It was an honor to work with Kaira on her new music video, “I Forgive U,” and I’m so excited to be able to share its premiere today! This is the song the world needs right now more than ever.

If you connect to the message of this song, please share and subscribe for more.

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Film students learn best by doing, so any chance I get, I bring outside artists to class for a taste of real-world shooting. I immediately connected to Kaira’s “I Forgive U” the moment I heard it and was excited to help build a music video around the song.

Kaira was introduced to me by my Purchase College film department chair, John Young, who had met her at a party. He was impressed by her song “I Forgive You” and thought it might be possible to work it into my music video class. But I immediately saw the project as the perfect capstone to my advanced cinematography course, and a great way to pull together the filming techniques we had spent the semester refining.

Nothing builds skills, camaraderie, and character like a shared group goal.

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I invited Kaira to campus to meet the students and scout for locations that could bring the video to life. She wanted to perform with an elegant nightclub aesthetic, which we could pull off in the sound stage, juxtaposed with her outside on a sunny day. We walked through the woods behind the campus and found several visually interesting spots to choose from.

With the right lens and camera angle, a small bump became an epic mount. When it came time to shoot the real video, we added a dolly to the mix.

We iterated several ideas to visualize the song, but as the edit developed, we chose to keep it stark and simple, letting the music stand out and emphasizing Kaira’s connection to the audience.

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Once we had settled on the visual ideas, it was time to shoot some lighting and camera movement tests. Throughout the semester we had studied different ways to rig lights, among them, the goal post, which is a pipe or truss suspended between two large stands. This was the perfect way to rig hanging lights behind Kaira in one of the set-ups, while she was lit by a large dome light soft box raised above the camera. A side-to-side dana dolly completed the set up, to give some perspective shifts as she sang to camera.

We also tried the doorway dolly on circular track to better wrap around the performance, but found that it didn’t work as well and created issues with seeing the stands holding the goal post.

We shot test shots with students and myself standing in.

Kaira brought a production designer who built a flower arch as a portal where Kaira approaches herself, asking forgiveness. Below is a still from our series of compositing shots we got for the final frame of the video.

By far, my favorite shots we got were with Kaira performing on the dolly. We did several test shoots to get this frame right. The first time the camera was moving in parallel to the trees, so the movement was minimized. Then we moved the tracks perpendicular to the tree branches, which helped emphasize the move, but they were so far up that with the wide lens the movement again felt underwhelming. So we rigged some broken branches off of stands and positioned them a few feet above our performer, which did the trick. The multiple layers of crossing branches gave the shot the dynamic power that it needed.

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Then Kaira got on and gave it her all, inspiring me to pan the camera in accordance with her movements, which added to the intensity of the song’s climax.

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece.

He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Look for his filmmaker conversation series, HOW I SHOOT, wherever you get podcasted. As long as it’s one of these three: (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).

What struck me in the film was the way Cameron threaded personal storylines of his own family’s encounters with the killing sites in the 1990s, shot by his mother in Mini DV, with modern interviews with scholars and historians who detail the way the killings of disabled citizens were both cataloged and kept under wraps. He uses extensive archival footage and shoots at modern memorial sites throughout Germany.

Learn more about the film: https://www.disposablehumanity.com/

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In our conversation, Cameron details the film’s 25-year journey to completion and we discuss how he built his career as a cinematographer and filmmaker.

You can watch/listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts:

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A special thank you to for inviting me to attend the ReelAbilities Film Festival screening - you can read his interview with Cameron on :

AMAUTEUR

"What if we treated the film festival circuit like the theatrical distribution of the film?"

Adam Kritzer: Hey Cameron! Congrats on your new documentary, Disposable Humanity. Can you tell me a bit about the film and its distribution journey so far…

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2 months ago · 6 likes · Adam Kritzer

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece.

He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Look for his filmmaker conversation series, HOW I SHOOT, wherever you get podcasted. As long as it’s one of these three: (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).

You can watch/listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts:

Manjari Sharma is a filmmaker based in Bombay and London who writes the Substack New Age Directors:

Manjari's Substack

My personal Substack

By new age directors

Manjari recently reached out to me to get feedback on her latest Substack post that featured the multi-format film, Mommy (2014) by Canadian director Xacier Dolan. I had found the 1:1 shooting format of the film interesting and enjoyed reading her take on the “Instagram” style of the visual treatment, so I invited her on the show to discuss how our shooting formats communicate to an audience.

In this conversation, we discuss modern shooting formats, AI in filmmaking, the Indian New Wave, and many more topics.

HOW I SHOOT is a series of conversations between Alan McIntyre and filmmakers, cinematographers, and other film workers.

For more HOW I SHOOT episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwbqVHAdZ_Gz3BaDFtJzTLw

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece.

He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Look for his filmmaker conversation series, HOW I SHOOT, wherever you get podcasted. As long as it’s one of these three: (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).

We are looking forward to hosting our first screening this Thursday in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. RSVP with the Partiful link below:

Like everything in my life, it’s a bit of an experiment, so come with an open mind, and at worst you will meet some interesting film people. We will have an hour or so to meet and chat, then get the screening going once it gets dark enough.

The film programming celebrates this great city in a selection of short films and clips that take place throughout the five boroughs. I hope the films will be complemented by the ambient sounds we will hear, like traffic, trains, sirens, random screams from Knicks fans, etc.

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Featured Filmmakers

writes the Substack and is a producer and director. She will show a commercial she produced and share some images from her narrative proof of concept that she just got in the can.

writes the Substack and is currently touring with his new feature, LOST CAUSE, while also publishing interviews and articles and hosting IRL meetups for film people in New York. He is celebrating the tenth anniversary of his first feature, Good Funk (2016), and will share a ten-minute clip.

Adam Volerich co-hosts the filmmaking podcast Eye of the Duck and is a writer/director/producer on many narrative shorts. His feature debut, Drink and Be Merry (2025), was released last December.

Jay Stern is a filmmaker and produces/co-hosts The Iron Mule, a monthly comedy short film festival in Manhattan. He has also directed many theater projects in New York and internationally as part of The World Wide Lab.

Joe Miles is an actor, comedian, and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. He will be representing the short, Night Session, which he stars in with Richard Kind, directed by Ballard C. Boyd, who cannot attend.

Look forward to seeing you there!

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece.

He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Look for his filmmaker conversation series, HOW I SHOOT, wherever you get podcasted. As long as it’s one of these three: (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).

Subscribe now

HOW I SHOOT is a series of conversations between Alan McIntyre and filmmakers, cinematographers, and other film workers.

You can hear our conversation on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts:

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Check out Nathan’s directorial debut feature, Off Ramp:

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece.

He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Look for his filmmaker conversation series, HOW I SHOOT, wherever you get podcasted. As long as it’s one of these three: (Spotify, Apple, YouTube).

It was a great week at the Big Apple Film Festival, playing dozens of films, including BOX OFFICE CHAMP, a short that I shot and edited with director Mike Timoney based on a script by his brother Bill Timoney. This mockumentary stars Dylan Baker, Tony Goldwyn, Ethan Phillips, and many other talented actors playing Hollywood producers and agents reminiscing about one of Tinseltown’s biggest forgotten silent film stars, known affectionately as “Champ.”

