Camera Systems and Camera Operation
Partnership with DukeCreate & Cinematic Arts
The Cinematic Arts Filmcraft Workshop Series
The Cinematic Arts Filmcraft Workshop Series gives students the opportunity to learn hard skills and advance their ability in practical areas of filmmaking, such as cinematography, editing, post-production, and sound. The workshops run for six weeks, starting the Friday that drop/add ends, September 9th. Each workshop is offered twice, on Friday afternoon and the following Saturday morning. No experience or registration is required.
The Cinematic Arts Filmcraft Camera Guides which accompany the workshops are provided as links at the end of this page.
Camera Systems and Camera Operation
iPhone to IMAX, cameras are systems configured around common subsystems–physical, mechanical, optical, electrical, digital, and chemical. A well-organized understanding of the purpose and function of each of these elements is invaluable if one is to execute complete creative control over the moving images they combine to produce. Similarly, awareness of how a camera’s systems affect functionality will help one choose the right camera for a given purpose, or scale up from a simple to a more complex camera.
While several camera systems are demonstrated and described in this workshop, it is not intended to teach the specific menus or controls of any particular model. Instead it provides a practical approach for quickly mastering the use of any camera. The goal: if you were pushed out of a moving taxi in a strange country, and the first thing you found after rolling to a stop was a cache of unfamiliar cinema camera equipment, you would be able to shoot a film by sundown.
About the Instructor
Steve Milligan is a professional cinematographer. Over the last fifteen years he has worked in long and short form documentary, narrative features, commercials, music videos, and projection design. He has been a lecturing fellow in the Duke Arts of the Moving Image program since 2015.
About the Location
This workshop will take place in the Cinematic Arts Studio in the Rubenstein Arts Center, 232.