David Mullen ASC
Active member
I'm glad to have found this site -- and hope I can be of use to any students out there.
My background is mostly shooting indie features, small to medium-budget. Recently I've mostly been shooting in 24P HD, seven out of the last ten features. I just finished a 35mm anamorphic (Panavision) feature in Philadelphia and will be leaving next month for Austin, TX to shoot a small 24P HD feature in September. I'm also in the middle of color-correcting and filming-out a 24P HD feature that I shot last December.
Even though I went to film school (MFA, 1991, CalArts) I'm mostly self-taught although that's true of most filmmakers. I had been making my own short films (mostly Super-8, some 16mm) for a decade before I even decided to go to film school. When I wasn't shooting or working to pay the rent, I was reading everything I could find and watching movies all the time.
I'll be happy to answer technical questions but understand that I come from the attitude that technology does not precede art, but supports it. So it's pointless, in my book, to ask me what's the best camera or film stock to use if you don't FIRST have a creative idea to help guide those choices. So if I can give any overall advice to students, it would be to develop your visual imagination. Go to movies, look at paintings in museums, take walks in the woods, whatever it takes to improve your ability to SEE and to IMAGINE. THEN start thinking about technology as a means to expressing those visual ideas...
My background is mostly shooting indie features, small to medium-budget. Recently I've mostly been shooting in 24P HD, seven out of the last ten features. I just finished a 35mm anamorphic (Panavision) feature in Philadelphia and will be leaving next month for Austin, TX to shoot a small 24P HD feature in September. I'm also in the middle of color-correcting and filming-out a 24P HD feature that I shot last December.
Even though I went to film school (MFA, 1991, CalArts) I'm mostly self-taught although that's true of most filmmakers. I had been making my own short films (mostly Super-8, some 16mm) for a decade before I even decided to go to film school. When I wasn't shooting or working to pay the rent, I was reading everything I could find and watching movies all the time.
I'll be happy to answer technical questions but understand that I come from the attitude that technology does not precede art, but supports it. So it's pointless, in my book, to ask me what's the best camera or film stock to use if you don't FIRST have a creative idea to help guide those choices. So if I can give any overall advice to students, it would be to develop your visual imagination. Go to movies, look at paintings in museums, take walks in the woods, whatever it takes to improve your ability to SEE and to IMAGINE. THEN start thinking about technology as a means to expressing those visual ideas...