I was happy with the reception our film received, getting laughs in the right places and even some emotional investment from the audience towards the end. All in all, a great premiere!

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Film Friends!

It was great to run into some friends, new and old, throughout the week. At the screenings, I bumped into Ralph C. Schultz, founder of RiseFlix, a mission-driven short film site partnering filmmakers with the larger production world. Also, great to say hi to cinematographer Jendra Jarnagin, who was supporting the premiere of her latest feature, Noxturne.

And to top things off, at the closing party, I accidentally reconnected with two of my former students from Rutgers, Daniel Omrani and Tyler Terrible. They were premiering their first feature, Asking For A Friend. It had been a decade. It was awesome. More to come.

Look Out For These Short Films!

I couldn’t see all the films, of course, but I did catch several fun shorts during the week. Here are some of my favorites:

He’s Typing by Rebecca Gialanella

This is a fun and funny comedy that captures a twenties-vision of “looking for love” amid the metropolitan unease of the anxiety generation. Ms. Gialanella plays the lead and is supported by a vivacious group of personalities who all want to get their fears latched onto her. The film has a bright and colorful tone and was obviously made with love and care. A filmmaker to watch!

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Strawberry Week by Savannah Rae Miller

Strawberry Week has a beautiful, slow build that rewards viewers with a touching relationship that forms before their eyes. I wasn’t sure about this one at first, but it drew me in scene by scene. The cast of young campers is fantastic, and the lead actors carry the film. The shooting finds its footing as the short progresses, moving towards longer lenses as the outcast camper bonds with the counselor. Hopefully, this will pop up somewhere online when its festival run is over; it deserves a larger audience.

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Resume of Regrets by Lori Hammel and Tom A. Capps

Lori Hammel finds the hilarity in failure, mixing fact and fiction in Resume of Regrets, a pseudo-documentary style piece that starts with a job interview but devolves into a self-lacerating misadventure in filmmaking. Co-directed with Tom A. Capps, Hammel’s humor cuts to the bone and might feel all too real for some filmmakers in the audience. The film keeps mixing up the visual palette, with a great opening, a job interview shot in black and white, that then intercuts with home movies, photographs, and archival footage, keeping the audience guessing where it can go from here. And it keeps going!

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Teen Gay Fairytale by Rachel Billings

High school has changed a lot since I attended. So I appreciated that Teen Gay Fairytale did some heavy lifting in the world-building department, creating an outlandish but believable “heightened” high school reality, complete with jocks, theater kids, and an uncool-kids chorus, who spy and comment as events transpire from afar. A jock finds himself in love with his lacrosse partner, who is in love with the typical pretty girl. It felt like it could be a send-up of Heated Rivalry, or other recent hot gay sports fictions, but it also held its own as a narrative. Fun and playful.

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Off the Record by Anthony Mulcahy

Off the Record is a charming drama between two East Village “Bohemian” artists, who just might be living a little differently than they let on. The film lets us enjoy their company, playing music and drawing strangers to keep building their respective skills while they search the city for human connection. The film builds to an excellent musical climax at an open mic event, but don’t let that scare you.

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Period by Kat Olson

Period builds suspense and tension the old-fashioned way - using real-world stakes that can be understood by anyone who has lived a day in their life. The filmmaker’s perspective shines through, building paranoia and second-hand embarrassment for the leading man as he tries to deal with getting his period during a night out. Solid shooting, lighting, and sound work make this small but powerful story flow.

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About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece.

He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Look for his filmmaker conversation series, HOW I SHOOT, wherever you get podcasted. As long as it’s one of these three: (Spotify, Apple, YouTube)

You can watch/listen to the conversation on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts:

Amelia Wyeth Ponirakis is a filmmaker currently based in Syracuse, NY. She makes experimental films and has worked in the art department and as a production assistant on films and served as a teleprompter and camera operator for live television.

Amelia’s film BLUE LIGHT (2024):

In this conversation, we discuss how to start a career in the film business, shooting animated films combined with live action, techniques to help you advocate for yourself on set, and Amelia's upcoming film festival QUIET ON SET: A Short Film Festival for Finger Lakes Youth.

Quiet on Set will present short films on June 7, 2026 at the Wharton Studio Museum in Ithaca, NY (120 E. Green St). The program is free and open to the public.

You can find Amelia’s work at: https://www.ameliawyethponirakis.com

Amelia’s film CAUGHT THE BUG (2023):

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he is currently shooting in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

You can watch/listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts:

Elliot Lobell makes stop-motion short films in between working day jobs as an animator, fabricator, and motion graphics designer. His latest film, EDWARD, recently premiered at the Coney Island Film Festival and won Best Animation. He is just starting his festival run, with further screenings at the New York Short Film Festival and an upcoming event in Norway.

In this conversation, we dive into animation techniques, the ideas behind the films, and how to stay sane as you work on a project for seven years.

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You can find Elliot’s creative work on his website and Instagram feeds, where he posts behind-the-scenes shots of his model sets and previews new character designs, artwork, and puppets.

Back in the 2000’s, Elliot was one of my stand-out students at Purchase College, SUNY, and it has been a pleasure to see and follow his creative output since, but this was our first time speaking in years. There’s nothing better than seeing a former student make something of their talents and skills.

We all wish him and EDWARD luck as they embark on a new film festival adventure.

Screening tonight in Shorts Block 2 (May 15, 7:30 PM) at the Cinema Village as part of the New York Short Film Festival. Check it out if you’re in the city!

Get TIX HERE!

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he is currently shooting in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

We have , thanks to the tireless efforts of , microcinemas like the Iron Mule, which I wrote about in the last post, and the city hosts many cinema art houses, recently amplified by ’s Art House Cinema Week. But surely, we could use one more place to gather and watch/discuss/drink in films as a community.

I looked into some local coffee shops, but all were too small, so I looked into starting my own coffee shop, but the estimated startup costs ran around half a million, give or take. I love cinema, but not enough to worry about the cost of beans in Trump’s America.

So I kept thinking - and then it hit me on a walk home after dropping my daughter at the pool - I passed my building’s community garden, and it all came together.

A garden cinema!

Right in the Lower East Side, a block south of the Williamsburg Bridge, but it wasn’t exactly my space; it is for all of us. So I contacted Dave, the head of the garden club, whom I occasionally see films with at Metrograph, and he got really excited. He was putting together a selection of summer activities, and this could fit right in with music lessons and art classes taught by other residents.

We will screen a selection of New York-themed short films and have interviews with filmmakers in attendance.

You can sign up below, as space will be limited. And bring a folding chair if you have one (plus BYOB). The films will start once it is dark enough.

Sign up here: https://partiful.com/e/MAHnDC0ph1WM6T3Op7MN

Inaugural Screening: Thursday, June 11, 7:30 PM

The WTF-Stop LES Microcinema will have its first screening in mid-June, with a garden hang at dusk, with the screening starting as soon as it’s dark enough.

Please sign up with Partiful, and I look forward to seeing you there!

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Amanda Sweikow is an upstanding filmstack community member that you should follow, but you probably already do. She writes the brilliant Substack, Talk Cinema, Save Cinema.

