Remi Adefarasin

I love the Minolta range & cried when they closed down. Fortunately Kenco bought their factory & I got a Kenco KCM-3100. Very happy with it. Case is very slightly different to the Minolta but everything else is identical. Remi

Awards and gongs don't necessarily mean that a person is super-normal. Douggie however is a super hero of our industry. Brave and innovative. If only us ?younger? men would follow his lead. The first time I met him I was an aspiring camera assistant and thought I didn?t have the personal polish to ever be a DP. Well maybe I don?t but he inspired me to persevere, as all you need is a passionate interest and of course luck. This honour goes to a man who deserves it.

David is right once again. I didn't try to match Elizabeth but to follow the story. Karl, If you film a queen in a palace it doesn't matter how you light it or frame it, it will always look the same. I did get very expressionistic with some scenes but they hit the floor. Elizabeth was a grittier look & older stocks helped that. I love most newer stocks. I'm presently in Australia shooting The Pacific which is a companion to Band of Brothers. Very different story, different photographic approach but hey, it looks like guys in khaki shooting each other again.

Dear Adam, Replying to your points. We only had Steadicam on the days we booked it. Never used it to save time. I was constantly trying to break down the image & used nets, lighting & camera movement to this effect. Hard to have an invisible camera on a Kapur film. The horse ride was done with two cameras on remote heads at the same time for continuity. The track was very bumpy & the stabilization ironed out the bumps but that?s why it looks unusual. The dungeon scene with Walsingham?s brother was the director?s decision to only see one eye. The intended tension got broken when we cut to a clear shot & then back to the deliberately obscured one. Locations didn?t cause us to chop off ankles. Some of the frames allowed more headroom to give a sense of immortality. I?m sorry that you saw a bad set or prints. Spanish scenes were deliberately graded yellow/green. The whole crew worked very hard on this film and I?m extremely grateful for their effort. Remi

Peter is a master and did very well with this film despite a small budget. Very intelligent all round. Don't read IMDB or any review before you see it as it will spoil the movie. One of the best looking films this year IMO.

Don't knock baby oil till you've tried it. I was a doubter too. Only round the edges mind. The centre stays totally dry.

Try using baby oil. Pre-cut your gel first or it will get messy. Then use a tissue to smear the oil around the windows edge. 3/4" smear. You don't need to go right to the edge. Then squeegee the air bubbles out. It works real neat & cleans up a treat with some tissues. Remi

I love the look of that film. Really interesting shots that last almost a mag & never get dull. I love the blocking of the shots. I met the cinematographer, Yorgos Arvanitis, at Camerimage and he told me the whole film was shot with one lens! A 35mm. I feel sad that I will never be allowed to shoot a film with that purity & passion. Glad you saw it.

I use a 1/4 minus green to add a touch of magenta to the 1/2 to full CTO I use. If you look at a winter sunrise it is a shade pink. Remi

I personally hate the colors on the clapper sticks. When I see the rushes I judge neutral by the slate. I know the graders do too. During early tests it really is worth getting fabric samples that you can shoot & send bits off to the lab. It's truly astounding how different man made fabrics can look when photograped.

When I saw the film I was annoyed by the flashback as it seemed out of keeping with the style of the film. Funny thing is that it?s now the enduring moment of the film in my minds eye. The beauty for me is that it was both the wife?s mental image of her husbands? demise and Ennis? imagination (fashioned by childhood memories) brought together in the same moment. Now, if I?m right, that?s filmmaking. Happy New Year from London.

Dave, I've tried it by eye but it doesn't make day look like night. There are a lot of things you need to do with day for night photography. Keeping the sky out, keeping scene backlit by the sun, putting massive sources in windows to simulate failing light etc. What worries me most though is calculating the exposure. A polar is 1 2/3 stops okay. Two is 3 1/3 in theory but that depends on the rotation. You can achieve almost no light transmission.

