Matthew Bennett

I'll stand up for this film, I thought it looked fantastic. Lots of natural light, scrappy handheld, backlight, but never a bad shot, some really incredible moods and lights, actually! I've never been a sean penn fan, but I liked this film quite a bit.

Yes, Andrzej Sekula, the dp for pulp fiction... I was watching "vacancy" the other night, a movie Andrzej Sekula shot, and was noticing the complete mastery of a palette of earth reds, dirty yellow/oranges, with touches of green neon... His color palette grafted such a sickening yet earthy/bowels/underground mood onto an already frightening film. This color palette was what I thought was one of the most striking things about pulp fiction, too, the constant attention to reds and yellows, where it creates a happy mood in the flashback with Christopher walken, then has this hellish effect in the basement dungeon rape scene. He's so good with these colors that he can create nearly any mood from them. But back up to the original thread post, I think also that rear projection in the cab scene is in black and white to boot, further making it look 'fake'.

Just watch out for red in your stool. <sorry couldn't resist Thanks as always for the informative posts

I'd tell you but it would take exactly 30 years

Play the song in slo-mo to match the cam's frame rate...

I saw this the other day on dvd - was really impressed by the cinematography + unity of the general lighting plan. Cinematography by Yuen Man Fung. It is shot with a simultaneously ultra high key and really dim look. Combined with the crumbly grey/green Hong Kong backdrops, general filth everywhere (one extended scene takes place on an enormous pile of garbage)... it gives the impression of a nightmare, with a great clarity to the feel of space but also a strange, confused half-light... Anyway I really dug it, I'd say its worth checking out. Story wise it's just incredibly grim, depressing and brutal. I really got interested in ultra high key light by watching this... very high-con single source lights, shafts, cuts of direct sun. I shoot almost entirely with the DVX100 andromeda(RAW). It has a nice dynamic range at 10bit color, but still has limitations. High-con lighting to me seems very mysterious, mystical.. and also nicely uses the limited range of video as an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

Thanks for the interesting 'behind the deal' information, fascinating to hear about. Love those Todd Hido photographs, all the wet, misty atmospheres and single color schemes. I love fog and obstruction, distortion. The Hido portrait work is great, too, is that an inspiration or is it just the landscapes/interiors?

The Andromeda system highlight handling is a lot more mellow and feathered than what the DV NTSC compression does from a DVX tape output. Compare for instance the two screenshots above.

Please post stills when you shoot, I'm very interested to check out the quality of bokeh produced by this combination of adapter elements.

A draft trailer for a film I shot (part of) using the andromeda modification for the DVX100a. Its a great system for color correction. The only drawback is the DVX lens which is nice, but you sort of run out of options pretty quickly during a feature shoot. The website is reel-stream.com http://www.stickypod.com/videos/uploads/27...4_2000_fast.mov

Claudio's work is incredible. I always use him as the example for budding DP's to say "this is how good you have to be to get work". Also in Claudio's 'journey' description he forget to tell us about the part where he became a master of light, color, design and lens. That growth to me is a big part of the artist's story... How about it Claudio??

Congratulations! Just wondering, when you show it at festivals, what exactly do you show, a tape, a film blowup, or what? What sort of process did you use to get the SD footage to that point, also.

Curious, what numbers would you see as a success, Richard? Also, why no theatrical intent for your film? Isn't that 'the dream'? re: polley's film, how marketable is a movie about old people anyway, (god bless them).

Well, get your film out and show them how it's done, Richard! Any new trailers or anything, by the way?

Good strategies guys.. . Can't wait to see more on this...

Great grabs, Getting a Maya Deren meshes of the afternoon kind of vibe, the key in the hand and eye I think triggering that off. I'd actually love to see it with the lynch-esque industrial soundscapes, that sounds like a moody combo. If anyone hasn't see Meshes of the Afternoon, of course, you should. Practically every shot is a good idea you can walk away with and use later in your own work at some point. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbJKyLXoqXc This stuff ages like fine wine...

I watched twilight samurai about a year ago and loved it, recently I bought a copy of "The Hidden Blade", by the same director, Yôji Yamada, loved it as well. It has funny scenes, peaceful scenes, intriguing and historical scenes, romantic scenes, and violent scenes. I wish there were a thousand other movies eactly like those two because I would watch them all. Good picks!

You can't do this. Color information is extremely compressed in DV. It will give you blocky looking edges and other nasty looking artifacts. It will always look bad no matter what software you use. Read this article on codecs and color space, it will illuminate the limitations of dv. http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/colorspace/ Don't shoot greenscreen with DV!

How did you do it and what was your budget? Any new trailers or promo material?

The trick with wedding videography is to slightly dutch every shot, not so much that it's noticable, but just tilt the camera ever so slightly. You can also physically move in towards the subjects (bride and groom) while tilting wildly at the same time. When editing, make sure to use every filter you have in the effects bin of your NLE, however unmotivated. Also make sure to include a shot of a red rose, where every other color of the shot has been drained to black and white, and only the rose bud itself remains in red. (Yes I have very bitterly shot and cut weddings to support my film education, can you tell?) Seriously though, weddings can actually be quite well done.. see this site for probably one of the world's best http://www.bluecoremedia.com/

I read that Luc Besson does his own operating...

How comes it's 'illegal' for cinematographer's demo reels to not have any dialogue or sound from the films they reference? I watch people's reels and feel that there is something missing.. I think it's production sound. Good vocal performance/audio is half of the 'physicality' of what's on screen. Try putting in some of the dialogue and see what happens. And also lose the flat shots previously mentioned, there's no need for that.

Get the reel-stream setup. It records 980p at 24 frames per. I just used it for a film, its pretty good. www.reel-stream.com

Ha! Now's there is going to be two directors named Matthew Bennett. Matthew Bennett has to be the worst name in the world, there's a million of them and there are no big plosive sounds in it until the very end. If you like slow beginnings, long middles and big explosions at the end, choose Matthew Bennett. I'm glad to see that Matthew Bennett is directing... let the best Matthew Bennett win!

The overrated one is Jadorowsky the "Holy Mountain" guy. What a masturbatory baby! Lynch is an icon-creator, though. He's cement. Elephant man IS the toughest film in his ouevre.. you're right.. why the hate by the way?