Amanda is incredibly supportive of other’s writing and filmmaking as she works on her own films, currently gearing up for her NonDē 50 feature, Unclaimed, which asks questions about how we can think about a life when no one is there to claim the body after death. Her films are deeply empathetic to the hardest parts of living and surviving in this crazy world.

But no matter how much I read someone’s writing, it’s always better to get to know them in person, even over a video call.

In our conversation, we discuss how the Filmstack community has changed our filmmaking, we delve into the background of her short film, That’s Not My Mother, and plan for the glorious future of cinema.

You can watch the YouTube link above, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

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Amanda’s Films

Watch Amanda’s short That’s Not My Mother here:

And see more of her work on her website: https://www.amandasweikow.com/

Enjoy!

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he is currently shooting in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

To catch up on the Filmmaking F-word series, check out F#1, F#2, F#3, F#4, and F#5!

The Set Up

My friend and filmmaking collaborator Jay Stern had been trying for years to get me to make a movie for IRON MULE, his monthly microcinema comedy screening series. The only problem was that I had seen a lot of the previous month’s entries, and they were stupid. I mean, really fucking stupid.

Since it was a comedy series, they were usually funny, but the production value wasn’t there; they had to be written, shot, and edited within the month before the next show, and I didn’t want to make something I wouldn’t be proud to show. I was a Cinematographer with a capital “C,” after all. I was going places.

And I didn’t feel very funny.

Back to One

But let me back up for a sec, and set the scene. A few years prior, I had worked on a Hal Hartley movie, The Girl From Monday (2005), where I met his former students from Harvard who were getting a leg up in the film industry.

I had been a big fan of Hartley’s work in college, my teacher Jill Godmilow turning me onto his films Trust (1990) and Simple Men (1992), so I was ecstatic to get to work with him, and he didn’t disappoint. His longtime cinematographer (after Michael Spiller), Sarah Cawley, had hired me to help her light a dystopian future on a limited budget. I loved listening to Hal and Sarah talk on set as they set the camera - they were so much more efficient than most of the filmmakers I had been working for at the time.

At the time, I was a gaffer who was shooting Columbia and NYU student films in between bigger-budget lighting jobs, always looking for my first feature as DP. That would make me legit…

Looking for my next director collaborator, I zeroed in on Hal’s student Kyle as he seemed like the smartest of the bunch, working next to the indie film master as his script supervisor. We talked between set-ups and he told me about his thesis project, a fake Greek Myth called The Epic Tale of Kalesius and Clotho, which made fun of his former classmates’ obsequious sucking up to Harvard’s other “film god” instructor on campus, Ross McElwee (Sherman’s March - 1985).

I told Kyle about my own “real” Greek myth movie, Persephone (2001), which I had completed a few years before, and let him know that if he ever needed a DP, to give me a call. And call he did.

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Take Two

A few months later Kyle was making a short called Two Night Stand, about a couple who meet at a bar and accidentally end up getting blackout drunk and spending the night together twice in a row. It was a funny script and a simple enough movie to shoot over a weekend - the only set was a bedroom, and I was happy that I had parlayed a lighting job into a shooting job.

But I was still looking for that feature credit!

A month or two later, Kyle called me again. He had just screened his aforementioned Epic Tale at a monthly microcinema comedy screening series where he got into a conversation with the founder and host, Jay Stern, who was preparing to direct his first feature film, and badly needed a cinematographer.

Kyle passed along Jay’s contact and I pulled a VHS reel from my shelf (it was 2004) and took the train to his Chelsea neighborhood. I found the building and to my surprise it was the same location where I had gaffed several shoots for filmmaker Amos Kollek, so I took it as a “meant to be” sign from the universe and buzzed the apartment. The voice was static so I said I was there to drop off my reel and after a long moment the buzzer screeched - I headed up the stairs to apartment 3D.

Just as I arrived the door flung open and an old man accosted me! “Who the fuck are you?!” he screamed, as if he lived in Taxi Driver’s New York. “I’m just here to drop off my reel,” I stammered, shocked and confused. This director didn’t seem to have very good bedside manner! “I’m calling the police, you’re trespassing!” the man yelled as I turned and ran back to the street.

So much for “meant to be.”

I walked back towards the avenue with a racing mind. What was going on? How could Jay run a film festival let alone direct a movie with that attitude? Then I got to the corner and looked up at the street sign. I was off by one block! I had exited at the middle not the end of the train, and my nostalgia for my prior shoots had led me down the wrong street. I was so determined to have the new director live in the same building as the old director’s sets so I could feel like it was destiny.

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I walked up the next block and buzzed on the correct address, an unassuming tenement with a mushroom spray painted to the right of the door. Was this a new sign? At the correct apartment 3D I met Jay and he took my VHS reel without pomp or circumstance and I went home to wait and see if I passed the reel test.

Then Jay called. It turned out that he was making a film based on a Thomas Middleton play called The Changeling, and it would take place in the 1600s with candlelight. Lucky for me, my reel was full of candle lit scenes, as I had previously shot Imbroglio as an NYU thesis film for Walter Strafford and my own film Persephone was filled with candle light.

Reel Love PSA

When directors watch your reel they want to see if you have shots that match how they see their own project. It’s a tricky balancing act to decide what to show, but back then I only had a few projects under my belt so I just showed them all.

After twenty years of shoots it is a lot harder to edit down to three minutes, but I have a number of shots that have stayed on the reel through many iterations. I’m always tweaking and changing the music between gigs when I want to feel busy but don’t feel like cold calling new prospects.

I’m looking forward to adding my New Orleans crime footage and Greek island film footage soon. Here’s where it is at the moment:

I Finally Get My First Feature as Cinematographer, but…

So Jay and I set out to make our first movie. The only problem was he couldn’t pay. We had a budget of $25,000, most of which would go towards securing locations and Jacobean era wardrobe, transpo and food, and of course, the sound guy.

Sound guys always get paid.

Everyone wants to be a cinematographer (less so for sound) so there’s always competition, and if Das Kapital has taught me one thing - you have to be a sucker if you go after what you want. Marx and the oft forgotten Engels talked about the exploitative nature and inherent contradictions that drive the extraction of surplus value from labor like they had grown up on yet-to-be-invented film sets.

But hold the roll - this was art!

And Jay wasn’t making any money from the film either, so I agreed to shoot the movie for the experience, the new shots I would get for my reel, and the badge of honor that I could attach to my cinematography resume - a feature credit.

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But We Didn’t Have a Camera

When I made Persephone in 2000 I knew that I had to shoot on 16mm film. There was no way that I was going to use a 30 fps video camera to shoot an epic Greek myth - that would look ridiculous. I spent around $8k for film stock, developing, and transfer to video for editing, and that was for just 20 minutes of final film. There was no way we could do a feature length film on celluloid. Not even Super8, which would have been cool.

But lucky for us, Panasonic had just released a breakthrough DV camera that shot in 24P - that’s right, the cinematic frame rate that makes all movies look like movies and not a soap opera or home video.

Enter, the Panasonic DVX100! It was a game changer.

I still remember their slick ads aimed at corporate videographers who aspired to be cinematographers, spouting copy along the lines of “Shoot your day job at 30 fps, then flip a switch and shoot your movie.” Enough with those boring CEO interviews, cinematic fame was just a click away.

