Searching for inspiration

After creating this blog and constantly checking to see if there were any followers, I decided to knuckle down and try and search for some inspiration for the upcoming project. I began thinking of films, photos and artwork that had inspired me, when I remembered someone I had previously studied at College.

His name is Dean Rogers, and is a photographer/cinematographer/director of photography. Unfortunately, his official website is 'down for maintenance', and has been for some time, but luckily there is a large collection of his work on bluntlondon.com. Some of his work includes the 2007 film 'Control' (Dir, Anton Corbijn), 'This is England' (Dir, Shane Meadows, 2006) as well as one of the most recent mockumentary style films 'Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee' (Dir, Shane Meadows, 2009).

Control, 2007, Dir Anton Corbijn (bluntlondon.com)


This is England, 2006, Dir Shane Meadows (bluntlondon.com)


Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee, 2009, Dir Shane Meadows (bluntlondon.com)

Just from these images you can see there is a big difference in visual styles, ranging from high contrast, black and white grainy footage, to bright, warm toned/coloured scenery. Within these films Dean worked as DOP/Cinematographer, and he creates a kind of social-realistic theme/mood from the stylistic choices he makes on how each shot is composited.

I'll finish this post with a short, black and white Super8 film in which Dean Rogers was the cinematographer. Click here to view the video.

Dean Rogers Bluntlondon.com

First post introduction & short films

So this is the first Blog entry I've ever written. I'll be using this to update and post information regarding my Logbook for the Cinematograpy Technology module.

Checked through the online discussion board already and posted links to a number of films that I watched over the summer, all of which will be linked to at the end of this post. Haven't decided yet what to create for the assignment piece but we've only had the one lecture so far, so hopefully will be able to get inspiration soon.

Anyway, here are the links for the films I posted;

'The Cabbie' by Vincent Laforet
Canon and Vimeo teamed up to create a competition called 'The Story Behind The Still', where they gave a still image and asked people to create segments of a film from this image. The films last around 4 minutes and the end of each film must end on a still, so that the next person can take that image and carry on the film and so on....

Vincent Laforet who I only recently heard about from looking into DSLR filmmakers was commissioned to start the competition, and I think he did a brilliant job of it. (The idea behind the Competition)

'Last Minutes with Oden' by phos pictures
This is a short documentary that i also saw in the summer, which is simply and beautifully made. It takes advantage of the Canon 7D's fantastic HD movie mode and I just think it's really well shot.

'The Last 3 Minutes' by Po Chan
Yet another DSLR film that I saw recently, this time shot on the Canon 5D. It just shows how something can be created now that looks so cinematic with tools that are available to almost anyone. The story follows the last minutes of a dying janitor.