Alex de Campi

Back to the question at hand, I recall reading on Antville that the flares were in camera - they deliberately used an older model of anamorphic lens that gave those horizontal flares.

A few things to keep in mind: * If this is a low budget video for a not very well known band, there is a chance you will only end up with an audience of about 30 people. This is the consistent problem with this sort of shoot at a low budget level - "oh we'll have a packed club!" ... oh no you won't. * Go look at the club and the lights. They probably have old Par-Cans up with the most brutal, heavy-duty filters you can imagine. Stylistically, is this OK? Or are you shooting a woman singer and want to make her look glamorous? If the latter, assume unless you change all the filters in those Par-Cans, you will have to bring in your own lights...

How do you become a music video director? You hang out at gigs, and have a lot of friends in bands. Or you get lucky here: http://www.radarmusicvideo.com with one of their commissions. Every commission I've got so far has been via a personal friendship (or acquaintance) with the musician... Then you make about 15 music videos for free, get shown in lots of festivals, and become nearly suicidal because you still can't get repped. It takes 5x as long as you think to get to be a director who is paid for what they do - and it takes you to the brink of poverty and beyond. Most people's directing career is financed by Mastercard - seriously. In terms of breaking in, music videos are great because in general your costs are covered and you can experiment with various styles and techniqes in 3-minute bursts to help you find your "own". So you get a lot of time on set and a lot of time learning the ins and outs of production... while you write/search for your first short film or feature screenplay. (Read STORY. No, seriously, shut up. Read McKee's STORY.) I broke into directing from a writing background - I was a published author and screenwriter who had a lot of rock and roll friends. Before I announced to the world that I was a director (I couldn't say it with a straight face for my first five shoots) I spent a year on every film set I could get on as a runner or a camera trainee, from giant features to crappy indie short films straight out of the "worst shoot ever' thread. I learned the basics of lighting, sound, and cinematography. I also had a drama background, so was familiar with the actor's process. Also very importantly, I met a gang of people about my age across all departments and they became my team. They got paid crappy day rates to make low-budget music videos for me and we all rose up together. I'm still learning, but I feel I have a decent grip on my cinematic style now. I know what an Alex de Campi film should look like (er, Circuschrome levels of colour saturation, aggressive framing combined with a certain old-skool European mannerist composition, a more Japanese/Korean pacing...). My intention was to do a couple short films to show this, then my first writer-director feature, but the music video thing is really taken off (I am actually getting well-paid gigs now) and I think I'm about to be attached to someone's Hollywood feature (it's in negotiation). But oh my god, you have to be tough. I've seen directors "quit" after six months (!!!) because The World Has Not Recognised Their Genius. Unfortunately it's only about 10% genius... and 90% being too ornery to quit. So, in short: * Get on set, learn from real people on the job. * Practice directing on things that are not your lovely perfect first short film, because there is a 99% chance your script sucks and you'll make a total hash out of it if you try to do that first and will waste all your money. * Watch every movie you can - old, new, foreign, whatever - and make a list of the shots/techniques you want to steal from them, and think about why you like these shots - how framing, movement, etc helps convey the emotions of the scene. * Learn to edit; it will make you a more honest director. Eventually you will hand the editing over to somebody else who is better at it than you, but by then you will have learned the important lessons of the "get out of jail" cutaways and of how much coverage is too much / not enough. * Here's a free tip: on a low budget set, your brain will shut down because you'll be doing the jobs of four people. This is why you can never have too much preproduction - having storyboards and a clear and sensible shot list schedule for each day of shooting will save your life and your project. Then when you're reduced to a gibbering wreck, you just look at the shot list, point at it, point at the picture of the shot, and the camera department's like, OK, we're good. * Shoot on film at least once, because if nothing else it teaches you the value of rehearsal (for both camera and actor). * Don't give up. Not ever. Keep working & learning all the time and let the rest of the world catch up with you.

Books are only of moderate use - I'm a bit Mamet about books and schools. Getting on set and shadowing another director - making his/her coffee, being a runner, whatever - will teach you so much about how to direct (and more about how not to direct) than a book will ever teach you. There are a couple books that are not how-tos, but teach you a lot about directing - one is Michael Caine's book on acting which is hilarious and oh-so-true; the other is the Walter Murch / Michael Ondaatje book, THE CONVERSATIONS, about editing and stories and all sorts of things. GREAT book.

