Reel Inspiration: Take 6 with Jon Connor

So this is the next installation of the Reel Inspiration series.I realized that I haven’t really said

much about who I am or what drives me.

My name is Jon Connor. I directed my first “film” in 7^th Grade.

It was for a school project on Robin Hood.

Most kids wrote a report or made a diorama. Remember those things?

Screw Avatar and a $400 million budget.

A shoebox and an imagination was all you needed back then for 3-D.

When making this “film” I was on a very tight budget. I was 12.

 I had no money, a cheap handy cam, and no computer

capable of editing. I printed out all the titles and video taped them,

I edited it on my own version of A/B roll.

I plugged the camera into the VCR and used pause and record to

 cut out the crap as best I could.

We did have some epic special effects.

We lit the ends of arrows on fire and shot them into a house that was under construction,

 then cut to a close up of a house we built out of Popsicle sticks burning. Not sure why

 I thought my parents wouldn’t ask questions or be pissed about that, but I guess that

 was a good lesson to be learned. Anytime you try to get creative as a director

you have to answer to the “man”.

So that was it. I had the bug. Due to some setbacks like getting a “real job” when I was

14 as a busboy my career in this field went on hiatus.

In 1999, I enrolled in the Art Institute of Philadelphia for Video Production.

I learned a lot about a variety of topics: art, history of film, color theory, lighting,

 script writing, and worked my way up from their A/B roll suite to the Avid one.

 I shot 16mm film, Beta Max and DVC Pro. I saved up my money while working my

way through college and bought two 3 CCD Sony cameras with wide-angle lenses.

Someone broke into my dorm roomand stole them a week later. I was devastated.

I left college frustrated and disappointed. It seemed like everything I had

worked for was all for naught.

I bounced around for a while and worked a variety of odd jobs: I was a PECO electric meter reader,

 a used car salesman, a landscaper, a manager of a cell phone store, I worked in demolition

for awhile, I waited tables, tended bar,even shined shoes at a country club. Everything you can think

 of that has nothing to do with what I wanted to be.

Or so I thought.

I eventually moved back in with an old roommate from college and we started a video production company.

We shot social events mainly and a few low budget music videos. It paid the bills.

Fast forward to today. Literally. Today.

As I sat down and began writing this I really didn’t know what the point was but it just dawned on me.

All that stuff that I did, that isn’t what I wanted to be: a filmmaker and a storyteller. All of it.

Some of the lowest points of my life. It’s fuel. It’s material.

They are my stories. There are a million of them.

So when someone says, or you think, “What can I do that’s original? It’s all been done.”

No it hasn’t. No one knows my story or perhaps yours. They haven’t been told yet.

So I guess when we are lacking in inspiration,

maybe the best source is ourselves. It’s a largely untapped resource.

The best part about it is no one can ever say you copied, or imitated.

This is not a list of the greatest movies ever. I tried to pick a few you may not have seen that I thought were excellent at telling a story that piqued my interest and demanded my attention.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels – This was Guy Ritchie’s directorial debut as far as I know.

He has been criticized since then by a lot of people who say all his movies look the same.

I don’t care about that. This movie is a perfect blend. Thisis storytelling how it’s supposed to be done.

The movie intertwines a castful of crazy characters and manages to keep building

tension and excitement throughout before it ends with a series of plot twists that I will not spoil here.

Just watch it. I thought the cinematography was excellent.

Editing spot on. Soundtrack was awesome.

Big Fish - Behind the grand visuals in this film there was an endearing tale. I liked the way

Tim Burton jumped back and forth from the past to present.

This film drew me in and kept my attention the entire time.

I also used to frequent a bar in West Chester, Pa. where the giant in this film was a

bouncer, before he passed away at way to young of an age. So I feel I have a personal

connection with this film as well.

Cool Hand Luke – This is a classic. Great use of symbolism. Growing up, Paul Newman was my hero, not because he made excellent salad dressing. Because I always saw him as “Cool Hand” Luke. I empathized with his character and to this day still root for him anytime I watch this film.

I guess I realized while writing this, that Content is King. You can have all the special effects in the world and I just am not that impressed. Tell an amazing story and you have me hooked.

You can follow me on twitter @jonconnorfilms

All photos courtesy of Gary Nevitt Jr.

Read more...

Reel World:DP Christopher Gallo shooting "Portable Life" on Canon 7D

As a Director of Photography Christopher Gallo's work has taken him to more than 70 countries and five continents. He has worked with such talent as Steven Speilberg, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Gallo's work has been exhibited at the most prestigious film festivals (Cannes, Venice and SXSW) and his documentary "JUKEBOX" was archived in the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". He currently resides in Venice, CA. and is working on his first feature narrative film with two Canon 7D bodies and Nikon lenses. The film is entitled "Portable Life" and will shoot in Europe,South Africa,Bali,Morocco, Turkey and the States. Plus he's funny as hell.

Final Version 7D Film out from RAWworks on Vimeo.


