I have a very strong memory of seeing Thomas Vinterberg’s film, The Celebration, when it came out in 1998. Here was a movie made with a couple of tiny Sony VX1000 prosumer DV cameras that actually looked and felt like a real movie. As a young filmmaker, out of film school for just three years, it was revelatory. It was a good film, yes, but what it really meant to me was that the tools of filmmaking were now basically in the hands of anyone who could afford a $5000 camera — and not just documentary filmmaking, feature narrative filmmaking. Vinterberg proved that by writing a script that fit the style of shooting with a small, fast-moving, hand-held camera, you could make a film that not only was impressive because it was made for nothing, but because it was just impressive. I was inspired. Not long after that, I started making a documentary with my dad’s Hi-8 camera, and eventually finished it on my own VX1000 (which came down in price tremendously by the early aughts, when better cameras started to emerge).
The Amateurization of Everything
The Amateurization of Everything
The Amateurization of Everything
I have a very strong memory of seeing Thomas Vinterberg’s film, The Celebration, when it came out in 1998. Here was a movie made with a couple of tiny Sony VX1000 prosumer DV cameras that actually looked and felt like a real movie. As a young filmmaker, out of film school for just three years, it was revelatory. It was a good film, yes, but what it really meant to me was that the tools of filmmaking were now basically in the hands of anyone who could afford a $5000 camera — and not just documentary filmmaking, feature narrative filmmaking. Vinterberg proved that by writing a script that fit the style of shooting with a small, fast-moving, hand-held camera, you could make a film that not only was impressive because it was made for nothing, but because it was just impressive. I was inspired. Not long after that, I started making a documentary with my dad’s Hi-8 camera, and eventually finished it on my own VX1000 (which came down in price tremendously by the early aughts, when better cameras started to emerge).