Vincent Laforet’s Filmmaking Trade Secrets

In the field, director and photographer Vincent Laforet doesn’t just bring a certain tool to a given job—he brings a toolbox. “I shoot with a lot of different cameras,” Laforet says, “and it’s just like with lenses: Every one has its sweet spot. A combination of size, dynamic range, frame rates and resolution makes you pick one camera over the other. I’ll use whatever is the right tool for the job.”

Shooting commercial videos or short films, Laforet’s go-to camera is often the RED Epic-X, which he’s used since it was introduced in late 2011. “The RED is a great tool because of its size and weight and resolution,” he says. “It has the portability and the great image quality as well. I consider it an interesting bridge between still photography and video.”

Bridging those two disciplines is a key to Laforet’s success. He started out shooting photojournalism, earning a 2002 Pulitzer Prize as part of the New York Times team covering post-9/11 events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. After going freelance with Laforet Visuals in 2006, he moved to Los Angeles and shifted to commercial and fine-art photography, often shooting aerial stills with a cinematic quality.

Two years later, Laforet created the short film Reverie—a pioneering 1080p video shot on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR—which went viral on YouTube and was viewed by millions within weeks of its release. “Reverie kind of changed a lot of things for a lot of us,” recalls Laforet. “I went into directing and DP-ing commercials and shorts, and I haven’t stopped since.”

That led to the 2011 Canon short film Mobius, which Laforet shot for the company on a prototype EOS C300 in the Mojave Desert.

Mobius from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

Now, many of his projects combining motion and imagery—including a recent ad for Nike featuring star athletes Kobe Bryant and Richard Sherman—are shot on the RED Epic with time-lapse photography shot on a DSLR. “For time-lapse and stills, DSLRs give you the best bang for your buck,” he says. “They have a larger sensor, a greater dynamic range, better resolution. But for motion, I’ll want the RED, or a similar camera, for its smooth cinematic capabilities.”

Whenever clients ask Laforet to shoot both stills and video, he does them at different times. “I’ve never been a believer in doing both at once,” he says. “You’re using different parts of your brain, you’re approaching a shoot differently, and ultimately, when a big moment happens you have to make a choice of which medium is going to get it—not a decision you want to be making. They are two different disciplines, and they each deserve their own respect and time.”

Whatever the means of capture, Laforet relies on G-Technology drives to transfer, review and store data. “We are shooting mass amounts of data every day, between half a terabyte to a terabyte on average,” he says. “With the RED, you use SSD cards and then you copy those over to a variety of G-Technology products—I use a G-Dock with G-DRIVES, or a more portable G-DRIVE Slim, depending on the job and the amount of stuff we have.” This allows his digital-imaging technicians to view work on a MacBook Pro while Laforet continues shooting. “They are constantly off-loading data and checking the integrity and the technical quality. And the G-DRIVE is the final storage place, since we don’t have film. I never have just one copy—in case the worst happens. With a G-DOCK, I can make two fast copies and give a copy to 
a client at the end of the day.”

Laforet pointedly mentions another key on-the-job tool. “The one thing that’s essential, that people don’t talk about, is a good concept,” he says with a laugh. “Whatever you shoot with, ultimately, it’s always about having a good story to tell.”