Kitao Sakurai

Hey all, I'm gonna be shooting a music video coming up on super 16. I've been wanting to try a skip bleach combined with a pull process. I'd like the final image to to have a kind of blueish, sinister, contrasty, crunchy highlights, but not to be too overly grainy. Has anyone tried this? I'm thinking of the pull process so that I could expose the neg slightly more normally and not have it be overly dense. basically, I'd like to have a very funky, organic, unexpected quality to the image, which is what I had gotten before with skip bleaching 35mm '79. Has anyone ever tried this? any advice? again, as it's for a music video, I won't be needing to go to print or anything... this is kind of a point of inspiration - I love the messed-up look of the Anthony Mandler video for The Killers: anybody know how they got that look? I just love the fogged or flashed look to the performance scenes... thanks!!! Kitao kitaosakurai.com

Hey everybody! my new site and reel is up! tell me what you think! A couple things on it don't work quite right - one of the music videos and one of the shorts don't work, but I'm working on getting that fixed. Enjoy! kitaosakurai.com

I recently purchased a canon over a Beaulieu purely for functional reasons. I'm about to go into production on a doc, and I'm approaching the shooting of it in a partially run and gun/film collage style and partially in a traditional, old-skool, film-doc style. I'll also be shooting super 16 and standard 16. I did some tests with the Canon, and I was not only utterly blown away with the stunning quality of the image, but with the ease of use. I'm sure that a beaulieu could get me equally nice images, but for the kind of camera I need (gotta be able to shoot sync sound at 24fps) the canon feels more run-and-gunnable. In terms of image quality, IMHO, the main factor (besides good shooting, of course) is how you get the film onto tape (if you want it to live on tape, that is). From what I've seen, if you can afford a really decent TRANSFER of the film using an actual telecine with a super 8 gate and a competent colorist, Beaulieus and Canons can both look utterly mindblowingly fantastic. For me, I made a choice based not on which camera might have a minute edge in terms of softness in low light, but on wether or not I could whip the camera out and grab something, as opposed to futz with this battery and cable and metering it and etc etc... If I were working in a different shooting style I might choose the Beraulieu. I think the answer is that there is no "this camera is concretely better" answer. If you have the resources to properly transfer your film and put it through a workflow that will preserve the raw, beautiful quality inherent in super 8, both cameras can be really great. I'm pretty sure Guy Madden used all Canon super 8 cameras on his newest feature...

Yeah, I just shot a super 35 short (2.35) with the cooke S2s for similar considerations. The director and I both wanted this very old-school anamorphic quality in both the mise-en-scene and the lighting, but, like you, there was no way we could swing ACTUAL anamorphic lenses for budget reasons. I had used this one set of re-housed S2/S3s which I love, and was happy to discover that they cover super. I think that these lenses, shot pretty open, (I shot the entire movie at a 2.8 or thereabouts) has a very anamorphic feel. I didn't actually go for any flares, because they wouldn't have fit the film at all (the film was mostly these bergman-esque master shots)... But they have a great "period" anamorphic quality... I don't know why more people don't shoot more super 2.35 with these older cookes, it's just so nice. And we even tried to be really period in how we lit it. We barred ourself from using ANY kinos or HMIs whatsoever, just a bunch of big tungsten fixtures that we rigged into these old-school bounce-light rigs.. And lemmie tell you, the quality of light and image you get from a 5k smashing into bead board and then diffused through a layer of opal or frost, and then shot with like a 70mm S2 prime... man... SOOO creamy and seductive, it all just "works..." good luck!!! kitao

Hey there! Very nice work. I think what it does best, really, is showcase your very specific eye. I don't really love those "I can do every kind of shot/film/mood/genre" type of reel, because they don't really give me a sense of what the DP is thinking or what she is concerned with, visually. As a director (being that I work as a DP), I would want to work with somebody with very strongly defined notions of what they want to see up on screen, and I think that your reel appeals to (hopefully) others who want the work of a DP with "big ideas".... Couple minor things. A couple shots bothered me not because they were badly lit or composed but simply because they screamed video - towards the beginning, we see a group of people at a table in front of a window, I'd consider losing that, and I can't remember where it comes but a very high-key shot of a black guy looking to the side, which seemed very "video hot" to me, and didn't really otherwise contribute to the reel. Minor things, though.. I think you should take them out only because the rest of the work is so strong... Can you talk just a bit about your background? where do you live/work? You mentioned the work of some very interesting DPs. Would you list some films that are close to you, or that you're enjoying/taking insparation from at this moment? cheers, kitao

Hunh, great news then! Yeah, I really like the soft, bendy quality of these lenses - much more "anamorphic" looking than superspeeds. Thanks!

