The Passing Years (Verloop van Jaren) selected for IDFA and aired on national TV

Premiere at the IDFA

From the fall of 2015 into the fall of 2016 I worked on a documentary on poet/writer Remco Campert. The film was selected for the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and has been aired on national television. 

Remco Campert with his favorite animal

My company Imagine Video co-produced it and I did a lot of the 'intimate' camerawork for it. The film was received with great praise by both the press and the public. 

You can see the documentary online by clicking here: The Passing Years.

I am now officially a Flying Dutchman!

No, I did not get my pilot license... but I did get a Phantom 4 drone! My first drone. The Phantom 4 struck me as 'somewhat idiot proof' with it's obstacle avoidance system so I decided to take the plunge. I'm taking one lesson to avoid the most common mistakes and then I'm off to.. err, well, whereever... :-)

Fly, soar, float in the sky... the next best thing to having wings myself... Anyone in need of some aerial footage in Europe? Contact me, your devoted drone pilot.

Sony A7S Mark II - Sony wants to eat my wallet, again.

After all the excitement about the Sony FS5, I completely forgot the A7S Mark 2 pictures I made, although they're not as exciting as the FS5 photo's. It's basically the A7S with a different sensor with ISO 4 million (no, it's actually a mere 409600, see pictures below...) and x-ray vision. And built-in image stabilization.
Who needs a camera like this? We all do! And who doesn't have threethousandfourhundred euro's lying around, doing nothing...? Or should I just rent?

The best Sail 2015 - time lapse video

A few days ago I saw a few time lapse video's of Sail 2015 that were labeled as The Best of Sail 2015. Too bad I didn't publish my video until yesterday ;-)

Nosh the incredible camera dog

Nosh wearing a harness and her camera of choice, the GoPro 4 Black

Dog cam footage is available at Shutterstock. Buy a clip and get a free bone.

Why high resolution in video works.

Here's a great example of where high resolution works, especially in combination with time lapse photography.

I talked my way into a restricted private apartment building to be able get this shot and am particularly pleased with the composition, light, the colors and detail. Everything falls into place here. I also made a 4K video recording of this scene but it adds a crop factor. Only in photo mode do you get this super wide view- and the action. Shot this with the Panasonic GH4 and the 12-35 f2.8. View full screen on a 5K monitor! Or better even: buy it on Pond5 or contact me directly for a discount price.

Cheese - a short film on posing

Goodbye Panasonic GH2, hello GH4!

I had a great relationship with my Panasonic GH2 but after 3 years our ways parted a few days ago. The GH4 took her place. We have a lot of familiarizing to do before our relation will reach that same level of affection and confidence but our first 4K production is a fact, however brief and frivolous! 
For good measure, I picked up a Panasonic Lumix 12-35 f2.8 as well, which is the lens to have for a documentary filmer. I have to grow into this lens as well- it doesn't have that same organic feel as my favorite lens, the Panasonic 20mm 1.7 
Shooting in 4K has a lot of consequences- and shooting in 4K is what you buy this camera for. A big drawback is the narrow field of view. The cropfactor on the GH2 was already 1.82 but shooting 4K increases that factor to 2.2. In other words, 12mm becomes in effect 26mm compared to a full frame camera. That is not very wide when you're shooting in a tight spot or indoors.
Another reason why you'd want/need to shoot 4K is because it produces great Full HD pictures, better than shooting Full HD right from the bat. It sounds absurd and that's what it is, but downsampling the 4K image to full hd produces much cleaner and richer images that shooting 1080P. And 4K grades much better than Full HD. 

But the 4000 dollar question is: does downsampled 4K look better than 4K itself? Stay tuned for more and in the meanwhile, enjoy the short boatride.

Tourists - a short film about people & hats

In the fall of 2012 I started noticing a great many people, tourists, wearing the same type of hats with  'Amsterdam'  stitched on them. I thought it was such a curious phenomenon and started to 'collect' all these people wearing these hats, asking them where they are from. I thought they would be from all over the world -and they are- but It turned out that by far most of them are from Italy!

