M Joel W

Easy question: three-hour adaptation of The Master and Margarita.

Calm down for a minute. Yes, there are "huge chunks of data" that compression removes, but they aren't so much missing as they are reinterpreted into a more efficient (but less accurate) form. JPEG, one of the most basic there is, works like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jpeg or by using a more color space that is less accurate but visually as accurate to the human eye and cosine transformation from 1X1 pixels into combinations of 8X8 pixel grids. To be honest, I only understand some of it...as you can probably tell! At high image quality, you can make a very large image (20mb as a TIFF) into a 2mb JPEG that looks nearly as good, except under close scrutiny. Redcode similarly uses different color space (it compresses BEFORE transforming bayer into RGB) that looses a bit of color quality in favor of efficiency, and uses wavelet based compression which is much more efficient than JPEG (I think the grids can be of any size, for instance.) Unlike H264, HDV, MPEG2 and similar codecs, Redcore is INTRAFRAME meaning that fast motion will have no effect whatsoever. No matter how fast you move the camera, the image will hold up just as well. But...wavelet codecs have problems with areas of high detail. If you gain the camera up very high (1600ISO or so) you will get more noise. If you shoot deep focus, your scene will have more high detail areas. From what I've seen from some tests, Redcode softened footage a tiny bit...but not enough to really matter. I would worry a bit about deep focus photography with lots of gain...but if you have enough light or shoot wide open you will probably be all set.... Of course, that's just speculation. But compressing isn't like scaling down an image and "repeating" data, it's like giving a very accurate summary of data, from which it can be reconstructed so accurately, you (ideally) won't notice any effects of compresison. So don't sweat it, or just shoot miniDV!

I'm amazed how immature people are acting on both sides. Think about it from the perspective of a not-terribly-wealthy aspiring filmmaker or low budget filmmaker who wants to improve. The dvx, hvx, red, etc. are low cost, actually purchasable cameras promising (though more often than not not delivering) the quality (or something close to it) of 35mm film (remember the hoopla over 24p years ago?) This is genuinly exciting, and while some may laugh at the obsession with specs, people need to quantify the awesomeness of what they're getting, or, in the case of people as poor as me, they need to justify large purchases. It's not Panasonic and Red's fault that this audience is easily marketed to. On the other side you have pros and semi-pros who are being told by amateurs that their skills are no longer needed; that a "revolution" is coming that will put them and their ways out of business. This is ridiculous; no camera will buy you cinematography skills, although I won't lie when I admit that shooting DVX footage is way easier and cheaper even that shooting decent 16mm footage. Why can't we all just agree that story (or in the case of DPs artistry and technical skill) are most important, and no camera is going to change this? The fallout of the Red camera will probably prove similar to the fallout of the dvx, but at a different level of production. The dvx didn't really revolutionize anything, but it found extreme popularity and introduced a bunch of shooters into the world of video production. The Red will probably introduce a bunch of amateurs into the world of higher end work and it will facilitate high quality production, but it certainly won't guarantee it. The worst these cameras can do (besides generate endless hype) is to democratize the world of film and video production. And if all of you have the skills you claim to, this is a non-issue. Personally, I'm really excited about the Red camera because I can afford it for rental and it promises to be a huge leap in quality over HDV. Do I expect to get Hollywood quality results? Only if I light well!

What can I say? I don't really know; I'm just a broke student who researches cameras carefully, not a profesisonal being asked by producers to show up with a certain camera. From what I understand, the Z1U is last generation but it's excellent and does both NTSC and PAL. The HVX is better for narrative work (24fps, slow motion, etc.) in my mind, but it's probably considerably worse for ENG or videography. The Canon seems to be the happy medium. If you're shooting ENG, stick with the Sony I suppose. The mini35 is actually only about $10,000 (plus lenses) but I'd only recommend it if you have a lot of light. HD cameras are so light hungry in the first place, I wouldn't really recommend it at all actually if you plan on doing a lot of interiors. If you're doing ENG the Sony is a great choice; if you are doing "filmmaking" on video, you may want to look into the HVX or Canon. Just my opinion.

