Salero Festival Premiers

March 25, 2016

Festival teaser for Salero, directed by Mike Plunkett.

If you go back throw my blog you'll see I spent a lot of time in Bolivia working on a feature doc (untitled at the time). Well, the film is finished and starting to make the festival rounds. It premiered at IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) last fall, and now has two major US premiers. It will be making its West Coast premier at the San Francisco film festival and its east coast Premier at Full Frame! Below is a short write up from the San Francisco catalogue:

"Moises Chambi Yucra and his family stand at the crossroads of time. For generations, they have has made a humble living harvesting salt from Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat, but beneath Uyuni sit massive amounts of lithium, a mineral instrumental in powering smartphones and electric vehicles. With stunning cinematography that captures both the vibrancy and the solitude of the land and life, director Mike Plunkett captures the final days of an age-old way of life."

More info and screening dates @ www.salerofilm.com/

San Francisco International Film Festival 2016 April 21 - May 5
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2016 Durham, North Carolina April 7 - 10
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2015 November 19 - 28

Credits: Directed by MIKE PLUNKETT
Featuring MOISES CHAMBI YUCRA
Edited by ANDREW BLACKWELL and PAX WASSERMAN
Composer ADAM BRYANBAUM WILTZIE
Director of Photography ANDREW DAVID WATSON
Co-producers AARON RABIN and NOAH BLOCK-HARLEY
Executive Producers PHILIPP ENGELHORN, MICHAEL RAISLER and PAUL MEZEY
Produced by ANNA ROSE HOLMER, ANDREW GOLDMAN and MIKE PLUNKETT

SUPPORTED BY:
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation San Francisco Film Society Documentary Film Fund
New York State Council on the Arts
Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund
Tribeca Film Institute
Independent Filmmaker Project Paley Center for Media in Association with Snagfilms

Motorcycles in Chennai!

March 25, 2016 in Uncategorized

I started 2016 off with an awesome week long shoot in Chennai, India for Royal Enfield & W+K! Working with the New Delhi office of W+K, I was tasked with Directing/DPing the "development" story of the New Royal Enfield Himalayan, a lightweight adventure bike. The final project incorporated footage from a previous motorcycle trip I took through Ladakh (the northern tip of India), archival testing footage from Royal Enfield, and new footage we shot on our week long trip. We spent a good chunk of the trip at the Royal Enfield Factories, which was a dream come true! It was amazing to see the legendary Royal Enfield factory (Which has been functional since the 1940s) and also the new Royal Enfield high tech factory south of Chennai. Even eating in the mess hall was awesome!

After we finished up with interviews and factory footage, we headed up to Andhra Pradesh, to film some riding footage with the new Himalayan. While the shoot was demanding, my awesome camera opt Andy Whitlatch managed to snap a few BTS photos.

One last note, the crews in Chennai are wonderful! The production, while challenging on many levels, went off super smooth thanks to amazing local support!

And here is one of the final edits:

Xenon Primes

September 29, 2015 in Uncategorized

At the end of the last year I decided it was time to invest in a set of lenses. While I love Cooke S4s and Ultra primes, they are a bit out of my budget for an everyday set of lenses. After a ton of research, I pulled the trigger on a set of Schneider Xenon Primes. The Xenons have some great features, such as very little breathing, switchable from PL to EF, uniformed size and they also cover full frame sensors. But the thing I really love about the Xenons is how well the lenses are color matched and also how the lenses render skin tones. The bokeh is also wonderful. The Xenons have a more natural look then Canon, but not as contrasty as the CP2s. So far I have mounted the Xenons on the Amira, Red Epic, FS7 and Canon c300, samples of a few combos below.

VASQUE

Over the summer I headed out to Seattle to direct a mini doc for the hiking boot company Vasque. The short film profiles David Page, a legendary outdoor footwear cobbler. We spent a day in Dave Page's shop and then a day on the trail with some of his loyal customers. Nothing beats getting to hike on a shoot!

