Cinematographer Collective - New Member - Mikhail Petrenko

Most recent addition to our Cinematographer Collective - Mikhail Petrenko (usually going by what he calls his friendly name, Misha). Super guy with a very passionate approach to cinematography. When he's not shooting films, he's honing his eye with still photography, trudging around in natural landscapes studying the light. He often tells me about his dreams to create a free cinematography based school where people can learn and teach in an open environment flourishing with new ideas. http://mpetrenko.com/

On Location - Footy (SI2k Mini)

Another cool project headed up by Frame Discreet. I was cinematographer on the shoot with fellow Frame Discreet cinematographer, Mike Leblanc operating. Everything was shot POV style mounted onto a helmet (except for a couple stylized jib/dolly shots). Tony Del Rio directed the spot and it was shot on our SI2k Mini head recording direct to a touchscreen tablet laptop. I had the VGA port off the laptop cloning the monitor which was then converted to a wireless composite signal. The composite signal was rigged into our MYVU video goggles for Mikey to compose his shots. I monitored the laptop running alongside him. Only had a couple of hickups. One being battery power for the laptop (we had two batteries, however we were only able to charge them on the recording laptop). The other hickup was with a loose connection on an RCA cable that lost us 30mins in troubleshooting. Besides that, everything went great! Kept with the natural flourescent lighting, having a few bulbs off to create pools of light and accented it with our kit of 3 1k LED lights (www.flolight.com). Fantastic because each 1k only draws 100W of power. Power outlets were scarce, so we actually had batteries charging, and 3 lights all running off the same circuit, no problem :)
Shout out to production photographer Sam Grant for his stills. Thanks to Aalis @ Tiger Direct for his magical rush orders on components and laptop.... and Special thanks to Ari and Steve at Silicon Imaging for the ongoing support and skyping to make this shoot a success!

Justin

Camera: SI2k Mini - Toshiba m750 12" tablet laptop - Switar 10mm, 25mm, Angenieux 5.9mm, Schneider Xenon 50mm, MYVU Shades 301 (w/ VGA>RCA adapter)
Format: 1920x1080 HD
Stock: QT Cineform RAW to internal 120gb Solid State HD
Cinematographer: Justin Lovell

Super 8 Transfer Samples- "Sheila's Day Off"

Super 8/RED Short "Sheila's Day Off".

A great little short film shot on both RED camera and super 8. Seasoned actress' Heidi Tan and Amanda Lewis co-produced this project-- Amanda Lewis' directorial debut. Taking a challenging approach Richard Fiander shot all the super 8 on ektachrome 64t. A tough stock to use for interiors because of its slow speed. Most people would choose to shoot this with the negative 200/500 ASA film stocks for the extra latitude and speed. Richard ended up pushing the processing in certain shots to be able to maintain exposure. Good on 'ya for taking a less conventional approach!

Camera: Rollei SL85 & RED
Format: Super 8mm
Stock: Ektachrome 64t
Cinematographer: Richard Fiander

On Location- Swagger of a Rockstar

Music Video collaboration with Director Jason Gosbee & RED Camera Package from Toronto local Ben Goldstein (redshorts@rocketmail.com).
Shot most of this in 4k, except for the sections we wanted at higher frame rates. Having to keep in mind that when you shoot at 3k or 2k you are cropping in on the sensor and losing some of your field of view. Lots of help from 1st AC Mike Dawson made the day fly by smoothly. Another tip of advice, when exposing for darker skinned people your green screen ratios may have to be adjusted. I was often opening up nearly 2 stops from incident readings to get a healthy exposure on the darker skin tones. A little extra fill light also helped to maintain detail. I'll post the video once it is released!

Video: Quinn-Maybach - Swagger of a Rockstar
Camera: RED 4k, nikon primes
Director: Jason Gosbee
Cinematographer: Justin Lovell

On location- Greenhouse

Greenhouse - an inspirational short film that looks at greening Toronto's social housing community. from SHSC GLOBE on Vimeo. (sorry, squeezed 4:3 ratio)

On location shooting with Director Christy Garland and Producer Kathleen Smith (not in photo). Thankfully I had some of our cinematographer collective helping out with lighting - Barry Cheong and Misha Petrenko. Was a great time working with the crew over the 7 day shoot. Made great use of Barry's Kino-Flo package and my EZFX Jib arm for some cinematic intro shots around Toronto.