The Black and Blue

Filmmaking Tips for Camera Assistants

Filmmaking Tips and Advice

by | December 10, 2025

Does anybody who’s not a Netflix or WB executive want this deal to happen?z

The New York Times covers the blockbuster merger between Netflix and Warner Bros with a litany of legitimate concerns and fears surrounding this deal from film industry insiders:

Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Cinema United, a trade organization that represents 30,000 movie screens in the United States, called the Netflix acquisition “an unprecedented threat” and vowed to fight it. “Theaters will close, communities will suffer, jobs will be lost,” Mr. O’Leary said, noting Netflix’s policy of giving movies only “token” releases in theaters.

For many crew, we have a love of movie theaters and the idea of The Big Screen. Does an industry without them expand or contract? Does it still occupy the same place in the cultural zeitgeist?

Entertainment workers in Los Angeles — camera operators, producers, hairstylists, writers, actors, set designers, editors — have already been struggling with a contracting job market. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, two union strikes, an exodus of production to cheaper locales and the rise of artificial intelligence tools, tens of thousands of workers have been laid off by Hollywood companies since 2020.

So on Friday, there was a keen understanding that “consolidation” was just another word for “job loss.”

It’s been a rough year – or five – for many of us working below-the-line in the industry.

Netflix has a lot of jobs here, said a high-level aide to one City Council member, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not have the authority to comment publicly on the merger. But, he said, the Federal Communications Commission would have to approve the deal, and the worry would become what Netflix needs to do to appease President Trump.

With what Trump and his administration have already done to the media arts landscape writ large (60 Minutes / CBS, Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, the Kennedy Center takeover) this is a real wildcard.

A significant concern, Mr. Perez said, is the potential impact of an even smaller marketplace for independent and boundary-pushing films. “Where you only have a few buyers, they’d rather have something that’s less risky, and you get safer, less controversial content and less experimentation,” he said. “Consolidation has the potential to kill creativity.”

“These mergers always promise benefits, but they always deliver diminished competition, lower pay and fewer jobs for workers,” she added. “It’s a very dismal day.”

There is no angle in which I see this merger as “good” news except two perspectives:

  1. Netflix is the lesser of two evils. Warner Bros selling to Paramount to create a mega-studio would’ve been much worse from a monopolistic perspective.
  2. You’re a Netflix stockholder.

The consolidation of the legacy studios into even larger, monolithic media mega-corporations does not bode well for an industry already hurting.

Finally, I can’t help but recall what Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said his goal was way back in 2012: “to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.”

Version 5.0 of The Black and Blue is Live!

by | Website | November 5, 2025 | Comments: 0

In spite of the long breaks that I’ve taken from this site, it continues to find an audience and help camera assistants around the world. It’s amazing. And because so many of these people reach out to me, I’ve always made sure The Black and Blue was hosted on a fast web server and made continually accessible. But a refresh has been long overdue.

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‘The Gift of Room Tone’ featuring Martin Scorsese, Roger Deakins, Cristopher Walken, and More

by | Behind the Lens | January 1, 2021 | Comments: 0

“Capturing room tone requires [Criterion Collection] interview subjects to sit quietly for thirty to sixty seconds, and of course when you ask a bunch of people to do the exact same thing, they’ll all end up doing it differently. As you’ll see, some are very playful while others are more meditative; some close their eyes, and some look around the room or check their phones.”

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by | December 18, 2020

Focus Puller Chris Silano on Using the Preston Light Rangerz

A little late to this one, but this overview of the Light Ranger 2 from Chris Silano (“A” Cam 1st AC on Uncut Gems) from the Gods of Focus series in Jon Fauer’s Film and Digital Times is worth the delay:

… I don’t care how good you think you are. You can get marks, you can use laser beams, run your 200-foot tape measure, do whatever you want. The precision that the Light Ranger brings really lets you choose which eyelashes to keep sharp. It’s a really phenomenal tool. People might say, “Just press the Autofocus button.” I don’t use it a lot, but sometimes it’s really handy when everything’s moving, people wobble when they walk, and if you can get in sync with it, that’s great, but it’s just as easy to go the wrong way and get out of sync.

Silano later provides an example:

We had a good chuckle one morning. It was 2 am. We were in an enchanted, psychedelic forest. In this fantasy land, Jim McConkey was pushing an ALEXA 65 with the Betz Wave horizon stabilizer on his Steadicam. That’s a beast of a payload, but Jim’s a workhorse. He just won the SOC camera operator of the year award, well deserved.

I heard director Pablo Larraín say, “Jimmy, instead of stopping, can you just continue in?” Jim looked over at me. I was 20 feet away, pulling focus, guided by the video overlay bars of the Light Ranger.

The actors in the scene must have been startled when Jim shouted out to me, “Chris, I’m not going to stop. I’m going to continue in. I’m going to keep going in at the end.” They all looked at me and I just answered, “Always got to ruin the surprise, don’t you, Jim?” Everybody laughed, but really, it gives everyone enormous freedom on set. Now I don’t have to say, “Well, let me get marks first.”

More and more, pulling focus feels like playing a video game.

by | December 16, 2020

Tom Cruise Isn’t Messing Around with COVID Safetyz

As first reported by The Sun, Tom Cruise went on a tear against two members of the Mission Impossible 7 crew who failed to social distance. We don’t know the entire context of what happened – merely that these two people were standing within a meter of each other around a computer screen – but it’s not hard to imagine that Cruise, also a producer on the film, had seen too much of this or had seen these particular crew violate other policies previously. Plus, this comes after the movie already had to suspend filming due to an outbreak of COVID-19.

Based on my experience, it’s entirely plausible that people were flouting COVID safety left and right thinking that the mask shields them from other important measures like staying socially distant. In any case, Cruise’s rant, while aggressive is fair given the circumstances of the pandemic:

I don’t ever want to see it again, ever! And if you don’t do it you’re fired, if I see you do it again you’re f***ing gone. And if anyone in this crew does it – that’s it, and you too and you too. And you, don’t you ever f***ing do it again.

That’s it! No apologies. You can tell it to the people that are losing their fing homes because our industry is shut down. It’s not going to put food on their table or pay for their college education.

[…]

I trust you guys to be here. That’s it. That’s it guys. Have a little think about it. . .[inaudible].

That’s what I think of Universal and Paramount. Warner Brothers. Movies are going because of us. If we shut down it’s going to cost people f***ing jobs, their home, their family. That’s what’s happening. 

All the way down the line. And I care about you guys, but if you’re not going to help me you’re gone. OK? Do you see that stick? How many metres is that?

A few thoughts: one, I like that he doesn’t want an apology, he wants them to follow the rules; two, I wish more producers would back up their safety measures like this. It sure would make me feel better about signing those garbage coronavirus liability waivers.