Cinematographer and Director Patryk Kizny Interview

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to director and cinematographer Patryk Kizny. We decided to make a few interviews about him and his future projects and we’ll start with the presentation of his last work as cinematographer: “The Dreams Come True” a film directed by Damián Perea.

“The Dreams Come True” is a short film commissioned by the the office of Las Palmas 2016 to promote the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria as a candidate for The European Capital of Culture 2016. Spanish director and producer of the film, Damián Perea, teamed up with Patryk Kizny to take the audience into a journey filled with magic and poetry, where oneiric visuals blend together with an intriguing narrative.

The original script of Damián Perea and Nazareth Lezcano is materialized through a breathtaking visuals, mostly shot in motion-controlled timelapse cinematography sometimes flavoured with a pinch of HDR imaging to enhance the oneiric character of the script. As the film goes, the audio-visual feast is perfectly orchestrated with David Campodarve’s music score, refined with a precise design from Ricardo Manrique and finally smoothly delivered thanks to elegant editing style of Alberto Navarro.

During the production process over 100.000 still images were taken using DSLR cameras and with the help of the DitoGear motion control sliders they produce the final 7 minute long video showing the city of Las Palmas in a frame of hope and dream of its citizens to become the European Capital of Culture in 2016.

INTERVIEW with “The dreams come true” cinematographer Patryk Kizny

Cameraman: Hello Patryk, Let start by telling us a bit more about how it started for you with The Dreams Come True

Patryk: It was May, 2010 and I got contacted by Damian Perea, a renowned Spanish director who also runs Animayo, the VFX and animation festival taking place in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria annually. Damián had an idea of producing a short film, actually a commercial, to promote the city of Las Palmas de Gan Canaria as a candidate for the European Capital of Culture 2016.

Damián was already familiar with my work as a cinematographer specialized in timelapse and saw the film “The Chapel” earlier. The idea was to produce a very poetic and dreamy short film and therefore my vision and skills seemed to him essential to create the look of the film and reflect the character of the script.

Cameraman: I know you were also engaged in few more aspects of the film besides the cinematography. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Patryk: Since almost the entire film was shot in timelapse, it requires a special approach and experience for that. My vision as a cinematographer and the sensitivity was crucial for Damián, but the other part of the story is that I am also very ‘technical’. What I actually brought to the table was the entire know-how and also the equipment necessary for the production process of such film.

You need to realize what you can do with timelapse shots in post-production to really take advantage of this medium. And this worked very well – Damián knew the locations and had initial shot ideas with their emotional meaning. I brought a lot of creativity in terms of how to shoot using motion control gear and how to use post-produce tricks to enrich and make the film deeper.

Damián had a very strong idea and vision regarding the story and narrative part, but there was a lot of interaction between us during the work. At the end of the day, besides the shots that were created on the fly, many of the shots which were scripted – meant to illustrate certain parts of the script but they ended in many different places of the film. Damián did a lot of magic during the editing.

At the end, I was also responsible for color grading. Again, another very exhausting week, working in rush towards the deadline. We did the grading at LookyCreative, my studio in Poland on DaVinci Resolve suite. We had a great time and I am pleased with the results.

Cameraman: Tell us a bit more about the shooting.

Patryk: It all started really fast – just a few days after I got a call from Damián I was on the plane and that was the first time I got my hands on the script. I was shocked. More than 50 shots in timelapse during a few days. Crazy! Remember it is all timelapse.

The shooting actually took us about a week, about 20 hours a day. So the main challenge was definitely the time. But Damián and his production team did a great job, so everything went really really smoothly. We had a lot of extra ideas and finally we ended with over 100 shots! That’s probably a world record. Well, recently at LookyCreative we did over 40 timelapse shots in one day, but that was a complex production where we shot in 4 parallel teams during a football match.

Cameraman: What camera equipment did you use? And what was the reason for that choice?

Patryk: The film was shot on a bunch of Canon 5D MKIIs. That’s my camera of choice for timelapse because of its lowlight capabilities and aesthetic quality of the full frame sensor. I also use it for real time filming. If you know what are the weak points you may work around them and get really amazing results.

Cameraman: And what about the motion control system used for the timelapses?

Patryk: The entire film was shot using 4 Canon 5D MKIIs, 2 DitoGear™ OmniSliders 1.5m and a bunch of tripods, lenses, etc… We also used a Pan/Tilt head for a few shots in conjunction with the slider.

The DitoGear™ OmniSliders are the sliders we have been developing for over a year now. The video shooting of the film in May was just after we released the beta version of the V2 firmware.