Actually I am, although I should have been clearer in my response. There's a not-that-well documented but clearly extant "watercolor" effect with some progressive footage in 25p and less so in 24p that significantly degrades image quality in the new Sony. Also, the XHA1 records discreet frames, while the Sony buries them in 60i, which decreases quality (30fps at 25mbps<24fps at 25mbps) and makes post production a pain. That said, seeing as the original poster is editing in Final Cut Express, the Sony may be the better option, since I don't think FCE supports Canon's proprietary (but nonetheless superior) 24fps HDV codec. However, the Sony is somewhere around two stops slower than the Canon (although it produces cleaner footage, apparently) and three or four stops slower than a DVX. With an added 35mm adapter (and I've used plenty of these), you may be shooting five or six six stops slower than the DVX's roughly 500ISO. What would that be? Something like 16 or 32 ISO. And you can't really shoot at 32 ISO without serious lighting gear, which is far more expensive than either camera. Even with the fastest adapter and a bit of gain, your Sony will leave you shooting around 100ISO, which is prohibitive for large interiors. And you'd be limited to shooting wide open (unless you get even MORE light) and Nikkors are soft at f1.4 while Zeiss lenses are prohibitively expensive. And regardless, focus will be an issue. I'd say go for the Canon and an upgrade to Final Cut Pro (the new version looks outstanding) and skip the low end lens adapter...for now. Or go with the Sony and stick with Final Cut Express. You can always add a lens adapter later, anyhow.

So true. My 35mm f1.4 was like new (I would not have questioned its newness had it been sold as new) and it's a piece of junk wide open. Most of my older lenses are much better. Thankfully my lenses all have similar warmish/neutral color casts, although an older 35mm f1.4 I tried was bright yellow and a newer 28mm f2.8 E series was quite cool. That said, for the price, these lenses are fantastic.

Definitely get the Canon. The Sony has a bug that makes progressive footage look awful and the Canon uses a superior codec that is much better for editing. Also, the Sony is much slower, so if you're using a lens adapter (maybe a bad idea; it will soften the footage a lot and eat up 2+ stops of light), you will not be able to get sufficient light for the Sony without breaking out the HMIs...

Thanks, this is the answer I needed. I'll probably end up using a 50mm f1.2 so I'll maybe ask a professional lens tech to do the work since it doesn't sound that hard but it does sound like something I could screw up. For everyone else who responded, the actual shot is a bit different from what I described, but suffice to say I need an extremely fast lens that I can buy and modify myself....and afford for my short thesis film (with a budget around 5 grand but with some free equipment from my school). And thanks again to everyone who responded. And on the subject of lens sharpness, I've been using a set of AI and pre-AI nikon primes lately with my digital rebel XT: 28mm f2.0, 35mm f1.4, 50mm f1.4, 85mm f1.8. All of them are soft wide open, the 35mm f1.4 unusably so, and all of them exhibit major chromatic abberation. Still, they have a much nicer look than the kit lens that came with the camera...but I wouldn't want to shoot 4k using them, except perhaps at f2.8.

I'm going to be shooting somethinge either on a mini35 or a Red camera using Nikon lenses. However, I need to do a shot with a rack aperture--along the lines of one of those shots that begins indoors then whip pans outdoors. But I can't mask it or do it in post--just trust me on that one. I also can't rent lenses; just trust me on that one--I need to buy the lens and it needs to be under $1,000 and faster than t2.0. I'd like to just remove the hard stops from a Nikkor and install a focus ring; is there a way? Otherwise, are there any fast lenses under $1,000 with decent optical performance? Thanks...PM me if you want details of the shot, but just trust me on this one.

He had the Black Maria! But, yeah, fair enough. The weather forecast is now "sunny" rather than "mostly sunny" so I may just start the shoot an hour or two early and make sure the weather is good. The shoot's on a roof so I'm not supposed to bring heavy equipment up, both because it could fall and because the roof isn't too strong. Heh... But the concrete pail muslin shade canopy advice is great. I think I must have intentionally set myself up for frustration (no crew, bad conditions, prohibitive location), but if I can't use that trick now, I'll definitely be using it in the near future. Anyhow, thanks again for all the advice. I'm still very new to cinematography, although very passionate about it, and this forum constantly proves to be invaluable.

