What Jim loves about Steven
Jim has posted his thoughts about the one and only Steven Soderbergh. Here are his Thoughts:
1. Academy Award winning Director.
2. Loves to shoot his own stuff. And edit it.
3. He doesn’t ask anyone’s permission to do what he thinks will work.
4. Made a decision to shoot two Ché features (Benecio Del Toro) based on seeing Peter Jackson footage and one quick test shoot at his house (with Jarred, Deanan and myself) on two prototype, pre-production RED ONE cameras.
5. Assembles his troops in Spain waiting for two RED ONEs to show up. Has told his team he does not need backup cameras. RED will come through. We got the CF cards working minutes before shooting begins by emailing firmware to Deanan, Rob and Ivan in Spain. They then drive to location and fire up the cameras and start rolling…
6. 1st day shooting in a walk down only valley, 100+ degree temperature. Cameras overheat. SS says “put ice packs on them until RED can figure this out” and continues shooting. Continues this process for a few days until we can email a firmware upgrade. Pre-production firmware, no exposure assist or frame guides of any kind, 24fps only… barely more advanced than “Boris” and “Natasha” used by Peter Jackson. Never complains. Not once. Only… “happy to be here”.
7. Sends me an email how thrilled he is to shoot RED and probably will never shoot anything else, no matter what the budget. Loves the cameras.
8. After finishing the 1st (2nd) Ché movie, decides to shoot the next one anamorphic. We tell him he is nuts. He believes that we will find a way to make it work. We do. He is thrilled with the results.
9. After shooting and editing the two Ché movies, SS informs us he is shooting “The Informant” (Matt Damon) on RED. “What do you have in the way of improvements?” We give him Build 15. Off he goes.
10. Next up is “The Girlfriend Experience”. Shot on RED Build 18 (with anamorphic support). His 1st AC surprises him onset that he can actually view the anamorphic footage correctly on his monitor. He wrote me a note to tell me, “you won’t believe how good this stuff looks… well, maybe you will.”
11. Next up… 3D on RED.
I have to say he’s inspiring to me as well. He’s a guy to mention when someone says to me “The Director of a movie can’t also be the Camera Operator…
