel alive. In fact, whoever's reading this...hell all 6 of you, should make a teen badassery & angst/Diane Lane marathon of Ladies and Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains, The Outsiders, and Rumble Fish. It'll make your whole world.
I went to see a wonderful indie film co-written and co-starred by these 2 ladies. One of which is the Director, Alexandra Roxo, and a friend of mine. It was the first time either had made a film, although both went to school for acting. It was a pleasure to watch and the characters occupy a place in one anothers' world that isn't easily described, which I like.
There are really good moments throughout the film and the locations chosen (luckily in the family of one of the writers) are well-used and full of rich layers. The color palette and wardrobe are key elements of any film as well and they too are expertly chosen. The Director of Photography, Migela Crosignani, was the one of the most experienced people on the team and she does not disappoint. It's beautifully shot, beautifully framed...a perfect complement to the storyline. She uses everything from spoons to truck side windows to frame her shots and utilizes every inch of the lovely rural location to present the story at its best.
My good and talented friend Mark Schwartzbard shot this Indie darling in Delaware and has recently been making the FF circuit. It's been well received and I'm so happy for him. He shot it on the 7D and did a wonderful job conveying the dreamlike, cold, transitional world the 2 main characters create for themselves. If you watch it, pay attention to the operating, which goes unnoticed in films a lot. Good operating should, I suppose, but pay attention to its fluidity and its pace. I think it probably has a lot to do with his Aaton HH handle he swears by for all his HH work. Oh, and that he's got good instincts too.
I am debating buying a Sony F3 and subsequently thinking of whether I would get the 35mm, 50mm, 85mm set of lenses that Sony has put together for the camera. I'm always hesitant to steer away from dependable, reputable companies for glass, ie: Zeiss, Cooke, Angenieux. Also, where's the 18mm or at least the 25mm?? There have luckily been some tests comparing such lenses to Sony's.
I have trusted friends who have used Sony's lenses and are not impressed with their build or their image so that usually is the affirmation of my hesitancy.
And as always Philip Bloom, for what he's worth, is there to compare these 3 cameras:
Why, Why does the F3 only offer 60fps at 720p? Man, that really is a bummer. You can see the quality difference in the video PB does of course. The F3 is by far the better quality long term camera...it's just such a large difference in money when it comes down to it. And once you get into buying a KiPro or a Nanoflash to utilize the camera's full range. It's always so exciting and nerve wracking!
This picture has nothing to do with the actual Cinema Club I'm posting about...it's just an old image of an old movie theatre in the Berkshires I found. So there.
This is such a great idea! I'm sure there are variations on the concept, but this one is pretty wonderful. I think it's a Photron cam they used for the high speed? I can't be positive.
I operated on this16mm Arri SR2 feature film, directed by Brian Jun, which tells of a true & controversial story that took place in 80's small town Iowa. It premiered this weekend on the Life Time Movie Channel. We shot it over the course of 18 days in LA and 3 additional days in Illinois. It meant getting to work with the fantastic John Savage who is full of, um, spunk as well as Gabriel Mann, Mark Pellegrino, Jennifer Finnigan, and Eliza Dushku. We shot the main stunts in the WB back lot out there and had a really great crew! Check out the website to know more about the story of this corrupt small town police department.
I watched this very compelling documentary "Guys and Dolls" a couple years back and odds are if we've had more than 5 conversations I've mentioned it in some depth to you. Well the site I found it on initially is defunct, but I found this fairly testy site and the doc. Granted this site just links you to Youtube where the doc is in pieces, but if you can deal with the inconvenience it's really fascinating.
I recently rewatched "Michael Clayton" for this short I'm shooting, which is also a sort of deception, twistsandturns type. I always seem to forget how good an actor George Clooney is. He's solid, subtle, and always sexy. I don't mean sexy in an overt, trying too hard, working out too much way. I mean reaaal sex appeal that comes from investing in your character and the subtle depths that lie within. It doesn't, of course, hurt that he is an attractive man, but there is more than one way to be attractive, people. He just happens to bring a lot to the table.
He is also a smart man, as he chooses to team up with Robert Elswit often, sometimes on his own accord, other times, by association. He is one of my favorite modern cinematographers...and he is probably one of yours too, you just may not know it:
Good Night and Good Luck Duplicity
Boogie Nights The Men Who Stare at Goats
There Will Be Blood Syriana
Punch-Drunk Love 8MM
Redbelt Magnolia Waterland
A very cute short shot with all natural light, except the interiors with the little girl using Kinos, on the F3 with Zeiss G.O. 1.4s...without Nanoflash so 4:2:0. Holds up extremely well, in this presentation format. I'm slated to shoot a short in the next few weeks and am leaning heavily towards this camera for its quality, ease of use, and affordability. And it comes with the brown paper mache man!! No. Just kidding.
" The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move. "
When the line between something good and something bad or just sub-par is so fine, I think that this sentiment is so true. The genius is in the proper execution of the subtleties.
I am always inspired by the Polish brothers and namely David Mullen...last night I dreamt in Northfork mode, which was dark and wondrous...I wish I could always dream as beautifully as DM shoots.
With spring upon us and the return of some warmth to my bones, I set to explore my new(ish) neighborhood. We have a huge, outstanding library. I found a great, comprehensive book on James Wong Howe (whose real name is Wong Tung Jim...and came known as the former due to a 1st grade teacher's mix up...or probably her concerted effort to Americanize his name) which made me wanna rewatch one of his last (& one of my favorite) films, Hud*. It's breathtaking and always invokes a feeling of "I wanna make things!" from me. Plus, Paul Newman plays evil in it...and who can't eat that up?
*Note, I did not watch it from this youtube posting. It would be too shameful to do so.
Prodigy Interview
Biolashx3
The Dish and the Spoon