Sorry if I sounded dismissive; trust me, it's the last thing I mean to be. I actually appreciate the support a tremendous amount. This particular project is borderline home video in budget and I have no crew (maybe one person) to help, so any negative responses on my part are mostly me (unintentionally) venting my frustration that I don't have better resources, especially since this is part of a project which I've been shooting and reshooting for over a year, now, and of which I'm extremely proud but with which I'm equally frustrated. I have some thin shower curtain that works a lot like light diffusion, so I'll see if I can build a frame out of it, and I'll buy some more foamcore as a reflector. Or would a shinier material work? I fear it would cause hotspots. Anyhow, thanks again, and I do mean it.

This is mostly great advice (as I've noticed you usually give), but it applies more to big budget shoots, I think. I really can't afford any additional equipment. I should have been more specific about how low budget this shoot is, though; there's basically no crew and it's on video. The plus side is that I can shoot all I want... And the set up time is next to zero. (No lights, a small tripod, no need for light meter readings.) The down side is that I have no control over light except, basically, black and white foamcore. If I shot the master while it was overcast, could I then shoot shot/reverse while it was sunny if I held a large shower curtain over the talent? I'm trying to cover all bases here. Sunny or shady: either look is fine, but I can't have massive continuity problems. Since I'm on a roof, I can't put the talent in the shade, either. (Plus, video's poor latitude would prohibit this in the first place.) Oh well, maybe I'm just unnecessarily worried...I only need half a minute of footage.

Short Question: How do I deal with partly cloudy conditions on a budget? (Reflectors, no lights powerful enough to make a difference (except maybe a 100w flourescent for close ups), no butterfly). Longer question: I have to shoot under partly cloudy conditions for a scene that will work either under completely cloudy conditions (at any time of day; this would be ideal) or in late afternoon with a clear sky. I have to shoot about 30 seconds of footage total, give or take, and it has to match--it's largely shot/reverse shot with an extremely wide master two shot. It's on a roof if this matters. Should I delay the shoot? The forecast is 12mph winds, and "mostly sunny." I only have reflectors and weak lights (tungstens 1k and under, a 100w daylight flourescent) and no butterfly. I can't get my actors back, but I can cancel the shoot and reshoot in three months, which I don't want to do either. How do I deal with this? I REALLY need help. Thanks so much, -Matt

My point exactly, although I can see how what I wrote was poorly phrased and may have implied that I meant otherwise. Con Air and the Rock had similar casts, the same producer, similar budgets (I believe), etc. One looked a lot better than the other. Michael Bay does have some unique style and talent.

Wow, great stuff! Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Since dichroic filters look "magical" I kind of assumed they might be more efficient.

Why would I buy this? http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...oughType=search Why I could buy a sheet of CTB for five bucks? Is it more efficient or something? Or is it just more firmly secured?

I wish I didn't agree with you on this point, but I do--completely.

Okay, I'll buy that, with the exception that knowing how a film "works" means that films are harder to appreciate. Many of the best filmmakers are film obsessed, and watch tons of movies worse than their own, often repeatedly--and both enjoy and appreciate them. Understanding the medium should lead you to appreciate it, not dismiss it. That said, you're right about a lack of great films. What, from the past decade, has the promise of really holding up? Maybe The Matrix... Sadly, I can't think of much else... I would like to think that Festen was influential, but I don't think that is the case and its aesthetic is somewhat "radically reactionary" in that it's a call for storytelling over production values. But that doesn't mean one should dismiss the past decade of films entirely. Blame it on auteur theory, but I really enjoyed both War of the Worlds and Munich, and I didn't think either was a great film. By the same token, I don't think The Magnificent Ambersons was that great (very interesting, maybe) but it was a fascinating watch after seeing Citizen Kane. And because of film's brief, largely teleological history, a lot of truly influential films feel dated. For instance, I can recognize that Bicycle Thieves was hugely influential, but I just don't enjoy it that much, and it didn't even feel fresh because I'd seen so many films it inspired before I saw it. If you do want to get into Wyler (of whose films I've still seen very few), check out The Best Years of Our Lives. I actually prefer it, aesthetically, to Renoir, but its story is shamelessly Hollywood. Its use of long takes is pretty stunning, though, and is a wonderful reconcilation of high art aesthetics with Hollywood story-telling and extremely high production values. Lastly, at least cut Spielberg a break. He's making borderline avant garde high art under the guise of blockbusters. Re-watch Minority Report. Even more than Total Recall, even more than Blade Runner, and way more than The Island or what-have-you, it's a real masterpiece of cinematography and a stunning realization of a futuristic world. Just because it's deeply flawed doesn't mean it's not brilliant. And if you dismiss it as conventional or predicatble (especially aesthetically; the script has flaws) you either don't get film at all, or get it so fully that you're de facto the best filmmaker alive. I doubt either is the case.

