I’m thinking about canceling my Netflix subscription. Why? Why not a little history first?
Years ago people would dress up to go to a stage play. Attending the theater was a special occasion, a way to relax after a hard week, or even month of labor. With the advent of cinema nothing much changed. Most people treated movies like they treated theater—as a special night of entertainment. Going to the movies was still at most a once a week event, and people still dressed up.
Last winter I had the privilege of helping my friends Colin and Christiana Flanigan with a photo shoot to promote their band The Aches. They specifically wanted an analog film look, so I used my Canon AE1 35mm film camera, along with a Polaroid Colorpack II instant film camera to photograph them. We headed out to a lakefront park in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which gave us a starkly beautiful view of partially frozen Lake Michigan.
Here are some of the shots I captured.
As always, it was a joy to shoot with film. I love the aesthetic of 35mm and instant film, and I didn’t even have to do much work in post to get these images ready for publication. Chris and Colin really liked what we achieved and they’ve have already incorporated some of these images into their Facebook page. Check it out here.
Oh, and they’re also an awesome band! You can listen to some of their music here.
There’s a new camera in my life! This summer Blackmagic dropped the price of their little Pocket Cinema Camera, and I snatched one up. It’s incredibly powerful for it’s size and delivers a much higher quality image than my Canon DSLR ever did. I picked up a vintage C-mount lens from the antique store–a Bausch and Lomb 26mm f/1.9–and with the help of a Fotodiox C-Mount to Micro Four Thirds adapter I shot a quick demo with it. Here’s the result:
God bless Peter Jackson. He has a good heart and he clearly loves making movies. Nothing shows his love for this craft more than The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. It’s a film packed to near bursting with thrilling sights, passioned monologues and epic moments. Sad to say it has more in common with Dungeons and Dragons, a derivative version of Middle Earth, than it does with Tolkien’s original classic.
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It’s been a fairly average year for summer films so far. Here’s what I’ve seen:
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2014. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo
The first Captain America film from Marvel Studios had charming characters but no real plot to speak of. This sequel has both, plus well-paced action scenes and superbly choreographed fights. But unlike a lot of films these days the action doesn’t take away from the story, which is just the right balance of cheesy comic book camp and genuine spy vs. spy intrigue. Also, just enough time is given between action set pieces for the characters to breathe and develop, another thing sorely lacking in most recent blockbusters. Add in a villain that is just as menacing and complex as Bane from Nolan’s last Batman outing, a bigger, juicier role for Samuel L. Jackson, who has been criminally underused in genre films for the past decade, and you have a popcorn film that’s as stimulating as it is entertaining; a breath of fresh air in this age of slapped-together CG fests.
Every few weeks a story come out about a police officer getting in a fight with a photographer. Generally the altercation begins when the photographer tries to capture a shot that the officer deems unfit. The resulting aggression seems to stem from a basic misunderstanding of the law: what a photographer is or is not allowed to photograph and how much authority a police officer has over such actions. As a filmmaker, I’ve encountered my share of police officers while out shooting, but most of my encounters have been humorous ones.
My job requires me to spend some time on photography blogs and forums every week, and I’m consistently surprised by how much snobbery I run into. It seems everyone has a premium brand or model they swear by, and the predominate claim is “costlier is better. While I won’t argue that expensive lenses and sensors can yield great results, I still want to grab the internet by it’s collective shoulders, give it a good shake and ask it a few simple questions: does your camera have ISO, shutter speed and aperture control? Do you understand the basics of composition and subject matter? If so, you have the tools to be a great photographer. So cut it out!
It was a weird year for me and film viewing. I ended up spending most of my time in cinemas watching mediocre summer fare, and I had to scramble at the end to rent and watch the films I had wanted to see all along. Well, I finally saw everything on my list and now I can present my top five favorites. Here they are:
1. Blue Jasmine
And I thought I had mixed feelings about the first Hobbit film! I’ve seen Peter Jackson’s second installment of his Hobbit Trilogy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, three times now and I still don’t know what to think about it. As in the first film, Jackson and his Weta wizards run amok with Tolkien’s beloved novel, cramming cartoony action scenes, bonkers sub plots and alternative character motivations in every nooks and cranny. The result is a film that’s both immensely enjoyable as cinematic entertainment and extremely insulting as an adaptation. I actually walked out of the theater the first time I saw it. It was late in the film, the characters had all strayed as far away from the plot as they possibly could and Thorin was shouting at Bilbo to “pull the lever!” Visions of a drug-addled Bela Lugosi babbling nonsense in an armchair filled my head and I fled, not after hurling a few childish insults at the screen.
