NZCS members feature prominently in the nominees list for the 2017 Rialto Channel New Zealand Film Awards (AKA the Moas) to be held in February.
Up for the Rialto Channel Best Film are Hunt for the Wilderpeople shot by Lachlan Milne ACS, Mahana Shot by NZCS Cinematographer of the Year Ginny Loane, and The Rehearsal shot by Andrew Commis ACS.
Nominees for NZOnAir Best Television Feature include How to Murder Your Wife shot by Richard Bluck NZCS, while Ginny Loane shot Jean, which was also nominated for this category.
Image Zone Best Cinematography NZCS member nominees are Simon Raby for Deathgasm, Lachlan Milne ACS for Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Ginny Loane for Mahana, and Waka Attewell/Alun Bollinger for The Great Maiden's Blush.
Nominees for PLS Best Documentary Cinematography include NZCS members Jacob Bryant for A Flickering Truth, Mathew Knight for Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses, Jacob Bryant for Chasing Great, Adam Luxton jointly credited for On an Unknown Beach, Christopher Pryor for The Ground We Won, and Dominic Fryer for Tickled.
Meanwhile, corporate members Halcyon Digital and Park Road Post have been nominated for the contribution to Deathgasm, and WETA Digital for Hunt for the Wilderpoeple.
When you travel by air with film or video equipment there are restrictions on dangerous goods including the lithium batteries that you will almost certainly be taking with you.
The most well-known restriction on lithium batteries is that you must not put loose or spare batteries in checked-in baggage.
Here is the official Air New Zealand policy about travelling with lithium batteries updated for 2017. It has a handy table to help you decide what is acceptable. It can be helpful to carry a printed copy with you in case you encounter check–in staff are not fully up to speed.
Air New Zealand, like many airlines, also has a guide on their website. This website guide also warns that your batteries should have the original manufacturers labels on them that show capacity or lithium content.
More detailed documentation from airlines sometimes refers to a requirement that batteries and cells must be of a 'type proven to meet the requirements of the UN manual of tests and criteria'. Reputable manufacturers have certificates showing that their batteries meet this criteria. They can usually be found by a Google search for '[Insert manufacturer] batteries proven to meet the requirements of the UN manual of tests and criteria'
It's important that we all comply with these restrictions, they may seem like a nuisance but they are there to keep us all safe.
Links:
www.airnewzealand.com/travelling-with-lithium-batteries
IATA document Lithium Battery Guidance Document Revised 9 March 2016
Lithium batteries for film Crews 2017.pdf
Members were intrigued as the possibilities of Virtual Reality (VR) Augmented Reality (AR) and 360 degree shooting were revealed at an NZCS event held at the VR Garage in November.
Aliesha Staples of Staples Productions explored the techniques and equipment on offer and surprised many with the extent to which VR, AR and 360 shooting is already happening in New Zealand.
It would be easy to dismiss this stuff as gimmicky just because there has been little impact on conventional drama shooting so far. But it’s hard to ignore the potential for the screen industry to be affected by YouTube, Facebook, the games industry, and the electronics industry.
Staples pointed to the efforts of the giant Samsung to promote VR headsets as a hard-to-ignore factor that is opening up the field. (Observe the appearance of VR headsets in mobile stores, of all places).
And while VR may not be the stuff of cinema film screens just yet. The Suicide Squad shows, it can make for a pretty inventive EPK and games spinoff. However, Staples was quick to point out that resolution and colorimetry have moved on since then. After all – that was last year.
Also on show at the event was various 360 shooting options – think of shooting Google Street View style, but without the vehicle loaded with keyboard and servers.
Because 360 is so easily watched on-line this is a rapidly moving area and it is not just factual film makers, others are trying to figure out how to use this dimension to tell a scripted story as well.
After the main session members were free to have a go within several VR scenarios using a headset, and if you have never done this before, well, it is literally a whole new world. But then you had to be there…
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Ginny Loane won NZCS Cinematographer of the Year at the inaugural NZCS Awards on Saturday.
Photo: Barrie Osbourne presenting the NZCS Cinematographer of the Year Award.
Ginny Loane won NZCS Cinematographer of the Year at the inaugural NZCS Awards on Saturday. Her success was earned from shooting feature film Mahana directed written and by Lee Tamahori, who was on hand to offer his congratulations.
It was a fitting climax to the event, after NZCS President Richard Bluck acknowledged at the beginning of the evening the lack of women and ethnic diversity in the New Zealand cinematography profession. He promised that NZCS has a programme underway to address the issue but warned that it would take time to bear fruit.
Photo: Presenting the Al Guilford Emerging Cinematographer Award. Sandra Clover Smith, Sophie Guilford, Christian Hipolito, Antonia Prebble, Richard Bluck NZCS.
Photo: The Al Guilford Emerging Cinematographer Award. Sandra Clover Smith, Sophie Guilford, Christian Hipolito, Antonia Prebble, Richard Bluck NZCS.
The inaugural NZCS Awards were judged a resounding success by the sellout crowd at the Heritage Grand Tearoom last Saturday and NZCS offers a huge thank you to everyone involved.
The event was led by master of ceremonies Antonia Prebble who helped make the evening entertaining and moving along smoothly with lots of breaks for socialising.
The climax of the evening was Ginny Loane winning NZCS Cinematographer of the Year for Mahana directed and written by Lee Tamahori, who was on hand to offer his congratulations.
Over dessert, guest of honour Tom Stern ASC AFC, surprised the audience by waving a roll of genuine 35mm film stock. Then, like a Clint Eastwood gunslinger he drew a mobile phone and GoPro from each pocket as a vivid illustration of how the world of cinematography is changing.