Hi all, I'm about to shoot a short in a few weeks, and the idea is we'll be shooting super 35 4 perf composed for 2:35. I've shot stuff with this set of cooke S2/S3 primes which I absolutely adore, and I'd love to use them for this project, but I'm not sure if they'll cover super 35 2:35. My rental house says that they PROBABLY will cover but I don't think they've tried. I need to test, I know, but I'm just wondering if anybody has had a definitive experience with this setup before - either "yes, it worked beautifully, no problems" or "It was terrible! ruinied the production"... etc. My instinct is that it'll probalby work - the 2:35 is pretty narrow, versus if I wanted to get 1:33 full aperture, in which case edge-to-edge would probalby be a problem. Thanks in advance everybody!!! kitao

Hey, What you want is already out there, actually: http://www.duallcamera.com/catalog/index.shtml This is a rental from Duall camera here in New York, where I rent a lot of stuff from. They have converted several Beaulieu super 8 cameras to take PL-mount lenses (!!!!) as well as adding crystal sync bases. Additionally, these cameras will accept rods for matte box/follow focus... I think they even have video tap too... I do not work for them, to let you know... The 16/9 thing it does not have, but If I were you I'd just crop in post... 1.33 to 1.78 isn't THAT bad... Duart just got a super 8 gate for their Ursula telecine, and I did a supervised TK onto digi of plusx and trix stuff that I had shot at 24p... Man, it. was. BEAUTIFUL!!! a good transfer really makes all the difference. I think the optics in a lot of the good consumer s8 cameras are totally fine... I was using a cannon xls, and it was RAZOR sharp. I think a lot of what people blame on bad optics is really bad transfer or bad projection... Some of this stuff, if you saw it on tv, you'd think it was 35mm shot in the late 50's, no kidding. I'll try to put some frame grabs off of the stuff once I digitize it. kitao

Hey guys, Great work, I thought the second one - the black and white one - was especially well realized. I loved the quality of the images. I'm curious as to how much of the "look" you did in post, and how much you did while shooting. You say that on your home-made mini35 rig you are using sigma and nikon 35 still lenses and a macro that "isn't perfect" in that it blurs the edges of the frame slightly. I found this bluring - as well as the vignetting (again, was that post or in camera?) - to be one of my favorite visual aspects. It was very "organic" feeling, and worked perfectly with the shifting focal plane and really very smart hand-held shooting. Well done, Kitao Sakurai

Alan Clarke, a British director who made work mostly for the BBC in the 80's (and who sadly never became popular in the US) has made some really astonishing no-dialogue films. I say no dialogue and not silent because the sound design becomes a really essential component of viewing his movies. His greatest film (in my opinion) and one of my personal favorite films of all time is "Elephant." Not to be confused with the Gus Van Sant picture of the same title. Van Sant's "Elephant" is actually an homage of sorts to Clarke's version. The floating, roaming steadicam shots, the 1:33 aspect ratio, the "disembodied" narrative viewpoint, the treatment of extreme violence and it's placement in society along with a host of other stylistic and conceptual ideas were taken pretty directly from Alan Clarke's "Elephant," which was made in the early 80's, deals with the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland (as opposed to Columbine) and is only 37 minutes long. To me, this film is pure cinema. Not pure form or style, but pure cinema in the best sense - he wrestles with a subject that's both inherently political and topical and age-old at the same time and manages to create a succinct, laser-like statement, which, in it's strength, refuses to take sides. All with no dialogue, no narrative development, no "characters" really to speak of, and a really really strict structure. Having spent a little time in Northern Ireland myself, I can appreciate how crazily hard it would be to create ANY kind of statement or piece of art that could somehow deal with such a complicated and brutal situation, let alone with SUCH grace and strength as Alan Clarke's "Elephant."

