Leitner’s Cinematography Corner

One way to tower over any pro­duc­tion problem.

D.W. Leitner’s writing—whether his in-depth cam­era reviews, wide-ranging NAB sur­veys, or com­plex pro­duc­tion stories–remains one of my favorite reads in mil­lime­ter. While we have both writ­ten for the mag­a­zine for many years, I’ve got to be hon­est, it’s David who has gained a fol­low­ing for his writ­ing, fea­tur­ing as it does his unique blend of tech­ni­cal know-how, a love and knowl­edge of movie his­tory, and a deep under­stand­ing of the com­plete pro­duc­tion process, all wrapped up in strong, clean prose that’s all too rare in our industry…well, you get the idea, he just always seems to deliver fas­ci­nat­ing writing.

Well, there’s a new ver­sion of that smart pack­age if you tune into his own, recently launched weekly blog on millimeter’s site, Leitner’s Cin­e­matog­ra­phy Cor­ner.

You’re in Leit­ner World, so don’t expect just another dig­i­tal naval-gazing cool-tool-of-the-week approach. He says it straight and plain in his inau­gural blog: “The Cin­e­matog­ra­phy Cor­ner will be my ongo­ing effort to steer dis­cus­sion of new tech­nol­ogy away from starry-eyed wor­ship of all things dig­i­tal and back to estab­lished film­mak­ing practices.”

All the more rea­son to turn into his most recent col­umn, EX3 x 2 = DIY 3D, a title that becomes less mys­te­ri­ous when you read about the suc­cess of two New Jer­sey film­mak­ers in cre­at­ing a sig­nif­i­cant 3D pro­duc­tion for the Newark Museum via their home-brew setup of a pair of Sony PMW-EX3s. Besides tech­ni­cal details, you see today’s results bal­anced out against the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of Sheeler and Strand’s pio­neer­ing Man­hatta (1921), a silent black-and-white song-of-the-city.

Vin­tage Leitner.

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