FreshDV Film School: The Art of Pulling Focus (Part 2) at FreshDV

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FreshDV Film School: The Art of Pulling Focus (Part 2)

Published by Matthew Jeppsen September 9th, 2007 in Cameras, FreshDV, Interviews, Lenses, Production, Tutorials

The FreshDV crew interviewed Bob Sanchez recently, a career 1st AC with 30 years of feature filmmaking experience. This video is the second half of that interview, you can watch Part 1 here. In this segment, Bob details the methods he uses to pull focus, and what tools he carries on each job to facilitate the position of 1AC. Watch the Part 2 video below. Part 3 is also now online. Part 3 is the unique segment where we take you behind the lens as we demonstrate the techniques Bob uses. You may also be interested in our video review of 5 popular Follow Focus systems.

FreshDV would like to thank the following companies for their involvement in making this segment possible:
Zacuto for providing a fully-loaded handheld studio rig.
Fletcher Chicago for providing a Zeiss 85mm PL cinema lens.
Zeiss for providing a set of ZF prime lenses.
Cinevate for providing a Brevis 35mm lens adapter and PL-mount.
Bruce Allen for providing a Sekonic cine light meter.
Bartech Engineering for providing a remote wireless BFD focus system.
Palomar Engineering for providing the M-One focus motor for the BFD.
16×9 Inc for providing a Chrosziel matte box and follow focus.
Ste-Man, Inc for providing a Petroff matte box and follow focus.
Cinetech for providing a matte box and follow focus.
Redrock Micro for providing a follow focus.
IndiFocus for providing a follow focus and dolly system.
Ikan Corp for providing a HD reference monitor.
Lowel for providing a fully-loaded production lighting kit.
Mole-Richardson for providing a fully-loaded production lighting kit.

12 Responses to “FreshDV Film School: The Art of Pulling Focus (Part 2)”

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1 Mark Wale Dec 20th, 2007 at 6:51 am

Big kudos and thanks to you guys and especially to Bob for his time and sharing his secrets. People like Bob are the ones who keep the magic happening, and their skill and knowledge is what gets it up there on screen so all the above-the-liners can get the champagne and applause. Love to see more of these tutorials (gaffers, grips, AD’s etc.)
2 Kendal Miller Dec 20th, 2007 at 9:18 am

Stay tuned we are continuing to work on more of these type tutorials. Including the possibility of another segment with Bob!
3 fer vargas Jan 23rd, 2008 at 11:13 am

Hi,
I check your website almost every day and I am very grateful to you guys for all the valuable, detailed and generous info you post in your website. Currently I am following closely all the reviews on the XDCAM EX you have posted so far for I am about to buy one. My internet connection is very very slow and trying to watch your flash movs is unbearable. However, I benefit greatly downloading your QuickTime movs even though most of them take a long time to download. So if you could reconsider posting your part 1 and part 2 of The Art of Pulling Focus in Quicktime format I would be very thankful and happy

Best Regards
Fer Vargas
from Bolivia
4 Kendal Miller Jan 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm

IT will be considered…although my guess is it will take longer to download than allowing it to buffer in flash, but we will discuss that possibility.
5 Hart Feb 7th, 2008 at 11:12 am

Thank you so much for these interviews. This has been extremely informative. Love the effort you guys put in the site.
6 Mic Apr 11th, 2008 at 3:32 am

Hi Mat!

i’ve some problems watching your video tutorials. in the “art of pulling focus”-tutorial for example the flashvideo player pops up but the video doesn’t get start! it just keeps loading. i also unsuccessfully tried to watch another videotutorial (”using a lightmeter on a dv cam”). this one seems to be not even online. all i got was this site: http://www.freshdv.com/kmiller/video/freshdv_lightmeter_tutorial.mov

since this site has been recommended to me by many friends of mine, it would be nice if those tutorials would be uploaded soon. i can’t wait to see them ;))

greetings from germany
7 Matthew Jeppsen Apr 17th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Mic, the video clips should be fixed now.

-MJ