Since graduating from USC, Alice Brooks has photographed award-winning features, shorts, music videos, and commercials. Her films have premiered theatrically, on video, and at festivals around the world. Alice is currently working with director Jon M. Chu (Step Up 2, Step Up 3D) on Paramount’s The LXD (The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers). The LXD is one of the most ambitious webseries ever produced and consistently ranks in the top ten on hulu.com every week. She is also shooting a new webseries Tainted Love (starring Orlando Jones, Eric Roberts). Alice recently finished her first 3D project with Pace rigs on Arri’s Alexa cameras, Game On, an LXD Presents short which plays before Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. Her previous work includes the award-winning Mulligans and the 2010 official selections at Tribeca Film Festival (Roots In Water, director Domenica Cameron-Scorese) and Cannes Film Festival (The Bake Shop Ghost, director Lorette Bayle). This autumn her work on the feature film One Fall can be seen at theaters nationwide.
Advanced Digital Cinematography
An increasing number of productions are choosing digital video as their preferred format. This class is for cinematographers, video professionals and directors of photography who want to explore the creative potential and technical options of the latest digital video cameras, while blending traditional filmmaking techniques with the latest digital technology.
Students learn visual perception, optics, sensitometry, gamma curves, exposure meters, the Zone System, exposure latitude and depth-of-field, test frame rates, shutter speeds and angles, and progressive versus interlaced using cameras from a variety of manufacturers.
Control of the image through on-board menus, filtration, lighting and exposure is a focus of this class. Students set up cameras, use waveform monitors, vector scopes, and light meters and learn about script interpretation, story content, scene coverage, blocking, camera movement, perspective, lens selection and eyelines. Footage is critiqued daily. It is recommended that students take the Digital Cinematography workshop first.
Workshop sponsored by:
Instructors
Within months of receiving his Master’s degree from the University of Texas in 1973, Daniel Pearl photographed the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a legendary independent feature which is part of the permanent film collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. He spent the next several years shooting low-budget fright flicks with high production values, most notably She Came to the Valley, The Stuntmen, and Invaders from Mars.
Pearl began shooting music videos during the early 1980s, initially to fill the spaces in-between narrative film projects. But his use of light and lens - exemplified in "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson - breathed life into the music video art form. Pearl's work quickly became the benchmark for all music videos. He won the inaugural MTV Award for Best Cinematography in 1984 for "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, and again in 1992 for"November Rain" by Guns & Roses. Pearl has earned a total of ten MTV Video Music Award nominations - most recently for "Take a Picture" by Filter in 2000. In 1996 he was the first cinematographer to receive the MVPA Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1997 he was the first inductee into the Kodak Vision Hall of Fame for Music Video Cinematography. Most recently he was honored by the 14th CamerImage Cinematographic Festival in Lodz, Poland with their Golden Frog Award for his outstanding achievements in music video and commercial cinematography.
His contemporary work includes collaborations with Hype Williams, Andy Morahan, Paul Hunter, Marcus Nispel, F.Gary Gray and Rebecca Blake. Pearl's easily recognizable and highly influential reel is dotted with Grammy winners and the biggest names in the music industry, including: Mariah Carey, Garth Brooks, Toni Braxton, Kanye West, Meatloaf, Lauren Hill, Aerosmith, Shania Twain, Cher, Whitney Houiston, The Rolling Stones, Puff Daddy and Janet Jackson. Having photographed over three hundred commercials, Pearl also manages to create some of the advertising industry's best images - earning industry-wide acclaim for his work on Motorola's "Wings" spot in 1999, which is also in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.
In the summer of 2002, Pearl photographed the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre for director Marcus Nispel, and they teamed up again in the summer of 2004 to shoot Frankenstein for the USA Network. It was around this time that he was asked to join the American Society of Cinematographers. In the summer of 2005, Pearl photographed the feature film Captivity for director Roland Joffe in Moscow and upon completion went straight to work on Pathfinder. Lately spending his time more equally split between commercials and feature films, he has recently completed photography on Alien versus Predator: Requiem, The Kings of Appletown, and Michael Bay’s Friday the Thirteen. Both Bay’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th were the top grossing films the week of their release.
Pearl was recently in Berlin filming Joel Silver’s The Apparition being directed by Todd Lincoln.