Try advertising on shootingpeople.org (especially the music video / film music email) and/or Mandy. You should be able to find a composer; there always seem to be a bunch looking for credits work and 6m is not a huge undertaking.

Yay! Joined.

And by the way the two classic films that do this sort of shot in a lo-fi way are North By Northwest (end sequence at Mt Rushmore) and the Powell & Pressbeger film about the nuns in the Himalayas, that wasn't shot in the Himalayas but in Pinewood with back projection after the DP went out to Himalayas and took photos*... Black Narcissus? *I might be mis remembering this story.

Or you can build foreground rocks and just back-project the plates of the landscape... which essentially means you do it all in camera and can adjust your lighting in studio to make sure it all works.

Superspeed because that edition of the SRII will go up to 150fps, creating very slow slo-mo. Most standard film cameras will go only to 50fps unmodified. I do a lot of music videos so I think a superspeed is GREAT!, because we do a lot of overcranking and undercranking on mvs. Again, your style may not require it, but it's certainly a nice to have.

Ray, if you can swing the extra cash, this is a super-sweet deal: http://tinyurl.com/593eud (Arri SR2 superspeed for $8k) The SRII is a bit of a tank compared with the Aaton or the Eclair (which is only an issue if you're all about the handheld) but there are all the spare parts in the world for it and service is easy. You'd still need glass, FF, and a video assist plus support etc. But it's got a good variable speed motor, extension viewfinder, mags and batts. The video assist thing, it really depends how you're going to use the camera. If you want to rent it/yourself, you need a video assist. If you're working with a bunch of different directors, you need a video assist. If you mainly work with one director and he or she is cool to just stand next to you, you can probably do without. It's a fairly easy add-on later anyhow. There's another SRII (not highspeed) up too, with various extras in his other auctions: http://tinyurl.com/6g3a6y . The videotap he's also selling is currently a REALLY good deal. Good luck. S16 is fun.

A lot of major festivals won't take anything longer than 15 minutes, including credits. And really, if you're going through the angst and cash sink of a short film, you want it in festivals. So do your homework and check entry details at Cannes, Tribeca, Berlin and Sundance. I think Venice is invitation only... but those are the festivals that really matter. (You could argue Edinburgh if you only want to work in the UK, too...) My gut instinct says 25 minutes = too long.

You can always call up Decode (http://www.decodehire.co.uk/ ) and ask if you could speak to some of their clients who rent the Red regularly.

Paid gig?

Wow, no love for Henri Decaë?

I really enjoyed WANTED, as a big popcorn boomfest where I could turn my brain off for two hours and watch stuff explode. The comic it was adapted from is so much worse written than the movie, the screenwriters did an amazing job actually. But best conventional hollywood film - DIE HARD for an actioner, probably, and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE for a comedy.

I have a dirty, dirty love for Depression-era screwball comedies, such as - and yes, this is the Captain Obvious example - the Thin Man, shot on secondhand sets in something ridiculous like 10 days for MGM. Lord, how we'd all squeak if we were asked to do that by a big studio now. So perhaps we're better off than we think. I've always found it amusing that only when we're (as a nation) fat and happy we make movies like Night of the Hunter and Angel Face*. Hm, I wonder what it would look like if we plotted David Lynch's film career to US GDP. Sorry, that was totally off the subject. Audience psychology fascinates me. *trivia: circa 18 days from Preminger first getting script to wrapping the film.

Filmmaking is at the same time an art and a craft, and it's facing pressure on both sides of that. Less people want to pay for the art, if it's just going to be seen on youtube. And digital cameras' general ease of use and accessability are making the craft seem less important. (I am not saying that no craft is involved in digital cinematography, I am just saying that HD is the bass guitar of the camera family. You can do pretty OK just by picking it up and fooling around. To do really excellent you have to learn craft. Sadly, a lot of people are happy with "pretty OK".) I think there's also a generational issue at work. About every 20 years folks sort of look around and go, holy cow, I don't know any of these people making films any more. All the people you came up with, they're doing something else or living in a different city. And the kids are busy working with the people THEY are coming up with. Often on digital cameras. And heaven forbid if you don't fit in an easy niche work-wise. Is it ever easy, though? I always thought that half of surviving as a freelancer was just being too damn ornery to give up. There's always some variety of the Stupid to fight, in order to make the Pretty.

