Last weekend HDSLR guru, Vincent Laforet, held a weekend long workshop in Seattle, that was hosted (and streamed live on the net) by Creative Live. Since it was Laforet’s short film, ‘Reverie‘ that opened my eyes (and those of several million others) to the possibilities of the Canon 5DmkII, I was fascinated to watch as he took a small group of aspiring filmmakers on a journey through the shooting, editing and completion of a short documentary and onto scripted drama with professional actors, using HDSLRs.
The highlight of the event, for me, was Laforet’s chat with DP, Gale Tattersall, who famously shot last year’s season finale of House on Canon 5D MkII cameras and Canon lenses. Throughout their conversation, Tattersall was seated with a vintage 1902 16×12 plate camera behind him, which he explained he had set up especially to highlight the fact that “Understanding real photographic process is very very valuable if you’re going to become a good DP or a good camera technician…It forces you into a discipline of understanding light, understanding dynamic range, understanding all the things that are still just as critical in this digital age as they were back in the day.” Coming from a film background, I couldn’t agree more.
Stating “The reason the 5D is so special and [has] become the love of my life is because it can achieve things that there’s no way [to achieve on] even the most expensive motion picture camera,” Tattersall explained that the 5D’s Vista Vision sized sensor gives him control over “Depth of field, which to me is one of the most essential parts of my toolkit in terms of telling story.”
Questioned by Laforet about his technique for controlling the ultra shallow depth of field used in House and the cast and crew’s reaction to the 5Ds, Tattersall discussed how the focus peaking on Marshall monitors enabled his 1st ACs to rise to the challenge of pulling focus on wide open lenses with relatively tiny barrel movements. He also revealed that once the actors saw what the 5Ds could do, realised that the camera’s diminutive size blocked their eyelines less and enabled the cameras to get closer so that their eyelines were less spread, they were hooked.
The one big surprise was Tattersall’s comment that “I don’t think [Canon’s] optics can be faulted. They’re the most beautiful optics and they’ll stand up against Primos or Cookes or any of the conventional movie lenses.” Much as I love Canon lenses, I suspect the latter part of his statement might provoke debate in some circles…
Laforet concluded their 35 minute chat by asking Tattersall ‘If you had one pearl of wisdom…what’s the one thing you would leave us with?’ Tattersall replied “Treat filmmaking as something that’s part of your soul…Go and make your dream…Just go do it! All the excuses have been removed and there is no excuse for you not to make a cinematically releasable film using these cameras…a film doesn’t have to be huge…you can make a fantastic film about two people eating cucumber sandwiches in a library if you have to…Just go do it!…There is no end to the creative possibilities now… Live your dream, grab this with both hands and go and make beautiful movies.”
What more can there possibly be to say…other than downloads of the complete workshop and it’s 101 forerunner ‘HDDSLR Cinema with Vincent Laforet‘ are available from Creative Live and together provide pretty much everything an aspiring DSLR filmmaker needs to know about the art, craft and technique of filmmaking.
© 2011 – 2015, Paul D. All rights reserved.
