Robert Goodrich

It appears as if the issue has been resolved, and I will post my solution for anyone who experience similar trouble. So much of my attention has been spent on the battery and power supply contacts, that I missed the two small pegs that reside at the top of the battery compartment. So inbetween the two contacts and slightly above is a spring mounted contact, of which the purpose eluded me. But apparently it is some sort of "registration pin" that informs the camera that a battery or power supply is attached. The reason I know this is that I discovered the pins were bent upward, and with the help of a small flathead screwdriver I was able to bend them back into position. Now everything functions perfectly. Sorry if the solution seems obvious to the more mechanically inclined, but perhaps the information will be of some use in the future.

Hello, I have been experiencing a problem with my XL-2 for the past month, and am wondering whether anyone else has had this issue as well. It started as my camera not powering up. Initially I was frightened that I had blown my master fuse. But I don't use my camera as a deck, so I never connect it via firewire. And I hadn't removed the viewfinder or lens. But then it started working again. Off and on. Now it has turned into an intermittent problem. Sometimes it powers right up, sometimes I have to giggle the battery or AC adapter before it kicks in. As I mentioned, it occurs with both battery and AC, I have cleaned the contacts on the camera and batteries. And since it works sometimes I feel confident it isn't the fuse. Has anyone else experienced this? I have always been able to get it going, but my heart races everytime I power up when I'm shooting something for a client. Thank you for any recommendations.

I personally think you are going to be very happy with the XL-2. The only disadvantage you will find is that it isn't HDV. Which, depending on your opinion of HDV, might not be that big a disadvantage at all. I have been remarkably underwhelmed by the HDV footage I've seen.

Have a project planned for the Spring that involves shooting inside a space capsule. My plan is to light as much of it practically with back-lighted control panels and work lights. To prepare I have been watching movies that I know were shot primarily using practical lighting in similar environments, for instance Alien and Das Boot. Is it your opinion that the filmmakers only used the lights that were installed in the sets and choreographed the action to best take advantage of it, or were supplemental instruments used as well? For instance some sort of small soft box to kick light up into the faces.

In the early nineties I worked a stage production with Kim Hunter. My job consisted entirely of picking up Ms. Hunter at the dressing room, escorting her by flashlight to her entrance, and then doing the reverse at the end of each act. Now I was a huge Planet of the Apes fan, but I didn't dare mention it to her because I didn't know how she felt about being known more for those movies than Streetcar Named Desire. So I just kept my mounth shut and enjoyed our few moments together. She was a complete sweetheart. One night after the show she was met outside by a few fans that wanted her to sign some Planet of the Apes glossies. That same night I ended up, for some reason, driving her back to the private home in Palm Beach at which she was staying. In my Toyota pickup. On the brief drive she mentioned the fans, and I took that as my opportunity to tell her how much the Planet of the Apes movies meant to me. I soon found out that she had great affection for those movies, especially Escape from the Planet of the Apes, because she got to spend so much time with the young chimpanzee playing her child. She told a wonderful story about not seeing the chimp for more than a year, and her tearful reunion with him during a taping of the Tonight Show. But it was obvious that her real reason for having such fond memories of the movies was because she adored Roddy McDowell. She beamed when she spoke of him.

It has both, yeah. I own an XL-2, but have worked a little bit with the DVX. They both really are fantastic cameras. I have found the DVX's cinegamma settings to be better right out of the box. But after fudging with the settings in the XL-2, I was able to get a look I'm happy with for my narrative movies. And the 16:9 footage on the XL-2 impresses me. Perhaps I'm easily impressed. But if you light something well, the image can be stunning. And although many find the XL-2 to be a bit ergonomically challenged, I find it just the opposite; and I find the controls on the DVX to be "crammed" everywhere. But obviously to find which camera works best for you, you just have to try them both.

As a director I must ask: Could there be another, technical meaning to the phrase "the douche-bag behind the monitor"? Just asking.