This view was thoroughly reinforced by the amazing range of clips that demonstrated that New Zealand produces world-class cinematographers across a wide range of genres.
The Australian cinematography community supported the occasion by sending special guests Ron Johanson OAM ACS, ACS National President and David Lewis ACS, ACS NSW President and ACS National Vice President, and a number of Australian-based sponsors.
Cinematographers are set to pack the Grand Tearoom of Auckland’s Heritage Hotel next month for the first cinematography awards event the New Zealand screen industry has seen.
With over 170 entries, there is no shortage of image-makers willing to go after one of the prestigious awards created by the New Zealand Cinematographers Society (NZCS).
“We have been overwhelmed by the response,” says Richard Bluck, NZCS President. “We have fantastic entries across 14 categories ranging from students, news and current affairs, through documentaries, teleseries, and feature films.”
Because the judging standards are set extremely high, it is no easy feat reaching award standard, says Dave Cameron, NZCS Awards chair.
“I’m delighted to say our judging panel of seasoned-pros were astonished at the quality of the cinematography coming through,” he says.
“The NZCS Awards follow the pattern set in countries like the US, Canada and Australia, and after seeing the entries, the judges tell us we can be confident that our New Zealand cinematography stacks up alongside any in the world.”
In one sense that is not surprising, because among the entries are a BBC One drama, Netflix hits, Hollywood blockbusters, and some beautifully shot commercials and music videos that are designed for a worldwide release. But these productions won’t have a monopoly on awards, because of the quality of the New Zealand productions.
“I think the audience at the NZCS Awards dinner is going to be bowled over, when they see just how far New Zealand cinematographers reach, but also what they achieve at home, ” says Cameron.
He adds that NZCS has also been amazed at the level of support received from the sponsors led by major sponsor The Weta Group of Companies, and Platinum sponsors Panavision, A2Z, Xytech Technologies, Metro Film, and ARRI.
“These companies, and our gold, silver and bronze sponsors, have been enthusiastic from the beginning, perhaps because they know that top-quality cinematography is one of the keys to a successful screen industry,” he says.
The black tie event will be held on 15 October, and will include guest speaker, acclaimed cinematographer, Tom Stern ACS, AFC, and a considerable contingent of guests from across the Tasman.
Cinematographer Christopher Doyle will appear at the Big Screen Symposium on Saturday 24 September, first giving a talk entitled Three Elements Make a Film, followed by an address to the main conference that sounds like fun: I Didn't Plan to Come Here (And I Ain't Leaving).
Christopher Doyle's Bio Reads:
One of the world’s most brilliant and audacious cinematographers, Christopher Doyle has undeniably created some of the most beautiful and innovative cinema imagery of all time.
He left his native Sydney beach culture on a Norwegian merchant ship at the age of eighteen, and his subsequent experience as a Kibbutz-nick cowboy in Israel, quack doctor in Thailand, and “green agriculturalist” in India, inform but don’t really explain his work. In the late seventies, Doyle was “re-birthed” as Du Ke Feng, which means “like the wind.”
Soon after, he moved to Taiwan where he started to photograph and film, theatre and dance. It was his 8mm and video work that moved director Edward Yang to hire him for his debut film That Day, On the Beach. Fluent in Mandarin, French and Cantonese, Du Ke Feng subsequently became a sought after cinematographer in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.
He has been exploring the art form ever since. Du Ke Feng has realized over fifty Chinese-language films, and his alter ego Christopher Doyle has made more than twenty in various other languages and film cultures. His body of work is famously distinct, characterised by images that are lush, kinetic and highly textural.
Du Ke Feng worked with Hong Kong director Kar-Wai Wong on DAYS OF BEING WILD, which began a collaboration between the two that included some of the most iconic Asian films of the next two decades: Chunking Express, Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, and 2046.
Du Ke Keng/Doyle went on to create stunning visual aesthetics for Zhang Yimou’s award-winning wuxia film Hero, Gus Van Sant’s masterful Paranoid Park, M Night Shyamalan’s fantasy/thriller Lady in the Water and the rich cinematic experience of Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control.
Doyle’s most recent collaboration with visionary Alejandro Jodorowsky on his carnivalesque memoir Endless Poetry (Poesia Sin Fin) screened at this year’s Directors Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival.
Enthusiasm ran high in the camera and lighting crowd as Xytech Technologies, an NZCS platinum sponsors, hosted an evening event to showcase the new full colour LED lighting technology that is revolutionising the way some sets are lit.
As a huge bonus, Brett Smith, GM of ARRI Australasia - also platinum sponsors of NZCS - flew in with Bertrand Duaphant, GM of ARRI Lighting in Asia Pacific, and Nancy Liu Lighting Product Manager, ARRI Asia. The ARRI visitors generously shouted NZCS members drinks and nibbles, and a table of ARRI swag.
The evening opened with introductions and welcome from owner of Xytech Technologies, Stephen Pryor, and President Richard Bluck NZCS, followed by a presentation from Nancy Liu that showed how the Skypanel technology aims to produce a high colour rendering index whichever measure you happen to use. Nancy also illustrated how much control the simple menus provide.
Perhaps the highlight of the evening, was an amusing and light-hearted talk by gaffer Dave Brown and best boy Scott Harman who explained their experiences with the Xytech equipment - including Digital Sputniks and ARRI Skypanels - on Ghost in the Shell.
However the message from the evening was serious: this technology brings with it a change in the way of working, but the result can be absolutely amazing.
If you missed this event, that's bad luck, because was both informative and enjoyable. Still, we aim to hold informative events like this regularly. To stay informed subscribe to our newsletter here.
Special thanks to Xytech Technologies, ARRI, Dave Brown and Scott Harman.
Bertrand Dauphant explains what ARRI Technology can do.
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