Fatbardha Salihu
P h o t o g r a p h y
11th January 2021
Direct Digital Talk
We had a talk from the General Manager at Direct Digital Steven Moulsher.
Background information about Steven Moulsher
He initially studied as a general practise surveyor at University graduating in London although he became bored of that. He then started working in a pub and everyone he met in that pub was either a photographer or a stylist and he ended up getting dragged onto any high end still fashion shoots and at that stage they were just shooting with film so it was loading 35 mil ,120 mil cameras and so on and so forth. After there was a big change in the industry , mainly digital and there was a job offer which was a DG optical operator and I got involved in that so I used to work with phase one Hasselblad. He has also worked on set with photographers such as Nick Knight, Sam Taylor Wood and Tim Walker. He then decided to take a break from being freelancer and started working on production works with a few companies around London which got him to Direct. He now runs Direct which has branches in Manchester, South Africa and Paris.
Direct-Digital
Direct Digital is a rental company own which allows people to hire all sorts of photography and film equipment. They are part of the Panavision group and the company was originally called Direct Lighting. After they started to work with Panavision they began to have moving image equipment for rental alongside lighting equipment which lead them to change the name to Direct Digital. It was founded 66 years ago and has branches in over 60 countries around the world including Paris and South Africa.
Panavision are also famous for their lenses as shown in this image.
In this image you can see an example of what kind of equipment is available for rental hire at Direct Digital. They rent out all sorts of equipment ranging from still, moving image, flash , continuous lighting , lenses and others like production kit, generators and many more that may not be shown in this image.
This is part of their Hire section of their website which lists the complete list of the equipment they have to rent raging from moving image to production. I like their colour scheme of the website with the black , grey and yellow and feel like they have made it easy for people to use and follow their website layout.
He then goes on to talk about how no matter how big and successful you become once you finish your course and get out into the real world and start shooting , you're going to have somebody around equipment but there are going to be jobs where you will need either additional equipment or different equipment or you'll be in a different country then there are many reasons why you might need to hire equipment. There are companies out there such as fatllama where you're hiring a camera from someone you've arranged to meet in the local cafe , you take the chances and take it back to them. He mentions how this is a cheap way of hiring but does not include guarantees which cause problems.
He says how rental companies generally offer a safer service. An example he mentions is a producer or an assistant or a photographer or DP might go to them and say "hey I'm doing this shoot we're doing this sort of photoshoot , this is the vibe we want this equipment and when I say this equipment they will just say we want a camera that can do X so that might be a 4k a 120 frames a second or it might be at least 100 megapixel" and they may ask for a wide angle lens they need to rig it from above they want some 4K HMI. Direct digital have to then fill in all the blanks and have to work out where they’re shooting what distribution is how they can plug it into the wall what kind of stands are going to need all the health and safety aspects angle view of lenses how high the stands are going to get the camera as far away as possible to fit the 13 people lying down and ground all that kind of stuff so there's a lot of work. Steven Moulsher also says how it is key to build with rental houses so even before we graduate. Today this is difficult due to the pandemic but he he trying to build relationships go into rental houses meet people is a good thing, trying to get internships and working with studio lighting warehouse as we will learn a lot about equipment but we will learn how the industry works from the inside out.
Moulsher also comments on how winter houses and most rental houses are generally a fountain of knowledge , when someone asks them with help on how do I do this you know often they will have an answer for this as they have come across that problem , he says so don't always feel like google is your first way finding out how to do something sometimes reach out to rental houses and ask for their their opinion and their knowledge.
Something I found interesting was that apart from being a rental house for equipment Direct Digital also hold training courses and events which are currently on hold due to Covid. He encouraged us to to go out and take part in these as he said they are a great way to get exposure to different equipment.
Apart from equipment on their website they have a page called Direct Assist where photographers who are looking for assistants can go on the website and can choose to book an assistant based on location, qualifications , skills and language they speak. Moulsher mentions how working as an assistant you will be very immersed in the world, you get to meet people get to see how things run . He states it is a hard job and is not the best paid work in the world but it is where you really get to see what goes on on whether it's behind the scenes of the John Lewis ad that you signed or some big fashion photographer, there's all different types of things that happen in studios and studio assisting is another good way of getting into the industry
As I am quite interested in working in Fashion Photography , Moulsher mentioned at the beginning of the talk that he had worked with Nick Knight, Tim Walker and Sam Taylor Wood so I asked him about that. He said that when he was working as an assistant and was lucky enough to work with Tim Walker on a Vogue shoot . He also states he worked with Nick Knight in a studio on which he comments was very conceptual and how Nick Knight was always ahead of the game with what he was doing. He said working with Sam Taylor Wood was great because she is more of an artist than a photographer. It was through being a lighting and director assistant and a digital operator that he got to work with these photographers. If he were to go back to being an assistant he mentioned how he would be one of those assistants who doesn't work with just one photographer and would prefer to work with many different photographers in order to learn more.
This talk was a very interesting talk, I learnt that rental houses can offer more than just equipment to rent such as training courses and assistants as I did not know much about rental houses before. If in the future I need to hire equipment I would definitely go to Direct Digital as their website is very nicely presented and easy to follow.
For more details about Direct Digital or Steven Moulsher the links are below:
Website: https://www.direct-digital.com/en
The Dots: https://the-dots.com/users/steven-moulsher-460136