This was a huge step up from the Sony PD150 that Sarah Cawley had used on Hal Hartly’s Girl From Monday just the previous year. We had shot that film (video?) on a PAL version of the camera so that we could shoot in the European 25 fps to be more cinematic. Oh, the workarounds.

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I had been saving up for a new camera, so this was the opportunity to buy it and use it to get more shooting work. Surely a feature would bring in more DP jobs… I’ll detail The Changeling’s shoot in another post, as this one is focused on microcinemas (supposedly), but long story short, Jay and I got our film (video) in the can (DV cassette tape) in six short days of principle production, with my lighting friends helping me by dimming lights to mimic candle light, sometimes even falling asleep as we shot through the night!

I even got a compliment from Variety upon the eventual release, in their typical pre-AI robotic writing style: “Attractive DV lensing is the pic’s outstanding tech value.” Wow! Now the shooting jobs would surely come rolling in.

Attractive DV Lensing

In the meantime, Sarah got me my first teaching job at SUNY Purchase College, which led to the cascade of other classroom gigs. She ran off to California to shoot Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2004) and I learned how to run a class, which was a lot harder than running a professional crew.

Jay and I became friends as we completed post on the film and have since gone on to shoot projects all over the country and world. I helped him get a teaching job at Rider University and then he helped me get a teaching job at Rider University, which led to us collaborating on more projects where I got to direct as well as DP. This finally led to my first feature as a director, Stargazer, which we shot on the campus and he helped me produce.

We also both collaborated with Kyle Gilman (now an editor) on a feature we shot in Wales, Say My Name, bringing us full circle. It’s amazing what attractive DV lensing can get you.

But Back to the Microcinema

So as stated in the opening paragraphs, back in 2007 Jay had been trying and trying to get me to make a short film for his festival’s audience participation award, but I couldn’t be bothered. Until one New Year’s Eve party when I was looking at an empty calendar for January.

And this moment is the microcinema decision that changed my life in an even more profound way. Like insane profound.

So stay tuned for part 2 to find out how this journey gets even crazier.

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Dual Focus

There are two types of focus you need to master to become a successful filmmaker - mental and optical. You can always hire a great focus puller (or 1st Assistant Camera), but no one is coming to save your mind. You’ve got to do that yourself.

Stop the scroll! You are draining yourself to further enrich billionaires. Get back to work!

Mental Focus

I thrive on film sets in part because I’m the oldest of six kids, so my entire childhood was chaos. I learned to tune out distractions and focus on my homework. At family dinners, the little kids would babble on while I sat quietly, observing and thinking.

I also have to thank my mom for waking me up one Saturday morning late in high school and dropping me off to get lifeguard training. My early working years of standing by a pool taught me to stay focused and, when talking to someone, keep my eyes on the swimmers.

Working on set isn’t much different - you need to keep an eye on set developments, even deep in discussion. I am aghast when I see PA’s who are supposed to be watching gear or locking up a location buried in their phone. They are asking for trouble.

No one drowned on my lifeguarding watch and no strangers got to my Oreos when I was the craft service guy on Happiness (1998).

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Tunnel Vision (the good kind)

It takes a lot of concentration to make a movie, and it feels like the entire world is conspiring against you. You need to focus on what’s important: getting the key shots first, getting the performance you need to make the scene compelling and believable, all while preparing for the coming days and dealing with other problems as they arise.

When you are directing a crew, everyone wants something from you - does this wardrobe work? The sun just went away, can we set up a light? Can you sit for an interview or production meeting during lunch? We’re running out of money, can you shoot less film? Where’s the sound guy? Why has the actor locked themselves in the trailer?

You need to address these questions as they come up while ceaselessly working towards completing your day’s shots. But multitasking can lead to poor results, so you need to pick and choose your priorities and let others worry about their departments. You can establish what requires your attention and what can be decided by others.

I think of it as an iris - closing in on a single point - I love to live in tunnel vision on set. If you can work with good people whom you trust, many problems will arise and be solved without your knowledge.

The iris-in/out was an early film technique that focused an audience’s attention on a single point without cutting to a closer shot, as seen below in the Buster Keaton film, Neighbors.

Optical Focus

A few basics to know about how lenses work:

1. A lens can only focus on one distance at a time. When you turn the focus dial on your lens, you are moving the optical elements towards or away from the sensor or film plane. This changes the focus distance.

2. Changing your aperture will affect the amount of apparent focus, known as depth-of-field (DoF), in your frame. We will delve into this concept more fully in the upcoming F-stop newsletter, but the basic concept is that the smaller your aperture, the more focus depth you will see in frame.

3. Changing your lens will also create the illusion of more or less focus depth (DoF) with wider lenses looking sharper and longer lenses showing shallow focus.

4. Focus is the unsung hero of composition - often, you hear people talking about the rule of thirds, frames within frames, and God forbid, the golden ratio. But we naturally look to the part of the frame that is in focus, so it is the cherry on top of the composition.

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Shallow Focus or Deep Focus?

Keeping a moving shot in focus is one of the hardest parts of operating a camera. That’s why it’s an entire job on professional film sets. But if you’re working on a doc or low-budget production, you might need to take care of it yourself. But don’t despair, there are lots of good tools to help you succeed, because no one wants to be the reason that you’re shooting another take.

If you are in the early stages of learning to keep a moving subject in focus, you can give yourself a little wiggle room by shooting with a deeper focus setting. Every stop you close down on your aperture gives you more depth-of-field, meaning that you have more of a range of “acceptable” focus. But if you close down too far, you might lose the cinematic quality of the image, and it will look like you are shooting some 1990s video news footage, so be careful with this setting.

A lot of people love the shallow focus look, so they shoot in the f/1.4 to 2.0 range. This clearly helps the subject stand out from the rest of the frame, but with a paper-thin DoF, you are playing with fire and may have soft moments when actors inevitably move. Hopefully not during the best performance, but Murphy’s law does predict that all focus snafus will land on the director’s favorite takes.

I like to shoot at an f/2.8, as this aperture setting will give some DoF but maintain a limited focus and still feel cinematic. If you are shooting outside and have lots of deep background in frame, you can close down to an f/4 or 5.6 and still feature a blurry background.

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Kubrick’s Deep Focus

I first noticed deep focus while watching Stanley Kubrick films - he would often favor wide lenses and brightly lit sets, even for his horror masterpiece, The Shining. He was a director who favored great detail in his mise-en-scène with symmetrical compositions to tell the visual story of his cinematic worlds. By keeping most of the set in focus, he allowed the audience to explore each frame as they saw fit. He never liked to explain his films, but left many visible clues for interpretation.

Would you walk down this hallway? Stay out of room 237.

The wide lens in the shot above holds focus from the camera to the end of the hallway, and the optics of the wide lens help it feel like the space is stretching away from the viewer. This combination invites us into the picture, thus raising the stakes as the setting feels closer to reality. A brilliant technique to invoke the supernatural.

Akira Kurosawa’s Deep Focus

On the other end of the lens spectrum, longer lenses usually boast a shallow DoF, with just a sliver of focus on the main character. Akira Kurosawa went against this norm by closing down his aperture to create deeper focus in films like Seven Samurai. He wanted to emphasize the communal nature of the film’s village under threat, which he achieves by framing layers of farmers huddled together with each face in focus to emphasize their humanity.

