Off and running on a new documentary with director Dan Kruse of Rising Trunk Productions. This time, the story of Jeff Haskell, a legendary pianist on the Tucson Jazz scene, with more than 30 years of composing and conducting for groups from the Tucson Jazz Orchestra to the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. He is also faculty at the University of Arizona School of Music and is retiring this year after 40 years of educating and coaching hundreds of successful musicians who are performing across the country and around the world.
We officially started filming this week, spending a lot of time backstage at Crowder Hall at the University of Arizona. Dan and I have been batting this project around for months. finally, we decided to pull the trigger and start shooting. Many times, it’s more important to fight inertia and just start rolling. Initially we plan on assembling a short piece for fundraising.
Our kit is a basic 7D package with a set of Canon L series lenses. Always amazed at the image the 7D pulls, despite the ISO at 640 and above. Backstage is always a light-suck of gray and black, so I’m really pushing the sensitivity. I’ve found that image noise at high ISO is better if you use an ISO that gets you a full scale response, versus under-exposing and pushing later in post grading. Canon does a fine job with their chips and in camera processing, far better to get your exposure right, in the camera, than trying to twist those 8 bits around later in post.
Don’t twist your bits!
Bob Demers 