During Talent Lab we got to meet a woman I’ve been dying to meet, an incredible cinematographer Rachel Clark. She’s worked on multiple films, especially within shortflix, on the day she visited us she brought in some AMIRA Camera’s for us to test out.
Rachel explained she did all camera jobs when starting in cinematography, starting out simply as a runner and working her way up the ladder, her first big break being American Honey, she learnt there about the importance of adding filters to her shot to soften out the image, we spoke a lot on polarising filter and how it stops reflections within lights.
Clark then got out a huge piece of equipment named the easy rig, that if I’m completely honest didn’t look easy at all, it’s a stead cam that’s fitter onto your back, we tested this out and realised how much this can help take the weight of the camera when running around shooting, this was something that really opened my eyes to the equipment out the for filmmakers. Another piece of great information she gave us was concerning Film Stills, she explained always have a photographer on shoot, never just use film stills as the front cover.
She then gave us a list of things to be doing and checking out these go as follows:
Skills Set: Internships and work experience
Mandy: Actors and Crew
ARRI and Panavision: Ask them to borrow equipment, it doesn’t hurt to ask
Running: don’t be scared to start off low, you learn so much
Shooting for free: This will help you gain experience and also allow you to find contacts for the future
Once the discussion was over I decided to ask some questions concerning a film she created for Shortflix, Nosebleed is a film that really inspired me and my major grad film visually, I knew I wanted the same vintage sort of look within my film, I always assumed this was done in post production editing so I was extremely glad I’d had the opportunity to speak with her as the explained that to get that vintage look they was aiming for within nose bleed they used the following:
Glimmer Glass
Old Vintage Lenses
Smoke
Having the opportunity to meet Rachel was incredible, she taught me many things in which ill follow within my career, following this meeting I know where to go for equipment, where to try for work experience, the fight and wrong this to do within the industry and how she found her distinct style, for me this was extremely inspiring stuff that i'm extremely greatfulto have experianced.
