Born: ?, Santiago, Chile. Raised in Los Angeles, USA.

Career: Started as doph in 2000.

Ph commercials dir by David Fincher [3 for Nike with athletes Maurice Green, Marion Jones & Michael Johnson; Heineken ('Beer Run' with Brad Pitt), a.o.], Joseph Kosinski [for Mezzo], Antony Hoffman [for McDonald's, Motorola, American Airlines, a.o.], Joel Peissig [for Suzuki, Pocari, a.o.], Rob Cohen [for Pontiac], a.o. Ph music videos dir by Bryan Barber, Paul Hunter, Joel Peissig, Little X [a: Foxy Brown], Motion Theory (collective) [a: Velvet Revolver], Marcus Raboy [a: Faith Evans], Hype Williams [a: Snoop Dogg], Jake Nava [2003, 'Baby Boy'; a: Beyoncé], a.o.

Member ASC since 2009.

Awards: Bronze Clio Award [2002] & 11th Annual Association of Independent Commercial Producers Show Award [2002] for Pocari commercial ['Tennis' dir by Joel Peissig; uwph: Pete Romano]; Bronze Clio Award [2004] for Xelibri commercial ['Beauty for Sale' dir by David Fincher]; MVPA Award nom [2004] for 'Baby Boy'; ASC Film Award nom [2008], BAFTA Film Award nom [2008] & 'Oscar' AA nom [2008] for 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'.

Website: Claudio Miranda

Using the Thomson Viper FilmStream Camera on 'Zodiac' and 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button': 'David [Fincher] loves the workflow of the Viper. He likes seeing what he gets. He asked me once, "Don't you sleep better knowing it's all good, all in the can, with no scratches?" He also raved about how much time they saved on reloads on 'Zodiac'. 'Zodiac' has its own look, whether you like it or not. We're not trying to make the Viper look like film. The Viper has its own look. It's not HD – it's its own thing.

It's really amazing – some scenes, I'll put a light bulb in the middle of the frame and it looks fine. Some scenes are really beautiful. The way Viper reacts, the image looks like a painting in a way. One of my favorite scenes is a whorehouse scene, and the textures and colors that were produced looked really beautiful. To say the Viper does well in low lighting situations – I think you can underexpose film beautifully. We're not letting it go as dark as you can see in 'Zodiac'. You start losing color detail. I'd rather step on it. You can print it down so much easier – I don't think it looks good when you bring it up. We're aiming at printing down. But still, there are actually very dark moments in this movie – it is David, after all, he can't let that go. The Viper does shine in those moments. There are advantages: if we go dark and we need more light, the Viper can go to a 315-degree shutter. Sometimes, if I need light on a slow-moving scene, I'll go to a 270-degree shutter.

Everything is recorded straight to hard drive. I can get a little thumb drive of selected images - DPX image files that I can manipulate later.

I color-grade stills from each day's shoot at night and post them on a secure FTP site for David. He'll look at them and we'll talk about it, and sometimes the look changes. That's been great – I can grade the negative. With film, you're always relying on a dialogue with the dailies colorist. Now I'm the dailies colorist. David and I have the same computer – I color-grade for his Power Book, to make sure that what he sees on his screen is what I have. There's no real color calibration between the two of us. If I can make it look good on a $2,000 machine, I know I can make it look good later down the pipeline.

The Viper gives you no surprises. You're not surprised about focus, or if it's in focus. You know it. You see it. You're not surprised if it's too red or orange. There's a surprising lack of surprise.' [From interview with Debra Kaufman on the studiodaily website.]