The movies that we make, Van [Neistat] and I are in way communication aspects of the
sculpture. They are built like…the movies are built, just like sculptures. They’re
films so they show the flaws, they are shot with a Canon T2i with a missing pixel in the
middle about two-thirds of the way down from the top of the screen you will see one red
dot. It’s almost always there and I think we’re about to get a new version, like the
T8i or something? I’m not sure. But it’s the idea that we started making movies
when iMovie came out and then iMovie started to become so difficult and not functional.
That is when we stopped for about three years and now we’re using Final Cut Pro because
it’s easy again. Film Courage: What lenses did you use because you had such great, intricate
close-up [shots] of drills and things like that? Tom Sachs: That’s the off-the-shelf
Canon zoom lens. I don’t even remember the model number of it but it’s probably
something like a 20 or 30 millimeter to zoom out to be somewhere between 80 to 125. It’s
a good, basic, off-the-shelf one. It’s not even the one with the red ring on it.
It’s not the good one. I think we bought one of those later when we had to get another
T2i to take a picture of our T2i for the credit sequence in the SPACE PROGRAM. We needed
a photo of the camera so we had to buy a second one just to take up one photo of the first
one…which we then returned. Film Courage: So the entire film is shot
on a Canon T2i. Wow!… Tom Sachs: It’s name is Baby Jesus and in the credit sequence
you’ll see that…in the credit sequence shot…you’ll see the camera is in it.
There’s some iPhone footage also, but nothing…there is nothing exotic. When we shoot still footage
of the sculptures those are all shot with like a…40 ninja pixel Hasselblad digital
back. Those are always shot by Genevieve Hanson or Joshua White, those are stills and
those are for images you’ll see in books and on websites. Film Courage: What was
your decision to use the T2i? I mean I was thinking you used a Red camera or something.
It’s beautiful… Tom Sachs: It’s really what Van had…that’s Van’s camera and
what’s important about the T2i to our team is that Van knows what all the buttons do.
And the Red has…it’s probably a superior camera in nearly every way except you have
a huge liability because it’s so expensive and the virtue of a cheap camera is that it’s
not an heirloom product. It’s a consumable even though a camera is not typically understood
as a consumable. The films, the data cards, are considered consumables. But when something
is that cheap you can take risks. You don’t have to obsess about it and I think a lot
of filmmakers and camera aficionados are more obsessed with the hardware than what it’s
capturing and if something is only $500 and you’ve got a huge production ahead of you,
it’s really a relatively small part and that reversal of economics and power is what
gives us the freedom to make a movie like we did. It’s a a bar-lowering affect.
And, I can’t underscore this enough, the knowing how to use the tool is the most important
thing. Not what the tool can do. As a sculptor I made much better work with lower
quality tools that were in my hands that I know I have a muscle memory with a more precise,
better tool because it’s part of my body. I’m not thinking. So when Van is getting
these shots, he doesn’t have to worry about learning about some great new feature. He
just goes…QUESTION FOR THE VIEWERS: What’s the cheapest camera and most expensive camera
you have worked with? How would you compare the experiences?