16 minute read
TRISTAN OLIVER BSC•COPPELIA
ENTER . . . CAMERA LEFT
By Natasha Block Hicks
To visit beautifully-bleak landscapes in the course of one’s work is a privilege peppered with discomfort, relates Chris Plevin ACO Associate BSC GBCT, enjoying the momentary snugness of his home outside London.
“I love those incredible vistas and the fact that you can see so far,” he says reverentially.
Plevin’s career has taken him to the mountains of Norway and the iconic African Sahara. His latest role, as A-camera operator on The Northman (2022, dir. Robert Eggers, DP Jarin Blaschke), introduced a new sort of ‘desolate’.
“The landscapes of Ireland and Iceland are both pretty moody,” he relates, “I love them, but you’ve got to have stoicism to film there. You may have to stand in the rain and wind for a long time, to be rewarded with a cold meal in a soggy bit of cardboard.”
The plight of the cast – in authentic Viking peasant rags, standing semi-barefoot in the same mud and wind as the bundled-up crew – kept things in perspective.
“We had snow, wind and rain, but there were only two days when the weather was so bad that we couldn’t shoot,” Plevin recalls, “and, of course, it looks fantastic with beautiful sets in wonderful scenery.
“The job of operator is essentially the same whatever the genre,” he continues, “but there can be such variation within it, in terms of your input. Robert and Jarin were very tight and extremely specific; many scenes were covered with a single shot. The blocking would be such that it would manipulate the actors into the right space
for the camera to capture a close-up, in a way that was meticulously choreographed. They were very precise about what they wanted to do, so my role became one of technical precision.”
Plevin studied Materials Engineering at Queen Mary College in London in the late sixties, so precision should be second nature to him. However, he confesses to finding the course distractingly dull. He then attended the West Surrey College Of Art in Farnham to study film.
“West Surrey introduced the idea that you could combine technology and artistry and get paid for it, which was brilliant,” recalls Plevin, “I’d found what I wanted to do.”
After graduating, Plevin was hired as a camera trainee at United Motion Pictures (London) Ltd, a small
I never get bored going to work
producer of corporate and motor sport documentaries. Around this time, he became involved with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and was called-up, alongside director Maxim Ford, to shoot a TUC film on their ‘Jobs For Youth’ campaign. Discovering a shared interest in left wing politics, Plevin and Ford expanded their slate to include the ‘Jobs For Youth’ concerts in Brixton, which became the documentary feature Live A Life (1982) and, with some funding from Channel 4, they founded the co-operative production company Parallax Pictures.
“We wanted to make some commercials for worthy causes like Greenpeace and the TUC campaigns,” relates Plevin, “but with glossy filming values. We thought if Ridley Scott could persuade people to buy Hovis, why couldn’t we use the same techniques for anti-nuclear?”
By the early nineties Plevin had drifted away from Parallax and was busy working as a freelance focus puller for DPs like Michael Coulter BSC on productions such as Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994, dir. Mike Newell). On his last project as an assistant, Mary Reilly (1996, dir. Stephen Frears), the DP, Philippe Rousselot ASC AFC, suggested to Plevin that it was time for him to take on a new challenge. He moved up to operating, working on commercials for a year until the first film work came in – a low-budget British comedy, Brassed Off (1996, dir. Mark Herman, DP Andy Collins).
“Brassed Off was a real film from the heart,” recalls Plevin enthusiastically, “everyone was behind it. Mark was focussed on the story and performance, so I was able to work intuitively with Andy, which was a great experience.” Plevin clocked-up a few of these archetypal Britflicks during his first years of operating, such as Little Voice (1998) and Purely Belter (2000), both with Herman and Collins, and additional operating on examples like Notting Hill (1999, dir. Roger Mitchell, DP Michael Coulter BSC).
“It is a shame that British, low-budget, narrative-driven films are much less common now,” Plevin laments, “as I really liked doing them.”
