M Joel W

For the most part that's how I think of it and why I think "objective" (proscenium or on the sidelines) "indirectly subjective" (not a POV shot, but motivated by a character's feelings and closer to the action and/or somehow stylized) and "directly subjective" (POV or dream sequence) makes more sense in terms of classifying the same three shot types. No shot is totally objective and it's ultimately a matter of what's appropriate for the scene, so an OTS shot should be more subjective (especially if you're following with the character's eyeline or doing a steadicam follow with them) than a really wide shot because you're closer to the action and following a character's eyeline, but on the other hand dirty shot/reverse is a predominantly objective editing pattern (especially with longer lenses) and that's OTS, too. So maybe I misspoke--I was mostly referring to OTS follows like in Black Swan being very subjective shots (maybe not a great example, also not my favorite movie). None of this matters at all except to the extent that it helps directors and dps classify the shots they choose and articulate their motivations. If it's all inherent to how you're thinking you don't even need to articulate it. I doubt most directors approach this really academically while they work, but if you want to stand back and emulate your favorite director it's nice to have a vocabulary to discuss things or if you're talking with your dp it can help, too. And chances are some of them do approach it academically. I suspect the Coens do. The one place where I disagree with Brian's statement is that I don't think the director is usually putting his or her spin on the shot (though they can be, especially in the case of shots like the aforementioned Barry Lyndon zooms) so much as articulating a diegetic character's emotions through an indirectly subjective shot, especially in the cases of transparent directors like Spielberg. This isn't something to get hung up on, just something to consider while storyboarding. And helpful for picking functional equivalents when one shot doesn't work.

I completely agree (and really like Barry Lyndon). I think the same thing might be true about the zoom out at the end of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and maybe the zoom as a director's POV has something to do with the popularity of zooms in the 1970s in general. But I need to watch more movies before making that generalization.

Agreed. Physical comedy plays best wide. Comedy is tricky since you need access to each character's subjectivity (so you know their goals), but you can't be too closely aligned with their experience or you feel the pain. You need access to intention but distance from pain. I guess comedy is primarily objective/very omniscient, but modern character-based comedy has more subjective access. I agree about the wider frame for comedy in that it's a) more objective and B) offers more distance. In an odd way, the Jackass movies seem to be the most direct descendants of older physical comedy--a lot of tableaux staging, wide shots, clearly articulated set up and pay off, etc. except pushing the boundaries of how much pain the audience can take. "Awkward" comedy like the British Office is interesting in that it's subjective and "dangerous" to start, but scenes resolve safely so it kind of becomes funny retrospectively. Comedy is a tricky genre. I guess you're right about Kubrick. His movies are all so different, though. I suppose he's mostly objective, but his use of the zoom and careful control of the frame puts him in a very different category from Preminger. Kubrick's movies feel more authorial and less formally transparent to me. I'm not sure what to think about Coppola. The Conversation is an interesting film; probably it's about the failures of subjectivity so it's subjective/restricted (in terms of range of narration), but I need to rematch it in the context of its forebears (Blow Up, etc.) to really say. The Godfather movies do seem objective but I haven't really considered them in this context before. I think dramatic stories that are more objective/omniscient than traditional dramas (in terms of storytelling) are generally tragedies and the Godfather seems to fit that description in terms of both story and form, so maybe The Godfather is a modern tragedy. Lars von Trier is one of the trickier directors. He'll give direct subjective access (Dancer in the Dark), he'll make a completely Brechtian movie (Dogville), and he'll swear he hates animation and artifice (Five Obstructions), but then make one of the more over-the-top operatic movies I've seen (Melancholia, which is excellent). I've always assumed the final image in Breaking the Waves was meant to be disingenuous, but I don't think the ending of Melancholia is disingenuous at all, and that makes it very hard for me to figure out what's going on in either movie.

