Flying High

High Maintenance moves to HBO while maintaining its web series roots, keeping wry humor alive on ALEXA Mini and a mix of Canon, Fujinon, Cooke and vintage Super Baltar lenses

By Valentina I. Valentini

Developed by wife-and-husband team Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair, High Maintenance follows a cannabis dealer on wheels, The Guy, who delivers pot to the human mosaic that is New York City. Originally released as a Vimeo web series, HBO picked up the show with six new episodes. The series was shot by DPs Dagmar Weaver-Madsen, Charlie Gruet and Brian... Read more

Masters Of FX

An informed read on the state of the art in cinema VFX from the artists who got us here

By Kevin H. Martin

Phil Tippett adds final touches to the Rancor puppet seen in Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi. Once upon a time, “making of” books on movies were more the exception than the rule. For aficionados of the silver screen, pickings were even slimmer; in 1970, there was a thick paperback released entitled The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001:... Read more

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

Cinematographer Terrence Hayes lights a fluorescent Mexico on the RED DRAGON with Kowa anamorphic lenses for Happy Birthday

By Valentina I. Valentini

A FAST-MOVING, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants thriller, Happy Birthday is the story of Brady Baxter, taken on a drug-fueled, death-defying journey through Mexico after discovering his girlfriend is cheating on him. The film marks Casey Tebo’s feature directorial debut, a natural evolution for the talented Massachusetts native, who started out directing... Read more

Pump It Up!

A global commercial campaign for Reebok’s ZPump Fusion 2.0 shoes features effects-driven work by German-based design studio weareflink

By Simon Wakelin

Reebok is world-renowned for its Pump technology, an inflatable feature in coveted shoes released to the public back in 1989. It was the first line of athletic sneakers with an internal inflation mechanism, a unique-fitting cushion located in the shoe’s tongue to provide a firm lock around the wearer’s foot. One of the biggest moments in Reebok’s... Read more

Planetfall

A spiraling VFX history in the Star Trek franchise has led to the latest installment, with effects vendor Double Negative supplying VFX fireworks as the Starship Enterprise goes down blazing in Star Trek Beyond

By Kevin H. Martin

Kimberly French © 2015 Paramount Pictures Star Trek ’s history with visual effects has been both acclaimed and troubled—sometimes for the very same project. The original series, which began airing on NBC 50 years ago, required the services of four separate vendors in order to continue to meet airdates. Unlike several Irwin Allen sci-fi series... Read more

Bourne Is Back

Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, BSC, combines film and digital acquisition methodologies with a documentarian’s eye to capture Jason Bourne

By Kevin H. Martin

AN AMNESIAC ASSASSIN PURSUED RELENTLESSLY by his former employers struggles to survive long enough to discover his identity. This was the premise of 2002’s The Bourne Identity, an adaptation of spy novelist Robert Ludlum’s popular series, starring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. The initial entry in the Bourne series was directed by Doug Liman and... Read more

The Gold & The Cold

Phedon Papemichael ASC, GSC, bestows ARRI ALEXA 65 splendor upon Cedric Nicolas-Trojan's Huntsman Sequel

By Kevin H. Martin

2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman reimagined the timeless legendary fairy tale with a flourish, augmenting its considerable star power with an array of breathtaking visuals. The film had come about after veteran commercial director Rupert Sanders, aided by his longtime associate and VFX supervisor Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, fashioned a proof-of-concept... Read more

The High Life

Indie filmmaker Ben Wheatley and cinematographer Laurie Rose go upscale to adapt J.G. Ballard’s sci-fi classic High-Rise

By Kevin H. Martin

Producer Jeremy Thomas had been hoping to make a film from author J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise for decades, dating back to the novel’s publication in 1975, even involving Nicolas Roeg as director at one point. Heralded as a leader of New Wave science-fiction that redefined the genre as a field addressing sociological, as well as hard science, during... Read more

Shooting Blind

Despite dumping most of his gear and breaking the monitor on his EPIC-M RED DRAGON, filmmaker Renan Ozturk and his climbing team completed Down To Nothing, a documentary following the perilous ascent of one of Southeast Asia's tallest Mountains

By Mark Dillon

In fall 2014, cinematographer Renan Ozturk and five fellow explorers set out on the daunting mission to scale Myanmar’s Hkakabo Razi. The goal was to determine which mountain in the far-eastern Burmese Himalayas is tallest, it or neighboring Gamlang Razi, measured a year earlier via GPS at 19,259 feet. The group consisted of elite climbers accustomed... Read more

Moody Blues

Stefan Czapsky, ASC, reveals his fresh approach to capturing cinematic visuals on NBC’s latest hit, Shades of Blue

By Iain Blair

Shades of Blue, the new NBC police series starring Jennifer Lopez, starts with a bang. Lopez plays Harlee Santos, a single mother and resourceful, but compromised detective at the heart of a tight-knit crew of Brooklyn detectives. Led by enigmatic Lt. Matt Wozniak (Ray Liotta), Santos is looking far from glamorous while confessing to all manner of shady... Read more