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One of the interesting things about growing up in Miami is that you see a lot of film and television productions. I remember seeing a Harrier jet in the middle of the street near my father’s office because True Lies was being shot there. Scenes from The Crew and episodes of Burn Notice were shot a few blocks from my childhood apartment. The causeway by my high school was shut down because they needed to shoot, of all things, the music video for Sisqo’s “Thong Song”. And these were just the productions that I personally encountered, there were tons more that I won’t bother naming. Yet in all these years of seeing my hometown on big and small screens, there wasn’t a single one of them that told a real Miami story about real Miami people from real Miami communities. Everything was some kind of cheap music video, some capitalist nouveau riche fantasy, some tropical bikini fantasy for white people. You never hear about the immigrants from all over Latin America and the world hustling in warehouses, flipping merchandise, laying marble tiles, praying in strip-mall churches. You never hear about how the City let public housing be cannibalized by fancy contractors so that they could build private residences to push subprime mortgages with. And you sure as hell don’t hear about the black and brown people living in Liberty City, much less about those that are queer. But that is what makes Moonlight a film of rare power, in that it renders, in masterful strokes of black and blue, a story that was once invisible. Personally, the film resonated deeply with me, even though my young life in Miami was different from Chiron and Kevin’s. For the first time in my 30+ years, I saw fragments of familiar experiences (riding sad in a sad metromover, smoking a blunt on South Beach at night, jokes about jitneys, black beans from Cuban diners) in a film of staggering beauty, written and directed by fellow Miamians working with a Miami crew. And holy shit, it was the best film of the year. <3 [Edit: It actually fucking won best picture]

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got home late from the Oscars last night and the only file open in Photoshop was, apropos, a WIP color study from Moonlight 🙌🏼

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Moonlight (2016, Barry Jenkins)

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A video showing Wong Kar-wai’s influence on Barry Jenkins, with side-by-side comparisons of Moonlight with In The Mood For Love, Days Of Being Wild, and Happy Together.

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花樣年華 In The Mood For Love

my submission for the Love Unspoken zine!

twitter / ig / prints

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“But at this moment, I feel very warm.”

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James Wong Howe

Cinematographer

Born: Aug. 28th, 1899 Died: Jul. 12th, 1976

“James Wong Howe was a Chinese American cinematographer who worked on over 130 films. During the 1930s and 1940s he was one of the most sought after cinematographers in Hollywood.

He worked on Fantasia‘s Philadelphia Orchestra sequences, notably 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’, featuring 'eye-searing Technicolor cinematography’. He was uncredited for this contribution. 

Howe earned the nickname ’Low-Key' because of his penchant for dramatic lighting and deep shadows, a technique that came to be associated with film noir. Howe also was known for his use of unusual lenses, film stocks, and shooting techniques. In the 1920s, he was an early adopter of the crab dolly, a form of camera dolly with four independent wheels and a movable arm to which the camera is attached. For the boxing scenes of Body and Soul, in 1947, he entered the boxing ring on roller-skates, carrying an early hand-held camera. Picnic (1955) features a very early example of the helicopter shot.

Howe was born Wong Tung Jim in Taishan, China in 1899. His father Wong Howe moved to America that year to work on the Northern Pacific Railway and in 1904 sent for his family. A Brownie camera, said to have been bought at Pasco Drug when he was a child, sparked an early interest in photography.

After a chance encounter with a former boxing colleague who was photographing, Howe approached cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff and landed a low-level job in the film lab at Famous Players-Lasky Studios. Soon thereafter he was called to the set of The Little American to act as an extra clapper boy, which brought him into contact with silent film director Cecil B. DeMille. Amused by the sight of the diminutive Asian holding the slate with a large cigar in his mouth, DeMille kept Howe on and launched his career as a camera assistant. To earn additional money, Howe took publicity stills for Hollywood stars.

Howe met his wife, Sanora Babb (novelist + poet), before World War II. They traveled to Paris in 1937 to marry, but their marriage was not recognized by California until 1948, after the law banning racial intermarriage was abolished.

He was nominated for ten Academy Awards for cinematography, winning twice for The Rose Tattoo and Hud. Howe was judged to be one of history’s ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.”

(see more)

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Cinematographer Eigil Bryld on designing a uniform look for ‘House of Cards’ with director David Fincher:

Fincher’s ground rules included “no steadicam, no handheld and no zoom lenses.” […] “to a great extent, moves are on the dolly or the boom. We wanted to use the space more so people would grow larger in the frame or move away and get smaller. We went for a more composed look; even though we had very shallow focus, we tried to create deep compositions all the time to add a sense of drama and power, and the 2:1 aspect ratio really helped with that.“

The entire show was shot on ARRI/Zeiss master primes, mostly the 27mm and 35mm. “We used longer lenses at times for close-ups, but we never wanted the sense of space to disappear,” says Bryld.”

Zoe barnes gets three sizes of coverage in the scene above, each inching higher and closer to the eyeline.

Also, the A and B cameras are usually kept very close, often stacked one on top of the other. “We typically had one camera doing a low-angle wide over and the other doing a tight over,” says Bryld. Continuity is key. “If you have perfect continuity, I think it almost creates a hypnotic universe, like you’re almost experiencing something in real time. In Fincher’s world, you have to respect space and time, and two cameras help with that.”

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#Anderson ft. #Jarmusch

‘Moonrise Kingdom’ (Wes Anderson, 2012) 'Paterson’ (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)

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scans from American Cinematographer, October 1982

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Exclusive photos from the November 2016 issue of American Cinematographer for the Ash vs Evil Dead cover article.

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Lion (2016)

Directed by Garth Davis

Cinematography by Greig Fraser

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Cover art to American Cinematographer, July 1977, via Martin L Kennedy

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Karl Struss Photography ‘The Attic Window, Dresden’ 1909.

Struss was an American photographer and a cinematographer of the 1900s through the 1950s. He was also one of the earliest pioneers of 3-D films. He mostly worked on films, such as F. W. Murnau’s ‘Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans’, Charles Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ and ‘Limelight.’

(via eBay)

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Red Heat (1988)

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“But now I’m not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings. There are days that define your story beyond your life. Like the day they arrived.” Arrival (2016) dir. Denis Villeneuve

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Swiss Army Man (2016)

Directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert Cinematography by Larkin Seiple

“Before the Internet, every girl was a lot more special.”