How do you light day exteriors in these huge movies? For wide shots I imagine all you can do is "paint" from behind the camera or the side. For close ups are we talking enormous overheads of grid cloth (or solids) and then diffused light from the front, direct from the back, the idea being the background is far enough out of focus that you don't notice the difference in light's directionality relative to natural daylight? Or are these musco and bee bee lights big enough that they don't need to be diffused? Are some used for background lights when the sun falls behind a cloud? The day exteriors in War Horse trailers that are clearly lit seem to follow two patterns: overcast days have an additional offside key meant to look like direct sunlight and sunny CUs are heavily backlit with an unnaturally bright fill that, based on reflections in eyes is quite soft. But for that latter look you could backlight with a medium/big HMI and use a breadboard for bounce--no need for bee bee lights (or whatever they are called, I have never seen one). And how do you move fast enough with this huge gear? To me the trailer looks a bit over lit but in an intentional and controlled way (far more pleasing than Indy 4) and the photography overall looks stunning. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the movie itself.

I agree, but think of it a bit more broadly: The screenwriter starts out with a story (a series of events), from which they have to make a plot (the employment and arrangement of those events). When we first pick up a camera or write a story, we try to present everything that happens over the course of a story and it's usually very boring and there's no suspense or surprise, just a straight sequence of all the pertinent events. Then as we progress as storytellers we omit what's superfluous or implicit between scenes, omit events wholesale to allow for surprise or ambiguity later on, choose from which perspective scenes happen and how much we know relative to one character or another (some films will have the main character present in every scene, most won't), choose to show things in a linear fashion or non-linear fashion and/or with varying degrees of objective truth. You can motivate non-linear storytelling plenty of ways: Tarantino motivates it through authorial presence (his movies are obviously crafted by an outside voice, his own); in Memento, Nolan motivates the non-linear story through the subjective experience of a crazy person. So objective/subjective/authorial storytelling starts with the script. How much do we know relative to each character? How much is the writer guiding us or do we have a lot of freedom as audience members? No shot is entirely objective. Just by selecting a moment time and space that choice favors whatever is present there. But an objective shot is one that lets the viewer see everything without a lot of stylization. A long take tableaux or a big crane move following everything somewhat transparently would be relatively objective. Then there's indirectly subjective storytelling. This is where the camera evokes what a character thinks or feels. You could have a shaky cam, a Vertigo zoom, a zoom at all (zooms are complicated), a push in, a pull out, a very wide lens, a very long lens, edits on eyeline, a close steadicam follow, inserts motivated by a character's thought, a canted angle, whatever. Indirectly subjective shots are shots that are stylized or motivated explicitly by one character's subjectivity. POV shots are directly subjective. You literally see what a character sees. (An OTS shot is somewhere in between; it's very subjective but not literally a POV so it's strongly indirectly subjective. Eye lines are HUGE in film and are overlooked, especially by naifs life me.) Authorial shots (frequently inserts--or camera motion NOT motivated by a diegetic character's subjectivity) are indirectly subjective from the director's perspective. Maybe even a "director's POV" shot. This is complicated territory. So that's objective/subjective/POV (though I prefer objective/indirectly subjective/subjective since then you can discuss sound and dream sequences, too). But it starts at the script stage. And while I agree with the examples above, you can have a movie with multiple subjectivities (a horror movie where different characters die and you identify with each one prior to that, a screwball comedy or thriller, a story told from multiple perspectives, etc.) and that's very different from something that's straight objective. Zooms in POV shots are directly subjective. This is the basis of a zoom: when you look at a detail in a scene, your eyes and brain discount the surroundings. The cinematic equivalent of this is a black frame or blur or something engulfing the entire frame except the detail. But now blow up that area of detail to the full size of the screen. You get a zoom. The eyes can't zoom and yet the zoom is arguably the most subjective camera move (if you can call it a move at all). It's also the most "reflexive" because it's used in news footage and because the eyes can't zoom but we can move in all the other ways a camera can move. Zooms not in POV shots may be indirectly subjective