The advantage of working on Reef Doctors is getting to be in the sun, sand and serenity of Australian tropical paradises like the Gold Coast, Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef. So what's the catch? Sand, sun and serenity aren't always all they're cracked up to be.

Reef Doctors is produced by Jonathan M. Shiff and co-produced by Lisa McCune, who also stars in the drama series. The show is about the remote Hope Island Clinic on the Great Barrier Reef, run by Sam Stewart (McCune), an accomplished doctor who along with her team looks after the residents of all the neighboring islands, as well as the holidaymakers and thrill seekers who visit the area. Sam is also a single mother with a free spirit, and a determination for an unusual hobby: venom.

This Ain’t California is a unique movie that straddles the line between documentary and narrative filmmaking. The project depicts the skateboard subculture in East Germany in the 1980s, which is presented as a manifestation of a yearning for freedom. In the film, skaters from the era — now approaching middle age — look back on that time wistfully. They saw skateboarding as a rebellious act, and a way of doing something completely nonproductive, just for fun, in a politicized society where such actions were not only frowned upon but actively repressed, and in extreme cases, could land you in prison.

One skater in particular is recalled by all as a catalyst for the scene. Identified at a young age as a gifted athlete, he is put into the East German training pipeline by a driven, competitive father, and by age 13 he is training 35 hours a week as a swimmer. Eventually he rebels, drops out, takes the street name Panik, and becomes a superlative skater who is constantly provoking confrontations with authority.

The Barrens is a psychological thriller set in the dense Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. The story follows Richard Vineyard (played by Stephen Moyer) as he takes his family on a camping trip where he encounters what he believes to be the mythological Jersey Devil. As the story progresses, it is unclear to the audience if they are watching Vineyard go insane, or a father who is heroically trying to save his family.

The film is the fourth collaboration between director Darren Lynn Bousman and cinematographer Joseph White. “Darren and I have developed such nuanced shorthand that our communication is often non-verbal,” says White. “At this point, I know what he likes in terms of movement, contrast, saturation, tone and mood. The challenge has now become how to express these things in a different way than before. While I want there to be a thread connecting our work together, I want each film to feel like its own separate entity.”

“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears. We dance for madness, we dance for fears. We dance for hopes. We dance for screams. We are the dancers. We create the dreams.” These few song lyrics neatly encapsulate the essence of Aayna Ka Bayna — The Dance Film, a feature film from Indian director Samit Kakkad and cinematographer Sanjay Jadhav, presented by Akshara Films Division and produced by Amar Kakkad and Pushpa Kakkad.

Where most Indian films, and particularly those shot in Marathi, one of India’s many dialects, portray traditional Indian forms of dance, Aayna Ka Bayna eschews this convention, substituting instead many contemporary forms of western dance including hip-hop, street jazz, bachata and freestyle.

Josh Spires, from the University of Texas, is the Americas Region Winner for the 2011 Kodak Film School Cinematography Competition.
Spires' film, The Whale, follows a young boy who lives in an ephemeral fantasy to try and escape the cycle of paternal abuse.

Film-making

 "Cinematography is all about storytelling. All the way, 100%. If telling a story is your one true goal as cinematographer, everything else will follow. The light and glass and stock one uses are only means to an end, which should be a story worth telling."