I was a road manager for a travelling theatre show, and we had 100' lengths of speaker cable. Always used to get tangled and twisted. At the end of every week, when we returned home, we would visit a 5-story parking garage. We would tie off the cables to the back of the van and hang them over the edge and eat our fast food dinner and BS about what we did that week. By the end of dinner, the twists would have worked themselves out, and we could retrieve the cables and get a nice coil (although, 100' speaker cables are real deltoid busters). My last year on tour we bought these cable spools that had a hand crank (you see them sometimes used with garden hoses). You just yanked out enough cable to reach the speakers, and then hand cranked them back in at the end of the show. It was like we had discovered fire. Marvelous devices.

A solution might be to purchase or make a lightbox. They are usually used in product photography to offer a nice even light, along with reducing the direct reflection of camera and lighting equipment on the object being photographed. Instead of thinking of it as a solid box you need to light from inside, think of a transluscent box that allows you to light from outside. Here's an example of one that can be purchased, but you might get an idea how to make one yourself that better serves your needs. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...egoryNavigation

There used to be one in the early nineties, on the D train as it left Brooklyn heading for Manhattan. It was a completely hand-painted animation of a moving geometric pattern. Very impressive. It was a nice little visual treat as I headed in to work every morning.

I tend to find Tarkovsky unbearably tedious, but there is a shot of reeds moving beneath the surface of water at the beginning of Solaris that I remember more than anything else from the movie. I'm particularly fond of the screws rotating out of the floor-vent in Close Encounters. The two girls at the end of the hallway in The Shining. Nearly every shot in Pink Floyd's the Wall. The first shot of Star Wars, Episode IV. When Michael describes how to avenge his father's shooting in The Godfather. A very slight tilt-down marks a massive shift in the direction of the story. All the shots that make up the raining frog sequence in Magnolia. And now for the cliche: The apeman busting bones in 2001. The music usually gets the praise, but that is one remarkable shot.

My use of a safety is mostly for variety. If I get a great take, then I know that the performance is where I need it to be. By requesting an additional take, I benefit from the performance level, but I also get a slight variation. In addition, the talent is more relaxed once they know you have what you need, and can often offer an inspired alternative. Even if the "inspired" take sucks overall, and is completely off the rails, it might contain priceless moments that add something special to the performance.

Exactly. Again, since so much of my editing choices are instinctual, I'm not used to thinking about them in a formal or deliberate way. By now, some things are so ingrained I'm not sure why I do them. I've been editing my own movies for almost twenty years, but have never assisted a more experienced editor. That has its advantages and disadvantages I suppose. But the result is that most of the rules and techniques have been picked up from watching movies and internalized. So it was nice to read the interview, as well as your comments, and realize that the language of film can sometimes be picked up by osmosis and experience. Like being dropped into the middle of a foreign country and having to to figure out to communicate.

I enjoyed that conversation with Hitchcock. It revealed a principle that I had known only from instinct: Do not anticipate the action. When I'm cutting, I try to imagine that I'm an invisible observer, having my attention drawn to action the way I would if I was sitting in the middle of the scene. So I tend to cut picture with a slight delay after a character begins speaking if the character is interupting, or cut to them early if the character speaking to them invites me to see their reaction. For instance if the line is, "You are a vile person. I never should have trusted you in the first place". I would cut to the subject of the insult right after "vile person", because if I was sitting there in that room I would naturally turn to see that character's reaction to being called vile. Even if they don't begin defending themselves until after "trusted you in the first place". I have found that a lot of editing choices can be made by asking myself, "If I was there, what would I be looking at?" And, or course, in life you never know what's coming next.

For Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video, and the Talking Heads' Road to Nowhere, they shot footage of the perfomer's face lip-syncing to the song. On set, they played-back the footage frame by frame (or every 2 or three frames) on a monitor placed in front of the performer. They simply had to mimic the facial expression and mouth shape on the screen.

Okay. Have received via email what I believe to be the definitive answer from a very reliable source. Set the color bars normally, with the brightest pluge bar just visable. Adjust the setup level on the XL-2 so that they register as 0 value on FCP's waveform monitor (which for me was -4 steps). Thanks everyone for educating me on this very confusing, yet important, issue.