or authorial (Kubrick). Fincher, Kubrick, etc. are authorial directors, but Fincher is more transparent which is why Kubrick uses more zooms. Just to give some context: Welles is a tremendously authorial director with a somewhat distanced/objective/authorial camera. Lots of stylization, but a broader focus than one character's experience. Influenced by theater and radio. Hitchcock is a subjective/authorial director. You usually have a range of narration (how much you know relative to each character, a choice made at the script stage) similar to the protagonist or protagonists, but you might learn about a threat to the protagonist(s) before he/she/they do…the infamous bomb under the table (or whatever, I forget the exact quote). So Hitchcock creates suspense with authorial inserts, character identification with indirectly and directly subjective cues. He loves POV shots and uses them better than any other director. Spielberg is the master of indirect subjectivity. He is not a very authorial director, with Munich being his most authorial film. How you feel about a character is largely predicated on proximity--the closer the more empathetic. Spielberg is great at blocking so that character relationships are revealed through figure movement/relative proximity, but he's also great at placing the camera and moving the camera to add a visual emotional trajectory to a scene. Push ins, pulls outs, aperture framing and mirrors, etc. He's amazingly transparent for such a formalist. Underrated. The Coens rely on multiple subjectivities. Essentially every Coen film is a screwball comedy/thriller hybrid (the two genres are very similar to start with) and that requires having emotional and narrative access to a set of characters with interrelated/conflicting goals. They are great with POV shots, too, but they follow more characters than Hitchcock (or Raimi). The Wachowskis are all about transcendent experience and unity. So for them time/space/subjective/objective/etc. all comes together following the protagonist's enlightenment. See the Matrix or, better yet, their flawed/bizarre opus Speed Racer. Genres are important in terms of placement of the audience: Comedy requires safety parameters (establishing up front who can and cannot get hurt--you can't laugh if you play the pain!) and it's a predominantly omniscient genre with subjective access but still more of a focus on empathy than vicarious experience. The director must be subtle and transparently authorial. Inserts and reaction shots are the soul of contemporary film comedy. Superbad is one of the best comedies in recent years in that it provides subjective access but then cuts to authorial and objective shots to articulate the misunderstandings inherent to comedy and make the "dangerous" safe. It's superbly directed. Horror modulates between subjective (POV) and indirectly subjective (shots motivated by suspicion or feeling, frequently pain, but not seen through a POV) during scare sequences with more conventional storytelling during story-driven and expository sequences. Like Hitchcock's bomb, shots of the killer outside the victim's subjective realm can be used for suspense. Better but more difficult is to use potential threats to build suspense, reveal the danger for surprise. Screwball comedies and thrillers modulate between semi-subjective semi-omniscient storytelling, following a few parties toward a common/interrelated goal. Tragedy is all about distance. But comic distance and tragic distance are quite different (and different from voyeuristic distance and Brechtian distance), though the same cinematic techniques can achieve both. Brechtian critique is about a LOT of distance and distance that is not transparent. You could call Brechtian cinema objective/authorial. Maybe. Musicals…are complicated.

A combination of it being overcast and the bleach bypass process used in the film adding contrast and reducing saturation. The scene also looks pretty bright whereas sometimes dps will underexpose overcast footage a tiny bit. In general, blowing out the sky is easy; keeping detail in an overcast sky is hard!

I watched most of this movie with a friend and thought it looked pretty bad overall, some of it unusually bad. There was some nice magic hour photography and I've seen much worse from the era, but this was not a good looking movie and the music video effects didn't age well, either. The lighting in particular is quite bad; there's a lot of poorly done hard HMI fill during the day and the interior (sound stage) lighting can be reduced to two looks: hard HMIs through each window (at totally illogical angles) during the day and the same lights bluer and a stop darker for "night." Really inelegant stuff, but fast to work with, I assume. That alone isn't remarkable, but this movie was shot by Janusz Kaminski with Mauro Fiore as gaffer. Anyone know the story behind this movie? I assume the two met at Columbia College Chicago, but how did they land this gig and how did the relatively poor photography on it launch two very impressive careers? Or am I missing something? Just curious if anyone knows, not trying to disrespect either as both went on to shoot some gorgeous stuff.