Kurosawa would use big lights on set, even during sunny days, to get enough light to close down his aperture to achieve deep focus. We will get more into that in the post about f-stops.

Necropolis - Storytelling with Focus

In my recent shoot with director Jay Stern, Necropolis, focus played a pivotal role in our shot plan. We began the film using deep focus to build the world and allow the audience to explore every detail as we watch actress Annie Levy climb staircase after staircase using slow cinema techniques and wide shots.

For the opening sequence we shot on a 24mm lens at a distance from Annie to create deep focus. We wanted her to feel small in a vast and unfamiliar world - the audience and her are learning the rules of this new place at the same time.

Our protagonist arrives on a Greek island and makes her way through empty streets to a hilltop monastery. Along the way she doesn’t see a soul. Is she in purgatory or is it just siesta time?

The textures of the landscape called for sharp focus details and we wanted the maze of streets to feel confusing and feel like an endless M.C. Escher drawing. But to contrast that by the end of the film, we wanted to concentrate on Annie as she marches in a procession, keeping the specifics of the other people blurred with shallow focus.

We shot the procession on a 50mm lens with a wide aperture (adding lots of neutral density filters to keep the day exterior exposure in check) which allowed us to be with Annie and only feel those around her without distraction. This worked out as we were shooting in a real situation with people who would probably be looking into the lens and blowing shots if they were in focus.

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To Infinity and Beyond!

Every lens has a range of distances that it can focus to - every lens will focus to infinity (meaning the furthest point like distant mountains or even a block or two away if in a city) but each type will have it’s own close focus or minimum focusing distance (MFD).

Prime lenses (only one focal length like 18mm or 35mm) have the ability to focus closer than zoom lenses, with wide lenses tending to have a MFD of 10-12” and telephoto lenses in the 2-3 foot range, unless they have a macro function, which allows the lens to move further away from the image plane and thus focus closer to the lens.

Zoom lenses have a lot more glass inside them, which makes it more complicated for passing light and focusing close to the camera, so when you are scouting locations or shot listing, you need to take those parameters into account. If you are unsure, you can find specs for your lenses on the manufacturer's website or even the B&H camera store’s site. Or ask AI and hope it doesn’t hallucinate.

But even better, get the lens yourself and test how close you can get to the camera and keep it in focus. Also test the depth of field when you focus farther away, moving towards infinity. If you have cine style lenses you will see markings on the focus ring that show the distance setting in feet or meters, so you can also test the veracity of those markings to make sure they match the optical focus.

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Tape Measures vs. Eye Focus

When I was directing my first 16mm short film after college I found out about lens markings the hard way. My co-DP and I were framing a close-up shot on our lead actress and got into an argument about how to set the focus. I had taken a tape measurement which gave me the distance from the film plane to her eye, and set the lens accordingly. The other DP looked through and told me that it was out of focus. He then focused it by eye, which left the lens marking 5 feet off, but was sharp in the eye piece. In the past, I had been burned by soft focus on close ups shooting film because the diopter in the eye piece had been off, so I insisted on using the lens markings to shoot. A few months later we were watching dailies and my heart sank as we watched take after take with focus set on the back wall and the actress blurry beyond usefulness. I had to figure out how to edit the scene without the lead actresses shot! What a nightmare.

Later on, I discovered on the lens we had been using that the focus ring was a little bit loose, so the markings did not match up. I should have gone with the optical focus.

There’s so many more layers of detail that I could delve into, so maybe I’ll do a part two soon, but for now I think that’s enough! One thing I keep trying to learn with my teaching is not to hit too many points in one class. It’s hard when I’m super into a subject to not take it too far. So if you’re still reading this, you’re one of the star students.

Thanks for reading, and stay focused!

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About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

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Why is he sharing his film on the international unofficial stoner holiday? Well, let’s take a look at his poster’s tag line - “a comedy for romantic stoners.”

The film’s IMDb setup:

I have enjoyed reading Jake’s newsletter, seeing his community-building efforts in the L.A. microcinema space, and his positive attitude overall. It was a pleasure to speak with him about the past, present, and future of cinema, micro or otherwise.

We discussed our joy in finding what we love, including the Filmstack community, cinematic exhibition, the film Amadeus, social media addiction, moving across the country to pursue our dreams, and finished with some behind-the-scenes stories of how his first feature came to be.

To get your free copy of Scrapers, subscribe to filmjourn here:

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Stream. Screen. Scene.

By jake S. weisman

Listen to our conversation on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts:

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

As a filmmaker, you have many friends and enemies, but only one true villain: Time.

Memorizing your focal lengths and lens characteristics is one of the best ways a director can learn to make fast framing decisions and waste less time on set. In my time assisting, I saw D.P.s and directors cycle through their entire roster of glass only to land back where they started, with less time to shoot and focus on performance. I vowed never to be like them.

This preparedness not only applies to directing and cinematography, but also to all the crafts that go into a shot. The best actors I’ve worked with asked what lens was on them, then moved their bodies appropriately. A production designer or set dresser can better place important objects in the shot if they understand what will be seen with each focal length.

Inspired by his cinematographer, L.H.Burell, French filmmaker Robert Bresson shot every frame with a 50mm lens. A practice started on their first collaboration, Diary of a Country Priest, followed by A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, and Joan of Arc, a film that caused so much disagreement between them that Burell walked away. But Bresson kept shooting with the 50 for the rest of his life.

A short lens (wide-angle, 14mm-35mm) has a wide angle of view; the lower the mm number, the wider the lens. A long lens (telephoto) has a narrow angle of view, so it is generally used for close-ups or to capture action from a distance.

The beauty of the long lens is that an actor can more easily ignore the camera, or not even know when it’s on them, if you are shooting from across the set.

If you can get really far away, you can create an amazing layered and compressed wide shot. The shot below is from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, a film in which he began to use telephoto lenses more frequently for most shots.

Notice how the crowd feels pressed together, like a wall made of people. This long lens deep focus approach allows us to read their faces more clearly and feel the collective reaction to events off-screen. There’s an immediacy to the image that would be lost if shot on a wide lens.

The general starting point for filmmakers is to cover a scene using a wide lens, then zoom in on each of their actors for a matching close-up. While there’s nothing wrong with this approach (it is tried and true and has stood the test of time), the more open-minded you become to how you can creatively use a lens, the better.

It is amazing to be able to feel the world around your character, even in close-up. Many filmmakers have used the wide lens this way - Gregg Toland on Citizen Kane, or Wong Kar-Wai in Fallen Angels, among others. Stanley Kubrick. Terry Gilliam.

The list goes on of filmmakers who have used the wide lens to tell the story of a close-up.

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The Focal Length Composition Test Shoot

Sometimes a wide lens works great for capturing a wide shot, but if you get to know and internalize the characteristics of every available lens, you might find a better fit for a particular shot. So how do you do that?

Glad you asked!

This is what I do with my students every semester - I make them shoot the same frame with a variety of lenses so they get a sense of what visual characteristics each focal length has to offer. This exercise is the fastest way to get into the lens choice mindset.