I take a lot of issue with this statement and not just because you're positing "a book on film style" as somehow inherently superior to whatever other reference point people are using to judge a given director. I agree that Lucas is more important in terms of industry than style, and certainly Renior and Eisenstein (and I would add, above all else, Tolland to this list; his work with Welles and Wyler is mind blowing even today) have been more influential than Spielberg, but I think this is only because their innovations happened so long ago that the entire medium has absorbed them. Spielberg isn't the most influential director ever, but he's probably the most influential of the past 20 years. Also, the fact that you omitted Wyler and Welles from your list hints to me that you have an anti-corporate bias, of which I'm somewhat wary. Genius and commercial success are never mutally exclusive. I also feel that while Eisenstein may have been brilliant and a great formalist, many of his theories were horribly flawed. I've read some Eisenstein (beyond the few essays everyone reads) and not only is his prose incoherent and his structure digressive, a lot his ideas about parsing the image are fundamentally flawed, and many key sequences in his films are based on these theories. Sure, he did some great stuff, and certainly his experimentation has been key to film's evolution, but his most successful ideas were not his alone; they were shared by the other montagists as well and evolved accordingly. I think the reason people take issue with Spielberg is because the quality of his films is somewhat ineffable and impossible to quantify. He's both formal and intuitive and both artsy and commercial and while these are his great strengths, they are also the reasons he's so hard to pin down. Kubrick is pretty formally consistent, but I consider him to be the most "literary" of the great filmmakers. His choice of formal devices is based on the novel: metaphor (both visual and otherwise), symbolism, motifs, what have you. Relatively intelligent people who don't want to engage with the messiness inherent to film form love Kubrick because he's formally rigorous, but within an all-too-literary basis. He's easy to love, and it's easy to understand why you should love him. Heck, he even wrote almost all his films and they're almost all literary adaptations. He has some pretty fantastic and innovative cinematography, too, but I feel he engages with film as a unique medium less than, say, Spielberg, but still more than the average director. Michael Bay I feel is a competent director who can tell a story pretty well. He's also a phenomenally hard worker and a brilliant photographer, so his films are usually only decent, but gorgeously photographed nonetheless. There's an arbitrariness and predictability to his choices (fast cutting, high contrast, super rich colors) that almost makes their efficacy offensive, but his choices still work and are surprisingly hard to replicate. Con Air looks way worse than The Rock and is far less visceral. And when he's not shooting action, his films still look like Michael Bay and the "Suspiria Effect" comes in: yes, it's a stupid story, but it only seems THAT stupid because the photography is so beautiful. Bay is an average director who works hard and has a truly brilliant eye for abstract beauty; if he can transcend the limits of his prior films he has a lot of promise, but I think his work is purely intuitive and not constructed around a rigorous formal basis, so he will never be a true great. I'll still watch every movie he puts out. Spielberg, I think, mediates the line between Bay and Eisenstein. His love of spectacle recalls James Cameron, but I think Cameron uses film form on a very elementary basis. I enjoy his films for their "gee whiz" factor-what's onscreen and not how it's rendered. On the flip side, this is why Cameron is so technologically innovative; his films are more craft than art. All the same, he is an unusually good storyteller, if a poor formalist, and his willingness to enage with new methods of filmmaking forces some formal rigor into his style, because he has to cope with formal devices as-of-yet undiscovered by other filmmakers. (Avatar is going to be 3D and half CGI; its use of these effects will be elementary, sure, but it will also be new and therefore innovative.) But I digress. Spielberg uses form on a very intuitive basis; he engages so completely with film style (one has to assume Kaminski plays some role, too) that you can't really pick out how he's using it. War of the Worlds' use of long takes and aperture framing is just flat-out brilliant, but if I were to systematically try to figure out WHY this works so well and how Spielberg patterns these devices, I couldn't. A lot of formalists (Eisenstein, etc.) have a theory that they try to put to work and the stumbling blocks are that they don't realize said theory perfectly, and usually the theory is flawed. Intuitive directors try to communicate thought directly through the medium, but they fail to delve deep into its possibilities. Spielberg understands film on such a basic and profound level that he engages with it intuitively on a formal level. His films have incredibly formal rigor but not necessarily formal consistency; because he is a true cinematic genius his films are complex, flawed, self-contradictory, and ineffable. He also can't end a movie for his life; I honestly think he gets so involved in his world (so too with David Lynch, another brilliant intuitive formalist, but he uses sound more than image) that he can't find a valid way to leave it. So... Spielberg Rocks!