It's like a book light except instead of the bounce coming from the side it's coming from under the board. I think. I just use soft boxes.

Being future-proof is a terrible argument for shooting red because 95% of these movies are finished at 1080p or 2k. So how is that future-proof? Oh, I'll just export ALL my footage again from raw, redo all my effects, recolor the whole thing. If you happen to make the next Star Wars, maybe 20 years down the road someone will do this for it. For now, shooting Red does more to date your footage than it does to future-proof it; like it or not Red has a pretty distinct "look" and for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the look (for better or worse) the camera has been adopted for indie and low budget movies and so the red look has become associated with "cheap." Kind of a victim of its own success. Lately, the 7d look has become associated with "even cheaper," which is too bad since both cameras have their merits. The red camera's constant state of flux doesn't help either; original Red footage (old redcine; old sensor) looks bad and The Informant, for instance, is already visually dated. There's a solution to this, though, and that's shooting and grading really well and the red footage is super flexible to grade and the mx sensor is not bad at all. The red workflow remains horrible but its a pretty awesome camera for the price if you can coax a good image out of it in post. For stock footage, I can see 4k being totally useful, though. Way more flexibility and a longer life in this case. For vfx there is also a good case for red; it keys nicely and can be blown up in post. 2k vs 1080p is almost semantics. It's a matter of one format being 18 pixels wider. 3D 4k is not part of the DCP spec. If you look at the mtf of a 4k image vs a 2k image and the integral of the curve (which equates roughly with perceptual sharpness) a 2k red down convert has like 75% of the useful resolution of the original file and the Alexa has almost as much, too. From a marketing perspective, 4k is a big deal, though.

My recommendations are as follows: If you're shooting video ONLY: get 28mm (and/or 35mm), 50mm, and 85mm f2.8 or faster manual focus nikon primes (used from KEH or eBay) with a canon mount adapter and then complement those with the kit lens (which is only a half stop slower than f2.8 at 18mm!). Old Nikon glass is as sharp (or sharper) than modern zooms, but has a prettier look, nicer bokeh, etc. BUT no image stabilization so put that 85mm lens on a tripod! Or, for $550 get the Tamron 17-50mm zoom. I have mixed feelings about this lens. It seems to perform right on par with the twice-as-expensive Canon version and have better IS but the bokeh is inferior. For a gorgeous silky look...not my top pick, but still okay. For the money, though...it's a great lone lens. That said, f2 is useful and 85mm is a nice focal length (so is 105mm) so you may want to branch out.

For what it's worth, we've never had QC complain about images being too dark or grainy even when they've been really dark and grainy. So it's probably more of a subjective judgement there. 10 IRE sounds a bit extreme to me, though. If you watch Rob Zombie's Halloween it gets pretty dark and maybe it approaches that, but apparently that was a producer overruling the DP and director and it's incredibly hard to follow what's going on, which doesn't matter much since the movie is awful. 10 IRE might read, but not on all screens. I'm sorry if this seems really obvious but one technique to try is darkening and desaturating red and warm tones in general in your image almost completely and adding a subtle blue tint (very subtle, unless it's motivated by moonlight or mercury vapor in which case you can make it more pronounced)... I don't know how to use Resolve, but the luma curve and saturation curve in the secondaries in Color are very good for this (except that the luma curve breaks up the image in a bad way, bad algorithm I guess). The eyes see red as near black in the dark so you can darken something very little and make it look much darker subjectively. This might be grading 101, but I skipped that class...