We start with the camera far away and zoomed in, setting a composition size that we can replicate by moving in shot by shot and zooming out. If you reframe properly, you can scroll through the shots and see the world stretch out behind your subject as the camera moves in with ever-wider lenses.

A wide lens (18mm, above bottom right image) stretches the frame, prioritizing the foreground and diminishing the background, making people or objects feel far apart. These work great if you want your character to dominate their world, or in close-up, distort their face to externalize their monstrous thoughts.

On a longer lens (85mm), the same composition feels compressed, smaller and separated - we notice the flattened layers - everything feels both closer and detached.

On the 85mm lens the bill of my hat disappears, flattened into the face, set against the magnified blurry background. The camera needs to be in my face with the wide lens, stretching the bill against the top of the frame. The height difference is emphasized with the wider lenses.

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The Magical 50mm Lens

You can do anything with a 50.

At one point in my street photography learning process, I bought a 50mm lens and walked around getting shots with it until I could clearly imagine what the frame would be before I looked through the eyepiece. I had previously used zoom lenses to accommodate a variety of shot sizes, but using the prime lens was an important step. The limitation forced me to learn to see in a specific way.

When shooting Say My Name in Wales, director Jay Stern and I were figuring out how to show the moment of our heroine walking away from the man she’s spent the movie with, running from both cops and robbers. The film takes place on a fictional costal island, so we wanted to show her walking towards a distant mainland, and moving screen left would be a bonus (she’s headed back to America, to the left of the UK on a map!).

I knew that if we shot the wide with a wide lens, we would barely see the mainland, so I asked my camera assistant to load up a 50mm, and we started walking away from the set. After thirty or so paces, she asked how much farther we were going. We kept walking across the vast lawn until it felt right. We planted the tripod and framed up our man standing under a tree, helplessly watching the love of his life walk away.

It felt perfect. The shot was wide, but the distance compression combined with the medium lens angle of view drawing focus to the protagonists as silhouettes in the afternoon light. I wanted to frame the essence of a good thing walking away from you, and you’re too stupid to run after it. Not yet, at least.

Another film I shot on the 50mm is the Olivia Wilde-starring film A VIGILANTE (2019), directed by Sarah Daggar-Nickson. From the get-go, Sarah told me that she wanted to shoot as much of the film on a 50mm as possible, to have the camera as a constant companion to protagonist Sadie (Wilde), always with her, observing her closely.

We were able to accomplish that for the most part, propelling the film with an overall intimacy, but then breaking into super wide shots to create impactful moments.

Here is a typical shot of Sadie, waiting in the dark, knife in hand, poised to attack her abusive husband:

Here is a 50mm wide shot of Sadie at her son’s grave, killed by her husband:

A wide-angle lens wouldn’t have worked for these shots - the knife would be too emphasized in the closer shot, and the valley would have felt too open behind the cemetery. The compression crushes Sadie against the background - this is the moment when her life changes - she finds a new purpose in revenge against abusers.

The 50mm lens also emphasizes the trucks and traffic on the distant highway, a reminder that while we are mired in grief, the world keeps moving on. “The trucks keep on coming” is a theme throughout the film.

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Focal Length - Framing Practice Shoot:

To become an effective filmmaker, you must learn your lenses. Full stop. You can do this the same way you get to the Carnegie Deli.

Walking. And practice.

Walk around with a camera (not a phone), ideally with a fixed prime lens, and take pictures. Observe your surroundings, notice something that you would like to capture, imagine the frame, then lift the camera and snap. Then observe the difference between what you imagined and what you actually caught.

What did you think would be in the frame? Did you see a natural framing device? Interesting foreground? Did you isolate your subject or work them into a larger composition?

Keep this practice up with consistency and you will find yourself seeing in focal lengths in no time!

For More Cinematic “F” Words:

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

Recent directing projects include Infamous (2020), starring Bella Thorne, Mending the Line (2022), starring Brian Cox, and he just completed his latest shoot in Georgia, Three People in the Woods, which Joshua is editing now.

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In this conversation, we discuss the trust-building that is needed across departments, with producers, and with talent. And how to work efficiently, adapting to the realities of shooting locations or schedules.

When it comes to collaborators, Joshua likes to establish a shorthand in preproduction to avoid “hashing it out” on set or having the DP “hijack” the shoot. He likes the shoot to be an “ongoing discussion” about the look and continuity of coverage. Throughout the discussion, we break down his shooting approach to several recent projects and talk about the big picture approach to career longevity.

You can watch or listen to our conversation on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts:

Trailers for Joshua’s films that we discuss in this episode:

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he is currently shooting in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

To catch up on the Filmmaking F-word series, check out F#1 and F#2!

Framing

What are we looking at? What are we not allowed to see? Why?

These are some of the most basic visual questions you must answer when embarking on a film shoot. Are you going to show us what’s happening or make us figure it out? Whose perspective are you showing your audience? How big a world are you creating? Are you going to surprise your audience and keep them in suspense, or let them get ahead of you and lose interest?

Remember, a good composition doesn’t cost any more to shoot than a bad one!

You can also think about “framing” as a concept before you visualize the story, which can help you decide how the pictures that tell the story should be composed.

Director’s Framing Devices:

1. Do you know the subtext of your scene? The director’s perspective on the action is important to “show, not tell” the audience what’s really going on.

2. Whose story is it? This is another reason to know where to put the camera and how to frame your subject.

3. How do you want the audience to feel about this person or group?

4. Where does this story take place? Is it a familiar world or fantastical? What can you assume your audience already knows about this setting, and how much of it needs to be seen rather than inferred?

5. What are you withholding from the audience? Why?

6. Are you using your camera to reinforce the dialogue, or are you trying to undercut the conscious story by showing your character’s flaws or unconscious desires?

Framing Case Study: Stargazer

Let’s break these ideas down with some pictures. I’ll start with some examples from a feature film I directed - Stargazer, written by Rob Ackerman and Kate Ginna, who also stars.

Kate plays Grace Campbell, an anxious grad student who is trying to get her thesis published to bring belated renown to her scientist subject, Cecilia Payne, who was initially denied credit for her discovery of the elemental nature of the universe, due to her gender. Grace travels to New York to meet with a publisher who knew her mom in college, expecting that her tenuous nepo-connection will lead to renown for Cecilia.

We wanted to create a situation where the surroundings would show our young protagonist was out of her league, so we framed the encounter with Grace in between the two gatekeepers, with the city pressed up to the windows behind her.

We shot with a 35mm lens and extra headroom to help her look small and meek, wedged between the windows, and made sure to frame in the publisher’s awards in the foreground for good measure. One look at this frame and we know she’s feeling small.

But it’s not over: her first rejection leads Grace to launch a campaign to find a professional writer to help bring her thesis into publishable shape. She literally pounds the pavement, making dozens of phone calls. She still looks small against the city backdrop, but it’s more of a dynamic power shot - she’s finding her voice. I also just really love the reflected symmetry. And it zooms in, too!

Regarding the question above about what we don’t see, I want to point out that we

shot this sequence during COVID, when plenty of New Yorkers were still masking, even outdoors. We were determined not to have a single mask in the movie and have it tied to that period, so we found creative ways to keep people’s faces out of frame, even as they charged through the stolen sidewalk sets.