Hey, thanks. Those black stripes were actually put there because when I shot with this reflex bolex super-16 "hr-16" (I think..) the filter-tray slot was dangling open for a few shots and fogged the extreme right side of the image in really strange strips. I thought that it was too distracting and "mistake-like" even though I liked the idea of side-fog like things... so in the on-line I just added these black vertical grads to both sides to cover the fogging and balance out the shots. I tried curved vignettes, but they looked too obvious and less interesting. In the end I think those grads improved some shots, like the opening one in the reel. I'm glad that light leak happened. That soldier short film is a short called "Virgin Red," which I co-produced in addition to having photographed. You can go to it's site: virginredmovie.com You need flash 7 I think, but you can view stills, "making-of" things and pretty extensive content. We just did the TK a couple days ago so the film - or clips - should be up pretty soon. And yeah, I hear you about the last half. I had wanted to include the 'slower' stuff at the end, as it was the first big 35 short that I had directed, and because it shows a pretty different tone from the rest of the stuff... but it is indeed slower and less immediately dynamic. Different people react to the inclusion of that last stuff in pretty different ways. I'm thinking of maybe cutting a 2 minute "more dynamic" version, possibly. What do you folks think? I mean, what does this reel say to you, if anything? What would you think as a director? thanks! kitao

Hey, thanks a lot! In answer, that stuff at the beginning, with the very saturated colors and black and white stuff was shot with a super 16 Bolex, actually. I shot the entire video (for this Japanese pop thing) on this steadycam-ish flight stick and with one lens the entire time, an old (I think 7.5mm) Kinoptik. I love those lenses. In some of the shots you see this beautiful flame-like flare that occurs at the bottom of the frame which I really like, and upon closer examination of the footage I found to be caused by the image of the sun illuminating the clouds... it's hard to describe how it works, but kinoptics feel more grungy and organic to me than zeiss superspeeds or whatever... I used two stocks - Ektachrome, which I had cross-processed (for the color stuff) and vision 2 500T 18 for the bw stuff (which I made bw in telecine). I also liked the look of the car interior stuff. I worked with a crew of 2 people for that one, so we had more freedom to go anywhere and move with the sun, basically. The second thing - the 2:35 war stuff was 35mm 500T '79, which, upon extensive testing, was found to respond better to pushing and skip-bleaching than '59 or '18. It was shot with the beautiful cooke S2/S3 lenses. It was composed for 1:85 but I put a 2:35 matte on it just for my reel, cause I think it looks cool. The stuff with the woman and man in the bedroom was push process 1 stop and the war stuff was full skip bleach. The other music vid. stuff following that was all super 16, a mix of '18 and the really really nice vision 2 250D. All of the extreme color "looks" were created mostly in telecine. The last thing (the only thing that I didn't shoot myself, but wrote and directed) was 35mm vision1 200T with zeiss superspeed primes. Thanks for the intrest. best, kitao

Hi! Thanks a lot! Glad you liked it. To answer the question about the lighting package (if I can remember correctly): 1 4x4 kino 2 4x2 kino 1 1x1 foot kino 2 1200w HMI PARs a couple 1 k's... 10 or so stands, bags, etc.. a few flags, a few nets and scrims a china ball a putt-putt genny that never managed to work one of those big RV's that served as the dressing room/living quarters of most of cast, as well as a source of (not much) power to run a couple lights off of when we couldn't steal power from somewhere... That was pretty much it. Midway through production we even lost the g&e van, so we had to stick everything in the luggage compartments of the RV, making it like this omni-film-production-vehicle. Crazy production, but a lot of fun... As for the compression of the trailer, I didn't do it, but I know a sorensen or sorensen-like compression program was used to squeeze it and make it look good. I don't know the exact program, but I did use a program called Squeeze to compress my reel which I actually just posted (kitaosakurai.com). I think it's important to use one of these programs because they make the footage look better (and be much much smaller) than just posting a full-rez DV compression quicktime file or whatever... hope this helps kitao

Leo, "The late lamented 7361 B/W reversal print film was a great camera film. Use it with an uncoated lens and get something that looks like snapshots from the 30s. Quite sharp and amazing latitude for reversal. 5360 autopositive is still around and gives interesting results. Estar base version has BH-1866 perfs." Could you expand upon on this a little more? I'd be very interested in trying to shoot on a bw print stock like this. Would the current version of 61 be 02? Do you think this would compare? If so, as a starting point for testing, what were you rating the 61 at? And what results have you achieved with the autopositive film? best, kitao

Hey everybody, Here's my new reel. It's sort of a cross between a music video reel and a narrative reel. The first thing on it I directed and shot, the second thing (the 2.35 one) I produced and shot, and the rest I just shot, except for the thing at the end, which I directed. Hope you enjoy! here it is: kitaosakurai.com

Thanks for your post and for your words, but most of what you commented on, re: the structure and pacing of the trailer, I don't really have control over as the DP... I shot this film, but I didn't cut it...

