Bluewave Digital

To say I'm exhausted would be an understatement.

I had my first cinematography project shoot today on an Arri S 16mm camera (opens in a new window), as shown on the Film School Student blog I just linked to. Unfortunately I have no pictures of the camera myself, but that's a situation that I will hope to rectify this coming week.

This camera is built like a tank, and has been around since the late 1950s (just like all the other equipment in State's film department). Our first project for this particular class was to do pans and transitions. A pan, for the uninitiated, is a camera movement where the camera itself remains in one stationary position (for example, on a tripod), and moves from side to side. A transition, as described by the film instructor is when an object in the frame (view) of the camera is followed to another object or subject, changing the focus from the original subject to the new subject. It's a bit complicated to explain in text form...once I get my film back from the lab and digitized, I'll have a better explanation.

For my exercise, I filmed my two group mates playing chess by a lake in Golden Gate park. Yes, it's about as exciting as it sounds. Keep in mind that these are camera exercises and are not meant to be some form of amazing storytelling.

After I shot my entire 100 foot roll of film (approximately 3 minutes worth), we moved on to the second group mate's project which involved rolling logs down a hill. While this one was more amusing, it was also harder physically, as the logs were rather heavy.

We finished that exercise up and packed up to go home. Of course, not having a car, we lugged all the camera equipment, including tripod, camera and lenses, and two 20 pound sandbags back 5 blocks to the "staging area", aka one of my group mate's apartments. Needless to say, the trip back threw me over the edge, and now my arms and legs are completely sore.

As with my other 16mm film projects, the next step is to ship the film off to the lab, in this case Fotokem in Los Angeles, and pray that something came out. This is the part I really hate about shooting actual film. I guess I'm just jaded to the process by the fact that I learned to shoot on video, and then digital which has instant gratification. This whole waiting business does not sit well with me in this instance. Oh well.

Say what you will about shooting film, I plan on shooting digital once out of film school. It's far too expensive to shoot film for nothing more than aesthetics.

Cue film school students and purists breaking out their torches and pitchforks.