Since that time we’ve developed a lot more equipment, so I regret we didn’t have them while shooting The Dreams Come True. Some time ago we released the new DitoGear™ OmniSlider Servo version, the zoom and focus drives as well as Pan/Tilt head are about to hit the market. The DitoGear™ Hexacrane will be released this spring. All products are suited for realtime filming as well as for timelapse and stopmotion. And we’re working on a multi-axis moco system integrating multiple axes and providing really easy control with the keyframe-based interface. But that’s a subject for another discussion – maybe somewhere in the near future.

Cameraman: Will love to try those products. Patryk, tell me now about lenses you used and the composition.

Patryk: That is really an interesting question. Let’s start with the easy part. The lenses I used were the Nikkor 14-24 2.8, the Samyang 14mm 2.8, the Pentax 50mm 1.4, the Samyang 85mm, the Canon 100-400 F4L, the Canon 24-105 F4, the Canon 16-35 2.8L and the Canon 24-70 2.8L.

The more interesting part was the composition. That’s where we had a lot of hard work. Damián thinks in details and I also love to use detail shots or even macro shots, doing contrasts between the focal lengths with ‘standard’ cinematography and real time filming, but not that much in timelapse.

When it comes to timelapse, my style is really much all about wide angles which I don’t really use that much in real time filming. They don’t cut together well and you need to tell a story more in details if I can generalize that way.

With timelapse cinematography I think mostly in terms of motion and composition. Therefore I like wide angles, because when you use them with dolly moves they give you a great parallax and allow you to do really dynamic compositions.

Somehow in timelapse it is easier to edit together a film using mostly wide angles. Take The Chapel as an example. Besides of the b-roll details, the entire film is edited with cutting between wide angles. And it works together perfectly well.

Cameraman: Tell me about the post-production.

Patryk: Although with The Dreams Come True I did not do entire post-production, I was definitely involved in supervising the process. It included preparing guidelines and supervising personally the first stage – setting up the post workflow and developing the RAW stills into footage. The edit was done by Damián with the help of Alberto Navarro as technical editor and the final touch was again Damián working with me together. Besides the color grading we also did the sound mixing in Poland.

I was really happy to have the ‘last word’ on the visuals and that I was able to give the final touch to the film. What I don’t like about being a-cinematographer-only in most of the commercial productions is that you do your best and then you’re often excluded from post. The final look is really far away from what you aimed for. It happened to me a few times with timelapse shots for commercials – the post suffered and the results were far behind of what was possible based on the raw images.

Cameraman: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to do motion-controlled timelapses?

Patryk: I’d give one advice. Don’t shoot unless you have a story to tell. Or call it test shots. These are at least easy to filter out.

With the motion control rigs for timelapse and the entire timelapse hype (which probably we helped to bloom to some extent) the world quickly became over saturated with timelapses, but most of them do not tell any stories. It is cool to get excited with your new dolly shots, but how many dolly shots of flowered meadows or moving clouds you can watch? It is like a technology-backed hype. People get excited about the gear and overuse it, but that does not bring any value above the visuals which are mostly all the same and honestly – average. There are a few shooters who produce really stunning visuals or at least have their own style. I have a lot of respect for Tom Lowe’s efforts – his work is really outstanding and an experienced eye can clearly see the difference and huge gap between his work or a work of a few talented people out there and the followers. With Tom’s talent I hope and believe his film, although shot mostly in timelapse (and slow motion) will be still interesting to see. I can watch Koyaanisqatsi or Baraka for one and half hour, but can hardly get through most of a few-minutes-long timelapse compilations that appear everywhere nowadays.

That’s where The Dreams Come True is different and that’s also where The Chapel was different.

Cameraman: Thank you Patryk for sharing all this information with us! I hope to see you soon in Switzerland.

About Patryk Kizny

Patryk Kizny’s skills and activities span across multiple disciplines of visual creation ranging from graphic design through the photography, astro photography, motion design to cinematography. Patryk Kizny has gained a worldwide recognition as one of the leading motion-controlled timelapse cinematography pioneers. He’s also one of early adopters of HDSLR technologies and founded Misme New Media – a creative, branding and interactive agency. Since 2010 he’s been running LookyCreative – an independent film production boutique based in Poland and he’s also partner of DitoGear – one of the leading timelapse equipment manufacturers.

Follow Patryk Kizny:

Kizny.com
Twitter.com/pacocreative
Facebook.com/pacocreative
Vimeo.com/pacocreative

Follow LookyCreative:

Lookycreative.com
LookyCreative on Vimeo
LookyCreative on Facebook
LookyCreative on Twitter

Follow Director Damián Perea:

Damianperea.com

Follow DitoGear

DitoGear.com
Twitter.com/DitoGear

Interviewed by Martin Ureta

Cameraman.com
Twitter.com/cameraman