So this is the result 6 months later: a collection of people from all walks of life and from all over the world: United under One Hat…

'100' (from 0 to 100 years in 150 seconds)

In October 2011 I started documenting people in the city of Amsterdam, approaching them in the street and asking them to say their age in front of the camera. My aim was to 'collect' a group of 100 people, from age 0 to 100. At first my collection grew fast but slowed down when it got down to the very young and very old. The young because of sensivity around filming or photographing children and the very old because they don't get out of the house much. I found my very old 'models' in care homes and it was a privilege to document these -often vulnerable- people for this project. I had particular problems finding a 99 year-old. (Apparently 100 year-olds enjoy notoriety, but a 99 year-old is a rare species...) And when I finally did find one, she refused to state her age. She simply denied being 99 years old! But finally, some 4 months after I recorded my first 'age', I was able to capture the 'missing link' and conclude this project. Enjoy.

Vincent Laforet's favorite apps

Here's a screenshot of Vincent of the Forest's favorite iPhone apps. I saw Vincent speak last night here in Amsterdam. He is a great photographer, an eloquent & funny speaker and one of the first DSLR filmers. I knew Vincent's name and had seen some of his video work, which looks great btw but to me lacks soul. His videowork so far is an example of technical mastery without a heart. Vincent, so it appeared last night, is a visual artist and a gadget-man, not a storyteller. Vincent likes to shoot from helicopters, get a bird's eye view, have a unique perspective. He doesn't submerge in the pain nor does he get 'up close & personal', to stay in film terms... In that respect it was interesting to see that of all the photographs he showed of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, just a few were close to actual people. Most shots kept a safe distance and the disaster became a series of impressive yet abstract images. With the exception of a man holding a girl and a photograph of dead and wounded people in an arrival hall (also an overview, yet less distant).

Vincent Laforet in Amsterdam

It was also paradoxical after all this grief to see 'Vincent the documentary photographer' making the switch to 'Vincent the commercial director' shooting a $600.000,- commercial shot with a Phantom slomo camera for a shoe manufacturer. Great footage, but going from such human suffering and poverty to this decadent production was hard to rhyme. It invariably made you wonder: is every second of this commercial worth $10.000,-? My answer was no. It left me completely cold. The same for his film Möbius. It's a DOP's production, full of great shots, beautiful lighting and effects. But rather cliché in drama and lacking real emotion. (But I'm sure it was a lot of fun making it!)
To be clear, I'm not trying to knock the guy. He has worked hard enough to earn the right to fool around for a few years and prove himself as a filmmaker. He is a young guy and will get many more chances. I have great respect for his craftsmanship and what he has achieved for himself. But amidst all the fireworks of amazingly perfect images, I was never really touched by Möbius. I clinically hovered over it in awe, like his favorite gyrocopter shooting from the air. I longed for something imperfect and ugly, something real. All this money and talent towards... this? I felt I had seen it before. Coming from someone with a documentary background, I had expected something more.  I hope his next, feature film, will have some more emotional texture. So that his technical wizardry will be matched by more profound content.

Candid Camera (or how I learned to love my Canon FD200mm)

Hang man

A man playing the Hang in the Vondelpark, Amsterdam. I was struck by the pure, bewitching sound of this instrument, which, as it turned out, was developed by Swiss musicians in 2000. I thought it sounded like it was centuries old and came from the far east.
This is the opposite of a snappy edit and I even left in the soft-focus, out-of-focus shots. As a matter of fact, you don't have to watch it, you can just listen. (although I particularly love the shadowsun-shot starting at 3:25') At first I wanted to cut it to around 3 minutes (web-length) but decided against it and used almost all of the 15 minutes I shot. Most of what we show eachother is video&form, this time I opted for audio&content. (Maybe not the most popular choice: I guess that's what they call a 'director's cut'...)

Hang man from Filmersblog on Vimeo.