KitPlus | Articles

Key Grip Woolf Secures the Gear for GUILLERMO DEL TOROS P...

Jonathan Woolf has gathered a wealth of trade secrets from half a century working in the motion picture industry. His recent chapters have led him to key grip the miniatures unit on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and act as a lighting technician on the 2022 Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. Woolf’s big job on Pinocchio was to find reliable...

Submitted by Kathryn Ferentchak

Published 08 September 2023

Cinematographer Matt Ryan pairs ZEISS Supreme Primes and...

LA based cinematographer Matt Ryan’s enthusiasm for finding the most capable technology to support his creative process has enabled him to shoot across genres and formats. As a Director of Photography, Ryan has shot television for such networks as Disney, FOX, Warner Bros, MTV, PBS, and TruTV. Outside of narrative, Ryan has lensed high-profile comm...

Submitted by Kathryn Ferentchak

Published 08 September 2023

TVFutures My Dive in to Learning

In 2014 I had my first taste of underwater diving. I was on a family holiday and I happened across the experience of a lifetime. Within the first few minutes of that adventure I had decided that I wanted to be part of the diving world going forward. After countless dives and extensive training to become a scuba diving instructor, I made the decisio...

Submitted by Lucy Crow

Published 26 March 2020

CVP Helps Productions Choose the Right Lens for the Job

CVP Technical Specialist, Sam Measure, on how the company’s free online Lens Coverage and Camera Comparison tool is giving something back to the filmmaking community. One of the standout trends over the past year has been the move to shooting Full Frame, with more and more productions choosing to go down this route for the special look it brings to...

Submitted by Sam Measure

Published 27 January 2020

Creating A Signature Look With Lighting

As an LA-based DP, I view my role as a narrative storyteller. For me, cinematography is not just about getting some nice images – it’s about telling truths. I love being able to weave a story with imagery and capture something that’s real, whether through performance or visual symbolism. Lighting is one of my most important mechanisms for capturing...

Submitted by William Hellmuth

Published 03 November 2019

Behind the Scenes of Wild rose

Financed by BFI Film Fund, Wild Rose tells the story of a musician from Glasgow who dreams of becoming a Nashville star. The only thing in the way: her own penchant for crime and violence. Starring Jessie Buckley, the film begins just as its talented antihero, Rose-Lynn, is first released on parole after having spent a year in jail on a drug charge...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 04 June 2019

DJI Ronin-S Review

Any self respecting filmmaker starts their edits with their best shots, so let me try to do the same in my writing:My top tip when buying a DJI product is to buy from a local and reputable dealer rather than direct from DJI; sending any faulty item back to Holland at your own expense can be costly. That’s not to say much has gone wrong over the yea...

Submitted by Tim Bearder

Published 08 September 2018

Ruth Matos Interview - A Career Unfolds

We first met Ruth when we employed her as a student to help with our live studio at BVE in 2013. We were struck by her determination, passion and ‘I’ll do anything to help’ attitude. We became friends of Facebook and have since seen her career in the industry develop and unfold. We thought it was about time to catch up and share her inspiring story...

Submitted by Ruth Matos

Published 08 September 2018

G-Teching Storage to another level

That heart-dropping, cold-sweat evoking moment your external hard drive fails to connect to the computer and you realise the precious project you’ve been working on for weeks is lost for good (unless you want to spank hundreds on a recovery service that may or may not retrieve some of the mangled data!)Ah, the fun of video storage - it may not be t...

Submitted by Phil Vinter

Published 18 July 2018

Tips and Tricks to Giving Sci-Fi a New Look

From Terminator to Blade Runner, Alien, and even E.T., science fiction is a genre that will never fail to capture an audience’s imagination. It’s also a genre that encompasses so much more than just space crafts or time travel: frequently providing filmmakers with a platform from which to not only highlight social and political issues, but also exp...

Submitted by Mathieu Marano

Published 07 June 2018

Capturing the spirit of Mexico

Filmmaker, director and editor, Leonardo Dalessandri first came to fame with his stunning video ‘Watchtower of Turkey,’ which with more than 200 million views, garnered the accolade of Best Vimeo Video in 2014. His vibrant images are combined with a unique editing style, incorporating slow motion, hyper lapses and invisible match cuts to produce ge...

Submitted by Leonardo Dalessandri

Published 12 February 2018

When a lens is more than just a lens

Matching shots between different cameras can be tricky at the best of times. But how do you match lens characteristics between a live action shoot and a CGI composition? The CP.3 XD lenses from Zeiss offer an efficient solution to this with their frame accurate meta-data. The ZEISS CP.3 Cinema Primes have all the characteristics that have made ZEIS...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 02 November 2017

TV Futures - Running around for clients

My second year at the University of Portsmouth seemingly began in a familiar fashion to the previous year. We sat in a large lecture theatre and listened intently to our course leader, who gave an outline as to what students on the BSc Television and Broadcasting course should be expect experience-wise from the up-and-coming year. He continued to e...

Submitted by Joseph Long

Published 19 October 2017

Atomos Ninja Inferno REVIEWED

Bristol-based Daniel Peters is one of a new breed of indie filmmakers discovering that you dont need big budgets to create filmic shorts. Often working solo, shooting and editing his own work, he creates the look and feel of bigger productions with only limited resources. His commitment to the craft is so great he had to sell much of his own gear t...

Submitted by Daniel Peters

Published 19 October 2017

A 360 degree view of fashion

Im often asked, what do you do when the students arent around?, and the simple answer is, as it would be from any university technical support member of staff, I get involved in passion projects and these help me to stay up-to-date with the kit and keep my hand-in with video filmmaking. So, in April this year the Faculty of Creative and Cultural In...

Submitted by Michael Parsons

Published 19 October 2017