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Are ND grads only used for static shots?
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What I said, Ryan, is that an in-camera zoom is a last resort, or used for a special effect, but it is not a common practice. I see that your profile is empty. How about filling that in so that we can take at look at your history. Mr. Ticheli and I have have been award winning cinematographers for decades. A cinematographer uses a dolly, crane, jib arm or steadi-cam to achive his moving image.
Quite frankly, the constant use of the zoom by today’s amateur “filmmakers” makes me ill, as it will any audience.
We’re done here.
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Well in my neck of the woods, what the client wants dictates how I approach a shoot.
For example… I was contacted by a jewelry store to shoot a new commercial for them.
During the sit down it was decided that they wanted to emulate a movie style approach to their new spot.
We finalized the boards and everything was approved and set.
During the shoot the the AE from the agency told me that the marketing rep from the jewelry store was very upset,
because the camera we were using was very noisy, and must be broken… “It will ruin the sound of our commercial” she said.
I explained that it was an MOS camera, (Shooting with my ole’ workhorse, an Eclair CM3) and that audio was not being recorded, as we would add music and VO later.
At that point I recapped our meeting highlights… Their budget did not allow renting a 435 or 535,
and they insisted on 35mm, so I shot with the CM3 instead of using the Arri SR II and shooting 16mm.
Throughout the rest of the shoot it was clear that the marketing rep for the jewelry store was just not happy.
After the shoot and telecine we assembled the new spot and were more than happy with the look of the commercial.
The agency thought the footage looked awesome.
Then came the reply from the jewelry store!
It looks old fashioned because you cut between shots instead of zooming like our competitors commercial.In the end the agency was dropped, and we were rehired to come back out and shoot a new spot with our nice quiet modern Canon XL1s mounted on a jib doing a sweep and zoom.
When trying to push to raise the quality bar closer to the film we shot earlier, we suggested using the Panny SDX900.
Oh no, we like that little camera, it looks wonderful!Go figure!
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Hi David,
Often I think that the real gift in our business is being able to sell the client on allowing us to do the best possible job for them. Not always as simple as it sounds.Occasionally we are approached with what I like to call the, “ransom note;” only instead of words torn from a magazine and pasted, the client asks for a combination of elements that don’t make a coherent whole. Even worse is the situation when the client or client’s client suddenly tries to hijack the project midway at checkbook-point and begins to make unwise directorial or cinematographic decrees.
Very often we get to work for truly gifted clients; great art directors, writers, people with unique vision who are a joy to collaborate with; sometimes the client has more passion than talent in the specifics of our business. It’s producing great work for the latter that can be a challenge and really pivotal to our careers. Resist too stridently, and we may get on the “do-not-hire-hard-to-work-with” list. Knuckle under and produce sub-standard or compromised work, and we may never get to show what we can do and be regarded as artless hacks.
The secret is making the client feel great about allowing us to do superior work; then everybody wins.
Good shooting!
Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA -
Thank you for validating my point.
It is acceptable to use a zoom for necessity or for effect. Thus making them acceptable…..by you.
What does your knowledge of me have to do with anything? Are you going to try and attack the fact that I have less experience than you. Because I don’t recall questioning your ability.
I respect all the advice that you and Leo have given, all I was saying is that if the man wants to use a zoom, who is anyone to tell him he can’t.
Like you said…. “We’re done here”
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to say that any camera technique is bad or unprofessional is straight up retarded. i don’t care who you are, what you’ve done, or how much money your work has made. the correct thing to say would be that “dolly, crane and pan/tilt shots COST more than zoom shots to execute, which to some people automatically makes it a better shot.”
feel free to get in your time machine and tell truffaut that the running sequence in Jules et Jim is a bad idea.
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jaanshen.com -
You’ve got to remember that many, if not most, of the posters here are relatively inexperienced and may lack your skills. Beginning shooters often discover to their dismay that free use of the zoom produces unwanted results.
As a general rule, for dramatic presentations, zooms do look quite out of place. They break us away from the story by drawing too much attention to themselves. Certainly they do work for certain scenes, such as the Hong Kong “Kung Fu” look such as is seen in Kill Bill 2, or fast-paced, quick-cut “music video” type films. You’re unlikely to find them in a dialog scene in something like the “Soprano’s.”
