Derek Redmond

I teach film, video and digital media production. My area of greatest interest is cinematography -- the lighting and composition of the film or video image to create the desired impact. My work outside teaching has been mainly in that area, but in recent years the increasing importance of digital technology in video has led me to focus on developing the facilities and offerings of Queen's University Film and Media in that area.

In 1995 our department was one of the first in the world to offer students non-linear video and audio editing, and a website with downloadable video clips. I've also gotten involved in the development of multimedia teaching materials and the teaching of digital media production itself.

During 2011-2012 I'm teaching four sections of FILM 250 (Fundamentals of Production) .

Examples of film, video and digital media work from my students are online on the Recent Student Productions page.

I inherited an interest in shooting movies from my father. This photo of me with my 8mm camera was taken in 1970, the year I started university. The year before, I had shot my biggest project to date, a documentary made at the Woodstock Festival. I put some clips from that film on the web for the 30th anniversary of the Festival: see Woodstock 1969: As It Looked to Us.

By the time I graduated, I had bought a 16mm Bolex. (The Corvette wasn't mine; by that time I had started to develop my interest in old Jeeps. I now publish a huge website, The CJ3B Page, which is widely considered the most authoritative and interesting source on the history and restoration of 1950's-60's Jeeps, and was rated by Britannica as one of the ten best automotive sites on the web.)

I completed a Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning, but had already started to work in both radio and film. I taught my first film course at Queen's in 1976.

Here are a couple of the projects I worked on as Director of Photography:

Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh, was broadcast on CBC Television's The Nature of Things. A critique of western international development strategies, this tape was shot in Ladakh, an isolated, mountainous part of northern India near the border with Tibet (it was a great place for Jeeps.) VHS copies are available from the International Society for Ecology and Culture in Berkeley, California or Bristol, England.

Download a 1 MB QuickTime clip from Ancient Futures.
 

Morgan's Fall, a feature film directed by Ross Turnbull, is a story of deceit, identity, and the fraying of the ties that bind. It was shown at Cannes by distributor Cinema Esperanca. For me the film was an opportunity to use lighting to underscore character, and also my first chance to do underwater shooting, for a violent struggle in a swimming pool.

Download a 1 MB QuickTime clip from Morgan's Fall.