Sony professional CRT monitor.

I had it on 0 gain. Now, since I have confidence that I'm using the full latitude of the camera, and have the setup correct, I still have to admit that I'm not sure about the monitor. I have been using the color bars that come with Final Cut Pro 5. I have always had it set so that the 3.5 and 7.5 pluge bars are the same apparent value, with the 11.5 still visable. But this setting was having me increase the brightness to nearly +15 on my monitor. I downloaded a set of bars listed as 0 IRE, which had two pluge bars. When I set the two bars to equal value, it brought my monitor's brightness setting to about +2, and things looked great, and very near what I was seeing on the computer monitor (not that means much). But when I put FCP's color bars back through the monitor the 11.5 pluge bar was not visable. So, in short, if I set my monitor to 0 IRE which of the pluge bars (if any) should I be seeing? The reason I'm being so persistent, is that I have read on several occasions that I should set my monitor to 0 IRE if I'm working with DV, but no one has bothered to say how that's different from what I have been doing (11.5 visable, 3.5 and 7.5 just touching).

In an earlier post, Simon recommended an article on Ken Stone's FCP site that offered an experiment for determining the camera's handling of black. I recorded a few second of footage with the lens cap on, and captured it into FCP, then viewed the footage on the waveform monitor. Black was coming in well above 0, but not up to 7.5. Somewhere in the middle. I started playing with the setup level, and eventually got it down to 0 (which worked out to be about -3) I then downloaded 0 IRE color bars from Adam Wilt's site, and adjusted my monitor (which ironically brought my setting back to the dead-middle on my monitor). I stored all these settings into the preset I use for things like interviews and short films; things that are carefully lighted, and delivered on DVD. For determining how I set my monitor out in the field, I intend to switch back and forth between my setting using the 0 IRE color bars out of my NLE, and the bars provided by the camera. This should give me a indication of what my pluge bars should look like away from the office.

I have understood, to the best of my abilities, the issues that have been discussed. Unfortunately, I am still struggling to apply this valuable information to my concerns. So I'll just come out and say, "This is why I'm asking". I make extra cash doing small promotional videos in the 10-15 thousand dollar range. Right now I do about one or two a year. Just me, my XL-2, and my Mac. I also make short films, and am starting to pull things together to shoot a science fiction direct-to-DVD feature. Same deal: Me, my camera, some lights, very low budget. Much of the movie takes place in dark spaces. I've had one experience with trying to correct for underexposed video, and I don't need to tell you how poorly and noisey the image became. I also want to avoid my blacks being, as described above, milky. So I'm trying to establish the proper settings for both my camera and my professional video monitor. I have set my monitor using some on-line guides, and felt confident that it was set correctly until I read about this 0 IRE thing for DVDs and film outs. Even if I didn't feel confident that I fully understood my camera's settings, I felt that if I had the monitor kosher, I could just experiment with the camera settings until I arrived at what I was looking for. But now I'm not sure I even have the monitor set correctly for my needs.

Thank you two. It's been an education.

Two questions to help me understand black level: Is the NORMAL black level on the XL-2 0 or 7.5 IRE? Having seen recommendations that if your intended delivery is broadcast to set it to 7.5, but if you intend to deliver it on DVD or for a film-out you should set black at 0. Could someone illuminate me on why this is? And if (okay it will end up being more than two questions) NORMAL is 7.5 and I want to distribute my movie on DVD, what is the setting to get it to 0? Zebra pattern question: I have chosen for caucasian faces to set my Zebra at 90, and then back off the iris until the last of the zebra pattern disappears from the highlights on the face. Is this sensible? Or is there a better method? Extra credit question: Assuming I'm making a DVD, do I need to make adjustments to my field monitor for 0 IRE black? Excuse my terminology, but right now the brightest of the pluge bars is visable, the next one to the left is set so that is just at the point where it can not be seen. And for contrast I have it so that I stop adjusting just when I see the white start to darken. So in short, if I want to shoot at 0 IRE, should I set it so that the brightest of the pluge bars is "just not visable"? Thank you