Refugee and Radiance

Tobias Schliessler, ASC describes Shooting Dramatic Short Film “Refugee” with the new ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance Lenses.

Refugee has been a passion project of mine ever since I spent time with writer/director Brandt Andersen teaching filmmaking to children at a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan two years ago. It was a life-changing experience and I feel very fortunate to be a part of telling this movie’s story. When Brandt and I first discussed the look for the film we both agreed it needed to feel as real as possible — nothing distracting from the emotions of the story in terms of lenses or lighting, but preserving a cinematic quality.

I had just shot two movies with the ZEISS Supreme Primes on the full-frame SONY VENICE camera and immediately knew they would be the right choice for Refugee. The lenses look great in low light and wide open, which was important to me as we wanted to shoot under as much available light as possible. I also wanted to use wider lenses for close-ups to be more intimate with the characters and their emotions. The 25mm and 29mm ZEISS Supremes with a minimum focus of 10 and 13 inches with hardly any distortion felt like the perfect lens to accomplish this.

During prep for Refugee at Keslow Camera, Brad Wilson introduced me to the new ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance Lenses and offered for me to test them out on our movie. I was very excited to have the quality and features of a modern lens with beautiful flare characteristics of an older lens that gives it its own look. The Radiance lens flare has great color depth, travels organically with camera movement, and is not limited to circular flares. The lenses also have literally all the same qualities of the regular Supremes in terms of natural color saturation and contrast which makes it easy to inter-cut them between both sets.

Tobias Schliessler, ASC is a Director of Photography of over fifty feature films, including Lone Survivor, Beauty and the Beast, Hancock, The Taking of Pelham 123, Friday Night Lights, Dreamgirls, and Patriot’s Day. He is currently shooting Palmer, directed by Fisher Stevens.

For more information on the ZEISS Supreme Prime Radiance Lenses, please contact us at the ZEISS Cine Lens Showroom in Sherman Oaks, CA