In my experience, 18% gray is somewhere around 40 IRE (in theory it should be brighter), and caucasian skin tones exposed at key end up around 50 or 60 IRE. For night exteriors I'll expose one and a half to two stops under at most, which usually puts caucasian skin around 25-30 IRE if I remember correctly… That's what I've gone for as a cut off point when looking to get the absolute "darkest" look. For TV, you want to keep your skin at normal levels, so like nearly 50 IRE I would say. Watch Lost, for instance, and see how bright they light night scenes. For night I would say 30IRE is the darkest you should go on any face you want it to read; obviously so long as you have a portion of the face exposed at that level and/or nice eye lights you can go darker for the rest... I'm an autodidact so this could be crazy, but it's what I go by. The darkest shots in the feature I'm grading now have their brightest skin tones between 35-40 IRE and they look so dark I'm worried the network might object. Could be totally wrong, but want to chime in since I'm curious what the pros think...

For the purpose of cinematic language, the human eye is neither wide nor telephoto. I've heard fields of view from 180º to 40º quoted, but it's all meaningless from the director's perspective. From the director's perspective, this is what's important: the angle at which our pupils converge correlates with the distance at which an object we're viewing lies from them and we need a cinematic way to convey that variable distance, but using just one camera. In the case of point of view shots, what we're looking at (distance-wise) is conveyed through focal length. The eyes "select" differently from a zoom lens, but the zoom is the cinematic equivalent of looking at something or honing one's focus in on it. The act of looking at a field then focusing in on a flower can be conveyed, cinematically, with a wide POV of the field with a zoom in to the flower (or a cut to a more telephoto shot of the flower). This can be complemented by a rack focus or pan/tilt if needed. And for this reason, a POV can be wide or telephoto, depending on what its owner is looking at (the entire room, a small object across the room, etc.). Remember, most zooms are found in POV shots or are motivated by subjective alignment with someone looking at something (even if that "someone" is the director, hence the popularity of the zooms in the 70s, an era wherein the presence of the director made itself most felt). Hence, grammar-wise, POVs are focal length agnostic, remarkably so. You can limit your POVs to medium wide angles if you want a natural representation of space or if you like the feel of that focal length, but grammatically there is no need or precedent to do so. As for the shot in question, a telephoto lens is inherently more distanced than a wide angle lens. It puts the viewer further from the subject, assuming an equal shot scale. There are many kinds of distance: tragic, voyeuristic, comic, Brechtian, etc. In the case of Cinderella Man, which I have not seen but assuming your description is accurate, the director is going for tragic distance with that lens choice. Spielberg and a lot of the other masters will do the same and shoot the saddest moments with a bit of distance (though Spielberg will more often use other distanciation devices than focal length) to make a really poignant moment work without being too awkwardly "close" or too explicitly manipulative. An obvious example of this technique (distance facilitating tragedy) is the "nooo!" shot, in which a tragic character collapses and screams "nooo!" while the camera pulls out (or up).

This is like asking a painter what brushes to buy. Really depends on taste and subject matter. The most useful focal lengths for most productions are 18mm to 100mm, imo. Some directors go wide in general (Terry Gilliam), some do everything but stick toward medium wide (Spielberg), some stick around 50mm (Ozu, Hitchcock), Chris Cunningham once wanted to shoot a feature at 300mm exclusively... I like 18mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 105mm. Or any kit that fills out that range nicely. You can get a Tamron 17-55mm VC f2.8 lens for $500 and that's pretty useful, a good lens with ugly bokeh. Or a set of f2.8 nikon primes and an adapter but you lose image stabilization and interface with the camera. I like to shoot day exteriors between f4 and f8. Interiors around f2.8 or f4. Wider when needer. This varies tremendously based on budget and style. Then you need ND filters, a follow focus (ideally), a tripod, a mic, etc. Are you really planning to direct and shoot a feature with a $1000 camera rig you own? It will not be easy. A dSLR and fast normal zoom is a nice kit to get started with and you can get "cinematic" results, but it's just a start.