"I had used the 5d as a b camera on a documentary with my HVX and a Letus and it looked great. When I heard about the 24p on the 7D I started considering it as the b camera for the feature film. The reasons were: it does Pal, it's a 5 man crew, we travel constantly, allows for great stealthy B-roll shots, convenient car mounting and interior vehicle shots as well as the most important reasons....the ability to shoot in low light at a 1200-1600 asa and the ability to shoot with my old school Nikon primes. But the more I shot with it the more I realized that for the budget of this film, what camera in this price range(under 10k), is going to give you these images. The best I could compare it with is the ex-3 which sacrifices the lowlight capability,and low profile but more then anything the ability to shoot with my Nikon Primes.That glass looks stunning. So I started to push to be the first ones in the pool, and the test was on. I contacted Neil Smith and Jeremy Ian Thomas from Rawworks to do the workflow edit and color correct, and David Hays from E-film to do a film out, because the films financing comes out of the Belgium grant system and contractually they have to finish on film. Looked like super 16 and never took away from the story.
We saw the results at efilm and sent them to Holland for a screening for the producers and director and now I am on day 3 of 43 freezing my ass off doing night exteriors in Belgium with 2 canon 7d's. I guess they thought the results were good too. Do these cameras have limitations? Of course they do, all cameras do. The focus is an issue, the smoothness of hand held can be an issue or the shake on a long lens. You need to nail the exposure so you dont get grain while posting, but overall its pretty amazing what is happening and this is just the beginning. I am sure an uncompressed full frame 24,60 or faster will be out next year. Its a game changer." 
- Christopher Gallo
Director of Photography 
http://gallodp.com
http://www.vimeo.com/gallodp



Jeremy Ian Thomas
Creative Director 
RAWworks

www.hdirawworks.com

hdirawworks.blogspot.com

Read more...

Reel World: Why I Chose the Canon 7D to Shoot My First Feature.

by Filip Tegstedt

My name is Filip Tegstedt, I'm an indie filmmaker about to make my debut as a writer/director/producer. Next year, I'm shooting a little psychological horror film in Sweden called MARIANNE.

This here is my first blog about the project on www.canonfilmmakers.com and I'll try to keep the camera in focus.

First though, I do need to go into a little bit about this project if I may – what it is and who I am, so you'll see where I'm coming from.

My background is in screenwriting, or at least that's where I have my film school education. I started scribbling on this horror idea in 2003, but other projects and life has kept it dormant until February 2009 when I suddenly found a way to get the ball rolling. I've been working non stop full time on the project since then, and yes – being a writer, director AND producer on a feature film IS a lot of hats. I wish I didn't have to, but finding a producer willing to let an unknown make a feature debut in Sweden with a horror film is virtually impossible because of the way the industry here works.

Sometimes, you just gotta go out and shoot, man.

Now, because this film will be shot during summer in the northlands of Sweden, we won't need to use extra lighting on the exteriors, even outside the city. Even at night. This far north during summer, it doesn't really get dark – at least not for more than an hour or two, tops.

That saves us a lot of bother with hauling lamps and power supply. We can just bring the sound and camera equipment and that's it. Oh yeah, and the actors.
The budget on this film is low – actually, it's microbudget. I can maybe get 100,000-150,000 USD, if I take a loan with my summer house as collateral. Yeah I know, bad idea, right? Well it's an investment in my career as a film maker and we all need to make sacrifices.

So shooting on film is out of the question, obviously we're going digital. I've only ever shot on video anyway and this is not a good time to switch.
For a long time, the idea was to rent a RED ONE. I even looked into buying a used one and renting whatever equipment for it we needed. It might have worked, but in the end I decided to go with the Canon 7D instead. Here's why:

First of all, when we shot the pilot for this in May 2009, my good friend and technical advisor Soroush Shahrokni (find his stuff here: http://www.vimeo.com/user746382) had been raving about the Panasonic GH1 for several months already. I'm not a photographer, like I said my background is in writing, and so DSLR cameras are a completely new world to me. But after a couple of talks with him, and since Panasonic hadn't released the camera here yet and wouldn't until after we were finished shooting, I called them up and asked if we could borrow a GH1 to shoot the pilot, if we put their logo in the credits.

They agreed (Thanks again, Panasonic!) and I got my first taste of DSLR filming.
After that, we decided to start looking into alternatives to the RED. The RED is obviously a great camera, but sometimes you're better off owning your equiptment because the better you know it, the better images you will have. Just renting a great camera without knowing how to fully operate it might be a bad idea sometimes. You know?

I really did like the GH1, some of it's features I like better than the 7D. But the major problem with it was that you can't hook up an external HD monitor to it. A lot of the stuff we're shooting are with steadicam, and I also have a co-director who's way more experienced with photography than I am, so we need to be a few people who can see what's going on.

I also looked at the 5D, which I'm told would give me better picture, but I want to shoot this in 1080p 24fps. Also, because I bought the camera in the US to save money, but live in Europe, I needed to have one that could switch easily between PAL and NTSC. In case I need to shoot something in PAL, or in case I'd ever wish to upgrade and sell the camera, I can't be stuck with something that's only NTSC.

Then there was Nikon's new cameras that they were displaying at the Stockholm Film Festival in November, but since I need something that shoots full HD, they were out of the question unfortunately.

So the Canon 7D won.

I got it with three lenses: 16-35mm f/2.8L II, 50mm f/1.2L II and 85mm f/1.2L II.

It cost me a pretty penny, but was still cheaper than renting a RED for three weeks would have been. Plus, now I own a camera.

I've also ordered a Fader ND from Lightcraft, and I'm looking into some other equipment as well. Possibly a glide track or a Fig Rig, I'm not sure yet.
I'm still not the one actually holding the camera when we'll be on set – it's just not what I'm good at. I've got other people to do that for me who are much more experienced and knowing – but I did go out the other day and made a very, very quick test to see what it could do. You can check out the result here: http://www.vimeo.com/8326362 , but keep in mind that it's very raw. It's not run through After Effects, I didn't even white balance properly. Also, my current bandwidth prevented me from uploading a bigger file, and you'll see that on the compression.

Still, raw footage is a good measurement on what you can do with a great camera if you're a novice photographer. It can absolutely be better than this, but it can't get worse. That's saying something.

Oh and special thanks goes out to Kid Arctica of www.kidarctica.com for letting me use her music for the video. Check out her website, she does an amazing cover of Street Spirit by Radiohead.

Read more...