The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo

← Hot Shoe Archive

Indie Film HustleCinema

IFH 878: Why Most Screenwriters NEVER Finish Their Scripts with John Paxton Jr.

10.27

There is a strange addiction in the creative world that very few filmmakers are willing to admit. We love talking about the movies we’re going to make.

Read at Indie Film Hustle ↗

One letter a week, starting soon.

Latest

IFH 878: Why Most Screenwriters NEVER Finish Their Scripts with John Paxton Jr.

More from Indie Film Hustle on Hot Shoe

CinemaIFH 877: Why This Oscar-Nominated Animator REFUSED to Play Hollywood’s Game with Bill Plympton Indie Film Hustle

CinemaIFH 876: The Screenwriting Secret Behind ALIEN & TOTAL RECALL with Matt R. Lohr Indie Film Hustle

CinemaIFH 875: The Screenwriting Advice Hollywood Writers Actually Use with Ron Peters Indie Film Hustle

CinemaIFH 874: Do You Really Need Film School to Become a Filmmaker? with Miranda Sajdak Indie Film Hustle

CinemaIFH 873: Film School Won’t Teach You This About Making Movies with Jason Kartalian Indie Film Hustle

CinemaIFH 872: How One of the WORST Movies Ever Made Became a Cult Classic with Jackey Neyman Indie Film Hustle