2018 SA & WA Award entries open August 1
ENTER NOWOur 38th ACS SA & WA Awards for Cinematography entry window is open from August 1 to August 24. Please note all State & Territories have the same entry window. Entry is via our website and no late entries can be accepted as the website will shut the entry site down at CoB August 24. To enter the awards it will be necessary for you to login as our new website only allows ACS members who are currently financial to Login and enter. Check out the Categories or the Terms & Conditions via our website as there have been numerous changes. ENTER NOW using the Online Entry FormRemember you'll need your member login details.
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Our new website only allows ACS members who are currently financial to Login and enter the awards. If your fees are in arrears you will not be permitted to login or enter into the awards. Be sure to renew your membership in order to enter the awards. If you believe you have paid your fees or are having difficulty logging in, please contact our treasurer.
SA AGM Monday August 13
Our 2018 AGM is very soon on Monday night August 13 so please consider attending the AGM and voting the new committee in. All positions need to be elected on the night. The AGM only takes 30 minutes and the rest of the night is devoted to fun so come along if you are a financial member. BTW membership fees were due by June 30. To make the night even more appealing we will have a bit of fun as well and a drink or two and a bite to eat. What: 2018 SA AGM
Where: Holey Moley Indoor Golf, Level 1 170 Pulteney St, Adelaide
When: August 13 @ 6:15pm
AGM starts 6:45, Pizza 7:15, Golf 7:40.
18+ Event only. Financial SA members only.Please note that CineKids, Student and Associate Members are non-corporate members and are not eligible to nominate or vote for positions on the committee. As we have to pay for the venue and catering we will need to you to book by August 7. A Trybooking link is below. Book soon as numbers are limited.
July Events
 C44 showbags as well! |
During the July school holidays some of our CineKids had their own tour of Channel 44. Many thanks to the team at C44, I hear the CineKids loved it and they got a C44 showbag each too. On Tuesday July 31 we also had a colour grading night in the SAFC theatre at Adelaide Studios with renowned Editor & Colourist Daniel Principe. Forty nine attended this night, questions flowed as did Daniel's ideas, experiences and answers. Many thanks to Daniel, to our moderator DTang, our committee for the orginisation and also thanks to our friends of the ASE guild for co hosting the event. Why not read about Daniel's journey in his Profile below.
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Profile Daniel Principe
Since David Tang has known Daniel for a long time so I handed this months profile over to him. DP Disclaimer: I think we originally did this “interview” about 3 years ago so some of the points I make have changed. For example, I didn’t know it at the time, but the industry from my perspective was once again changing, which I didn’t necessarily immediately perceive. David Tang: So I’m here with Daniel. Daniel, favourite film? Daniel: There’s a difference between my favourite films and the best films that I’ve seen. Like everyone my favourite films are films that I saw when I was a kid, like The Last Starfighter, The Goonies, E.T., Labyrinth, Real Men, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Better Off Dead, that sort of thing. I’m sure if I watched some of them again, they’re probably terrible.
 Daniel on set. |
Your favourite films now? I’ve seen a lot of films and it’s very difficult for me to come up with “This is my favourite film.” My background is probably more European cinema – Godard, Pasolini, Tarkovsky, that sort of filmmaker. A lot of my friends love to watch films again and again. I don’t really do that. I watch a film. I go, “Yeah that was good” but I want to then see something else. I don’t watch a film over and over again. I guess a recent film I watched numerous times is Inception because to me that’s a very interesting blend of being a blockbuster with lots of effects and that kind of thing, but then it’s also got this kind of weird Bunuel quality about it, this kind of art house quality about it. So a blending of those two things that I found entertaining. OK so how about your favourite TV series? My favourite TV series right now would be Adventure Time, Rick and Morty and Toast of London.
What started your interest in film? I think my interest in film is something that is an evolution. So as a kid, I read lots of comics and I watched television, cartoons, Robotech, He-Man, Transformers, The SilverHawks, that kind of thing. It’s probably something that just grew out of that. I worked in a video store, that was my first job when I was 15. I watched a lot of American art house films and something developed from there. Also some of my earliest memories as a kid are of two David Lynch films – Elephant Man and Dune. I doubt I watched the whole films – I think Elephant Man was on TV in the background at my Nonna’s and I remember this stampede of elephants, which, when I watched the film again as an adult I was shocked ran for like a nanosecond as I remember it being this very long sequence. The sharp edged holographic suits from Dune and just the whole vibe of that picture also really struck me as a kid.
