Kommer Kleijn

Kommer Kleijn SBC (1959) studied in Belgium with among others Ghislain Cloquet ASC and Charlie Vandamme AFC. He became a Director of Photography, a digital imaging pioneer, a visual effects and motion control specialist, an inventor and an internationally renowned stereographer.

He is also active in education, research and standardisation, and consults for equipment manufacturers. While he learned the trade with analogue film, he has been at the forefront of the digital evolution. In 1996 he was the first to shoot digital cinematography in more than 2K, for the first digitally captured clay animation short, pioneering the now common single chip large sensor digital cinematography technique using a then experimental camera system he co-developed with friends. In 1997 he was the first to shoot digitally for a large format movie, using these same techniques.

He presented these techniques and the results publicly at the BKSTS Digital weekend in Pinewood Studios London November 1999 and at the VFX 2000 Conference in the London Waterloo IMAX theatre. It has since become mainstream throughout the motion picture industry, completely replacing the previously proposed three-chip method.

In 2004 he initiated the Additional Frame Rates work in Digital Cinema Projection Standardisation, leading to the addition of the frame rates of 60, 50, 30 and 25 fps to the International standard of Digital Cinema distribution and Projection (DCP) in 2009. They are now available in all commercially proposed digital cinema presentation equipment.

In 2007 he shot 4K footage before 4K cameras were released using dual HDcam SR and in 2011 he worked on the first theatrical HFR feature that used a short exposure time per frame.

He participated in the development of two speciality camera systems (one Digital Cinematography, one 3D), a stereo processor for 3D live broadcast and he designed a commercial motion control rig specific for stop motion cinematography, The Animoko.

He has worked on visual effects for features, commercials, special venue movies and large format movies and he has also photographed many of those. Among them are numerous stereoscopic productions, including IMAX 3D. He has been practising stereography professionally since 1998 and as a lead stereographer has been involved in 3D productions ranging from theatrical features and commercials to stereoscopic multi camera live captures for sports and music. He pioneered stereography for the first direct live 3DTV transmissions in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and supervised the stereography for the very first direct 3D Eurovision broadcast.

He received the 2017 Lumiere Award - Europe, Best European Stereography by the Advanced Imaging Society, UP3D at 'Stereopsia' for his 20 years of dedication to stereography.

He is an established filmschool teacher (RITCS, INSAS, La Cambre) for decades and worked internationally as an instructor in S3D workshops for professionals in Belgium, France, UK and Germany.

He has chaired the IMAGO technical committee for a decade and he has served on the board of SBC, UP3D and EDCF for 12, 5 and 9 years respectively. He has been an IMAGO depute board member and he is a full member of the AES, BKSTS/IMIS, DCS, AIS and a fellow member of SMPTE where he is a participating member of the DC28/21DC/27C Technical Committee since 2006, having chaired Digital Cinema Frame Rates Groups for more than a decade.

He is a regular speaker on international image technology and 3D events and received the "Bert Easey Technical Achievement Award" from the BSC in 2009 for his achievement in implementing the 60 frame rate proposal as an addition to the International Standard for Digital Cinema projection. In 2016 he received an IMAGO Tribute for his contributions to IMAGO, the International Federation of Cinematographers, and in 2019 he was given the IMAGO International Honorary Member Award.

His later works include supervising stereography for the Michael Flatley movie "Lord of the Dance 3D", the live 8 camera 3D capture of the "3Dimensies" concert by Marco Borsato in the Gelredome, the Netherlands and the Dutch/Belgian full length HFR 3D feature "Above Us All" by Eugenie Jansen, which led him to receive the 'Best Feature' award at the 3D Image festival, Lodz, Poland.

As an audiovisual perception researcher his main focus for vision is on cinema frame rates and 3D perception while for audio it is on the perception of aperiodic sound and audio perception in reverberant environments. He participates in a development team led by John Watkinson, which is creating a new kind of loudspeakers.

He has been late-diagnosed with the "Asperger Syndrome" (which also happened to Elon Musk and others), a form of neurodiversity on the high functional end of the autism spectrum. Combined with a "Savant Syndrome" this may have contributed to his research and inventor performances.

Beginning the nineties he contracted progressive chronic systemic disease, cutting down on his energy levels. This is an unfortunate combination as living in our (unadapted) society with Aspergers requires more energy than normal. Kommer managed to continue an active career for about twenty years spite the progressing illness, but by 2013 shooting pictures or teaching classes had become impossible. Since then he lives as a disabled person.

More personal interviews with Kommer Kleijn about his cinema career were made in 2010 by the NSC (Netherlands Society of Cinematographers) and in 2019 by the SBC (Belgian Society of Cinematographers). The NSC inteview can be read either in it's original Dutch version or in a translation to English. The SBC interview was written in French and also translated to English.

Kommer is fluent in Dutch, French, English and German.

His web page is at http://www.kommer.com