The name is Serhij Piskunov - that ring any bells? Frustratingly, he doesn't take escrow.com - if he did, I'd buy those lenses in a second just to have as spares/seconds.

I want PL mounts, though! Not putting them on a commiecam, putting them on an deutsche-cam.

Hi Freya, nice to meet you! I'm always so amazed when people have seen my work; I feel that my stuff is so niche that I'm generally off everyone's radar. Do you have a link to your work? I'd like to get acquainted with what you do. I agree with all you say. The IIC would definitely work for a live action video I have in the pipe; my silent short and probably my other short. I have no problem working on the second short MOS/italian style - as you know, my style is quirky enough that a little bit of floating sync shouldn't really be an issue - I'm not exactly known for naturalism, anyway. (Yes, I will record a scratch track on set.) Victor's camera is a great deal but at the moment I really want to put a package together that's under $10,000 including glass so it's not the camera for me. I haven't actually shot here in the US yet (I'm in production on about 3 animations right now, though, so am keeping busy) but I'm really itching to. Possibly back in London in August shooting my biggest mv yet - mid teens £ budget which is like all the money in the world. We can shoot more than five rolls! Woo!

I am entranced by these: http://tinyurl.com/67fhzj . Look at all the pretty glass! Want! Two questions, however. 1. Has anybody dealt with this seller before? Has good feedback and obv I'll ask to put it through an escrow service but it would also reassure me if any of you had bought lenses from him before. 2. I'm looking to use these with a 2-perf PL mount 35mm camera (and maybe eventually a standard 4-perf). However the listing says "All lenses except 18 and 22 mm cover Super 35 (4-perf) format." Does that mean they are anamorphic and thus would not work with 2-perf or standard 4-perf? Wise people, please explain.

Yeah, that's the heart of the debate. Arri IIC for fun (and yeah, I've seen the Orange production pics, they do look like the schneiders on a turret), or drop another $10,000 and get something I can use for the shorts and a putative feature. The thing about the kinor 35H is, as you say, if I decide to get into that league of spending a used BL3 or 4 makes a lot more sense. My instinct is still to go with the IIC with a PL hard mount and see how I like shooting like a big grownup on 35. Question: if you're shooting 2perf, do you actually end up with effectively a much higher speed camera (assuming you've got a decent variable speed motor*)? Say the top rate of the camera is (I'm choosing a random number here) 54 at 4-perf. As the film is going through the gate at about half the speed it would be with 4 perf, does that mean you can get up to circa 100 frames/second 2-perf on a 54 frames/second 4-perf camera? Or is that voodoo mathematics? * this obv doesn't apply to the IIC but might to a BL.

Yeah, the more I look at it, the more G'Day Bruce's IIC looks like the right camera... even if I only use it on 3-4 productions I have the feeling it'll pay for itself. Still, now to decide about lenses. After using superspeed primes it's hard to go back to a zoom or slow primes. If I'm ever shooting in LA and the project warrants it, I'll take you up on that Kinor rental offer. I do want to play with a commiecam, I just don't want to be committed to something that's likely to be $10-15k in cost to own.

Just to add (I co-own a late model LTR 54, which I love) - your package is missing FF and video assist, which will cost you another $3,000 at the very cheapest to add on. If you get the camera, get a decent video assist, not the crappy B&W one - unless you want to spend half your day chasing your director away from the eyepiece. Also the LTR is not completely silent - it's very quiet, but not silent. If you're shooting closeups in an enclosed space, you may need to do some ADR. (Somewhere I saw a dB comparison across the major S16 cameras but now I can't seem to find it.) Tim is right, aaton to arri bayonet mounts are cheap and plentiful, they cost about $100 give or take. We went through this saga a year ago. It's a hard situation, because you either get good Aatons sold body-only (a pain in the ass if you're buying for a specific project), or you get full packages which can run to a fair amount of money. We paid about $20k a year ago for the LTR, which included a full set of glass (4 zeiss primes, zeiss and canon zooms, and a shift/tilt we've never used), a gorgeous o'connor fluid head, b&w video assist, and all mags and batteries - was in excellent condition and had been lovingly maintained by Abel in NY for many years. You may want to wait until one comes along with lenses; it generally does seem cheaper to buy a package with glass included.

I need to know more about the commiecam in order to decide whether it makes sense for me. Clearly a lot of people around here love it, though.