We all know what it feels like: A new piece of gear arrives in the mail and we are giddy with excitement. We tear into the box, mount the accessory hastily onto a growing Franken-Rig, and admire our newly capable film-making setup. But then something dissonant happens…. The rig goes into the bag, the bag goes into the car, and off we drive to the shoot. The trouble is, as the day progresses, something is just not flowing the way it used to. Justify it though we try, there was something about that simpler, less “capable” setup that, with all of it’s flaws, somehow just worked. It was like an extension of the body. And yes, it made the back sore and the hand a bit cramped, but at the end of the day, we knew how to get the shot we wanted. Admittedly, this isn’t the whole story. Often, especially in the case of great ergonomic camera support, good accessories are worth their weight in gold, and they enable us to do better work. But on many occasions, just the opposite happens. There is something unexpected at play that makes how we envision equipment a very different thing from how it actually gets used when the clock is ticking and the lights go on. Why does this happen? When we look at a new piece of gear, we try to imagine what it will be like to use, right? Why do we get this wrong? Martin Heidegger on Set...
Published By: CineD - Monday, 16 July, 2018