RED WING HERITAGE | ITALY

The very first shoot I got to use my new Xenons on was a profile of Yoji Tokuyoshi for Red Wing Heritage. We shot the project in January of 2015. You can see I hadn't picked up a 114 to 100 step down rig and was instead using a foam donuts, which worked just as well.

COKE ZERO | BILLBOARD

Another cool project I shot with the Xenons this past year was a doc style spot for Coke Zero & Ogilvy. I don't have any BTS photos from this project, but here is one of the many edits that came out of the project.

THE NEW YORKER | THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE VOICE

And I almost forgot this New Yorker Piece, shot with a combo of the FS7 (for the interviews) and Canon c300 for the b-roll. (except Macro shots, which was with a Canon 100mm macro)

CAMERAS! CAMERAS! CAMERAS!

January 19, 2015

Camera bodies are really the new film stock, so heres is a round up of a few camera rigs I have shoot with over the last few months (and a quick bit about why that package was chosen!).

Alexa, Zeiss Master Primes

Nothing really beats the Alexa and nothing beats Master Primes, so whenever I'm shooting a project with the budget, its a great option! This setup was used to shoot a broadcast PSA to raise awareness of speeding in work zones.

Because we were shooting near a highway, we had a lot of limitations on where we could place lights. It was also a super windy night, so flying a 20x was not an option. The result? The idea of bouncing a 4k into the grip truck and an 8x!

Wireless focus system = a must when shooting handheld with such a beefy rig.

A rare BTS shot of myself without a camera on my shoulder.

Alexa with the Canon 30-105

Same project as above, but different concept and spot. We interviewed real workers about the dangers of working on highways. We used a "bungee" rig to give the illusion of handheld. Why not just handheld? Because we were shooting 18 individuals over a 10 hour day, and constantly having the camera up and ready, kept the day moving fast, while also saving my back!!! The zoom was also picked to keep the day moving fast.

Red Dragon Epic, Black Magic Cinema Camera, EF Glass

For a new feature doc project, we utilized a Red Dragon as A-cam and a BMCC as B-cam. We shoot 6k with the Dragon (so we could cheat 2 fame sizes out of the master) and 4k in the BMCC. This way the edit could maintain 4k, but still have room to move around on A camera. While a 2nd Dragon would have been ideal for B-cam, we choose the BMCC as the best budget friendly 2nd camera.

Arri Amira, Fuji 19-90

I was hired to direct and DP a few short films for the New York City Ballet. The project incorporated a number of camera formats (some archival was shot on the c300 and EX1), but we choose to use the Amira and a Fujion 19-90 for all the interviews and additional B-roll. The wide end of the 19-90 was great for covering dance (alway want to get those extensions!) and the long end of the zoom was great for the interviews. The zoom also allowed us to move quickly, as we had to shoot around real rehearsals and busy schedules. The high frame rates on the Amira was a nice creative tool as well.

Sony F55, Canon EF glass

Damn, I wish I could say more about this project but they got me an NDA! Long story short, I got to go to Germany to film rally car racing! The F55 would already chosen before I was hired, but I will say the frame rate options and the global shutter proved to be fantastic for shooting fast action. The choice of Canon glass was somewhat budget, and somewhat logistical. Since we were shooting racing we couldn't also get close to the action. I knew we were going to have to move around a ton, and I decided a small zoom like the canon 70-200 would allow for so much more coverage (in terms of set up) over a cinema lens such as the Optimo 25-250.

Using Canon glass with the F55 is tricky. We had an iris controller (The box on the top right), but it was funky, bulky, and didn't always work. Knowing this possible problem in advance, I brought along my Tiffen variable ND, and kept it on the front no matter what lens I was shooting. This way I could just pick an F-stop I liked, and then use the internal NDs and variable ND to get the exact exposure I wanted. This may sound like a pain, but I found it just as fast as changing iris on a regular cinema lens.