As discussed above, very slow zooms can work for standard dramas as can subtle zooms hidden within other camera moves.
As for the time machine, I remember quite well my first zoom lens which I purchased for my Bolex. I was thrilled and exuberantly zoomed away on the very next commercial I shot. The results were dreadful because I lacked the skills to use it properly.
Best regards,
Leo
Director/Cinematographer
Southeast USA -
leo, i agree on your points about the generality of our red-headed stepchild, the zoom. and your point about the level of inexperience of many of the posters makes those points even more relevant… but in many ways, i think that makes it even more silly to automatically discount a particular technique. even a moderate beginner has seen a contrived zoom and experienced its “dramatic disruption” as a viewer. let them decide if they want to utilize it for that, or any other strength that particular technique holds. branding it as unprofessional by default is like reaching into a plumber’s toolbox and throwing away his 6-inch wrench and telling him “you’re never gonna work on a pipe that big anyway, so don’t even bother.”
and i have to play devil’s advocate on your point about zoom usage in a dramatic context by mentioning the shot where tom cruise’s character looks up and sees his doctor in mask in “eyes wide shut”– the most powerful shot in the whole film. whenever i think of kubrick, that is one of the handful of nuggets of cinema that immediately come to mind. i’m glad he had his 6-inch wrench with him that day.
respectfully,
jaan____________
jaanshen.com -
Hi Jaan,
Just to make sure we don’t completely agree, I personally hated that zoom shot in Eyes Wide Shut. Opinions vary, and, personally, I’d bet on Stanley Kubrick’s judgement over my own. It’s also true that even the gods can occasionally fall from grace.I do agree that we shouldn’t throw any tools out of the box, but a six-inch pipe wrench is a poor substitute for a tweezer. On the other hand, a tweezer makes an extraordinarily poor pipe wrench.
By the way, I hit your site and I think you do marvelous work.
Best regards,
LeoDirector/Cinematographer
Southeast USA -
While a bit pissy, this thread brings back a funny memory. I don’t want to make the thread go longer but I have a little anecdote to share.
About 33 years ago my college professor, an English Dept. guy who thought he knew movies, taught a film appreciation seminar — very competitive to gain entry to. I was the only freshman in the group, because I had a visual arts background, and I was a bit scared to talk.
The prof was really very good about a lot of things, but one day he said, “Notice how the camera ZOOMS down the table…” I was intimidated in this class, but I was so offended that I raised my hand to interrupt him, “Actually it trucks down the table, there’s an important difference.” Man was he mad — and he absolutely could not get it — nor could any of the other students. They were all very smart and far more knowledgeable about film history than I’ll ever be, but the diff. bet. trucking and zooming eluded them all.
Why? I guess, because all they saw were old movies, and there was no zooming to compare to the trucking — while the only cameras they saw were zoom lens-equipped — so they assumed that the way you did that shot was to zoom.
— Bob Cole
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[David Jones] “Oh no, we like that little camera, it looks wonderful!”
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and I have to admit to laughing and crying simultaneously when reading this as it hits pretty close to home.
…we actually had a corporate client who had a “video enthusiast” on staff in the company somewhere and decided to buy their own camera. They had to shoot a machine that was very tall and not very wide. Of course, it looked fine in the LCD panel because it was tilted 90 degrees with the camera…I swear I thought Allen Funt was going to pop out from behind the plant in the edit suite.
I explained that our most practical options were to run it into a DVE and either drop it back creating space on either side, or we could build a graphic around it…or worse, we could blow it up so it filled the monitor side-to-side, but we’d obviously cut the top and bottom off.
In a final moment of frustration, the client huffed “Well I can’t believe in a professional production company with all this equipment you can’t do better than that.
…my editor proceeded to get up, walk over to the Sony Broadcast program monitor, and unceremoniously flip it onto its side. He then proceeded back to his chair and without a word, continued to check out the footage.
TimK
Kolb Syverson Communications
Creative Cow Host
2004, 2005 NAB Post Production Conference Premiere Pro Technical Chair
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net
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