I made this on minidv. The only "professional" lights used were a lowel tota and a lowel 500w open face: http://homepage.mac.com/mwauhkonen/scenes.mov Only the first shots are effects.

A $500 budget is impossible to begin with, but if you were to shoot 16mm MOS this is even more true. You would need a decent timed telecine, the cost of stock itself, then the camera rental. For my money, an HVX200 is the best bet for someone who wants to shoot something very cheap and "kind of like film." The P2 workflow and variable frame rates feel really magazine-like to me, Panasonic has made this thing produce really pretty colors at the cost of some grain and the footage doesn't feel too different from a lot of medium speed (200ISO) 16mm I've seen and wide open f2.8 it has a similar depth of focus to 16mm at like f5.6 or something. Also the lens is surprisingly sharp wide open. It's also super fast to use; I worked with one recently and we shot for next to nothing, did a ton of set ups, and most of them actually looked pretty good, even without any color timing in post. I'd see if there's some way you could get an HVX, tripod and a softbank light kit for cheap. But $500 really isn't going to cut it; that's barely enough for food...and what locations are you using? If you already have a 24p camcorder, go with that and focus on lighting and composition, which are what really matter. Good luck.

Jason, I was considering doing something similar to this for a scene I want to shoot, but dismissed it as impossible. It sounds like it might not be though. If you don't mind, when you do shoot these scenes (assuming you do choose this method), could you tell me how everything turns out for you and the approximate cost of rental? Thanks, -Matt

Where are these availible? Also, how brights is a 1k (in tungsten watts equivalent)? Given that CTB loses nearly two stops (as mentioned above) would it be approximately the strength of a 250w tungsten bulb? (75w hmi?)

Wow, that sounds phenomenal. I looked briefly online and didn't find much but I'll do a little more research later. A few 575w HMI pars would be fantastic, and I actually prefer 4000K to 5600K in most instances, since I typically gel "day" motivated lights with 1/2CTB rather than full. If you have any more information on where you got your particular par cans that would be great, otherwise I'll just look online and request cataologues where I can. I've been using a 400w growth lamp for a while, by the way, but the shape of the lamp is really unusable for most situations and the ballast is loud. It sure is bright, though.

I've been looking around for a high output but very cheap fill light (to bounce off ceilings, so precise control is NOT an issue) and was considering either a lowel DP light, an arrilite 1k, or a 575w hmi with CTB3/4. I have very little money so the lowel DP light or even a totabrite were tops on my list. I gather that fresnels are dimmer and more expensive so this is not what I want. Then I heard about parnels, which are apparently a cross between a par can and a fresnel. I read that the 575w parnel is four times as efficient as a fresnel or open face, merely less controllable. Is this the case if I bounce it, or is it just because it is an intensely focused beam. What do people think of these lights? Also, are there any affordable 575w HMIs? I know it's a lot of money compared with the other options but it is much more versitile, too. Thanks, -Matt