DRAMA ‘GONE TO THE DOGS’ ?

No – howling success for Canon primes!

When Director Phil Barnard and Producer Mark Riley asked Nick G Smith DoP  to shoot their short  ‘Gone to the Dogs’ they decided the film was to be shot on HD. The cast for the film included Dora Bryan, Tony Booth - and over twelve trained dogs! Shooting on film with this amount of dogs would obviously be prohibitive as the very nature of working with animals is unpredictable.

Writes Nick: “Although the budget for the film was tight (as it always seems to be!) I pressed for a film style package with the camera and a set of prime lenses.

Mark Riley managed to procure a set of new Canon film style HD primes with a Sony 750 HD kit from Onsight productions along with an Arri ff4 followfocus, 6x6 matte box, 4x5.6 Mattebox on 19mm bars, a set of 85’s, straight ND’s and S/E Grad ND’s.

For a lot of the work I do, be it Drama, Commercials or Promo’s, I prefer to work with prime lenses for the reasons that primes are fast, light, are not susceptible to breathing on focus (although many of the best zooms now have minimal breathing) and have a conformity of sharpness and colour matching throughout the focal length and aperture.

HD Primes Compared

As with most DoP’s  used to film cameras and film lenses, I find the majority of current HD cameras and video lenses set up for news gathering and television spots. The viewfinders are not particularly a joy to use and most switches have to be taped down so as not throw them at the wrong moment and my main gripe with video zooms is how on the longest focal length you have to stop down to achieve sharpness

When we tested the camera with the Canon lenses, by contrast, we found the lenses to be extremely sharp, had good contrast, feet measurements were accurate and the lenses were very easy to use.  My Focus Puller, Steve Annis, could change focal lengths extremely quickly as each lens has unified gear rings and a common 95mm front

‘ Gone to the Dogs’ was predominantly shot on exteriors on the seafront at Hastings. I shot the whole film at a stop of around T2 and a half with a 3200K preset and an 85 filter using straight ND’s to control the aperture. 

Back focus was set at the beginning of each day and checked throughout the day but although we had wildly fluctuating temperatures the back focus on each lens held set.

All in all I was extremely impressed with the Canon HD Primes - and they really helped in achieving the look we wanted for the film and making possible the style of filming I am most happy with.”