AFC Master Class 2018

By Richard Andry, AFC

par Richard Andry

[ English ] [ français ]

As every year for four years, the AFC gave, this Wednesday, November 14, a Master Class as part of the Festival Camerimage. As in previous years, the format of three cinematographers / speakers was preserved (each ½ hour) and in this year 2018, Céline Bozon, Gilles Porte and David Ungaro defended the colors of the AFC in front of a a large audience of young people, and under the leadership of Maestro Benjamin Bergery, Benjamin B, who, as usual, had studied and prepared his score well.

David Ungaro started the show with A Prayer Before Dawn, by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, focusing his theme more on camera movements because, in this film, everything was done in movement, and most of the time handheld camera, using a gyro-stabilized device the Stabe One, which he maneuvered with the help of an exoskeleton. To minimize the weight on the Stabe One, he chose the Arri Mini. As could be seen from the review of the projected shots, often long shots, this duo offered an extremely manageable and lightweight tool. Almost everything is shot at full aperture at 2 or 2.8, with a Zeiss Mark I serie, we can give a hat trick to the assistant camera, which has ensured on the spot. David has given us an impressive close-range camera choreography of actors in a Thai boxing fight scene. A risk taking very pay. But David seems to like the big challenges.

Celine succeeded David on Benjamin’s "grill" and showed us images of Félicité, directed by Alain Gomis, and the genesis of their artistic collaboration. Celine released in preparation shooting in the streets of Kinshasa with an Alpha 7 to "bring back" true images from the city life , his approach to the actress playing Félicité, the main character of the film, and the search for material and color rendering and the magic night tone from a picture by the photographer L. Pongo desired by Alain Gomis. Another form of handheld camera choreography than David’s one, with the same skillness of another camera assistant. Not a lot of light. The list of lighting equipment she showed us was very light.
Céline presented her work on a second film, Madame Hyde, directed by her brother Serge Bozon. Their choice of filming analog with a stock of "old" Fuji 250D tested at ISO 80, with a step wedge that crossed his knees, also took the risk of taking a real break. But the result, with the special effects showing Isabelle Huppert physically incandescent, was worth it.
AFC cinematographers, women and men, love the big challenges !

Gilles Porte, opened with the images of a film he had made 13 years ago to show his three-year-old daughter that under different appearances the people were all from the same human family and he showed it through children who were drawing. A trip to more than fifty countries full of humanity and poetry, children from all corners of the world facing a glass plate that stood out in transparency with a big felt-pen. Gilles and his studio "bohemia", in which we noticed the unique presence of a Joker 400 from our friends of K 5600, besides a sponsor of the Master Class with Panavision, LCA and Sigma.
The second film presented by Gilles was Marc Dugain’s L’Echange des princesses and his sumptuous images inspired by the paintings of Caravaggio, Gainsborough, Vermeer and Rembrandt translated in 2.40 format by the Sony F65 / Primo 70 assembled by Patrick Leplat and the Panavision team.
Our AFC Master Class 2018 was a success appreciated by the public, a success that has become, over the years, an appointment to note on their notebook and not to be missed by Camerimage festival-goers.