Pina 3D

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Pina 3D

I caught an advance screening of Wim Wender's new 3D documentary, Pina, at IFC and was really impressed. I've been waiting for someone to make a film like this - an art film essentially - that embraces the enormous creative potential of 3D and uses it to create a utterly unique viewer experience and not just a gimmick to fill seats. It's equal parts documentary and performance piece with a little magical realism thrown in for effect. As a film, it succeeds in illustrating Pina Bausch's character through her art - modern dance. I'm no dance connoisseur by any means but I found how she used to movement to evoke such powerful emotions in both her performers and her audience to be extremely inspiring. As for 3D, this is a great film with or without it but Wenders used it in such a way as to make you feel like a participant in the dance. If you were to see a performance like this live, you would most likely see it in a theater - from the front perspective only and far enough away so as not to perceive the depth of the scene but to see the whole thing happen from one flat, fixed point of view. But in this film, the performances were photographed stereoscopically with a dynamically moving camera getting very close to the action and tracking around it. It really has an immersive effect, because you can resolve the roundness of the dancers and their spatial relationship to one another. It's like you're standing right there with them. 

General release happens 12/23/11 so if you've been dying to see a real 3D "art film" this might satisfy you. 

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Holgaroid

Holgaroid

On our recent snow adventures, while I was firing away on the Mark 2, James was using a Holgaroid camera and some of his images are just too beautiful to not share. A Holga is a plastic, piece of crap medium format camera with a fixed plastic lens. The images it makes have a beautiful soft focus and a weird dreamy quality that's very unique. Polaroid instant film has its own weird and idiosyncratic qualities so put a Polaroid back onto a Holga camera and you have a very Frankensteinish analog image making tool. The film he had was also expired which adds another interesting variable to the mix. Enjoy.

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Thanks, James, for letting me post these. Gorgeous stuff. 

Here's another analog experiment we did a few years ago - a short film shot digitally through a medium format portrait camera.

The Model Maker (Director: James Buckley, DP: Ben Cain)