Over the 50 years chronicled in director Adam McKay’s Vice, cinematographer Greig Fraser had the challenges of photographing actors playing characters twice their age — with intense prosthetics, makeup and hair — while also making a potentially dull series of office-based scenes into a visually interesting story for audiences. To accomplish this feat, Fraser relied on Kodak 200T and 500T film and Cooke Optics’ Anamorphic/i prime lenses.
Boasting an impressive cast including Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes and Matt Smith, and captured by cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister BSC, the political thriller Official Secrets was directed by Gavin Hood, and produced by Ged Doherty, Elizabeth Fowler, and Melissa Zuo. Hoffmeister selected Sony’s Venice motion picture camera system for principal photography.
Claiming the coveted Theatrical Award for best cinematography in a motion picture, Łukasz Żal, PSC took home the American Society of Cinematographers Award for his work on Cold War. Giorgi Shvelidze took the Spotlight Award for Namme. The 33 rd ASC Awards gala took place Saturday in the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood
Sony is upgrading the capabilities of its Venice motion picture camera system by introducing high frame rate shooting, advanced remote-control functionalities and Cooke/i3 and Zeiss extended metadata support, as part of its latest firmware update. Both the free upgrade to firmware Version 4.0 and the optional HFR license will be available in June.
Dolby Laboratories congratulates this year’s Academy Award nominees who have tapped into the audio-visual power of Dolby technologies to draw audiences into their stories. Five of the eight Best Picture nominees this year used both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. And all five films nominated for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing awards this year were presented in Dolby Atmos.
Three of the five Best Animated Film nominations also utilized Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.
Red Digital Cinema has added the DSMC2 Touch seven-inch Ultra-Brite LCD Monitor to its line of innovative camera accessories. According to Red, the monitor is a robust, optically bonded touchscreen with Gorilla Glass that provides the most intuitive way to navigate menus, adjust camera parameters, and review .R3D clips directly out of the camera.
The American Society of Cinematographers celebrates its 100th anniversary today and to mark the occasion, the society released their members’ list of 100 Milestone Films in the art and craft of cinematography of the 20th century. The list is the first of its kind to showcase the best of cinematography as selected by professional cinematographers. The list culminates in a Top 10, with the other 90 titles unranked. The Top 10 films are:
Braving the challenging weather and Kodiak brown bears of Alaska, cinematographer Tom Trainor served as director of photography on the new Animal Planet documentary series, Into Alaska. Season one of the series, which showcases the wildlife inhabiting Alaska's national refuges and the men and women who protect them, is currently in rotation on the cable channel.
Arri has signed Art Adams to the newly created position of cinema lens specialist. In that role he will further develop and support sales of Arri lenses for North America, while collecting user feedback from imagemakers.
The makers of the Screen Gems feature film The Possession of Hannah Grace are claiming an interesting cinema technology first: the project was shot in Boston using Sony A7S II mirrorless digital cameras combined with large format Hawk 65 anamorphic lenses from Vantage, an unlikely combination featuring lenses designed for large digital sensors combined with a full-frame camera with a DSLR form factor and a price tag under $3,000. Nevertheless, the filmmakers say it made for a high-quality, cost-effective production workflow.
