Broken Lines, a WW2 film I shot close to 2 years ago, won a few awards at the Speak Up Film Festival, held in Mississauga, including the Light and Frame award for best cinematography.

I was unable to attend the event but thank Producer Lenny Dell’Anno and Director Sam Burrows for accepting the award.

Operated B-camera for Cameraman Ken Ng on a TV piece for Hi Fidelity HDTV. We were up in Alymer, Ontario shooting at the Ontario Police College.

Worked with the Sony EX1 camera for the first time and was surprisingly impressed with the layout and operation of the camera and it’s great LCD screen. I’d be really interested in testing the camera in a narrative or music video type situation. The A-camera was a Sony F900R.

We also did some neat rigging stuff to a police car with a Sony Handycam. I can’t believe how small they make these things these days! The camera records a 1080i image to a memory stick.

All the rigging gear by barrycheong.com

The EX-1. I really like the “real” lens layout and all the buttons were more or less where you think they should be.

Rigging of the small Sony handycam. It was getting some reaction shots of the driver and passenger as the car sped along demonstrating driving maneuvers.

Ken up in a Cherry picker getting some aerial shots with an F900R.

Finished shooting Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat for Director Mike Heron. In the end the production extended the schedule to include a 3rd day which worked out very well.

Lighting was kept simple to accommodate the large number of setups, very small crew and small package. Excluding the first day, most of the lighting was accomplished with existing practical lighting augmented with a long 4′ Kino mainly bulbed with cool white tubes to model the cast better. A mini-plus Litepanel unit was also used for closeups. As much as I would have liked to shoot HD, it was nice working with the faster speed DVX100.

Thanks to the crew for a job well done. Lighting and Grip by barrycheong.com.

Day 1. Flew a tungsten Chimera pancake over the coach. Our only heavier tungten world day. Everything else was mainly Kino.

Day 3. Shooting in an employee lunch area of a Blockbuster. Skirted some of the existing fluorescent practicals to improve contrast and long 4′ with cool whites tubes to key. From L to R - Art director Johnny Nghiem looking confused, Producer Michelle Whiting, 1st AD Kristine Regier and Sound Recordist Daryl Buttineau.

Day 3. An above view of a Home Hardware we were shooting in. A long 4′ (bulbed 2 coolwhites, 2 daylight) aimed in the direction of the checkout that we were shooting against and the cool white practicals provided most of the lighting. Some negative fill was used also to improve contrast when it could.

Day 3. Me wheeling around in our poor man’s dolly. Most of the film was shot handheld so the less than smooth feel still worked.