RED Camera and the 48 Hour Film Festival 2008
Woohoo! After pulling drama for a genre, having nothing on paper until after midnight on the Friday and frantically searching for a female lead, we pulled off a decent 48 Hour film effort which eventually won us the Auckland Finals! Next step, the GRAND FINAL at 8.30pm on C4 on July 3rd. Peter Jackson has chosen 1 more film to compete against all the finalists and he chose a good one. It was by the same team that won the entire competition last year, team Lens Flare.
We shot our 48 hour film ‘The End’ on the RED 1 camera at 2k resolution. Naturally I was extremely excited getting my hands on one of these cameras and making our 48 hour film look stunning. But then, my world came crashing down when I read the final script early on Saturday morning and realised that there was only 1 location and it happened to be indoors and a square white box 5m by 5m!! So I literally had the ferrari of all cameras but that didn’t mean jack when you are shooting against white walls….. gutting. My dream of having massive depth, great composition, beautiful colors, smooth moves and cinematic lighting gone in a second.
The RED 1 weighs a ton and for most of the film I shot hand held because the script called for 2 different styles in the one film. One of the styles was his fantasy, a fairytale. I decided to shoot the ‘fantasy’ section on sticks to make it have a kind of formulaic feel as this was his dream or what he had planned to go down perfectly without a hitch. I lit the fantasy scene with tungsten lighting to make the dream feel happier. The other style needed to feel a little chaotic and claustrophobic. I decided to shoot this style hand held to give the scene a kind of ‘the world is crumbling’ feel. I lit the ‘chaotic’ scene using daylight bulbs to give it a cold, harsh feeling.
This camera is extremely heavy but I found the RED camera to be the easiest of any other camera to hand hold. The weight was perfectly balanced on my shoulder and my shoulder is the perfect shape for the base of the RED. I did have some foam stuffed inside my shirt but it wasn’t until later on in the night that I realized that I could operate it without the use of the foam. In the photo you can see that I am struggling but that is because I am weak haha.
My laptop died on me 3 weeks ago and I just got it back today. Thanks to Apple for coming to my rescue and saving me at least $2,600 on repairs.
Bobby introduced me to HDR photos the other day. I had never heard of them but decided to check them out. High Dynamic Range imaging gives you a greater range of exposures within the photo and makes the scene look surreal. Here is an attempt I did today. The photo was taken in a small town called Bend, in Oregon last year.
I will finish this post off with one of my personal favourites.
It was taken in Hyderabad, India. This beggar came to me and asked for money through the window of the car I was traveling in. You are not meant to encourage begging so I asked her if I could take a photo of her and then in return, give her a little money. She was the most amazing looking woman I had ever seen. So much pain and suffering in her eyes, yet, through these deep emotions I could also see true happiness. Her face will haunt me for the remainder of my life and always remind myself how lucky I am when I look into her eyes. We all go through hard times, I am going through one right now, but our hard times are nothing compared to what most people on this earth have to endure. I look at this photo and feel hope.