Skip to main content

Behind the Scenes: The Original Tidewatcher

As work continues on the new, web based version of The Tidewatcher, I thought it might be fun to go all the way back to the very FIRST rendition of the idea, in a behind the scenes shot from the early 1990's. Here we see the original creators of the film, on the left: Tim Guest. In the center, Ray Guiliano. And myself on the far right. (I have no idea what was going on with my hair and clothing in that shot.) We were down on the West Haven Connecticut shoreline, shooting title FX on a SUPER 8mm FILM CAMERA, when this image was captured by a photographer for the New Haven Register newspaper. It made it to page 2 of the following morning's edition! A blast from the past, and one of the reasons I had to go back to the original locations to bring this story to life once again. Get ready... He's on his way.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Playing With Dramatic Light

I have this image that keeps recurring in my mind. It involves the cold blue feeling of a dark winter and the glowing orange of a firelight. So far it seems to keep eluding me, although I think this is largely because every attempt I have made to capture this "mood" has been done in a hurry, or in the rain, or some other situation that forced me to run through it rather than walk it out. This shot is one such version. I may need to go back with a slightly different lighting setup and try some more. Perhaps in a different location.

Turning Day Into Night

Shooting at night is like having a clean slate. A very challenging  clean slate. Why do I say it that way? Because as far as the camera is concerned, there is nothing  there. We may know there are houses, cars, or trees in that moonlit space around us - but without adjusting the ISO to extremely high (and usually noisy) levels, the camera sees a blank, black canvas. In order to make it come alive, we need to paint with light.       In the world of big budget films, this means using huge amounts of lumens and wattage to create either a large wash of psuedo-moonlight, or pools of selective light shining on specific parts of the scene. Either way, it means having lots of lighting - and lots of power - at your disposal. Maybe. And maybe not...       There is  an age old trick that has been used by Hollywood for decades, and is even seen  in large-budgeted modern films such as Jaws (1976), Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005) and Mad Max Fur...

Everything Old is New Again...

Due to events that would take far too long to explain here, I now find myself working with a camera that I have not used for more than half a decade. Granted, it will largely be used only as a back-up at this point, but the question of why  anyone would 'go back' to using such "antiquated" technology as a 10-year old (at the time of this writing) digital camera that is only 12.3 megapixels and has a max ISO of 3200 has an interesting series of answers. Let me cite the method to my madness. The camera in question is a Nikon D-90 with a vertical grip. At the time it was released it was considered a top-shelf pro-sumer model, and it was the definitive purchase that pushed me from film into digital. At 12.3MP, it was quite the heavy hitter for it's time, considering it was not all that many iterations down the line from the days of the "5MP cieling", where even high end DSLRs were still climbing out of the 3.2 range. To show you just how far things have co...