Yutine Fung

"Brought up in suburban Sydney, he left Australia at 18 to join the merchant navy. After three years travelling the world on a Norwegian ship, he came ashore again, and lived in India, Israel and Thailand. He then decided to learn Mandarin, and gravitated to Taiwan, where the courses were cheaper than in Hong Kong. (He's now so fluent, he has to say his phone number out loud in Mandarin before he can work out what it is in English.)

 

In Taiwan, he fell in with a group of creatively minded people, one of whom asked him to film an ethnomusicological documentary he was making. He won a prize for his first 35mm film, Edward Yang's That Day on the Beach, at which point he realised he was a professional cinematographer. "That scared the poop out of me. We were just playing around before. So I ran away to France to try and learn competence, and I realised it was all bullshit. You only need a little bit of technical knowledge. Most people can get it in a couple of months. The training of the eye is the real job, and that takes forever."

Doyle was a photographer before. He certainly knew all the issues like aperture, focal length, color temperature, composition, film stocks, etc. I think he's a cinematographer who cares more about intuition than techniques. If people talk to him like filmmaking is all about techniques and gears, I guess he'll fall asleep :lol:

Got the footage today. Everything comes out fine...such a relief

Wings of Desire is one of my all-time-favorite film. I think the transition from Black/White to color is creative and really impressive. To me, the color world implies the emotional human world. In the beginning, we see that angels are unable to feel anything even though they can read human's mind. Black/White may suggest the cold and isolated world the angels are in. So when the angel descends to be a human, he finally sees the colorful, emotional side of the human world.

would cinematography and photography majors most likely have some classes together like "intro to lighting", or something like that?

While I was at RISD(great school for photography major), I saw they had a lighting course for their photography major.

But at my school, there's no lighting course at all. There're basic cinematography and advance cinematography just for film/cinematography major students.

Only if you're shooting 100' rolls. The 2" core along with the exposed film is too wide to fit back inside the canister it came in. I was lucky to have a 400' canister on me the last time I went from a 100' daylight spool to a 2" core in the takeup.

You're right at this point. I had a difficult time to put the exposed film back to the canister last time...

In the real business, will people want a DP who has a solid photography background or someone who has a lot of experiences on set (ie. AC, Gaffer, Grip, etc.)? I think I'm a pretty good photographer. But at a school where everyone emphasizes experiences so much, people just don't trust in me because I don't have enough experiences on set. :huh:

Doyle needs to hook up with some top-rate visual directors.

Totally agree. I find Lady In the Water really boring... ;)

Anyone can introduce the so-called "Maine's Workshop"? It sounds like an awesome experience. Do they have any website I can check out?

Hey Julia, I think that depends on which school you go to. I'm majoring in Cinematography, and my school actually suggests us to take photography class. Therefore, I'm now a film student taking both film and photography classes.

Btw, I don't think anyone can be a good cinematographer without a passion in photography :-)

Thank you for all these useful suggestions. I had sent out the film to the lab yesterday. Let's see how it comes out...

I loaded(in the same way) and shot another 100 ft of film the other day, and everything went successfully.

Jonathan, do you suggest putting a spool instead of a core in the takeup?

Apparently the camera jammed in the middle of the shoot. When I opened the take-up side of the magazine, the film was twisted and folded. The film was stuck in the gate and the sprocket holes were broken.

I was doing a test shoot today with a Arri SR1 camera. I loaded a 100ft Fuji negative film on spool and everything seemed to be good initially.

However, when we had shot about 80ft of the film, the camera started to sound wrong. So I put the magazine inside the changing bag. And when I opened the take-up side, the film was already messed up. I finally managed to round the film to the take-up core, cut it off and put it back into the original box.

Now my questions are:

1) I still couldn't understand what's causing this. The film went on pretty well in the beginning, and the take-up side failed to take up the film at the last moment...

2) Is the exposed film affected? Is it possible to develop the 80ft exposed film?

I'm thinking the opposite. My photography teacher gave me an account of how his film students tend to check out lighting kits for a photographic shoot, which he found overlighted. He actually suggested us to use only one or two light.

I'm a good still photographer, but I couldn't say I'm a good DP(not at this point). 'Cos as a still photographer, you usually have a direct control on whatever you shoot. However, a good DP needs to work well with his team(director, production designer, editor, AC, etc.) And there're so many things a DP needs to know in addition to photograph the moving subjects.

Btw, Chris Doyle was invited to be a DP when he was taking photographs on a street in Taiwan. But this's an extremely rare case...

Why do you say Doyle refuses to teach techniques?

I had just read through this thread and saw Schneider wrote Doyle "apparently hates to talk about the craft."

I don't know whether this's true or not, but I'd still love to apprentice with Doyle if there's such an opportunity...

My top three are

Chris Doyle (He is the guy who introduced me to cinematography. Even though he refuses to teach any techniques, I think it's still worthy to see how he works)

Vittorio Storaro

Robby Muller