Yeah, the industrial vapor gel is pretty nice, works well and looks pretty good. Doesn't match perfectly, but not all street lights seem to match perfectly (tho in theory sodium vapor lights should). Works well with par cans to make pools of light but, as mentioned above, it cuts output quite a bit. I liked what I saw of it. I think 1/2CTS+1/2CTO and 1/2CTB+1/2 plus green over tungsten sources are the traditional formulae for sodium vapor and mercury street lights, respectively. Industrial vapor has a browner look than 1/2CTS+1/2CTO would, though.

I don't have much else to say since I'm not qualified to advise would-be directors (I am a would-be director), but David's advice about placement of the audience, and particularly Hitchcock vs Kubrick (though I would say Kubrick is more "authorial" than simply objective--he offers a strong point of view on the action, his own) is super, super important and very insightful. Don't think of the camera as a camera, but instead think of the camera as the audience. How would you feel watching a scene from a foot away? Would you feel different if you were across the room? How do you want the audience to feel? Before even thinking of shot scale (which can be determined by focal length or camera placement, so don't just think about one or the other) or coverage, think of the audience's (and the filmmaker's) ongoing relationship to the subject matter. A close wide angle shaky cam can feel very exciting, like you're right there in the action--maybe good for a war movie or something. A distanced telephoto shot could make the same subject matter feel more tragic, appropriate for a different war movie. A push-in can bring you closer to a character's psychology, increasing your sympathy for them or signifying a realization. Who gets the POV shots? Are there zooms? If so, are they motivated by a character focusing in on something (Raimi-esque) or the director indicating that you should look at it (more Kubrickian?)? How much does the audience know relative to each character? How does that make us feel about each character and thus change our experience of the story? Everything--sound, shot scale, camera placement, camera movement, range of narration (what we know relative to different characters), "look," etc. guides our experience and is primarily predicated on how much knowledge and emotion we share with our characters. We could do a POV/CU cutting pattern and we would be very close to a character. That's an effective thing to do if you want to empathize with a protagonist. Or do you want to study the scene? Or something in between? How do you want to inform the audience's experiences--though blocking, shot choice, sound, camera movement? There's a ton of stuff to think about and to work with. There's a story there. You can tell as much or as little of it as you want, you can have it be on screen or off screen, in back story or in real time, and you can tell it from any perspective (one character's, another character's, a broad objective perspective, the director's perspective, which might have a moral message or query)--you can modulate however you want between all these choices, most directors do. When most people start making movies, they shoot everything--they just want to get a record of the story on screen. The art of filmmaking is choosing what to show, what to hide, what to imply, and from what perspectives and subjectivities to do so, which then dictate formal stylization. To start, you would do well to get everything on screen in the first place. Write a script, write down the story beats that you need to show to make the story clear, make some storyboards, and shoot. Just get some practice. And watch movies (this is step two for me as I work toward directing more shorts--more watching and learning) and see how it's done. The processes will inform one another. Also check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Bare-Bones-Camera-Course-Video/dp/0960371818 The Bordwell/Thompson intro to film books are good academic texts, worth checking out, too. There are some okay cinematography and directing texts, but those subjects are so broad it's hard to write about them, imo. Most people don't direct a film, if at all, until they're in their 30s. So you have time to practice. There are jobs in the industry other than director, so you can work your way up, or do something else and save up for film school. Just keep watching, making, and thinking about movies. I should follow my own advice...

