Technical stuff

With the Shotover K1, the only 6 axis gyrostabilised head on the market: recent set up with an Alexa XT and the Anamorphic Angénieux Optimo 40-440mm, for the shoot of a feature film in the North of France. A unique set up completed with our ‘Rain Spinner’ mounted for shooting under the rain if necessary.

Angénieux announces a New Long Range Multi-Format Design Zoom Lens at IBC 2017 (booth number 12.E36) and continues to adapt its offer to the market trends by announcing new innovative zoom lens series. Following up the Angénieux Type EZ Series for S35mm and larger image formats recently unveiled at IBC 2016 for the growing corporate, documentary and owner-operator markets, Angénieux is now announcing at IBC2017 a new multi format 12x Optimo zoom lens for the high-end production market.

We hope that you had an excellent summer and we wish you a lovely September full of new projects! In our recent news: several feature films and commercials, our presence at the IBC trade fair.

No less than four months of intense preparation preceded the actual production of Luc Besson’s new film, Valerian. Besson first gathered all the department heads: production designer Hugues Tissandier, costume designer Olivier Bériot and cinematographer Thierry Arbogast. He summed up Valerian’s story line then, after a reading of the script, he showed them a series of drawings better to immerse them in the particular world of Christin’s and Mezières’ comic book that appeared in France in the 1970s and which the film is based on.

Way back when, the guidance counselor at her high-school in Lyon told her, in no uncertain terms, that "one should not choose photography as a profession because it [was] tantamount to choosing a life with no work, no money and no prospect." In short, the life of a gypsy.

On August 6 and August 9, 1945, two atomic bombs codenamed "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" wiped out the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in southern Japan, instantly causing over a hundred thousand casualties. More than anything, that traumatic dual event determined Tetsuo Nagata’s destiny.

The time: the 1980s. The place: A commuter train between Paris and the suburb of Chaville. On one of the faux-leather seats, lies a Leica R6 camera its owner must have left behind. A photo-loving teenager stares at it as if it were the Holy Grail. Honesty, however, along with the secret hope of - perhaps - recovering it some day, compels Guillaume Deffontaines to bring it to the railway company’s Lost and Found Department. His exceptional memory also brings him back to the Department — just in case! — exactly a year and a day later.

First things first. When you are the eldest son of a merchant navy captain whose ancestors, fishermen and sons of fishermen, came all the way from Ukraine..., when you were born and grew up in Marseilles as a certified "Corniche Kid" (the local equivalent to a Bow-bell Cockney)..., when you’d always dash wherever the fancy takes you - preferably beyond the horizon..., somehow, "moving up" to Paris to make movies in the 1980’s is not exactly the "normal" thing to do.

Evoking one’s debut as a cinematographer and remembering it as a professional experience at once too beautiful, too unexpected and too...special, inevitably makes one nostalgic. Furthermore, as one celebrates its 20^th anniversary, the phrase "track record" hits one in the face like a boomerang!

After twenty-six years of uninterrupted collaboration, Luc Besson’s cinematographer, Thierry Arbogast, was determined to surprise him. Again. Old couples must constantly reinvent themselves, mustn’t they? And so he did when they tested and tried whichever equipment they might eventually use for their next project, Valerian.

At the end of the last Claude Lelouch’s movie, Everyone’s Own Life and Intimate Conviction, Ariane Damain Vergallo met, on behalf of CW Sonderoptic-Leica, its director of photography, Robert Alazraki, AFC, and camera operator Berto, to talk about lenses, but not only...

A new team. A new formula. A new ambition: to become the privileged partner of DOPs and production companies for all their aerial footage needs. Bringing together several competences around aerial images, Papa Sierra is now a one-stop-shop.

ACS France’s shooting season has started early this year and our teams have been involved on beautiful projects these last few weeks.

Among the Next Shot’s news of the month, the Teradek Bolt 3000 set and June’s shootings

Within the “investiture” of the new French President, the 14^th of May 2017 and thanks to its network, Papa Sierra allowed information channels to show, live and from above, first steps of the new President.

During the recent Micro Salon 2017, right after the screening of the short film Escapade, shot in black & white using the Panasonic Varicam LT without any Infrared cut filter, many people asked me for a further and more specific explanation on the methodology employed. Here is my answer, a brand new presentation, which not only describes every single step followed in our process but also sums up my previous researches on this topic.

A HUGE thank for your visit to our “special 20^th anniversary” open doors; in helicopter for a few lucky one! Always on the cutting edge of the technology, we did present you some of our news systems such as the Aercam, the Twizycam or our new electric RC quad.

In the latest news from Exalux this month, Dimlite, the DIY dimmer, the new Flexx LED ribbon collection, new add-ons for the Rock Wide, a new DMX wireless kit at Maluna Lighting and the next rendez-vous.