The style of "The Girlfriend Experience."

I've been watching the Steven Soderbergh-produced TV-series, "THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE" on Starz. I think it's much better than the original feature-length film, and takes surprisingly bold risks, even for premium-TV. I've always admired Soderbergh's cinematic style, and TGE has captured that essence to a 'T.'

While I won't be copying the content, I will be emulating its cinematic-style. With two large-format digital-cine cameras in hand and a ton of large-aperture Nikkor lenses, I should be able to get fairly close. All I need are some incredibly good-looking actors and some ridiculously luxurious shooting spaces.

Specialty Nikkor lenses:

I own each of Nikon's unique DC-NIkkor 35mm lenses, the AF DC-Nikkor 105mm f2D and the AF DC-Nikkor 135mm f/2D. The lenses are designed to purposely introduce a controllable amount of spherical-aberration which gives a soft halo-effect to everything you shoot.

It's not heavy-handed like a fog filter; it's subtle, but still there. They're unique in that they imbue a soft-focus character without sacrificing accutance—they're razor-sharp.

Sorry, I couldn't locate the full-resolution wedding photos at the moment, but they're very pretty. I also have two of Nikon's "worst lenses ever," which are great for introducing natural optical lens-flare, with the zoom lens being particularly capable in this regard (sorry, no sample images):

1. Nikkor 43-86mm F f/3.5 zoom (pre-AI lens—do not mount on modern SLR).
2. AF-Nikkor18mm f/2.8D.

If you do happen to acquire the 43-86mm zoom, beware that it can damage a modern Nikon body. You either need an old F-body or a Nikon Df, which has a tab to move the potentially damaging prong safely out of the way.

The Premise: "Elevator-pitch."

No script, no idea, no "elevator-pitch," just some random visual ideas. I made the remnants of the short I keep playing way back in 2006 and it lacks in a lot of areas. For some reason, I have a much sharper focus cinematically now than I did then, even though I've been shooting since my late-teens (produced my first short at 19 which placed third in a national contest sponsored by Sony and judged by Francis Ford Coppola). If I had the same actors today, it would've been a much different vision.

For one, I was shooting with a broadcast zoom-lens. Today I have every focal-length from an f/1.2 Nikkor 55 to tele-macros, 400mm zooms, and everything in between.