Daily Highlights from Camerimage : November 17

By Madelyn Most for the AFC

Where Madelyn Most reports at Camerimage "whats goin on" in the film business today for the AFC (French Association of Cinematographers) - Part two

Monday November 17th
Monday’s long list of films screening in the main competition, documentary, Polish film, and European Panorama catagories all had to be overlooked to attend Stephen Goldblatt’s Canon Workshop : entitled “Techniques for concert filmmaking”, whereby a live band performed on stage while seven cameras were (swiftly) set up on dolly tracks, Steadicams, hand held, and fixed camera positions on an actual stage to demonstrate how to easily and quickly build up the many layers of shots necessary to photograph a rock concert with movement and energy.

A lively, but not so up beat Technicolor Seminar followed, with ASC cinematographers Matthew Libatique, Steven Poster, Ed Lachman, and Nancy Schreiber discussing some of the more controversial topics affecting cinematographers working as members of the IATSE film union in the U.S. film industry system : the pros and cons of DP’s operating the camera themselves, the gradual erosion of the Director of Photography’s role and responsibility, and their diminishing influence on the final look of the film, producers who want to get rid of cinematographers all together, the fact that cinematographers do not get paid for their work in post production doing the D.I., the initiative by Reed Morano to stop the “motion interpellator” built into television sets which destroys the quality of a filmed image, the on- going never ending debate over which is better-film versus digital, and other random subjects such as 4K, 8K, formats, composing for 16 x 9, 4 x 3, anamorphic lenses, pan and scanning, and the prickly role of the DIT. An animated Q&A discussion continued with the audience despite the overall pessimistic atmosphere that prevailed…

But the highlight of the day was the meeting with Thelma Schoonmaker, Ian Christie, Andrew Macdonald, and Erich Seargant which followed the screening of the newly restored 1948 Technicolor masterpiece, the Red Shoes, one of Michael Powell’s and Emeric Pressburger’s greatest achievements.