Tag Archives: lomo

How I did “COSA RESTA” pt1

Hi all, it’s been a while since I last wrote something. Fact is I’ve been dead busy with lots of projects lately and I did not have a proper chance to sit down and write on this blog.

Well, here I am at last! This post would have been too long to make it into one so I rather have it split in 2 sections, in the first one I will explain how I shot it and in the second part I will explain post production into details.

First you might enjoy having a look at the final version of the video

 

 

You might as well wonder why this version bears the “Director’s cut” label. In fact there was a first version of the video I edited strictly edited following the client’s directions but in the end he liked my version better.

All right, now let’s talk technical here. I shot this music video using both an anamorphic adapter and spherical lenses. I would have gone all the way anamorphic but in some instances we were in a real rush and we were mostly shooting exteriors so spherical is a lot faster. It would have been perfectly doable if I had the chance to grab some Hawks or Primos but I guess this was way out of the budget.. so the sought after anamorphic look it had to be all on an adapter: KOWA 16D.

A buying guide to LOMO LENSES

LOMO logo

 

I decided to write this post because I own a set of LOMOS and because the information about these wonderful lenses is scattered all over the web and not easy to find.
Russian glass is really too big of a topic to put in a single post but the crux of the matter is that you can buy a set of 4 standard LOMOS lenses for USD 1500. Special LOMOS would be at around 4 fold.

What if a country had the resources like the USSR did, so they could have access to the best chemicals available and of the highest grade to forge cinema lenses. It’s not quite what a privately owned company could possibly do.

OCT19 adapter for LOMO lenses

LOMO lenses are the answer of Russia to Cooke lenses.

As you surely know USA and URSS fought for years for the ultimate supremacy. Cinema was a field of excellence for the USA and indeed the Russian were trying to catch up.
Cooke lenses were widely in use in US movies, URSS had Konvas and Kinor films cameras and the best lenses available were the LOMOS.

With all this DSLR craze and especially with the introduction of mirror less cameras a hunt for vintage lenses started. Prices have raised a lot in the last years but you can still find some pretty good deals.
On mirror less cameras you can mount pretty much anything and that I think it is a strong point to go vintage for video work (on a budget). Indeed the 5dmkII dynamic range is superior, the full frame aesthetics are evident but looking for vsome legacy glass is one direction of DPing the art of film-making.

The making of my NEXT MUSIC VIDEO

anamorphic gh2

 

Soon after doing the video entitled “L’ AQUILA”, the singer was very pleased with the result and he wanted a new video for the new song in the pipeline.

A totally different looking video. More filmic looking. More dramatic. More story telling. I though this was a great chance to go anamorphic, after all it’s the most cinematic thing I know.
What I usually do is to listen to the song many times and get my mind around the feelings I perceive. It will not necessarily link to the song, its words, its theme.. it’s actually more to do with the gut feeling I get out it.
It might have more to  do with the rhythm or with a particular instrument or the general vibe.