A number of second unit DP credits crop-up for Plevin during his early operating years, such as on Velvet Goldmine (1998, dir. Todd Haynes, DP Maryse Alberti AFC) and Mansfield Park (1999, dir. Patricia Rozema, DP Michael Coulter BSC). “I probably should have pursued that road,” muses Plevin, “but I got married and had children, so there was an imperative to keep a roof over our head and not step into the unknown.
“Camera operator is still a very privileged position,” he continues, “plus at the end of the day, you get to go home. The DP is on call 24/7.”
Plevin’s first significant TV operating on Band Of Brothers (2001, DP Joel Ransom CSC) was, in his words, a “revelatory experience”. He was the second operator on his unit alongside Martin Hume ACO Associate BSC GBCT.
“It was 90% handheld, with the lovely Moviecam SL film cameras,” recalls Plevin. “We did one shot that ran across the D-Day airfield in a Jeep. Martin sat handheld in the back, then he handed the camera over to me physically at the encampment and I continued the shot into the officers’ tent. That was before gimbals.”
Shooting episodes simultaneously, several units would team-up when more cameras were required for big sequences.
“It was so well organised,” remembers Plevin. Christopher Newman, the 1st AD responsible for the scheduling on Band Of Brothers, went on to produce Game Of Thrones (2011-2019) on which Plevin operated from 2015 to 2017.
“The DPs, directors and actors on Game Of Thrones would fly in and out of where the ‘machine’, the core crew, was parked in each location,” reveals Plevin, “it was incredibly efficient. The producers recognised that, with the DPs changing, the operators were the guardians of the house style; we knew the rules. It gave the whole thing a seamless coherent look from start to finish.”
Cinematographer John Mathieson BSC, who Plevin first met on the music video scene when they were both assistants, has been instrumental in several significant moments of Plevin’s career. By chance, Mathieson’s camera crew on Kingdom Of Heaven (2005, dir. Ridley Scott) were staying in the same Moroccan hotel as the crew of The Grid (2004, dir. Mikael Salomon, DP Seamus Deasy), on which Plevin was operating, and he managed to hop on to C-camera on the epic blockbuster – his first – when The Grid wrapped.
It was on another Scott/Mathieson picture, Robin Hood (2010), that Plevin, on D-camera, and the other operators, Peter Taylor, Martin Hume, Paul Edwards, plus Peter Cavaciuti, first conceived the idea for the Association Of Camera Operators (ACO), for which Plevin served as president from 2012 to 2014.
Mathieson also gave Plevin his first experience of shooting a 3D movie, on 47 Ronin (2013, dir. Carl Rinsch).
“That was a very difficult shoot, technically, because of the delay in the operators’ monitor and the inertia of the enormously heavy Alexa 3D rig,” remarks Plevin. “You had to predict when the actors were going to move to achieve the correct framing.”
The first time Mathieson invited Plevin to take A-camera was on Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015), although it was Philippe Rousselot who had first bought Plevin to the British director’s attention some years earlier on Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011).
Ritchie and Plevin’s working relationship has continued outside the umbrella of any one DP, with Plevin operating A-camera for Mathieson again on King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) followed by Aladdin (2019) and Wrath Of Man (2021), both lit by DP Alan Stewart BSC.
“Guy’s got a particular way of shooting,” reveals Plevin. “I was pretty proud of The Man From U.N.C.L.E because I felt we’d managed to create a really nice style. We tried to steer it in the direction of those classic 1960’s spy movies in the way we used the zoom, and with John shooting some 16mm handheld it introduced different textures. There’s a sort of voyeuristic, surveillance-type look to some scenes.”
Project epic, or project small, the camaraderie of the crew remains one of Plevin’s favourite aspects of his job.
“You feel part of a group of people who are working as one,” he explains, “and you’re only as good as your crew will allow you to be. I never get bored going to work, so I’m very lucky in that respect.”
