Lenses

Buckland Appointed Cooke Optics Director of Product Management

Tue, 04/20/2021 - 12:50 -- Nick Dager

Cooke Optics has appointed Andy Buckland to the newly created role of director of product management. Reporting directly to Tim Pugh, CEO, Buckland’s new role includes responsibility for developing Cooke’s product roadmap, including launching forums to enable the design and development team to engage more effectively with our diverse range of customers and users.

Cooke Donates Archive to Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Wed, 04/14/2021 - 10:30 -- Nick Dager

Cooke Optics has transferred its archives, an historic collection dating from 1886, to a new permanent home at the Margaret Herrick Library, the main repository of research materials of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California. The Cooke Archives, which includes documents, photographs and audiotapes cataloguing the rich history of Cooke lenses as well as the wider development of the film and photography sectors, will be available for research purposes

Mixing Live Action with VFX

Wed, 03/31/2021 - 10:37 -- Nick Dager

Following its Netflix launch in January, Fate: The Winx Saga, the live-action TV adaptation of Nickelodeon’s animated series Winx Club quickly shot to number one in the U.S. and number three in the U.K. Cinematographer Frida Wendel FSF shot the series. As Wendell put it, one of her considerations during the live action shoot was how to play around with the visual effects.

Giving Hierro a New Look

Mon, 03/15/2021 - 13:21 -- Nick Dager

Following the worldwide success of its 2019 debut, the second season of Hierro recently premiered on Movistar + in Spain. Created by brothers Pepe and Jorge Coira, Hierro follows the story of investigating magistrate Candela Montes who is transferred to El Hierro, the most remote of the Canary Islands. When planning the second season, cinematographer Jose Luis Bernal, who shot season one, was very clear that he wanted to go a step further with the look of the show, to get to something different, while ensuring the soul of the story was untouched.

The Eyes Have It

Mon, 02/22/2021 - 09:49 -- Nick Dager

Behind Her Eyes, a six-part mystery-drama for Netflix, based on the novel of the same name by Sarah Pinborough, follows Louise, a single mother with a son and a part-time job in a psychiatrist's office. Louise begins an affair with her boss and strikes up an unlikely friendship with his wife but finds herself caught in a web of secrets and lies where nothing is what it seems.

A Colorful Comedy

Mon, 02/15/2021 - 10:55 -- Nick Dager

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar was written by its two lead actors, Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, who also wrote the 2011 smash hit comedy Bridesmaids. Directed by Josh Greenbaum, the film tells the story of best friends who leave their small Midwestern town for the first time to go on vacation in Florida, where they soon find themselves tangled up in adventure, love, and a villain’s evil plot to kill everyone in town. It was shot by cinematographer Toby Oliver, who said, “We shot with lots of color.”

Windows to the Past, Present, Future

Thu, 02/04/2021 - 10:08 -- Nick Dager

Claudia Raschke is an award-winning New York City based cinematographer best known for such films as Oscar-nominated and Emmy winning RBG (Magnolia/ Participant/ CNN), Oscar-nominated God is Bigger Than Elvis (HBO), Peabody Award-winning Black Magic (ESPN), Oscar short-listed Mad Hot Ballroom (Paramount), Particle Fever (Bond), Atomic Homefront (HBO), and The Freedom to Marry (Argot Pictures). Her latest film, which screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is My Name is Pauli Murray. Fifteen years before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat, and a full decade before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned separate-but-equal legislation, Pauli Murray was already knee-deep fighting for social justice. A pioneering attorney, activist and dedicated memoirist, Murray shaped landmark litigation—and consciousness— around race and gender equity. As an African American youth raised in the segregated South—who was also wrestling with broader notions of gender identity—Murray understood, intrinsically, what it was to exist beyond previously accepted categories and cultural norms. The film was made by the same team that made RBG including directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West, producer Talleah Bridges McMahon and editor Cinque Northern. My conversation with Raschke, via email, began with that team.

Making A Suitable Boy

Mon, 01/18/2021 - 10:40 -- Nick Dager

Produced to extremely high production standards and directed by Indian American filmmaker Mira Nair, A Suitable Boy tells the story of spirited university student Lata (Tanya Maniktala) as she comes of age in North India in 1951, at the same time as the country is carving out its own identity as an independent nation and is about to go to the polls for its first democratic general election. The series involves more than a hundred characters, many belonging to one of four extended families.

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