Thanks for posting that, Adam, that's a great example. I think, however, there's even more going on in that scene than just that. What Spielberg is particularly great at is keeping the audience at just the right emotional distance from the subject matter. It's not just that an extra CU is unnecessary--it's also that it would feel manipulative, artificial, in this case. I think what's least appreciated about Spielberg is that he's (at his best) extremely formally transparent, far more so than his Hollywood Renaissance peers. He blocks and shoots with clarity, elegance, and emotional impact, but the formal devices he uses are among the least overt and yet they're so emotionally resonant. Spielberg's the master of indirect subjective cues (particularly push ins, aperture framing/composition in general, and music). He doesn't use as many POV shots as some other directors and his camera movement is rarely unmotivated: he'll rarely place you in any one character's head (as, say, Hitchcock might through range of narration and POVs); he doesn't rely on the edit to guide your eye but instead on blocking and composition; and he refrains from making his presence felt in other ways--as I wrote, he avoids unmotivated camera movement and unnecessary inserts when possible. What's crucial about the scene in question is that it feels tragic without feeling emotionally manipulative. For tragedy to work, there needs to be some distance between the audience and the subject, but knowing how much distance and then modulating that distance appropriately as a scene progresses is difficult. This scene is set up with us knowing more than the woman who receives the letter and so we begin sympathetic to her but not actually aligned with her own experience, and while each shot brings us closer to her emotionally, Spielberg eschews any direct POVs, maintaining a bit of distance while still amping up our sympathies (he increases our sympathy but not so much empathy or vicarious experience). We're brought physically closest to her toward the beginning of the dolly right (when we're actually inside the house with her, which we aren't in other parts of the scene), but then when she actually receives the letter it's through the frame of a door and with her back to us--so there is quite a bit of distance, none of that straight-on CU that you're right would ruin the scene. The set dressing on the right clarifies and provides additional emotional impact, too, but organically, no cutting to inserts or unmotivated camera movement needed. That's the thing; the scene isn't only extremely clear without any need for dialogue, inserts, over-editing, or voice over--it also has an emotional trajectory and arc that modulates alignment and sympathy through the subtlest means. I can cut between POV shots or add shakycam to put you in a character's mind or evoke chaos, respectively, but manipulating emotional distance and evoking tragedy/wonder/what-have-you as transparently as Spielberg does is just like impossible. As an aspiring director, watching Spielberg is outright daunting. It's inspiring that anyone can achieve such impact through such subtle means--all the other "greats" are far more authorial or simply overrated--but also these scenes make me feeling hopeless to begin work on my own short films. I have no idea how I will ever even approximate this, myself. For now, I'll start by making shot lists and blocking diagrams of his early films, I guess, but he truly is a genius and among the greats--the greatest ever popular director, imo, though I do love Hitchcock...

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=26629A I've tried neat video (it must be with a temporal window of 5 frames)/chroma blur, as suggested above, and it generally cleans up any moire that wasn't immediately very visible on the LCD (and if it's that bad, there's no cure other than superimposing a still image, as you suggest, or shooting the shot just a tiny bit out of focus, which can work fine, anyway). All these solutions, including the one I linked to and the FCP plug in, do a wide-radius chroma blur and thus reduce color resolution and apparent saturation. Just something to be aware of.

Sorry for the beginner questions, but what do you mean by scenery/solutions? I agree that Spielberg is amazing at blocking, but what impresses me more than that alone is that he storyboards his films so carefully and still manages to keep things lively and naturalistic. It's not just a matter of where people are moving and when but how he coordinates that with the camera. He's very good at keeping action spatially coherent and camera movement emotionally resonant even while coordinating fantastic figure movement. As someone who is starting out as a director (shorts and stuff), I want to know...how can I learn to do this? Does it require very good spatial skills, coordinating all that in one's mind? Should I buy some of his storyboards? Or work backward from his early movies, mapping out blocking diagrams and shot lists as I watch? If Abrams can learn, I figure so can I... While I agree that Super 8 was shot too tight in general, given that Abrams started as a TV director he manages to avoid an over-reliance on CUs pretty admirably. Only the special effect sequences (train crash, the entire third act) felt way too tight and over-edited to me. I was very, very impressed by Abrams' direction of the quieter scenes and they honestly felt a lot like Spielberg to me visually, even when the script (which had problems even before it entirely fell apart at the second act turn) felt self-conscious.