Opposite: (descending) shooting on Game Of Thrones, Band Of Brothers and Mr Bean’s Holiday (2nd unit). This page: (descending) pictured on Men In Black 3, Aladdin, And When Did You Last See Your
Father? (photo © Giles Keyte), Auf Wiedersehn Pet in The Dominican Republic, and The Edge Of Love.
TRIED AND TESTED
By DP Matt Lewis
Way back in March 2020, just prior to UK lockdown caused by the pandemic, I was lucky-enough to use the original Sony Venice on a feature film I shot called Boiling Point.
The premise of that film revolved around executing a single, continuous, handheld take over the course of 90-minutes, which came with some unique challenges. Specifically regarding which camera to choose, some of those challenges from my perspective included: could it record for 90-minutes at a resolution of 6K?; would it be sensitive enough that we could light with almost all practical lighting?; and, would it be possible to rest it on my shoulders for 90-minutes without it dislocating both my collarbones?
Through months of testing with Canning24, the Sony Venice was the only camera that answered all of those with a ‘Yes’. The Sony Venice enabled us to shoot at 6K/24fps for as long as we wanted by being the only camera we tested that didn’t cut when the other card slot was emptied mid-take. Because the camera would hop back-and-forth from one card to the other mid-recording, allowing us to pull and exchange the full card, it immediately became the camera for the job. We used three 1TB cards in two card slots to shoot the film.
On Boiling Point, the original Sony Venice also offered its higher native ISO of 2500, which put us in good stead with the more stripped-back lighting plan we had. But, best of all, the camera could be split in half using the Rialto configuration, which allowed us to balance the weight of the camera when it was built onto an Easyrig. It was truly the only camera for the job.
Through the success of the film and the generosity of the folks at Sony, they very kindly offered for me to take a look at the new and improved Sony Venice 2. I used the opportunity to shoot a music video for a band called Wildfront, directed by Alex Fountain, that allowed us to take the camera to a number of very different interior and exterior environments, and to shoot at different times of day and night around Portsmouth and the local coastline.
It was, admittedly, a lower-budget production than was probably fair for a camera designed for shooting top-tier feature films. However, I feel it taught me much more about using the camera than standing gawping at it in a studio, shooting against a lens chart covered in fairy lights would have done. Hopefully all this gives me a fairly well-rounded opinion and a perspective that’ll be useful to fellow cinematographers and operators out there.
I’ll start with the two most eye-catching qualities of the new camera from my point-of-view: the sensor and the low light improvements. The Sony Venice 2 can shoot 8.6k 3:2 when using the full sensor. Now, 8.6k is a pretty massive resolution for most applications, and is certainly too much oomph for a lot of smaller productions, but I think it’s also an incredible tool if you have the infrastructure to handle the file sizes.
In the music video we were only looking to output a 4K end-product, but we were able to use the extra frame size to do full rotations of the frame in the edit. What you end up with is something less organic than spinning the camera on the day, but, that being said, it’s a flexibility you could have only dreamt of a matter of years ago; and the final effect still looks very impressive.
In terms of the look from the sensor, the Sony Venice 2 looks as good as the original Venice 6K sensor with fantastic latitude and colour rendition. It’s so identical to the 6K sensor that you can cut between the two cameras with, in theory, no tweaks in the workflow, which is a great option to have if you have two cameras on the go. I wasn’t able to test this, but it’s a great nugget of knowledge to have on future projects with this camera.
As expected, in the edit the images looked stunning. The clarity and detail that this camera provides, with its 16-stops of dynamic range, gives you so much information to work with in post, and the skin tones in a variety of challenging situations still look beautiful. That is something I recall noticing from the original Venice, and it is great to see it hasn’t changed with this bigger resolution sensor.
Next up, can this camera see better than my own eyes? This is something I was pondering as we sat at the new dual base ISO option of 3200, upped from 2500 ISO, with very little perceivable grain or noise. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this phenomenon with another cinema camera before, and it really was an exciting feeling.
