Directors Reveal Their First Camera Crushes

IAN DERRY

Archer’s Mark

"Shooting [debut short film] Johanna in Finland was always going to be technically difficult. The air temp was -15°C and water temperature -4°C."

First camera

My first was an old rangefinder that my father brought back from Hong Kong when I was 14. I had an instant empathy for it. After that he bought me my first SLR, a Chinon CM4 from Dixons. We’re talking 1981, so this was in the days of film.

By the time I was 15 I was offered a week at my local paper to do some work experience. That’s where I was given an iconic Nikon F to use, the camera of my boyhood dreams. I was smitten. That week turned into three years and I became a full-time staff photographer for the paper.

Since then I have shot on all formats – 6×6 Hasselblad, 6×7 Mamiya, 5×4 plate camera… and I’ve tinkered with moving image on Super 8 and 16mm. I have a little collection of Polaroid cameras too, which retain such an attraction for me; such unique and iconic devices that have a romance all of their own.

These days, of course, I shoot mainly on digital, which is a revolution, but you’re always looking for ways to inject some charisma. I use Zeiss Otus lenses that give a bit of that magical old-school look back. But the ways in which you can adjust your look are numerous, and I don’t want to give too much away!

Most unusual set-up

Shooting [debut short film] Johanna in Finland was always going to be technically difficult. The air temp was -15°C and water temperature -4°C. I wanted to shoot RAW and I wanted a proper camera to get the best quality we could. The environment was so extreme there was no margin for error. We put a Sony F5 camera inside a huge Gates underwater housing with a separate monitor. The water temperature wasn’t a problem, but the camera froze in the -15°C air. On one attempt to shoot some sequences underwater the monitor flooded so the DP was shooting blind. The O ring seal had frozen and let water in. Overnight we dried it out and it was a very tense start to the next and final day. Luckily it worked.

The other difficulty was the drone. As it flew higher it got colder, so each battery lasted only about two minutes. This meant we had to be very precise with our shot planning and choreographing of individual scenes. We shot these using a RED Dragon and the results speak for themselves.

Ed Sayers

Seven Productions

"The right medium and camera for each job is the key, whether it’s 35mm or Go-Pro and a drone or whatever."

First camera

My dad won it in a golf competition and finally let me use it on a snowboarding trip when the camera was about 20 years old – as was I! I made a film that I edited on two U-matic machines, cutting to Jimi Hendrix’s Ezy Rider. It was all shot on this Super 8 with a fixed lens. There was no focus to worry about, no zoom – only aperture, for which Syd Macartney (a commercials director from Rawi Macartney, where I was a runner) lent me his old manual Sekonic light meter.

With so little to adjust on the camera, it made you think about positioning to get a more interesting shot. And the camera was so small you could snowboard while turning it over in your hands.

Most unusual set-up

Despite my championing of Super 8 and film (via short film competition Straight 8) I’m totally agnostic about formats. The right medium and camera for each job is the key, whether it’s 35mm (Speech Debelle Terms & Conditions) or Go-Pro and a drone (VW Play the Road) or whatever.

As a producer and a director, I’ve worked on a lot of multi-cam projects, usually due to hiding some or all cameras from members of the public. Those projects don’t lend themselves to film for obvious reasons, so it’s always digital. You may have Alexas, Canon C300s, DSLRs or mirrorless equivalents, Go-Pros, phones, drones… the key is to get the cameras where you need them. On an eBay multi-cam film called Suddenly Xmas we had two cameramen in seven-foot-tall polar bear suits, holding Christmas presents with their huge paws. The presents contained the camera (a C300) with the lens looking out through a Christmas bauble-shaped cut-out at the front, a screen secreted on the back, and their real hands were on the inside of the colourfully wrapped box, operating the camera controls.

MJ DELANEY

Merman

"That’s why the Canon EOS 5D was such a game-changer for me when it came out. I was still self-shooting with zero budget, but digital SLRs gave everything a more professional gloss."

First camera

The first camera I worked with was the Sony PD150, which my brother, Theo, very kindly lent me from time to time when I was first making little films in my bedroom. For Deaf, Dumb and Blind, one of the first music videos I made, we couldn’t afford a grade with our £0 budget. [Editor] Rebecca Luff was working on reception at Final Cut and we used to edit in the dead of night there after everyone had gone home.

We chucked every filter available in FC7 all over it just to try and give it a look. That’s why the Canon EOS 5D was such a game-changer for me when it came out. I was still self-shooting with zero budget, but digital SLRs gave everything a more professional gloss. For example, for the second backstage film I made, for Vivienne Westwood, I still couldn’t afford a grade, but the 5D lent it a certain sheen, which I Iiked, and which hadn’t been available to me before.

Most unusual set-up

The most fun I’ve had with a camera was the Nando’s spot, where we strapped an Alexa to a drone and flew it out of an abandoned, roofless, Art Deco cinema and over Maputo. [DP] Chris Sabogal and I were grinning like kids on Christmas morning that day.

MILES JAY

Smuggler

"I still remember when the camera started rolling and I felt the money burning – the pressure of that made me work with heightened senses." 

