SHOOTING “TINY FURNITURE”

By Filmmaker Staff

Originally published in the Summer 2010 issue.

Only a few months after we selected her for last year’s “25 New Faces” list, writer-director Lena Dunham went into production on her second feature Tiny Furniture. Shot by fellow 2009 “25 New Faces” Jody Lee Lipes and produced by Filmmaker contributing editor Alicia Van Couvering and Kyle Martin, the film wound up winning the Grand Prize at 2010’s SXSW Film Festival and was picked up by IFC for distribution this fall. The film was shot on the Canon 7D, and we asked Lipes, focus puller Joe Anderson and Technicolor colorist Sam Daley to comment on the DSLR format and their production and postproduction decision making. –S.M.

“Choosing to shoot on the Canon 7D was a bold move on [director] Lena [Dunham’s] and [d.p.] Jody [Lee Lipes’s] part,” says focus puller Joe Anderson. “At the time of production there were few (if any) rental houses in New York supporting the new hybrid-SLR cameras as movie cameras. Subsequently we had to make due with far fewer accessories than a traditional movie production would use. Existing tools like matte boxes, follow focus wheels and multiple monitors had not yet been updated to work smoothly with these new cameras.” The production rented a few different types of handheld and tripod mounts, most manufactured by Zacuto, from still-camera rental houses in New York City, and Anderson worked with Lipes to retrofit them for the shoot’s needs.

Technicolor agreed to convert test footage to HDCam SR so that everyone would know what they were getting into. Before the test screening, Anderson remembers Daley warning them, “You really shouldn’t shoot with this camera. It records in the h.264 format, which is more of a YouTube format; it’s not meant for production.” “But that was before we started shooting, and before he saw the final tests,” adds Lipes. “I think the color correct is really what sold him — when he saw how much flexibility he had with the color while we were in the final grade.”

Anderson recalls that first screening of test footage at Technicolor: “We … Read the rest

JAMIE STUART AND THE CITY SYMPHONY

By Scott Macaulay

At the Chicago Sun-Times in a column entitled “The do-it-yourself auteurs,” Steven Boone writes about the city symphony film and ties it to Jamie Stuart’s recent Idiot with a Tripod. He puts Stuart in a category of “DDIY” (the extra “d” is for “digital”) filmmakers who are the “garage Kubricks” once prophesized by William Gibson. There’s also a video by Kevin B. Lee with text by Boone. Check it out below.

… Read the rest

JAMIE STUART’S SUNDANCE “MASTERPIECE”

From the shards of our experience shooting interviews and seeing movies at Sundance 2011 comes Jamie Stuart’s “Masterpiece.” With appearances by: Miguel Arteta, Alrick Brown, David Carr, Paddy Considine, Nekisa Cooper, Phife Dawg, Danfung Dennis, Andrew Donsunmu, Sean Durkin, Liz Garbus, Paul Giamatti, Megan Griffiths, Colin Goddard, Rutger Hauer, John Hawkes, Azazel Jacobs, Miranda July, Tom McCarthy, Peter Mullan, Adepero Oduye, Elizabeth Olsen, Jessica Oreck, Lindsay Pulsipher, Michael Rapaport, Calvin Reeder, Dee Rees, Amy Seimetz, Kim Wayans, Vilmos Zsigmond. Shot on the Canon 7D. Download the Quicktime here. (Contains adult language — NSFW.)

Look for the longer edits of these individual pieces throughout the year.

… Read the rest

DSLR-SHOT FILMS WIN PRIZES AT SUNDANCE

By Scott Macaulay

With a hat tip to Photo Cine News, here are clips from two Sundance 2011 prizewinners shot on DSLR cameras. The first, the Grand Jury Prize-winning Like Crazy, was shot on the Canon 7D. (Felicity Jones, featured in this clip, also won a Special Jury Prize for her acting.) The second, Hell and Back Again, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize as well as the World Cinema Cinematography Award. It was shot on the Canon 5D with custom-built rigs.

Hell and Back Again clip from Danfung Dennis on Vimeo.… Read the rest

“IDIOT WITH A TRIPOD”

Jamie Stuart has struck a popular chord with this lovely short shot during the December, 2010 East Coast blizzard. It’s got gorgeous visuals, humor, a slyly organic narrative, and, plus, it’s a tribute to Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. We at Filmmaker have touted Stuart’s talents for some time, but now Roger Ebert has weighed in, arguing that this new short should win the Best Short Film Oscar. It’s also been picked up Gothamist, New York Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal, among many others. It’s shaping up to be Stuart’s viral hit.

I blogged it when it came out but am giving it a more prominent place of love here on our home page Video section. Watch below, and download the Quicktime here at Jamie’s site.

… Read the rest

JAMIE STUART ON THE EAST COAST BLIZZARD

By Scott Macaulay

A lovely short directed, shot and edited by Jamie Stuart on his Canon 7D during the blizzard that covered New York and much of the East Coast.

Updated: Roger Ebert fell in love with the short and writes:

“This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject.
(1) Because of its wonderful quality.
(2) Because of its role as homage. It is directly inspired by Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent classic “Man With a Movie Camera.”
(3) Because it represents an almost unbelievable technical proficiency.

He conducts an email interview with Jamie, in which Stuart says:

Technically, for “Idiot with a Tripod,” I shot with my Canon 7D and edited it with Final Cut Pro. Early on, I was able to vary things a little more — I used macro diopters for the close-ups during the day shots, my portable slider for the dolly shots and also, a 75-300 zoom for the rooftop shots. I was more limited at night because of the weather conditions, so I stuck with my 24mm, 50mm and 85mm — all of which are manual Nikon lenses. Which meant that in the middle of that maelstrom I was changing lenses, wiping off the lenses and manually focusing/adjusting each shot.

“The funny thing is, for the first part of the shoot I felt early uninspired and almost stopped. But I kept going. And it ultimately turned out really nice.

For more, including what Jamie had for lunch, click on the link.

View it in Quicktime here and on YouTube below.

… Read the rest

JAMIE STUART’S “NYFF 48″

Jamie Stuart’s NYFF 48 is the latest in his annual cinematic trips to the New York Film Festival, “a 13-minute impressionistic juxtaposition of modern film’s evolution and man’s progress.” Turn your lights out, crank your speakers and watch. With appearances by David Fincher, Clint Eastwood, Olivier Assayas, Joe Dante, Charles Ferguson, Frederick Wiseman, and others.

The 720p file can be downloaded here. Visit Jamie at Mutiny Company.… Read the rest

BARBIE’S DREAM CAMERA

By Scott Macaulay

Here’s the latest camera shootout — the Canon 7D vs. the Barbie Video Girl. (Via No Film School.)

Canon 7D vs. Barbie Video Girl from Brandon Bloch on Vimeo.… Read the rest

DSLR PRODUCER VS. QUALITY-CONSCIOUS D.P.

By Scott Macaulay

Here’s a funny video satirizing the conversations going on between d.p.’s and producers around the subject of DSLR cinematography.

While in the video the producer talks about how DSLR cinematography needs no grading and pretty much offers a perfect image out-of-the-box, that’s, of course, not true. In fact, this video gives me a good reason to link to something from our current issue that word-for-word is perhaps the most useful article in the book: an article on how Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture was shot by d.p. Jody Lee Lipes on the Canon 7D.… Read the rest

STATE OF THE ART: HDSLRs IN 2010

By Roberto Quezada-Dardon

Roberto Quezada-Dardon looks at new models, new techniques and recent innovations.

Bonus Articles: Shooting: Tiny Furniture and
Street Style