Behind-the-Scenes with Big Pictures

We are excited to announce the addition of the new Canon C300 Super 35mm Cinema Camera to the Big Pictures equipment offerings here in Colorado.

A slow-moving bullet pierces a pane of glass, sending tiny shards in a million directions. A fist breaks through a piece of wood, and then turns into a car. A bird flies in slow motion, revealing every detail of its wings in action. This is the domain of high speed digital photography. Shooting moving objects [...]

In the Academy Award-winning documentary film Fog of War, Robert McNamara looks directly into the lens as he talks about the trials and tribulations of the Vietnam War. The effect is unnerving and powerful. He’s speaking directly to us – the audience – without the filter of the interviewer. It feels incredibly intimate, and almost [...]

There often comes a point in a shoot day, or week, when the value of the footage we’ve shot exceeds that of the equipment we’re using to shoot it! You look at the tapes and start to think of the work that was done to capture the footage, the lighting, the heartfelt storytelling by the [...]

One of the greatest benefits of working in the film and television industry is getting to spend time with so many interesting people.There are the famous ones, of course – the actors, athletes, rock stars, CEOs. But it’s often the not-so-famous that end up being the most interesting. These are the ordinary people thrust into [...]

Like the crew of an old John Ford movie, or a spaghetti western of years past, they searched the Dakotas for iconic western scenes, cliches of a time gone by… Their two-day quest led them to the streets of Deadwood, old casinos and saloons, and the carved faces at Mount Rushmore. While their mission wasn’t [...]

The EZ FX Jib adds the high production value of fluid movement, at a lower in terms of cost of both time and money than larger jibs.The EZ Jib provides up to 7 feet of vertical movement, and provides a maximum camera height of 10 feet. It takes our crews under fifteen minutes to set [...]

We’re pleased to announce the recent addition of the new Panasonic HPX170 to our camera package lineup. The AG-HPX170 is an ultra-mobile P2 HD handheld camcorder featuring full, 4:2:2 independent frame production quality HD and solid-state recording. Based on the AG-HVX200 series, the lighter HPX170 is fully solid state (no DV mechanism), and comes with [...]

When one of our clients, Producer Anna Maidon, first called me on a cold Colorado day in January to shoot something on a yacht in Florida for a company called Mona Vie, the first thing I said was, “Sign us up!” The next thing was, “What the heck is Mona Vie?” I had never heard [...]

Back in the Mesozoic Era of the internet (three years ago), production value was rare for videos produced for the web. A frequently heard phrase was “Don’t worry, it’s just for the internet.” This was often used to rationalize using lower-end cameras, crews, talent, bad editing and clunky compression. This was the domain of Mini [...]