S106 Directors Blog

Just a quick update showing where we will be staying during our 2 month shooting period in Africa.

After lowlands 2007 I couldn’t wait to get back in there. And this year I was directing for the VPRO. The above picture is me and my crew; Daan Nieuwenhuis (camera) and Gijs Stollman (sound) relaxing after some hard field work. My job was to portrait the festival and it’s visitors and show what was happening beside the music. A great job with a great crew! We had our own golf car and had a great time working together! Take a look at the gallery for some shots.

Yesterday at 08:50 I yelled “start!” and we went live. A show that would cover an entire stock trading day! We pulled the plug at 18:00 after the dutch markets where closed. It was a tough but fun day! The day entailed the grande finale between the 9 best day traders in Holland presented by Jort Kerlder. It was called “De Slimste Belleger van Nederland” initiated by none other than ABN ARMO. You can still watch a recap here. One of the people in my crew was kind enough to take some working shots, you can check these out in the gallery.

…and in to Africa! Kenya to be axact, 8 days of shooting for a short documentary. Our mission was to show how people live in Nairobi, thru the eyes of a European; Leon van der Zanden. We went to an orphanage, children’s hospital, slums, a dance school and finally to the Sawa Sawa Festival featuring Beef and Black Uhuru. The festival is organised by the Sarakasi trust. And it is very impressive to see what they have accomplished in Nairobi Kenya over the past few years. Rudy van Dijck (Chairman & Founder) is an amazing person whom has inspired and helped alot of young people.

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Most of the time we wish we could work on 2k material and sometimes we have to scale down… a lot… for Video MMS. Only 172 x 144 pixels with a maximum filesize of 220kb.

One of our regular clients is Chunk ID based in Amsterdam. We have done many video MMS campaigns for them over the years. Always strictly Vodafone and this one was special. Madonna & Vodafone have teamed up to release the first seven songs on her new album Hard Candy via Vodafone Live!

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I am completely in love with the look of these prime lenses! And the workflow is so much better then shooting on film. And with the grain from the ground glass and good lighting you can still achieve amazing results. This is one of my more recent scenes shot with an adapter. What do you think?

I am using the Letus Extreme with the custom EX1 achromat and just did some sharpness testing. I used one of my Carl Zeiss lenses, a 85mm with Nikon fitting. Great lenses by the way. Edge to edge looks good but I am not quite satisfied. Namely the right side of the screen makes me think because it won’t focus with the rest of the screen. I would guess it’s a ground glass issue. Any thoughts?

This saturday I directed the di-rect theatre show for DVD! A very good evening, location; Diligentia theatre, Den Haag. Production company; Double2 It was great working with Tim, Bas, Spike and Jamie, they are a great band! Next week I am starting with post production. I’ll keep you guys updated and maybe post some video. See some more shots in the gallery.

After a lot of waiting my Letus Extreme finally arrived. I basically read all I needed to know on dvxuser.com and learned a lot form Steve Callis and Phlip Bloom in watching their blogs and configuration. It is indeed a fine piece of machinery! With the EX1 specific achromat and the new Nikon mount the adapter sits perfectly aligned on the Zacuto bars. More updates as I get to put this beast to work! See some more shots in the gallery.