Cooke Optics is pleased to present #ShotOnCooke (shotoncooke.com), a unique online motion gallery showcasing the use of Cooke’s acclaimed lens ranges across a variety of production genres. The website, which is the brainchild of Cooke’s Director of Sales – Europe, Carey Duffy, has been designed as an insightful, educational resource presenting professional content created with Cooke lenses from around the world, championing great cinematography and highlighting interesting case studies.
“We wanted to expand people’s understanding of the characteristics of each Cooke lens series. While staged tests are important and useful, we wanted to produce a dynamic resource for reviewing Cooke lenses that highlight the attributes and qualities they produce,” said Duffy. “The concept of #ShotOnCooke is to offer ‘real world’ content that represents and defines the Cooke Look across our different lens families on different production genres, while also offering real insight into the DOP’s choices and reasoning for their selection of lens, aspect ratio, cameras and lighting.”
Catherine Crawley, Director of Marketing, Cooke Optics, added, “We considered using trailers from films or TV programmes, but came up against a major obstacle: trailers sell a film, not a cinematographic look, and they may have a variety of lens manufacturers’ products intercut. Instead we wanted to produce something that was unique, interactive and educational that put the cinematographer at the heart of it.”
Aimed at cinematographers, camera/lighting department professionals, directors, producers and students, as well as the wider creative community, #ShotOnCooke provides a visual insight into Cooke lens characteristics such as dimensionality, roll-off and edge fall-off by hosting a wide variety of examples that feature and illustrate each lens series.
The website presents sequences from feature films, television programmes, documentaries, short films, commercials and music promos, with sub-categories within commercials for fashion, automotive, food, beauty and travel, to show how a certain lens family used in a particular way can help to enhance the visual style of a project. Film and TV categories will also be sub-categorised as the amount of content grows.
In addition, the site features technical details about each clip, such as the cinematographer’s name, camera model, aspect ratio, lens series and focal lengths, as well as production information such as the director, colourist, post house, rental house, and relevant hyperlinks. There is also a space for the submitting cinematographer to describe why they chose Cooke lenses on the project, and how important they were to the look and feel of the featured production.
Highlighting the variety of material that Cooke is seeking, Crawley said, “It’s nice to feature the big budget, award-winning, high production value material, but we are also keen to present interesting production choices – such as using one single focus length lens, a 1:1 aspect ratio, an incredible single take Steadicam shot – and we’re also keen to highlight students and young cinematographers who show great promise. It’s about being excited about the content that Cooke lenses are being used for, and creating a virtuous circle between Cooke and our global creative community.”
As #ShotOnCooke is a curated website, cinematographers are invited to submit work that they feel best reflects the quality of their cinematography and the attributes of the lenses they chose. The Cooke team will then choose the most interesting examples to include on the website. Anyone interested in submitting content for consideration to #ShotOnCooke should email shotoncooke@cookeoptics.com
ShotOnCooke is a sister website to www.cookeoptics.tv, a lens-agnostic educational channel for filmmakers.
About Cooke Optics, LTD
Cooke is a storied name in both cinematographic and ultra-high-end professional photography markets. Known worldwide for their precision, exacting tolerances and superior quality, Cooke lenses are specified by many of the world’s most respected cinematographers. Cooke is also the developer behind /i Technology, the protocol enabling vital lens and camera information to be captured and passed digitally to post-production teams. Cooke was honoured with a 2013 Academy Award® of Merit (an Oscar® statuette) for its continuing innovation in the design, development and manufacture of motion picture camera lenses.
Features in production or recently shot with Cooke lenses include Vice, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born, Venom, Call Me By Your Name, Stan and Ollie, Motherless Brooklyn, Darkest Hour, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. Television shows in production or recently shot with Cooke lenses include Skam France, The Dark Crystal, Doctor Who, Fleabag, Tabula Rasa, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, The Crown, Westworld, Poldark, Game of Thrones, Midsomer Murders, Orange is the New Black and Fargo.
