American Cinematographer - December 2009 - 110

Clubhouse News Right (left to right): Brenton Spencer and Karl Herrmann, CSC with Jack Green, ASC and Roberto Schaefer, ASC during a panel hosted in conjunction with the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival. Far right: Adam Kimmel, ASC. an apprentice on Dressed to Kill, shot by Ralf Bode, ASC. After joining the union in 1980, Kimmel worked as a camera assistant on such features as The Verdict (shot by Andrzej Bartkowiak, ASC) and Birdy (photographed by Michael Seresin, BSC) before venturing into commercials and music videos as a director/cinematographer. Since 1991, he’s earned director of photography credits on such features as Green, Schaefer at VLAFF Jack Green, ASC and Roberto Schaefer, ASC recently participated in a series of professional workshops organized alongside the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival. The festival’s screening slate comprised 29 features and 33 short films from Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, El Salvador, Canada, Spain and Paraguay. In 2008, the VLAFF began hosting professional workshops to encourage the educational and professional development of Vancouver’s film industry, and the series’ immediate success prompted the festival’s organizers to make the workshops an annual component. This year’s educational series began with “The Ultimate Test Drive.” Held at Clairmont Camera Film & Digital’s Vancouver facility, the event offered attendees hands-on access to cameras and accessories. Clairmont also hosted a two-part lighting workshop focusing on glamour makeup, corrective makeup and lighting for prosthetics. Schaefer joined cinematographers Karl Herrmann, CSC and Philip Linzey, CSC, who led the workshop with makeup artist Stan Edmonds. The group demonstrated the effects of lens filtration, hard light and soft light, and tackled such everyday conundrums as balancing different skin tones within the frame. PS Production Services hosted a second day of workshops, which began with a discussion with Green and Schaefer moderated by Herrmann and filmmaker Brenton Spencer. The conversation covered long-term collaborations with directors and other crew members, favorite projects, and what ASC membership has meant to both Schaefer and Green. Schaefer also showed clips from his commercial reel. Green wrapped up the conversation by emphasizing, “The more craft you know, the more of an artist you can be.” Demonstrating his own mastery of the craft, Green then led the attendees through a lighting workshop. Green was in Vancouver shooting the back-to-back features Hot Tub Time Machine and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and he sprinkled his workshop with anecdotes from both while re-creating one of his lighting setups from Clint Eastwood’s Bird. Green fielded questions from the enthusiastic audience and stressed his own preference for the “KISS” (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach to lighting. —Jon D. Witmer Kimmel Joins Society Born and raised in New York, Adam Kimmel, ASC began his foray into filmmaking at the age of 17 as an apprentice in the camera department on The Wanderers, photographed by Michael Chapman, ASC. Kimmel continued with Chapman as an apprentice on Raging Bull, and then worked as Me and the Mob, Beautiful Girls, Almost Heroes, Jesus’ Son and Capote, and on live shows such as Denis Leary’s No Cure for Cancer and Lock and Load. ASC, BSC at IBC Michael Goi, ASC and David Stump, ASC joined producer Lori McCreary for the “Camera-Assessment Series Master Class” during September’s IBC conference in Amsterdam. Also present were BSC members John Daly, Sue Gibson and Joe Dunton, who presented the “Film and Digital Image Evaluation Master Class.” The complementary sessions explored both societies’ recent assessment series, which compared film and digital motion-picture capturing systems. Following the sessions, the panelists from both sides of the pond came together for a discussion moderated by Howard Lukk, director of media systems for Pixar Animation Studios. 110 December 2009 Adam Kimmel photo by Mark Romanek. Lance Acord photo by Jonathan Arroyo, courtesy of Film Shoot Locations.

American Cinematographer - December 2009

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