What was your first job in the industry? My first job I can think of was as a director and it was a music clip. It was in Queensland, with a really solid budget. A friend of ours at uni, his brother had gotten involved with someone else who was managing a band and said that they wanted a clip and we all flew over there and it was actually the biggest budget music clip I’ve ever directed because obviously things changed radically from that time till now. Big music clips are probably now like $10,000-$20,000 in Australia whereas this was probably a $60,000 clip.
Can you elaborate on why things changed? The whole structure of the way the music industry worked changed. The idea that you had to have a particular type of music clip and a particular type of strategy and release changed. And then the film industry changed as well. I mean we shot on Betacam or something like that. I think it was Betacam. Whereas obviously now, you could hire someone that has a 5D or A7S, and you could still get a relatively good product. The reality is if you watch the clip, we could make that exact same clip now for probably $5,000, quite seriously. And then whatever you want to throw on. We had a gaffer, a grip, a truck full of equipment, everything, we were in a casino. It was a big shoot.
 Daniel and his business partner Marcus McKenzie giving Viv Madigan a terrible haircut for a Kickstarter fundraiser. |
How did you get your first break? I then went on to do a PhD and I didn’t really look to do anything else for a while. I guess my reintroduction to the industry was Nima (Nabili Rad) asking me to grade a hip hop video that he was shooting. I never planned to do this as a job. I didn’t like what I perceived to be the politics of the film industry, and didn’t really want to get involved in that kind of thing. When I was at university, the idea that you could just go out and be a camera assistant or something wasn’t a reality, at least that’s how I perceived it. The marketplace has changed hugely in the 10, 15 years or whatever it is since I came out of university. It was just a very different place. When I started there actually weren’t that many places that weren’t either totally commercial or attached to the South Australian Film Corporation in some way. Obviously now there’s a zillion of them that spawned and there are lots of opportunities for people. Now, that might change again (and it has), but at that particular time, you just didn’t do that. I saw myself at that stage as a director and a writer and I didn’t really see how I was going to move forward. Being a colourist didn’t exist as a viable choice. That was just something I’ve made up, essentially have fallen into. So Nima asked me to do that job, and I did that and then people just kept asking me to do things and I just never stopped.
Do you want to quickly touch on what was the first big colouring job you did? My first big colouring job was Danger 5. That job was big in a couple of different ways. It was a huge undertaking and I don’t think I’ve done anything that had run for almost six episodes and maybe half an hour each. It was also big because of the complexity of the look that I created for it, and what Dario (Russo) wanted to achieve. He had a specific direction that we went in. The nice thing about Danger 5 is we actually did tests. There were particular things that he liked but they were very difficult to achieve. And because I was working in After Effects at that stage, obviously everything was very slow and I had to basically design this kind of whole production line to get this look.
Could you briefly name some of the jobs you’d be known for, or large scale jobs? Danger 5, Inner Demon and Wastelander Panda are the main Film Corp jobs I guess. Internationally it’s not those projects, it’s music clips I’ve done and online work. I guess I’m kind of known for a particular grading look, the low con high sat look, it’s been called. I mean, that’s not how I would define it but that’s something that’s been ascribed to me. From an advertising perspective, I would be known for certain campaigns like the Already Home campaign or the Uni SA TVC, but I actually made those so it’s a bit different there.
 Marcus McKenzie & Daniel with it their SASA award for Crew Cut, which DoP Viv Madigan won a Silver ACS State Award for Cinematography. |
Would you say that that’s a look you would use again? I never take a look and then just simply copy and paste it from a previous project. I don’t have presets that I keep or anything like that. Each project, I look at what I think what needs to be there and I start and just do my thing. That’s how I’ve always worked. DTang this is really interesting but were running out of room so I have attached the full interview as a pdf. Thanks Daniel & David Tang. Click below for the the complete Profile.
Upcoming dates
August 1 - 24 Entry for 38th SA & WA Annual Awards for Cinematography August 13 SA branch AGM August 31, September 1 & 2 SA & WA Awards Judging September 1 - 30 ACS Accreditation Application window September 3 Committee Meeting September 7 Sponsors Deadline for Awards Assets October 1 Committee Meeting October 12 & 13 Accreditation Assesments October 14 National OGM October 27 38th SA & WA Annual Awards for Cinematography November 5 Committee Meeting December 3 Committee Meeting December 10 SA Branch Xmas Drinks
Why not visit your National HQ
If you're in Sydney why not drop into our ACS HQ @ Level 2, 26 Ridge Street, North Sydney. The NSW committee will do their best to open up for you, just contact David Lewis ACS dlewis@cinematographer.net.au or 0408 273 702
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