Reel World:DP Christopher Gallo shooting "Portable Life" on Canon 7D

As a Director of Photography Christopher Gallo's work has taken him to more than 70 countries and five continents. He has worked with such talent as Steven Speilberg, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Gallo's work has been exhibited at the most prestigious film festivals (Cannes, Venice and SXSW) and his documentary "JUKEBOX" was archived in the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame". He currently resides in Venice, CA. and is working on his first feature narrative film with two Canon 7D bodies and Nikon lenses. The film is entitled "Portable Life" and will shoot in Europe,South Africa,Bali,Morocco, Turkey and the States. Plus he's funny as hell.

Final Version 7D Film out from RAWworks on Vimeo.


"I had used the 5d as a b camera on a documentary with my HVX and a Letus and it looked great. When I heard about the 24p on the 7D I started considering it as the b camera for the feature film. The reasons were: it does Pal, it's a 5 man crew, we travel constantly, allows for great stealthy B-roll shots, convenient car mounting and interior vehicle shots as well as the most important reasons....the ability to shoot in low light at a 1200-1600 asa and the ability to shoot with my old school Nikon primes. But the more I shot with it the more I realized that for the budget of this film, what camera in this price range(under 10k), is going to give you these images. The best I could compare it with is the ex-3 which sacrifices the lowlight capability,and low profile but more then anything the ability to shoot with my Nikon Primes.That glass looks stunning. So I started to push to be the first ones in the pool, and the test was on. I contacted Neil Smith and Jeremy Ian Thomas from Rawworks to do the workflow edit and color correct, and David Hays from E-film to do a film out, because the films financing comes out of the Belgium grant system and contractually they have to finish on film. Looked like super 16 and never took away from the story.
We saw the results at efilm and sent them to Holland for a screening for the producers and director and now I am on day 3 of 43 freezing my ass off doing night exteriors in Belgium with 2 canon 7d's. I guess they thought the results were good too. Do these cameras have limitations? Of course they do, all cameras do. The focus is an issue, the smoothness of hand held can be an issue or the shake on a long lens. You need to nail the exposure so you dont get grain while posting, but overall its pretty amazing what is happening and this is just the beginning. I am sure an uncompressed full frame 24,60 or faster will be out next year. Its a game changer." 
- Christopher Gallo
Director of Photography 
http://gallodp.com
http://www.vimeo.com/gallodp



Jeremy Ian Thomas
Creative Director 
RAWworks

www.hdirawworks.com

hdirawworks.blogspot.com