The GAGAS & digital stills

Stuart Brereton · May 17, 2005

Hi Everyone,

I shot a promo for UK rock outfit The GA*GA*S on friday. It was a Super 16 shoot, with some additional shooting the following day on DV, which will be treated to look like Super 8. It would have been Super 8 for real, had not the last Kodachrome lab in Europe apparently shut its doors for ever (thanks Kodak :-( ).

It was, as ever a full schedule, made worse by losing two hours of shoot time because of technical 'issues'. I was running around like a chicken with its' head cut off, trying to make up for lost time. This is where my stills camera came to the rescue.

I had taken it along to the shoot, with my laptop, because we had the client on location and I wanted to be able to give them an idea of what they were going to get. The stills were also going to be a reference for my colorist.

I started to use the stills camera alongside my lightmeter. I would take a reading off the keylight, light everything else by eye, then get a still with my camera set to my shooting stop. A quick upload to the laptop, and I could tell at a glance that everything was OK. This helped me work faster, and eventually we caught up and finished on time :-)

We had a load of Minibrute 6 Lights in shot, which were giving me headaches with flare. The stills camera was invaluable in checking their exposure.

I'll post some stills, both from the EOS10D, and from the 16mm footage, if I can ever figure out how to attach them to a post.

I'll definitely be using the camera this way again. It's not a substitute for a lightmeter, and careful exposure, but its' a damn good aid :-)

Stuart

oscar jimenez · May 17, 2005

Folow instructions bottomline when you are posting a message, so post them!!! Wanna have a look at em!!!

cheers

Stuart Brereton · May 17, 2005

Folow instructions bottomline when you are posting a message, so post them!!! Wanna have a look at em!!!
cheers

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tried that, doesn't seem to work. Is there a limit to the file size?

May 17, 2005

Omg, the Ga Ga's? I know them, well, kinda. Tell Ronnie I've still got two of his picks that I stole from the stage at the London guitar show, one from 2004 and one from last month. Tell them Dan said hi! lol

Unless, you were the guy AT the london guitar show last month taking pictures... (In that case, I've got you on camera :P Sorry but you got in the way, I was recording footage with my digicam)

Edited May 17, 2005 by Daniel J. Ashley-Smith

Stuart Brereton · May 17, 2005

Okay,

here's a still from the shoot, taken with a Canon EOS 10D, 200 asa, 1/50 sec, t2.8

this is pretty much straight out of the camera. The only thing I've done is to increase the contrast a little.

I'll post up a similar shot from the actual graded footage next.

Stuart Brereton · May 17, 2005

Here's the equivalent shoot from graded rushes. They've had the contrast increased, extra blue into the shadows, green into the highlights, and the whole spectrum skewed towards cyan.

the screen grab isn't great (I'm still having trouble with attachments :-( )