In case anybody is interested, here is the link to the new, extended trailer to the Transformations feature. It's maybe 2X as long as the previous one. So you know, all of the footage went through Magic Bullet (or is it silver bullet? I can't remember the name of the program, but it's an after-effects plug-in). All the best, Kitao http://www.transformationsthemovie.com/tra...tions_m480.html

"Also, one problem I had with mounting rods to the XL-2 was that the adapter plate precluded you from mounting the camera to the quick-release tripod plate. And you can't directly mount it to the dovetail plate because it drops down below the front of the dovetail slot and you can't meet the plate to the slot. How did you work around this? Or did you shoot the entire thing on-the-shoulder?" Tim, I'm not totally sure what you mean by this - are you saying that you used some kind of rod system that attached under the camera - but that wasn't the P&S system? With the P&S, the rods are built into adapter/camera support itself (the adapter screws into the camera and the XL mount, so that the bottom of the adapter is what you are mounting any support system into). I've never had any trouble mounting it to a quick release or a dovetail. It sounds like you maybe had a bad experience with some other purely rod-mounting system. The cost to rent a set of superspeeds? Well, you would try to get a quote with the adapter included, as well as all of the support/camera stuff you would need... I've found it to be in the range of five, six hundred bucks, I think.... Including the camera body, so you could expect to spend one to two hundred less than that, if you already had an XL2. Ah, yeah, the EZ rig... The last time I had used the EZ rig was during a shoot on a rooftop in New Jersey during the wintertime, and then it was great - I had a 150mm cooke S4 on the P&S and had to shoot take after take of this Reggaeton group performing. The rig worked very well, and kept me very warm because the body mount was so thick... This summer, though, there is no way I could have used the EZ rig... It was just so hot I would have passed out from heat stroke, I think. The rig hadn't actually been picked up for me to use for the first few days of the shoot, so after the first day or two I said forget it with that big rig... it just wouldn't have worked... I think it would be just plain scary in humid conditions over 90 degrees. Instead of using the rig, then, you just have to be really tight with your camera crew to make sure you never have to hold the camera a second longer than you need to, if you're doing a lot of handheld stuff. Common sense in the film world, but I could imagine a lot of people moving up from having done mostly dv stuff to the P&S rig and being taken off guard by the weight. You have to use the same protocol as if you were shooting with a moderate super 16 camera, say... That said, though, I'm a really big fan of bungee cam systems. I used one for the first time this summer, and I think that they're really swell. It's a length of speedrail fixed onto a dolly onto two junior stands so you can raise and lower the speedrail. Onto the end of the rail, there are a number of bungee cords (or elastic sash cord, as some prefer), and attached to the bottom of the cords, a plate that you mount the camera onto. It allows you to position a camera of any weight (pretty much) and move it with the ease and directess as a camera that weighed nothing.

Yeah, it's funny, at first I thought that there would be absolutely NO way I would be able to shoot a 90% hand-held feature with that rig, as it does seem really not balanced... Actually, I demanded that production get me the over-the-shoulder EZ-rig, which I had used on the xl2 p&S system before... I found, though, that I really got used to using it without any sort of rig... If you're using superspeeds, which are pretty light (as compared to using S4 primes, which was my first experience on this system) and a clip on matte box, you situate the camera on your shoulder a bit differently, basically with the camera body scooched waay back on your shoulder, so it's more balanced. I would just hold onto the P&S handgrip and the rods on the bottom of the rig, and it was pretty okay. So no, I do not have popeye forearms... although I was a static trapeze artist for a little while... but the muscle groups are pretty different for camea work! Also, it's just not that heavy... compared to the thing I had shot directly before the feature, which was a 90% hand-held short... on the arri 35-III (!!!!!) That actually DID hurt a lot. Oh, looking at your post, though, I think you may have the wrong impression about one aspect of the system - unlike using the P&S on any other prosumer DV camera with fixed lenses, the adapter actually connects to the XL mount of the XL2 itself, instead of shooting the ground glass through the cannon lens. Does this make sense? There's like this little optical adapter thing, maybe an inch long and the diameter of the XL mount that focuses the ground glass onto the ccd of the camera, so you don't actually use the XL lens of the camera... To me, this puts the P&S + XL2 combo head and shoulders above any other P&S + dv camera combo in which you have to use the lens of the camera itself to shoot the ground glass... If you do a rental, though, make sure the house has the P&S adapter MADE FOR the XL2. Otherwise it won't work... Good system, though...

