Tom Shirm

After much reading into the routes to becoming a cinematographer, a repeating theme seems to be beginning work as an assistant in a rental house. Is this route still a viable route into work on features? does anyone have recommendations of particular rental houses where they've worked at? Also, if they are supposed to be a gateway to work on features, how lenient are the rental houses on you taking such work? thanks in advance!

Having finally made the decision to make this film publicly available online i would love some critisicms of the work It's a re-imagining of the classic seaside tale of Punch and Judy, which i wrote myself for my major project from a television production degree at Bournemouth University. cheers

This is the first film that i'm really proud of making. Shot on a DVX100 with the cheapo DOF adaptor of ebay, which was suprisingly good. You do lose alot of light, and it vignettes most of the picture, but it certainly gives a style to stuff. Would love to know you guys thoughts http://www.vimeo.com/2769717

Are there any decent hdv cameras? I wouldn't want to shoot for 2 weeks with a little camcorder like the hv30s!

I'm recently been re-watching six feet under in it's entirety (Christmas sales!). Great stuff, but they often use this wierd shot. It's a two shot, normally with a large distant between characters in the foreground and background. The thing that's interesting about the shot is the depth of frame is quite shallow on each of the characters face or details, yet both are sharpnin focus. The blocking looks to tight for it to be green screen work, but I cannot think of any other explanation, save some sort of magical split lens. Has anyone one else noticed this? Thoughts?

Long time reader, first time poster I am a Student at bournemouth university, and have huge aspirations of becoming a cinematographer in the real world (away from student films!) and my first foray into this is a microbudget feature length documentary. The basic premise is that a DJ friend lent a life times collection of rarities and promo records to a friend who lives in Georgia. This was not a problem until conflict erupted between Georgia and Russia, causing the friend, in a moment of fear, to flee the country, leaving this box of treasure behind. The documentary therefore follows the two friends driving from bournemouth to Georgia across Europe, and the Eastern block, with their strange outlook on the world outside of their hometowns, and the development of their friendship being the protagonist of the piece. We are currently in the proccess of developing the film's package to sell to either investors or distributors (highly reccomend 'The Film finance Handbook http://www.fundyourfilm.info/) And have got to the stage of working out the budget. Therefore we are trying to work out which would be the best and most finacially viable format and, therefore, equipement to shoot this on? DV isn't really a possibility, as this would be hard to sell or distribute at the end of the project, so we were thinking more along the lines of HD, as it would be nice for the shoot to be a two camera shoot. As a rough estimate so far, we are looking to spend around the £25,000 mark. Would it be better to rent or buy? Has anyone done a similiar project to this? What sort of issues did you guys have to deal with, especially in the pre production stages? Cheers for your help in advance