I?ve had a Canon EOS for years so it seemed natural to use a Canon to use the lenses I already own. I have a 10D and very happy with it. There are good cheaper Canon SLR?s available. I find it very helpful to set at 1/50th second and use the same ISO & aperture setting as the film to get a rough pre-vis. I agree it?s not total film look but very close. I use the adjustable Kelvin settings (never auto). I?ve never had the time on set to print out an adjusted print for the Lab so I?ve tended to Photoshop at home and e-mail. Yes I know its down & dirty but it?s a guide of intent. Kodak?s KLMS is wonderful but not free which is a shame. Another way of pre-vising is to roll your hand into a fist & looking through the hole. I use this every day. I saw a still guy with a Hasselblad with digital back connected to his laptop for an instant image. This sounds like the Nikon software. I heard that it would be available for Canon cameras by June 05. I think it was called Phase One Capture-one. Load of $ probably but it looked very good. He could zoom in instantly to check focus etc. Designed for still guys really.

Beethoven was deaf in his final creative years and that never held him back. http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Bio/BiographyDe...Creativity.html I'm sure I heard of an Italian cinematographer who had his team describe the location & shot before he went on to explain the lighting & framing. He had gone totaly blind. Use your weakness to make you stronger & more original. Cinematographers should use their brain more than their eyes anyway.

I have to say I agree with Elhanan Matos. Everything is very expensive in England so it's PC for me. Cheaper, very powerful, & a multitude of programs. Using a Toshiba widescreen M30 with XP SP2. I installed the free Zonealarm & AntiVir and not a single problem. Remi

I'm shooting single camera at the moment. What works for me on many films is to have a spare body as an emergency back-up. Then on those days that you have a stunt or large crowd you bring in extra crew to man that camera and others you might need. I like shooting single camera not because of lighting but because you think more about what you want to say and devise the shot & staging for that end. With two cameras it?s often cover cover and you get to the cutting room discovering you?ve covered the story but not told it. Having said that I often shoot with two cameras for the whole shoot but many scenes are single camera for the above reasons. EPK footage is never shot on film these days. Remi

I hate filming in cars because you quickly loose control of the look of your film. Towing the car means you loose more control. You can?t get near the actors. You might have to mount your camera on the bonnet/hood. If you shoot from the towing vehicle the image is often bouncy. Try and use a low loader or low insert vehicle so the action car & camera are on the same platform. What can be exciting about car interiors for real (rather than green screen) are the random reactive effects you get. I mean shadows from trees or buildings, reflections from glass or occasional bounced moving fill from other objects like trucks or buildings. I try not to over light as this would loose these natural bonuses. I do tend to have a soft frontal fill using HMI through frames or often HMI bounced of Poly/Beadboard fixed to a stable support like two 4x4 reflectors. If using a low loader or insert vehicle it can look good getting two of the team to randomly swipe a 2? shiny silver board across the actors faces. I?m talking of the 1½? foam filled construction insulation board with a soft silver on both sides. Polar?s do help and using a circular one allows the video tap to work properly. Your idea of using white fabric on the laps is one I use too and also consider taping white fabric down the rear of the front seats. Even if there is no one in the back the car will get a swell of light when the sun hits the seat. I love seeing reflections in the glass. If you have a grip team, an old trick is to have an ND frame made up that is wood or aluminium strengthened. This is mounted horizontally above the windscreen and would be either .6 or .9 acrylic ND. This allows natural light to pass through to the actors but deadens the reflection of the sky whilst retaining some natural reflections. It has to be wider than the glass unless your going tight. It?s helpful having a remote iris control so you can gently adjust aperture when going into different brightness?s. Using this approach allows me to shoot extra angles (e.g. side shots, parallel tracking shots) without a giant mismatch of the look. Take care with the Polar on the side windows as these are mostly zone toughened and will show nasty patterns. Most windshields are laminated and therefore fine. I hate filming in cars!

Congratulations David, I hope your enthusiasm for cinematography never wanes and that you continue to enlighten us with your intelligent posts. Remi