Oh great! thanks... Well, hmm, to answer your question, I guess it has to do with my level of comfort with that particular system, and the fact that for me personally the P&S system's advantages outweigh its disadvantages... I've owned an xl1 for about 6 years, and I just feel very comfortable with the way it's laid out and the control over the images I can get out of it. I had done a lot of b-roll shooting with the xls in cleveland before I moved to NYC, and I guess I didn't want to have to learn a whole new video 'sysem' for the kind of shooting I was doing. I shoot a lot of film now, and I guess the P&S system with primes - I tend to never compose or shoot with zooms - gets me in a sort of 'film' mindset in terms of composition and actually having to light to an actual stop, etc... I've never used the SDX or digiprimes, so I can't say that it was a really informed comparison that drove me to the xl2 package, it was just something that, for me, allowed me to shoot in a filmic way on DV. I also think that, if you do it right, the DOF can work really, really nicely even with DV compression. I think that resolution and "percieved" resolution are two very different things... this is only my personal observation, but I feel that I can get a sharper "feeling" image on a 50mm prime, opened up to a 2, with a subject 4 feet away, (on the p&s) than with an equivalent perspective digiprime lens opened all the way up, even though there may be more acutal resolution, etc... I mean it has to do with your eye looking at what's sharp in relation to what's soft in the image, and I feel that I have much more of an ability to throw things really out of focus in a very pleasing way with the p&s system. I mean, if we're talking about SD stuff, especially... If I were using a digiprime on a system with more ACTUAL resolution that would change things a bit as well... You should have seen me and my first ac, Kate, trying to figure out depth of field for this system on the first day. trying to figure it out is useless, like they say, it's in focus when it's in focus... I mean, it's finicky too, this system is NOT for everything. It just happened to suit what we were doing - mostly hand held, a lot of longer lenses close on action, not a lot of really wide, static shots, etc... If I was shooting on video and it had to look more... still, or if things played out in really wide masters, than the lack of resolution would really get me in trouble. If you use it, you've really got to work WITH it... What you lose in resolution you get back in shallow DOF and the character of 35 optics.... to a point. But generally, I'm very pleased with the images and the way the camera feels. When I go hand held, it's important for me to really have firm idea about the form of the camera - as a former actor, I like to think about "performing the image" - so it's good to be able to hold it the way I want it... and I like holding the xl2... okay, my 2 cents. best, kitao

Thank you! when we shot, we were aiming for the festival route. There's just a rough cut that exists now, but I'm told that there's already very strong intrest from a couple "urban-drama" specific distributors, who, I'm also told, aren't used to getting stuff with any sort of production value, so they seem to be excited about the look of it. k

We shot 24p with a 2:3 pull down, we're not planning a film out, but we'll most likely transfer the ungraded DV to Digi, then do a tape to tape, and screen/distribute from a digi master... I didn't compress the movie or post it up, so I'm not sure of the settings, but there do appear to be weird jaggy frames that are actually in there, so I'm not sure that it's just your computer... As for critiques, hmmm, it would be hard for something as brief as this, but I wanted to put it up somewhere so people could check it out... not sure where the best place on cml would be, so.... I'd like to post my observation on using this system on a feature... is this the best forum? Should I switch? best, kitao

Hi everybody, Thought I'd put this link up - it's the teaser to this feature I DPd earlier this summer - we wrapped about a month ago. It was pretty darn low budget, we shot on the XL2 with the P&S PL mount adapter and a set of ziess superspeeds, as well as a 10.5 kinoptic (I'm very fond of these lenses) and a cannon telephoto... lighting package was a couple of kinos, mostly... We shot in Brooklyn and Jersey... hope you enjoy! http://www.transformationsthemovie.com/tra...tions_m480.html best, Kitao

Hi everybody, I've been asked to get the 'black light' look for an upcomng hip hop promo - by black light I mean everything that's white (or I suppose reflective of the specific wavelength given off by black lights - or UV lights? I'm not sure) will "pop" in frame, usually giving everything else a strange blueish cast. Now, to get this look I know I'll probably have to get ahold of some special flouro bulbs - am I crazy to think that I can just go down to Canal street and pick up some 'black light' bulbs at a dj equpmnet/lighting place that do what I want them to do by eye and swap them into some 4 foot kino fixtures? Are there safety issues involved in doing something like this? Also, do I filter the lens in some way to make the effect more pronounced? FYI this shoots on video. Thanks for your help! Kitao

Also, if it's in your budget to rent the P+S mini 35 adapter, you could use any number of PL mount wide-angle lenses. Might be good if you're going for a very optically 'clean' look... Kitao