Keith Lancaster | cinematographer

Kick it!

Posted on February 14, 2012

I’ve been unbelievably busy in post production on so many things. Here’s a fast update so you don’t think you were sent straight to my voicemail for naught

-Whispers Within did very well at the Santa Barbara Intl. Film Fest and won an award at a previous festival in Oregon. After the notify date arrives for the Nashville Intl., we are putting it to rest for good. It had a good run.

-The new film, Bar Tales, was shot just a week after my return from Istanbul and is now complete. It’s way more audience friendly and has been very well-reviewed. It begins the long festival circuit within a couple months and features the same core crew (Producer, Director, DP, Music Producer) as Whispers.

-You Look A Lot Like Me, the feature doc promoting the awareness of Domestic Abuse / Intimate Partner Violence, had a successful campaign on Kickstarter and is within a month of completion. The director, Chloé McFeters, has already begun the festival submissions and is seeking various educational distribution outlets! It’s going to be great to get that into the world finally.

-Most recently, I Produced, Directed, DPed and Edited a ten-song live performance for Happy Body Slow Brain as a first act of the New Year. The post production process is nearly complete and the performances are unbelievable. I uploaded a little outtake below to show you how awesome these guys are:

Kick It! from Keith Lancaster on Vimeo.

More later! There are a handful of fun projects in the works that have yet to receive the green light!

-Keith

Posted in Life, Projects |

Istanbul!

Posted on November 25, 2011

Capturing the following video in the heart of Istanbul made me think of this old nursery rhyme from my childhood for some reason:

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”

The Turbans and an Old Man from Keith Lancaster on Vimeo.

Posted in Life | Tagged Istanbul, music, The Turbines

Whispers Within Trailer!

Posted on August 27, 2011

In honor of gearing up for the festival circuit for our short film, Whispers Within, I figured I’d post a short trailer here on the site. I’m not much of a suspense person, but this one was a blast to … Continue reading →

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I’m Still Alive

Posted on August 23, 2011

Part of the problem with times when more editing is being done than shooting is I have little to show for updates; this, however, does not mean that life is any less hectic:

-The fifth cut of the first assembly of the “You Look A Lot Like Me” documentary has been completed. We move on to the second assembly next week! In the last month, we KILLED our Kickstarter goal with the help of over 100 contributors. It’s an amazing feeling to have so many people willing to help with something that means so much to us.

-A first day of camera tests and B roll went down just yesterday for a new project that I can’t talk a whole lot about – but I will say that it involves lots of stunt men / women and I’m unbelievably lucky to have been picked to work on it in both a shooting and editing capacity

-My first ‘real’ commissioned job on Avid Media Composer is in the bag and the color work is also picking up. The final pieces to a new color-correction suite are on their way.

Add to the list two up-coming music videos, a shoot for Awkward Universe and a handful of post-production odd jobs and you get a pretty busy September.

Here are some related photos to keep you from feeling like this was a shallow post:

A still from the upcoming documentary.

Production still from a recent commercial shot.

A helicopter landing during a location scout.

Hopefully, the next post will feature the most recent adventures of my intrepid Arri Alexa.

Thanks for reading.

Posted in Projects |

500 Pages

Posted on June 15, 2011

With nearly 500 pages of transcripts and a “paper cut,” a boat load of footage and three weeks set aside, I’ve officially started the cutting process on my first feature-length documentary. The film is a unique look into the causes and effects of domestic violence (both societal and personal) through the eyes of a diverse selection of survivors and abusers throughout the United States.

The data management portion is overwhelming, but that will be sorted out within the week. Having shot the entire west-coast unit of the film, I can’t wait to see the story unfold in the timeline. This one just might do some good.

Posted in Projects | Tagged documentary, domestic, feature, violence

Paris Shop Dog

Posted on June 14, 2011

For the purpose of testing out web alignment for the new site, I’m posting a picture of this little dog we saw in Paris during one of many walks. He has an incredibly easy life from the looks of it. If there were ever a place to be a dog, it would be a doorway threshold of a small shop in the middle of the 2nd arrondissment.

Posted in Photos | Tagged dog, paris, shop, test

Close-Up Toothpaste Commercials

Posted on May 22, 2011

The weekend was spent on a whirlwind shoot at DC Stages in downtown L.A. as DP and cam op for three spots in two days. Directors Todd Killingsworth and Cooper Karl had a plan and made it happen. The AC and I outfitted a 7D with a HDMI > HD-SDI step-down box and gaff taped the accessories to the sticks for mobility. It was crazy, but the spots came out pretty great! I’ll post the results on the video page when they get out of color grading.

Posted in Projects | Tagged 7d, canon, close, commercial, spot, up

A Day With Arri Alexa

Posted on May 17, 2011

With only a few days until the Alexa was scheduled to leave for Panavision, I felt an urge to gather together some extra equipment and spend a day shooting with it as a “last hurrah.” If you had a day to shoot with such an astonishing new piece of technology, what would you make with it?

We spent the day with three grown men and a Vespa, shooting a promo for an upcoming web series called “Buena Vista.” The guys’ website is launching very soon at http://buenavista.ws/.

Posted in Projects | Tagged Alexa, Arri, Buena, Shoot, Vespa, Vista

The La Jolla Indian Reservation

Posted on April 8, 2011

Before heading to NAB 2011, I drove down into San Diego County to spend two days on the La Jolla Indian Reservation to capture a big domestic violence awareness event / walk that they were hosting. I had no idea what to expect as camera crews aren’t often allowed to do this kind of thing, but this turned out to be an eye-opening experience that I definitely wasn’t expecting, to say the least.

After sitting down and talking with the entire community, citizens and national figureheads alike, it became clear how much sense of community still exists in places like these. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such compassion among neighbors in my life; the entire native community operates like one big extended family down to the way they raise their children.

The combination of culture shock and amazing views of untouched landscapes made for a fantastic final weekend of shooting. After today, production on the film is pretty much finished and moving on to post. I can only imagine how the director feels, having been in production across the country for nearly four years.

: Doug being committed to his shot.

: Driving to the finish line.

: An amazing view of the reservation from the highway.

: Waiting for the first to finish.

Posted in Projects | Tagged documentary, domestic, indian, jolla, la, reservation, violence, walk