Sit Down with Philip Bloom

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to sit down with renowned filmmaker Philip Bloom. At the time I didn’t quite appreciate what a big deal he was! In the past few years as I have progressed into the video industry, I’ve been an avid follower of Philips work and it’s simply ground breaking. It’s easy to see why CNN recently booked him to shoot their documentary series The Wonder List with Bill Weir.

At the time of this interview I was writing content for the NZ Photographer magazine. The week after this interview the magazine went through a massive twelve month restructure. In the end, this interview was put on the back-burner and never to see the light of day. That is till now!

While the audio was intended to be used to write up the article for the magazine, I’ve decided to just release the whole interview below. So please excuse my amateurish question prompts, and the sound of jets flying overhead (we were sitting in the courtyard of Peter Jackson’s edited house at Park Road Post Production).

Have a listen to the interview if you’d like, here’s three tips Philip provided for budding filmmakers:

1. Have an idea – no matter how good your camera is, unless you have an idea of what your shooting, and have the skills and know how to shoot it’s going to be very difficult. Whether it’s a scripted fiction piece (which means having a great script) or a documentary (finding somebody good to talk to). It’s all about content. Content is the most important thing. Having the most expensive cameras, the most expensive lenses, and all the gear to go with it is not going to give you a good film. Never forget about – what are you actually filming?
2. Practice - Shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot. If you don’t have the skills, or the confidence in your shooting, lighting, sound recording, or your editing ability – every chance you get, practice & refine.
3. Don’t wait for people to come to you with ideas, create ideas yourself.
4. Don’t buy a camera you can’t afford – Don’t think buying an expensive camera is going to make your camera work any better, it will only make your camera picture better. Don’t get broke because you think you need a better camera.

Probably worth mentioning this is a few years old now, and back then his go-to camera was the Canon C300.