Gonna Kick It Old School for a While...

Over the past week I have become obsessed with learning all I can about medium-format photography. I have grown quite disenchanted with the "art" created in this digital world. My Canon 5D Mark II sits on a shelf in my studio covered in dust. I can barely look at it without getting nauseous. This camera, and other HD cameras, are the reasons why kids just out of the film department at University of Whatever are heading out into the real world calling themselves Cinematographers and/or Photographers. An infant could take a good picture with the 5D! I like taking pictures but being able to do it without putting in the "work" just doesn't hold a lot of appeal anymore.

I cannot wait to start working with film again. Back in the day, I started learning how to get an exposure with several types of film cameras. The most satisfying was a Sears and Roebuck 16mm film camera I found at a thrift store for $17.00. Most of the footage I took was completely uninteresting but at least it looked good. My light meter worked! I finally learned how to work my light meter! Seeing film exposed at the levels you prepared for was quite a satisfying feeling.

Now that I learned how to incorporate strobes into studio and location lighting (many thanks to Melinda and Steph from Columbia College for this) I want to try my hand at syncing my ideas with 120 film, strobes, and an old has-been camera. Maybe this will also help me to slow down and be more thorough when it comes to creating art. I always tend to rush through things and that has rarely turned out well.

To this day, the best portrait I have ever done was on film. I was working as the Generator Operator on Step Up 2 and was able to sneak in an extra half hour after the rest of the crew wrapped in order to do some photos for a musician friend of mine. The Teamster said I had 30 minutes before he was driving away. I took 10 minutes to work with the Dimmer Board Operator to set the ambient light then took close to 15 minutes to set up the key light and some fill, metered everything, then spent less than five minutes shooting one roll of 35mm film. (You can tell I am a Technician by how little time I spent with the talent directing him in front of the lens.) By the way, a lot of the crew heard about what I was doing and stuck around, not to help but to watch. I felt the pressure and I was sweating...a lot.

Out of 24 pictures 3 were pretty good and one was spot on! The club setting and the talent looked amazing I just did not direct him very well. We nailed one tho! When I saw the pictures I was pretty embarrassed with the poor directing but the feeling of getting one that turned out album-cover worthy was something I never experienced with the digital format. It is time to go back to where it all started for me. I want to create on film.

My old buddy Nick Von Spaeth would be proud of me for this decision. Nick was a documentary film maker who worked on Star Wars: The Magic of Myth that was at the Air and Space Museum. He lived just outside of Oxford and always answered questions I had about filmmaking. All of our conversations took place before I even started working on films. Nick even gave me an old reel to reel editing table, but on the condition that I start working on projects shot on film. He hated seeing the rise of HD cameras. In one of our last conversations before he died he said something along the lines of: 'Your foundation must be film. Shoot on HD later when everyone else is but you have to learn how to shoot film first.' He was adamant on the verge of being angry when he said this and I always appreciated his candor with me.

Some frustrating times are a-comin'! Being precise and patient are foreign to me; however, I welcome the challenges. It would be so much easier just to smoke pot and keep shooting on the 5D, but I don't really dig the weed anymore. Shooting film will be a good hobby. Doing the research has been a lot of fun and I am really failing at being productive in the studio. Time for an affordable change of pace. Maybe I should buy 2 dinosaur cameras in case one gets thrown against the wall?