Looking at the footage in the edit there is definitely some extremely low-level grain in there that, if you’re a
The clarity and detail this camera provides, give you so much information to work with in post
I’d like to thank Jake Gerrard, who operated Steadicam, my gaffer Oli Brotherhood, as well as Hamish at Artefact Creative, who supplied lenses and other essential bits of equipment for the shoot. The final music video will be released this summer.
clean freak, you may not appreciate. However, if you are like me, where you’ll likely be grubbying-up your frame with all sorts of diffusion anyway, then this subtle grain is very live-able, if not welcome.
Being able to flick from 800 to 3200 ISO really is the most powerful feature of this camera. For example, it allowed me to light scenes by just shaping the existing street lighting without having to sit at T1.5, and praying some of the unplanned blocking would end-up sharp.
I could also work less intrusively in the darker scenes. The cast didn’t step onto a much brighter set than would be realistic for the story, which I’m hoping creates a better space to perform than having a sea of lamps burning dots into your vision. Whatever way I look at it, having the option to bring the lights down and not stress as much about retaining detail in the shadows is a good thing.
A big thing for me, and how I like to operate, is having a camera that works just as well in my hands or on my shoulder as it does on a head or Steadicam. One thing I noticed with the original Venice is that its size and weight didn’t put it to the top of my list of ‘Cameras I’d Like To Have On My Shoulder’, especially when compared to other highend cameras of a similar vein.
This time round the camera body on the Sony Venice 2 was noticeably lighter when I pulled it out of the flight case, and considerably shorter. This has been achieved by squeezing what used to be the AXS-R7 recorder into the main body of the camera, saving around 4.5cm in length.
That really doesn’t sound like a lot does it? But it does make all the difference when you start running around with this thing. It makes operating this camera off-the-shoulder a really enjoyable way to work. Paired with the Zeiss Supremes, and built with the usual transmitters and monitors, the rig we made up felt very balanced and much more nifty than its predecessor.
Sony have retained their streamlined, separate on-board displays around the body of the camera, one for what the operator needs to access – ISO, shutter angle, NDs – and one for all the main menu functions for the camera assistant. The operator side monitor can be a tad fiddly to reach when the camera is on your shoulder if, like me, your right eye is weaker than your left.
While I was getting used to the layout of the buttons I had to tip the camera away slightly to see what I was doing. I should imagine that after another half-a-day of using these buttons I’d have the layout memorised, so for me, that was not too much of an annoyance.
The incredible 8-stop ND wheel being easilyreachable to the operator is still such a win for this camera. If a cloud rolls along as you’re about to go for a take, you can make those last minute adjustments to avoid slowing the day down, which was a lifesaver for me on more than one occasion during our promo shoot. The only downside is that because the internal ND moves so quickly, no one will notice how reactive you’ve been in saving the take and you’ll have to give yourself a pat on the back instead.
Final thoughts? I naturally came towards this camera with an amount of adoration because of what the first Venice enabled me to achieve, but I’ve tried to give the Venice 2 an honest assessment.
I feel that Sony has made a camera that will be most at home in the high-end feature film and television world. Most importantly, I think they have, by-and-large, listened to users of the first Venice and made a smaller, more versatile camera that meets the resolution needs of the biggest productions.
It is, however, a camera I might second-guess bringing onto every job for that very same reason. It requires more storage and a more advanced workflow than what might be available on certain budgets/timeframes.
For me, however, if the resources are available or the output requires, it’s a no-brainer. The Sony Venice 2 is a truly excellent camera from a company who’ve listened to their users and continue to rock the boat.
Opposite: (top) XXXXX, (below) XXXXX/XXXX. This page: all photography by XXXXX.
Images courtesy/copyright of XXXXXXXX.
Images: BTS photos from Wildfront music video, lensed by DP Matt Lewis using Sony Venice 2, courtesy of Josh Holgate Photography.