First camera

Well, it’s not really the first camera I shot with. It’s not even a camera per se, but about three-and-a-half years ago I shot with 35mm for the first time and I was, like, “Oh, this is how it’s supposed to feel.” I still remember when the camera started rolling and I felt the money burning – the pressure of that made me work with heightened senses.

It’s a cliché, but digital lets you develop some pretty lazy habits that film won’t allow. There are fewer variables with 35mm, which I love. There’s a simplicity to what you’re doing; the emotion of what you’re shooting can come to the foreground. It’s honest. With film, I’m never worried about the aesthetics; it allows me to focus on performance and storytelling. Although, on the music video where I first shot 35mm, I also shot every scene from 20 surveillance cameras for an interactive component, but I learned my lesson. “Keep it simple” is the mantra now.

Most unusual set-up

Carly’s Café was, by far, the most technically challenging shoot I’ve done to date, and it was my first professional job. It was an interactive PSA where you could experience, to a degree, what it was like to be a person with autism having an over-stimulation episode. There were six different viewpoints for the character and we only used an Alexa because I wanted to keep the quality up and didn’t want to use a multi-rig set-up, because it wouldn’t have painted the subjective experience properly.

We started off on normal lenses and then we switched to Lensbaby tilt-shift lenses to play with the visual field. At some points we were holding lenses in front of the camera to give a certain effect, which had to match all the other action. All six of these cameras then had to be shot out of sequence with action that overlapped between the images in real time, with lenses that became more distorted as our story went on. It became a technical mind-bender.

MELANIE BRIDGE

The Sweet Shop

“I was seven when I first picked up a camera. It was my mum’s… I can still remember the smell: a mixture of leather and rubber.” 

First camera

I was seven when I first picked up a camera. It was my mum’s camera and had a Zeiss lens, which she informed me was really special. I can still remember the smell: a mixture of leather and rubber. I was interested in magic tricks and wondered if there was some way of creating a magical illusion in a photo.

My granddad, who was an amateur photographer, told me how to take a picture of a person sitting inside a bottle. To me that sounded amazing! He explained I had to take a photo of a bottle and then rewind the film and take a photo of a person in the same position and it would look like they were inside the bottle (a simple double exposure).

I didn’t really get it but I tried it anyway, positioning the bottle carefully and getting my little sister to make herself really small like she was trying to squeeze herself inside it. I had to wait weeks for that photo to be printed. I was so excited to see it – and then so disappointed in the result. I had completely missed! Here it is, the first picture I ever took.

Most unusual set-up

The most unconventional set-up I’ve used is also the most lo-fi. The idea for the ad (for Dulux paint) called for an animated mural to be painted onto a house before your eyes. To make it look as real as possible we shot a time-lapse from dawn to dusk with the camera moving all the way around the house using a 5D camera. We worked out how many frames we needed and plotted out our track, laying it all the way around the house, with a dolly and a small crane so we could move the camera up and down the walls. Every five minutes we moved the camera slightly and took another frame. The result is a one-shot camera move all the way around a house with the light changing from dawn to dusk. We created the animation in post. It looked entirely convincing.

SIRI BUNFORD

Knucklehead

“Sometimes I’d get invited to dinner parties and, being terrible at small talk, would take photographs. I guess I might never have been a director if I’d been chatty!” 

First camera

My first film camera was a Pentax ME Super which I bought when I first moved to London. Sometimes I’d get invited to dinner parties and, being terrible at small talk, would take photographs. I guess I might never have been a director if I’d been chatty!

Most unusual set-up

I shot an ad in the Serengeti during the wildebeest migration. It involved coordinating a helicopter and two SUVs to get 100,000 wildebeest to stampede towards the DP hiding in a tree holding a RED.

MARK ZIBERT

Rogue Films

“Now, instead of being pushed around on a skateboard, I use a Segway miniPRO to get a “dolly” shot. Not very cool, but at least it’s better than rollerblades.” 

First camera

I grew up reading [skateboarding magazines] Thrasher and TransWorld. Grabbing the family camera or camcorder and shooting your buddies skating was a natural progression. In high school I studied photography and purchased my first camera: a Nikon F-601. I still have it somewhere – probably collecting dust at my mom’s house. Eventually I went to photo school at Sheridan College, Ontario, where we were schooled in medium- and large-format photography. Nothing like hauling a 4×5 camera to school every day.

Most unusual set-up

If anything, cameras are becoming simpler by the year. Digital went mainstream just as I finished college. It definitely worked in my favour as the new medium levelled the playing field between the young blood and the established guard. Before then, taking portraits on 4×5 camera systems was complicated in terms of the overall process. Setting it up on a tripod, loading film, metering for exposure, whereas today you just look on a monitor.

Now everything beyond the camera system has become more complicated. My shooting process may mean holding a RED or Alexa Mini mounted on the latest Movi system and hauling ass down the street on a Segway… trying not to bail in front of the crew! 

What’s exciting about this is that flexibility and mobility have reached a whole new level and gear is more accessible and easier to use, levelling the playing field even further. There are more opportunities to steal “produced” looking shots without permits.

Now, instead of being pushed around on a skateboard, I use a Segway miniPRO to get a “dolly” shot. Not very cool, but at least it’s better than rollerblades.