We kept the camera low so people’s midsections would cross Grace in the foreground, and used a shallow depth of field to blur the background. Outside of practical reasons, these frames emphasized the fact that “no one cares” - the world keeps moving along as we try to change it.

Grace finally finds her savior, a reporter named Spike Randall (Matt Bogart), who woos her with a shot at appearing on a television program hosted by the real-life historian, Annette Gordon-Reed (Herself). Grace is in over her head as she realizes that she will get tongue-tied speaking publicly to achieve her goal. So Spike tries to calm her by helping her solidify the story of Cecilia. They meet at Grace’s campus library and get to work, catching the attention of a dance major, Diana (Lei Nico), who is also struggling with her thesis, a dance about sex and power in ancient Greece - the story of Atalanta.

Spike appears as the savior - confidently framed in the top left quadrant, the power position of a shot, explaining the situation to Grace, who shrinks into the bottom right edge of the composition. We framed for depth and story, setting up a student librarian in the background who plays a role throughout the film, initially trying to keep the two quiet. Their commotion draws the attention of Diana, who begins her pursuit (the Roman Diana was the goddess of the hunt…).

And Diana can’t wait to get her claws (beautifully painted by our amazing makeup artist, Chelsea!) into both of them. She brings her own tale of female desire into the mix and begins to blend the stories from thousands of years apart as the trio intercuts between fantasy and reality.

I love how Grace is barely in this frame, watching helplessly as Diana seduces Spike in her Atalanta fantasy forest. These shots intercut with Diana telling her story in the stacks, inserting herself between Spike and Grace.

Diana even works her way into Grace’s story of Harvard’s science department in the 1920s, where Grace has been imagining herself as Cecilia Payne. Is there no one she can’t seduce? Now it’s Spike’s turn to be out of focus in the background.

At the end of their first meeting, Diana finds a way to Odalisque her way onto Grace’s table, a composition we later reference in Grace’s fantasy of Cecilia Payne struggling at Harvard. This emphasizes Grace’s feeling of losing control over her narrative as other people add their own perspective. Group projects are hard!

As Spike and Diana take Grace’s story from her and make it their own, the frames begin to match Grace’s life as well as Cecilia’s - more powerful men taking her discovery and crediting themselves.

The central moment of Cecilia’s story is the denial of credit - she faces off with her advisors, who say they cannot grant her a PhD if she doesn’t renounce her findings. It starts out with a gentlemanly seating, but quickly becomes a standoff with the camera dead center, the men almost staring down the lens to put the audience in Cecilia’s shoes. The formal framing in this sequence helps set the rigid tone of parental supervision, aligning the figures with the architectural elements in each shot.

Which brings us right back to where it all began. Grace is caught in a loop and must find a way to save herself before she can “save” Cecilia’s reputation. Will history repeat itself, or will she find the inner strength to take back her story?

You can watch the thrilling conclusion on a variety of platforms! Free with Ads on PLEX, free on PRIME, or anywhere else you can rent movies!

About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he recently shot in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

With the Oscars coming up in a few days, I thought that I would re-share this writing from my first impressions of Ryan Coogler’s film. I saw the film opening night and worked hard to get this post written, but then, for some reason, the post was never delivered, so it didn’t get many views. I start out reviewing the film, then diverge into my experience shooting at Willie King’s juke joint in Alabama for PBS, then close with a reflection about Gordon Parks’ amazing photography, which celebrates the humanity of his southern rural subjects. Enjoy!

SINNERS Review

Ryan Coogler joins the 70mm club but keeps his soul in this evocative Jim Crow vampire fright fest - available in multiple aspect ratios.

Alan McIntyre

Apr 21, 2025

Ryan Coogler elevates a monster genre to high art through sheer force of will - and IMAX. Music is the soul of Sinners - both as a coping mechanism for the oppressed to connect to their ancestors and descendants, and an invitation to the Devil in the eyes of the local preacher.

If you had to choose a classic monster to represent the Jim Crow South, you could do much worse than vampire mythology. Coogler spins a compelling vision of the Prohibition era focused on a pair of twins (Smoke and Stack), both played by his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan, who have returned from harrowing experiences as soldiers in The Great War and bloodthirsty enforcers for Al Capone’s Chicago. They return to their hometown, Clarksdale, in the Mississippi Delta to open a juke joint with their gangland blood money because they’d rather deal with the Devil they know.

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The first Devil they meet, the KKK Grand Dragon, sells them the old saw mill that will become the story’s focal point. Remember, like a vampire, a dragon is known for their teeth (and fire). With what’s left of their cash, the twins hire locals and old flames for staff and musicians to play the Blues, including an excellent Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim and newcomer Miles Caton (Sammie Moore), who carries the movie’s heart and burden of the theme. He’s a preacher’s son who plays the blues, representing our duality and inner fight. Will he follow his father’s advice and leave music behind or walk down his own dirt road?

I went to this film without knowing what to expect (like, I didn’t even know it was a vampire movie!), which led to many great surprises along the way. Going in, all I needed to know was that it was an original film by Ryan Coogler and shot on IMAX 70mm film.

I’ll refrain from spoilers and only reference things that I’ve since seen in trailers, but I can’t recommend enough to see films without promotions.

The Aspect Ratio

As I settled into my third row center seat in the Regal RPX theater, I got a little worried - the screen was so large that it escaped my peripheral vision. As the film began, I quickly realized that I could miss the edges since every shot was center-framed. This made the edits easier to follow and helped the filmmakers compose for multiple formats.

Shot in IMAX on 70mm film, the original image is a 15mm side-scrolling full frame square shot with a 1:43 aspect ratio. Since most theaters can’t play that, they also composed for a 2.76:1 and 1.9:1 ratio, depending on where you see it. My screening was in the super-wide ratio, and it looked amazing - simultaneously realistic and fantastical. Shooting with the large format elevates every frame, even if you see it reduced to a “normal” theatrical DCP.

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In this age of streaming, I am happy that so many filmmakers are fighting to shoot large format and reward the audience that comes to theaters. We have to keep these cultural places alive, our society has atomized so much and forgotten the thrill of a collective experience.

It’s called “civilization.”

Of course, not everyone is up to speed on the wide assortment of screening formats available to the modern audience. To help alleviate confusion, Kodak partnered with Ryan Coogler to deliver this helpful and illustrative explainer:

The Lighting

I was impressed with the lighting throughout Sinners - it strove for underlit naturalism during the story setup, lighting through windows, letting faces fall into shadow. Shot by Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC, the film feels epic in scope but relatable and real. She’s not afraid of underexposure, but frames never feel too heavy or muddy. There’s always some highlight or sparkle to define the intentionality of exposure.

The sun plays a pivotal role in every vampire story, and this one is no different. Almost all the light in the opening section is natural as the twins set up their new joint and gather the townsfolk to party. While the sun shines, they make progress on their plans. The devil is at bay.

At dusk, we see a man perched high on a ladder siphoning off the power wires, sending down a shower of sparks and bathing the juke joint in a warm electrical glow. For the rest of the night, we wait in anticipation for the unravelling. When blood money talks, monsters listen.

