Most abnormal things

[Ckulakov]

Dear Filmmakers,

 

What are some of the most useless and abnormal things that helped make your day or shot in the filmmaking (cinematography) world. For example chap stick, tile, a window pane, baby oil, a band aid, paper clip, brick, or literarly anything in this world that you thought you wouldnt use but helped make a beautifull shot or scene.

 

HAVE FUN :) :huh:

[David Mullen ASC]

Back in my Super-8 days, I discovered the trick of using Arid Xtra Dry antiperspirant to create fake fog or condensation on windows and mirrors. Has talc powder in it. Some film crews seem surprised when I suggest this.

 

I made a diffusion filter with hairspray on a piece of glass once.

[Ckulakov]

Interesting cool idea.

 

KEEP THIS THREAD GOING

 

Thanks

[Bob Hayes]

Most of the really goofy stuff wasn?t really DP related. I was shooting a re-enactment on ?America?s Most Wanted? and we got an update from the FBI saying the murder weapon was a marble statue. I ran out to the trash found a large piece of Styrofoam and carved a marble statue that matched the FBI fax. Several times I?ve fashioned guns out of black wrap.

[David Mullen ASC]

Years ago, I had to do pick-ups and reshoots for some low-budget sci-fi movie shot in the Ukraine (original title "Technosapiens" now "Shadow Warriors".) We had almost no art direction to work with, so I found myself looking at the original footage and recreating the out-of-focus backgrounds behind the original close-ups using poster board and black tape arranged in abstract patterns. It was weird to look at a some blob on the old dailies and recreate it with a wad of tape.

[timHealy]

In college I wanted to make an anamorphic Super 8 movie but all I had was an anamorphic projection lens. So I attached it to a Super 8 camera with cardboard, balsa wood and tape and shot through two lenses. A test worked and I made a 15 minute film.

 

Another time I just wanted to shoot some skiers with my SR1 with a 45 degree shutter. (Warning: this may drive AC's crazy) The SR1 doesn't have an adjustable shutter so I measure the diameter of the mirror and using 2 inch black paper tape created an extension of the mirror. I doubled up the tape leaving a small strip of adhesive exposed on one side to attach to the trailing edge of the mirror.

 

Viola: an SR1 with a 45 degree shutter and I got some nice shots of skiers doing the bumps and kicking snow up in the air. Hell it was my camera. If I had damaged something, Arri in Blauvelt is not too far away.

 

Tim

[Gordon Highland]

A few weeks ago I needed an overhead shot of a stall in a public restroom, like there was a spy (or pervert) doing surveillance through a vent. All I did was stand the camera upright on its lens hood (PD-150) inside of a milk crate, stood on the neighboring sink and held the crate out over the stall. the crate created the out-of-focus "vent" in the foreground.

 

Smearing vaseline around the edges of a UV filter for a soft-focus vignette.

 

A 110V power inverter in a car cigarette lighter has saved me more than once.

 

Historically, gaffer tape and cinefoil have probably provided the simplest solutions to the most problems.

 

Number three is probably a cue card! I can't count how often we've gotten into time trouble because of a bad actor (midwest, folks, smaller talent pool). It got a to a point where now I'll usually shoot the singles of a dialogue-intensive scene first. That gives the struggling actor off-camera more time to get the lines down if he/she goes second, and then finally, they will have run the scene so many times you'll have a better chance of getting a usable master at the end.

[Charles Haine]

A 110V power inverter in a car cigarette lighter has saved me more than once.

 

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I too love the power inverter, but a quick warning to those who haven't used them: the cheap Home Depot/Autozone kind won't fire Kino's. This was a lesson I learned the really hard way, over the course of several hours spent tensely with a gaffer, a voltmeter, and a production waiting on us to figure out why the Kino's would fire one time out of 50 with our little radio shack inverter.

 

To fire Kino's (and presumably all fluorescents), you need a sine-wave inverter, as opposed to the square wave inverter that you can plug into a cigarette lighter. The square wave inverters get rented from a lighting house, weigh a lot more, and clamps onto the cars battery to pull from the alternator.

 

I hope this saves at least one person the hassle of getting production to call every boat rental place in NC on a sunday looking for a sine-wave inverter.

 

chuck