Julien Zeitouni, SOC - Local 600 Camera Operator
Last week I finally joined the Local 600 and, almost in the same time, got my first job on an union show. This is a new TV series produced by HBO and called In treatment, with Gabriel Byrne (Usual Suspects) as a psychologist seeking refuge from his patients by getting his own therapist… The sets where most of the action takes place are on Stage 25 at Paramount Studios.
Yesterday I worked on the new Passi’s music video, a famous french rapper. We got the bridge of 6th St closed all day just for us. I was pulling focus and operating the jib. It was a very busy day but also very nice to be with a french crew. A safe trip back to Paris to the DP Michel Faburiaux!
Here is the music video of “Ronnie Day”, on which Nicolas and I used the Jimmy Jib two months ago.
Yesterday was our last day of principal photography for “Deadgirl”, in Santa Clarita. We’ll shoot some B roll tomorrow and should have some pick-ups in a month or so.
PS: This is Matt, the camera intern, very well equipped, isn’t he!
It doesn’t look like it but she just finished killing and eating someone before we took this picture… That’s maybe why she’s smiling (yes, she is).
For the exteriors of the High Shool of Deadgirl that we shot last week-end, we used the new Dalsa “Origin”, which has a 4K resolution. Its look, size weight are quite… unusual and make this camera not very friendly to use, especially when all the shots are handheld! We went back to the Viper with a big smile on our faces.
PS: I hope you like my cowboy hat, pretty useful when it’s over 100F 🙂
Deadgirl is a low budget feature from the producers of Hellraiser.
We just finished shooting our first week, which went pretty well considering that we are among the first ones to use this very new configuration: The Thompson Viper with Digi-Primes and the Codex, a high-resolution digital media recording system, designed to capture moving images and sound from high-definition digital motion picture cameras. The footage is recorded live and raw on 2 diskpacks and backuped during the day to an external Ciprico harddrive, which is sent every evening to Dalsa for processing. You can visit their website here.
We spent more of our time in the very dusty basement of Buena Vista Lofts, a former hospital, downtown. We are wearing masks all day and the movie will be almost 100% handheld… It’s a good work-out 😉 Tomorrow, we will be in North Hollywood for two days and will be using the new Dalsa “Origin” camera…
We spent two nights shooting downtown LA this car chase for the feature “Sharphooter”. Here is one of the shot, in the tunnel on 3rd St. It took such a long time to set up… I hate night shoots sometimes!
My first post on this blog will be to invite you to have a look at the new Beirut’s music video, which came out just a couple of days ago. I worked on it as a jib operator in March and I am really proud of it. I think the director Alma Harel really succeeded in capturing the floating and nostalgic atmosphere of the song. Bravo 🙂