The Juke Joint

The juke joint setting is no coincidence- these act as a locus of solidarity and escape from the horrors of white supremacy. Every Black community in the Deep South has (or had) its local watering hole where the alcohol is cheap and the blues are loud. Saturday night is just as sacred as Sunday morning there.

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I got a firsthand experience of Willie King’s juke joint working on Martin Scorsese’s PBS project, The Blues. DP Lisa Rinzler and producer Alex Gibney brought me down to Alabama for the shoot. It was one of the most memorable nights of my life - they blew the roof off the joint! Here’s Willie playing in Mississippi (a little more subdued on this track!):

I had been in some rough spots in big cities, but nothing prepared me for the abject poverty I encountered in rural Alabama homesteads. It was like I had walked into a Walker Evans depression-era photograph, but in color.

So a Gordon Parks reference might be more apt. He was so great with color photography, an early adopter when shooting the civil rights era in gritty black and white was seen as more dignified with journalistic integrity. Parks wanted to highlight the beauty, vibrancy, and resiliency of Black communities and emphasize their emotional depth with humanizing portrayals.

The next thing I noticed while working on The Blues - in Alabama, where the Black rural neighborhoods began, the pavement ended. Your tax dollars at work. The year was 2003, but I saw no discernible difference in the production design of Coogler’s 1932 set. The photograph below was taken twenty-four years after the film’s time setting.

And one more for good measure, the title “Outside Looking In” says it all. To think Parks’ local handler had the audacity to tell him that there was not enough segregation in Alabama to merit a Life Magazine story.

Behind the Scenes

I would recommend watching these after you see the movie, but below are some behind the scenes videos that give a sense of the scale of this production. I’m always amazed when I see the IMAX camera on a shoulder or Stedicam rig.

Shout out to the camera operators out there. Keep your shoulders iced!

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About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he is currently shooting in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

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Click on the poster below to find details on the promos and films:

Nothing beats seeing films in the theater, so give yourself the excuse to find some off-the-beaten-path movies that are playing in New York. We need to keep our cinema culture growing and flourishing.

It’s up to us!

If you would like to find out more about Art House New York:

Substack:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arthousenewyork/

Please share this with anyone you know who loves good movies!

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About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he is currently shooting in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.

I invited her on HOW I SHOOT to talk about the process of crowdfunding using Seed & Spark, and to delve into her goals as a director after years of writing projects for others to produce and direct.

You can hear the conversation on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts:

SEED&SPARK

If you would like to know more about Lauren’s project, check out the Seed & Spark campaign below:

https://seedandspark.com/fund/swathe-a-short-film#story

Catch up with some of Lauren’s recent writing gigs:

Secrets to Kill For

IMdB Log Line: When Shanice learns her friend, June, is missing, she returns home to help in the search. She suspects June’s boyfriend, but when June is found dead and Shanice becomes a target, she learns the murderer might be much closer to home.

Locked in My House

IMdB Log Line: When CARIS (30s) is hurt by DR MARRICK during IVF treatment, her world comes crumbling down. She finds him on the train tracks and traps him in her basement, determined to get justice - even if it means risking her life.

If the first F of Filmmaking is forgive, then the second has to be forget. How can you possibly come back for more filmmaking if you don’t forget the pain and suffering that came with the last set?

People often regret their forgetfulness, but I think it’s what keeps us going most of the time. The brain has a wonderful way of smoothing out the bad memories and highlighting the good ones, redactions that help us do it again. Don’t lose your mental Sharpie!

Known Unknown Knowns

1. Learn Skills So Well That You can Forget Them (Forget What You Know)

2. You need to train past the point of conscious thought

When you first arrive on set you will be painfully self-conscious. You won’t know what to do or how to be helpful. So you must ask, over and over, until you have a protocol memorized.

A P.A. must be watching gear on the sidewalk so it isn’t stolen, not staring at their phone. Practice mindfulness!

A camera operator must be in the moment, reacting to the scene and subjects in front of them. There may be a shot plan, but that can change on an actor or director’s whim.

When a production designer imagines a character’s home, they must forget their own preferences but remember life experiences to find a truthful representation of an inner world.

Whatever job you’re doing on set, it will help you to practice to a point where you have ingrained reactions. There will still be lots to think about and figure out, so give time to solve new problems by automating the ones you already know about.

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When Forgetting Helps

If you’re the type to ruminate, then you might worry that everyone is thinking about your big mistake from yesterday.

The good news is they aren’t! Get out of your high school mentality.

It can be easy to assume the worst of your mistakes, but there are lots of other people on set making other mistakes or forgetting something important, so you can blend into the crowd.

It’s important to own up to your mistakes immediately - nobody will tolerate a cover-up but they will forgive a fuck up. As long as you come clean right away.

In the spirit of Maya Angelou’s famous quote, make sure your boss(es) feel supported. If you can make them feel the safety net you provide them, they will call you again or recommend you.

It’s hard work making a movie and everyone feels the grind, so try to go against the grain and make it a pleasant experience for all involved.

Maybe they won’t forget you!

Remind People That You Exist!

People will forget you.

Let that sink in. No matter how good a job you do, they will be on to something else and call the last person they happened to see when an opportunity arrives.

But don’t take it personally.

Your job in between jobs is to gently remind people that you are available, but not in such a way that you annoy them. It’s a tightrope, and it can feel awkward, but it must be done.

When I’m feeling awkward about reaching out to someone, I remind myself that I don’t mind when people contact me looking for work. It’s a nice compliment to let someone know that you think they are important enough to know what’s going on and how to get in on the action.

Most of the film business is freelancers between gigs. The most established people work a lot, but many people spend time between sets stressing about getting on the next one. A common adage I hear is “Every time a job ends I worry that I’ll never work again.” This is said by old hands and newcomers alike.

So, what are the best techniques to remind people that you exist and ready to help them solve their next production problem?

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How to Remind Someone That You Exist

1. Reach out by text or phone and let them know that you’re available and looking for work. Simple, right? But does it feel too mercenary? No! You are a mercenary, just with a camera instead of a gun. Call a spade a spade. Be honest - they will appreciate it.

2. Reach out by text or phone and ask if they want to meet up for a coffee or a drink, or lunch, if you’re feeling rich. They will probably say they would love to meet and make an ill-defined future date, which will probably not come to pass, but that’s not the point. You wanted to get back on their radar, so offering to buy them a drink will be remembered, for at least a day or two.

3. Share an article or post that you know they will enjoy or relate to.

4. Reach out with a question - give them the opportunity to be an expert and show them that you respect their opinion. Don’t use this as a way to kiss their ass, but to genuinely learn how to do your job better. You can even ask them how to go about looking for work!

5. Be yourself! Don’t over think it. You’re perfect just the way you are. You just need more work, so work for it.

6. If all else fails, start a SubStack or Podcast!

Do you have a good technique you like to use to remind people that you exist? Leave it in the comments!

If you missed “F” #1, read it here:

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About the Author:

Alan McIntyre is a cinematographer, teacher, and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent projects include MOTION (Bella Thorne, Tiffany Haddish, Terry Crews), A VIGILANTE (Olivia Wilde), and NECROPOLIS, which he is currently shooting in Greece. He directed the feature film STARGAZER and is currently making his first feature documentary, DINERMAN, with the FilmStack NonDē 50 project.