SVG Sit-Down: Tom Fletcher on Leveraging Cinema Experience Into New Role at Fujifilm

With a wealth of expertience in camera/lens rental, Fletcher is the newly appointed director of sales for the Optical Devices Division of Fujifilm

Tom Fletcher, part of the father-son team that founded Fletcher Chicago in 1987, is no stranger to the cinema and broadcast industry, having led the company’s Cameras & Lenses Division for more than two decades. He will bring that wealth of experience to his new role as director of sales for the Optical Devices Division of Fujifilm, where he will oversee sales and promotion of the company’s cinema and broadcast lenses in North America.

Fletcher ran Fletcher Chicago’s Cameras & Lenses division, which was responsible for renting cameras and lenses to the motion-picture industry, until its acquisition by VER in 2013. (Fletcher Sports — which provides specialty cameras to NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL broadcasters throughout North America — was acquired by a private-equity firm and continues to operate as Fletcher Group). He then used his industry expertise to become a consultant for a variety of companies, including Fujifilm/Fujinon, before joining the lens manufacturer full time this month.

SVG sat down with Fletcher to discuss the trends he sees in the industry today, what he hopes to bring to the Optical Devices Division, and his insight into the future of Fujifilm.

How did you come to be involved in Fujifilm, and why was the timing right to join the Optical Devices Division in a fulltime capacity?
Fujifilm/Fujinon has historically been a broadcast-lens manufacturer [and] one of the premier brands in the sports and television industry. They also have been making cinema lenses; they started making ⅔-in. high-definition lenses for films like Avatar, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Star Wars: Episode 2 — some of the very first digital-cinematography films. Fujinon has really been a leader in the ⅔-in. high-definition digital cinematography world, [and] as that world was unfolding in the early 2000s, Fletcher owned and rented a lot of their lenses.

Tom Fletcher

Now they’re doing major television shows like Empire and Chicago Med, but they really need to grow their brand and grow their sales in the cinema side. That’s really where my focus is going to be: on the cinema side. Gordon Tubbs [VP, broadcast and communication products, Optical Devices Division, Fujifilm] has been a staple in the broadcast side of the business for years and years, so he and I really make a great team going after the market. …

Fletcher used to be in the broadcast-camera–sales business, so we sold a lot of freelance news cameramen their Betacams back in the day, and these are guys that are working for 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, 20/20, Fox Sports, ESPN. …

I have relationships in all different areas, [but] my strongest area is obviously the cinema world, being an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and very active in doing a lot of education in conjunction with Local 600 [International Cinematographers Guild].

With your extensive background in the lens market, particularly on the cinema side, what industry trends are you seeing in this space?
The movement to 4K and 4K+, higher-resolution lenses. It’s extremely difficult to keep building lenses that are resolving higher capability and a higher power; both Canon and Fujinon just amaze me that they can build lenses that are hitting these unbelievable resolution points for such a small imager size. That’s certainly exciting on the broadcast side. HDR is very exciting, and lenses fit into that [in order] to have good-quality optics.

One of the trends [I’m seeing] is trying to understand the size of the imager and where that fits in with both the sports world and the motion-picture world. Are we staying with the super 35mm-size sensor, or are we going to a bigger-size sensor?

⅔-in. works really well for the broadcast world; it always has. It’s an extremely popular format and a very effective format for sports. It gives you a little bit of the depth of field that you need, and it gives you tremendous range, the ability to zoom from a fairly wide shot to a very long shot without a lot of weight in the lens. Lens design is always about compromise: you can build a lens that’s going to give you an incredible aperture, and, if you want a lens that goes from, to use video terms, say, 7X on the wide to 200X on the long, you can build that; it can be an incredibly sharp lens, but it will be extremely heavy. That’s a feature that you have to trade off, if you want to trade off [some] quality for weight. So that’s a big issue in the industry: the size of the imager.

What are you hoping to bring to the Optical Devices Division?
I would say more education. At Fletcher, we did a lot of events with regards to education, whether it’s more education on the cinema side or even on the broadcast side. … I remember sitting in various NBA/NHL broadcaster meetings, and they would always talk about having a more consistent look to game-camera positions and training more camera operators to have the look that the league wanted to have, so that, as you’re flipping channels and seeing different broadcasts, you’re seeing the consistent look. How can Fujifilm/Fujinon play a role in helping build and train more camera operators, whether it’s for the sports world or corporate television or [any] industry? People need to get their exposure, need to get their hands on the tools.

Looking to the future of Fujifilm, not only the Optical Devices Division but the entire company, what are you most excited about?
As a manufacturer in today’s world, you always have to be looking to the future and building products for emerging technology. Owning a rental business, I always had to have [the] best crystal ball I could [for] trying to figure out where to invest money, whether it’s buying super-slo-mo cameras or [investing in Arri] Alexa, trying to understand where the industry is going and seeing [where] the manufacturer [is going]. I’m excited about the new products that are coming out, that will always be coming out. To be back in this side of the business is exciting to me, and I look forward to it.