I am really tempted by this. What would shipping across the country cost? Using media mail, of course.

Although it doesn't cover everything, this is bar none the best book I've read on the subject of camerawork: The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video For technical stuff (grip and electric-related, specifically), this is a fun read: Set Lighting Technician's Handbook: Film Lighting Equipment, Practice, and Electrical Distribution

The 11-16mm lens is too wide for a polarizer (unless you want a really extreme look, with some sky dark and some bright) and a 50mm too tight for that rig (I'm sorry, but the glidecams are not very good). Also consider that within a given scene you'll usually want to maintain a consistent stop…going from f2.8 to f1.2 without motivation is uncommon. The t2i has very good highlight detail for the price. For exteriors, I shoot neutral with highlight tone priority and underexpose half a stop (relative to a meter; half a stop under looks normal to the eye) and don't have problems with contrast, generally. It's not great, but for the price… With the hvx I used a polarizer and grads for everything, but with a t2i or better it's kind of nice being able to skip them. A polarizer can, however, reduce glare on water and foliage dramatically. So at noon, judicious use may be in order... You can also just use it at half strength, too. I mean I guess it's a matter of taste. None of the lights you own will do any good. Jokers are okay, but they will slow you down tremendously and aren't that strong once diffused (and if they're not diffused they look sourcey, could be good or a problem depending on how naturalistic your style is). Generators are very loud and slow to move. Better to do a good job with limited gear than rent more than your crew can use effectively. Moving hard lights, a moving sun, alternating use of polarizers and switching f-stops…seems like a recipe for disjunctive cuts. But then again I don't really know what I'm doing; I am still a student...some people use this stuff well and certainly it's possible to. Personally, I would just keep it simple, buy a few 8x4s of shiny board from home depot or a lighting rental place and use them for fill, white side for direct light, shiny side if it's overcast or in shade. C-stands for static shots, hollywood them as need be for moving shots… These are much more flexible than 6x6s because they're faster to set up and can be moved easily by a couple crew members or held down with a single c-stand. Also shiny boards are more reflective than lame. I would also consider a 12x12 eighth stop silk if you're concerned about harsh light for reverse shots and at noon. A little slow to use, but still faster than lights, super cheap to rent, and works well and continuity will be okay since it retains some directionality. A couple tricks to avoid eye shadows under a silk: fill with white board from below; hang a large flag over the silk so there's less toppy light and more from the sides.

Me? I've worked with bolexes plenty and have shot a bit with SR2s. I don't know how that factors into a discussion of digital cameras, though. I didn't even mention film. If we're talking about movies that are shooting on dSLRs film probably isn't an option, budget-wise.

These videos are ridiculous. Instead of propagating the ridiculous (but at least kind of egalitarian) myth that a dSLR will make you a "filmmaker" they propagate the yet more poisonous one that yet more expensive cameras will...because they're more expensive. Straight from the school of "buy a red; be a DP." Studio pictures, with budgets in the millions of dollars, rent more expensive cameras? Who'd ever guess it? If you have the money, of course rent a better camera. First hire better talent, sound, production design, and lighting, which are far more significant factors. Anyone who's intimidated by dSLRs to the point of ignoring their remarkable image quality for the money is uncomfortable enough with his own craft that he has to look to the expensive cameras he's using for validation.

Overcast or sunny? If overcast, there may not be much you can do. Shiny board, maybe. If it's sunny, you can follow the talent with white board (shiny board wobbles too visibly when reflecting direct lihgt, imo, but might work in some cases) and if the ground isn't in frame, cover it with a white bedsheet, which will bounce a lot of light into the talent's face without looking fake. Polarizers are okay...generally they darken the part of the sky that's already darkest so I am not sure I'd use one with a steadicam or wide angle move. At least not always. What are you shooting on? Money can definitely buy highlight detail...