My Grandfather gave me his old Keystone 8mm Home Movie Camera a while back, along with three awesome Wallensak Cine Raptar D lenses; a telephoto, a 13mm, and a 9mm wide angle lens. They’re all metal, have manual apertures, and are super tiny. I’m impressed by how durable they are. They sure don’t make ‘em like this anymore.
Things to do this fall:
Savor the sound of crows crying through cold air.
Walk in the forest and understand its changing colors and where they come from.
Dwell within a pile of bright, cold leaves.
Capture the ghost of Halloween, discover its secrets and preach the Gospel to it.
Run full tilt in the cold till I taste my own blood.
Listen to college football on a warm Saturday afternoon on a crackly radio.
Be chased through a foggy wood by a quietly padding werewolf.
Drink hot coffee on a cold morning.
Uncover the essence of the ripe apple.
Watch the rain collect fallen leaves at drainage gates.
Go a’viking over the lake and between the misty boles of a November forest.
Find the exact point where Fall ends and Winter begins.
I can’t believe I haven’t written this yet! 2013 came on so fast, and last year just wasn’t that exciting film-wise. I could only come up with four films I truly liked for goodness sake! Oh well, here goes…
1. Les Miserables
Directed by Tom Hooper
It was shaping up to be a fantastic summer for movies, so I decided to see as many as I could. In the end, it was a mixed bag, but still mostly enjoyable.
Iron Man 3 – 2013. Directed by Shane Black
This franchise is all about defying expectations, and after a somewhat weak sequel, Iron Man 3 is back with a vengeance, throwing comedy curve balls and plot-defying twists as fast as its screenwriters can dream them up. One of the complaints about Iron Man 2 was its incredibly CG-y nature—the entire climax was just CG animated suits fighting—and I love how the screenwriters dealt with it this time, inventing a wayward suit that always goes to pieces, placing Robert Downey Junior’s character into countless situations where his precious armor wasn’t an option. It’s good to see Iron Man without his Iron Man armor, and its a testament to the power of the character that it works so well. Robert Downey Junior is Tony Stark, and Tony Stark is Iron Man, regardless of what he’s wearing. The story is crazy and fun, the characters and dialog sparkle, and the action is mostly well choreographed and rendered. A good way to start the summer.
So, in April I finally graduated from working retail into my first real full-time video job! I’m working for an awesome company in Chicagoland called Fotodiox. They make pretty sweet photo and video gear and it’s been a blast to be a part of their video marketing team. Here are a few videos I’ve helped them make.
I’ve managed to watch a few films this Summer, crazy busy as it is.
Moonrise Kingdom
2012. Directed by Wes Anderson
I love Wes Anderson. He’s one of my favorite film directors. His style is overwhelming and a tad too silly sometimes, but he tells unique stories with such deep emotional resonance that I’m always left applauding and forgiving any and all of his stylistic idiosyncrasies. This is the first of his films that made me pause, though. It’s a sweet tale about two young misfits who run off together in the woods. Set in the nostalgia of the 1960s on a idylic island somewhere in New England, the film just screams Norman Rockwell and classic boys adventure novels. The runaway girl and boy are desperately searched for by their dysfunctional families and the oddball cast of characters that populate the island, all culminating in a bizarre chase scene that involves massive armies of Boy Scouts, what seems like Noah’s flood, and repeated run-ins with lightning. The children and their searchers find grace at the end of it all, and the peace of the island is restored. The art design is lovely, the actors are clearly all having a blast and the film is sweet, but it takes a major misstep about halfway through. Wes Anderson asks the two young actors to play a brief scene that is obviously embarrassing for both of them and feels more like exploitation than realism. Without this scene, Moonrise Kingdom is a lovely film about misfits and the grace they find. With it, it just tastes sour.
Last summer I found a couple 110 cameras with expired, half-used film in them at a thrift store. I added to my arsenal with a Holga Micro-110 and a roll of Fuji 200 I purchased online, and I set out shooting.