Right off the back of shooting an Epic (forgive the pun) corporate doco for Kessler Crane with the Epic, F3, AF100, on my way back home I stopped off at a friend of Sarah’s from when she lived in the US, Anthony Vizzari.

Anthony has an amazing story to tell, and you can read about it on his blog here. When she told me about his story I wanted to make a short documentary on him, just touching on a small part of his life. Mainly his business. The vintage camera shop, photobooth business and of course what drives him.

I have been wanting to try out the NEX5N for a proper project for ages but didn’t trust it enough for a paid gig, so this was perfect. It has an APS-C chip in it, takes Nikon lenses with my MTF Services adaptor and shoots AVCHD. My version is an EU one so shoots 25p and 50p in full HD.

So we popped over to Anthony’s shop in the Chicago Suburbs to make the film and of course buy some of his incredible vintage cameras. We spent around 6 hours there. 2 hours or so for the interview then set ups and b-roll.

Kit wise I used my Kessler Crane PB Pocket Dolly, Miller Compass 20 tripod, Shape semi cage (so I had somewhere to mount the monitor!), the amazing 5.6″ TV Logic monitor, the Switronix Torch LED as my only light which did a sterling job, Tascam DR100 and Sanken COS-11DBP XLR lav mic.

The cage of course made the rig bigger but with no not shoe mount on the NEX5N I couldn’t just stick it on top of the camera which would have been my number one option for a camera of this size.

Lenses were the Samyang 35mm F1.4, Tokina 11-16, Zeiss 85mm F1,4 and Zeiss 100mm Macro.

Music is from withetiquette.com and the new Vimeo Music Service.

The main track is by Cars and trains. Check out the rest of the album here. It’s was only $99 to license the track for the piece so well worth it.

The end track is Spring by Daniel Dixon available again from withetiquette.com here





I graded it all with Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Looks and gave it a some film grain too. Don’t forget you can get 20% off all Magic Bullet products with the code bloom20 at checkout!

I am very happy with the documentary, though I will probably do some further tweaks later this week (EDIT: done 7 revisions. Now it’s done and am happy!). It’s long at just over 9 minutes, but I think it should hold your attention, especially if you love cameras.

Big thanks to Sarah Estela and of course Anthony himself. Check out his site at AnthonyVizarri.com, his vintage camera shop site here and his photobooth business here.

I will of course give the camera a full write up in the more detailed blog to follow in the next few days, I just wanted to get the film up first. I am really pleased with the image, very filmic…although it overheated quite a few times which was a massive pain, and this was with or without the monitor plugged in.

Oh and before you ask…yes I bought a number of cameras from him, love that Horizon!

A warning though there are some disturbing images in the film and one f bomb so be aware before watching!