Hal Smith

There was a thread on cml recently where a Cinematographer there expressed that editing his own projects taught him very quickly what was needed in coverage to have something you COULD edit.

I sit down every chance I get when working. Otherwise long days get me cranky which NEVER helps maintain discipline and efficiency.

A few years ago the U.S.Government surplused a zillion new 16mm projectors. Search "new 16mm projector" and you'll get a bunch of listings. I snagged a B&H JAN last year for $300.00. Currently Kinneaman wants $700 for new JAN's, $450 for B&H 2585's, and $250 for Telex's. What's nice about the JAN's is they use a Geneva mechanism pulldown (no claw but rather an intermittant gearbox driving a sprocket) just like movie theater 35mm projectors. Hey Cap'n, I see your up in the middle of the night too. What's your excuse? Mine is I'm suffering a winter cold, I woke up an hour ago and my newest batch of drugs is finally taking hold...

Pretty typical bait and switch operation. I "teased" one of the Brooklyn camera creeps just to see what they would do. When I wouldn't buy their overpriced, worthless accessory package they cancelled my order. I bought my 7D from B&H. A couple of weeks after it arrived Canon came out with a $100 rebate offer. I called B&H and they HONORED the rebate even though they were under absolutely no obligation to do so. That's what ethical dealers do. OT alert! I respect the fact that B&H not only shuts down their retail store for the Jewish Sabbath and Holidays but they also shut down their webstore. That's what I call walking the walk as well as talking the talk. Being New York Jews they're always a bit surprised when someone in Oklahoma whose last name is Smith wishes them "Happy Hannukah", etc. What they don't know up front is this Catholic guy's mother was Russian Jewish and he and his Hungarian Catholic wife celebrate some of the Jewish Holidays. When I converted from the Episcopal to the Catholic Church, the Catholic Priest in charge of the convert's classes was thrilled to learn of my Jewish ancestry. He told me "That's wonderful, you have both Covenants". And I do.

That's also been seen on the 7D and seems to vary from camera to camera. It's best to use custom settings and set up each camera for the look you want.

Nor did they count on backlash. The only way to make it work IM(not)HO would be to use a LUT that related not only the desired focal distance to some internal Canon offset but also whether or not it was being approached from near or far. And...Of course the values in that LUT would be unique to each model lens, possibly to each individual example of that lens on a specific camera body.

Thanks Phil. Shane's a bit over the top with his "Elite Crew" description but I think it's his way of recognizing the contributions of the other Cinematographers and crew members that regularly work with him on his HDSLR projects. Given that Shane was Canon's star HDSLR presenter at NAB this year, he's probably as in the loop with respect to what's going on between companies like Canon and Adobe as anyone. There's a lot of NDA action going on behind the scenes as a result of how fast the HDSLR world has been evolving and how competitive it's gotten. Even a mere mortal like myself without august letters like ASC, BSC, etc. after his name was somewhat in the loop this year with respect to attempts to develop follow focus systems that talked directly to the electronics in Canon lenses.

Shouldn't it be? "Ding Dong! The Digit's Dead. Which old bit? The wicked bit." (Okay, it's past my bedtime, I'll go quietly now.) PS: Richard, The Chorus Niagra Flash Mob in the Wellington Mall was inspired. You guys up north of the "Land of the Free (to Starve)" sure know how to have a good time.

Darned if the MZH-RH1 minidisk didn't have a uncompressed PCM mode. From what I could gather from the following link it required a special 1GB MD for recording uncompressed. http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/mz-rh1 I had no idea that at the end of their interest in minidisc Sony had introduced an uncompressed MD format. In broadcast circles MD's might lasted a bit longer if Sony had launched those machines earlier. MD's never were quite good enough for broadcast production though there were stations that retired tape cart machines and went into MD's. Much of their interest was because the built-in labeling capability of the format.

Anyone here have direct experience with editing Canon HDSLR footage with CS5 on a Windows platform? Shane Hurlbut, ASC really likes it but Shane's also got industrial strength editors supporting him. He says Adobe and Canon collaborated on matching their color spaces which could be a huge benefit in color correction, etc. http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/

Not to worry: Barnes and Noble has it in their online store. Seriously though, my roughly $120 worth of Christmas present books and DVD purchases would have gone to Amazon and did last year. This year a local bookseller and B&N got my business. A side story here about Amazon's business ethics. I had to upgrade my Quicken Home and Business software in a hurry this year to keep in sync with my bank's checking account register download system. A quick Google found a downloadable copy of Q2010 on Amazon's website 30% cheaper than Quicken's retail price on their website. I bought, and downloaded, it that day from Amazon. Two days later Quicken released Q2011 and the next day it was on Amazon's site, Q2010 having disappeared. I called Amazon's Customer Support to see what I needed to do to get a free upgrade. You know what they told me? Even though I contacted them THREE DAYS after they were selling (and I bought) Q2010 on their website, they said they didn't have any responsibility to upgrade me. If I wanted Q2011, I would have to BUY IT AGAIN! No one at Amazon had the authority to give me a courtesy upgrade. I've had Quicken for around ten years and fortunately I've kept it registered. I called Quicken, explained what Amazon had just done to me, and even though I hadn't bought Q2011 through Quicken, they placed a free copy of Q2011 in my Quicken user account for download. Don't buy software from Amazon, if anything bad happens, they'll screw you in a heartbeat. Later: Bottom line? Amazon treated me like someone they assumed was trying to steal something even though I've bought a lot of stuff off Amazon for years...and they know that from my account records. Quicken treated me like what I am, a long-term good customer.

It wouldn't hurt to watch "Raging Bull" a couple of times. Not a doc but it a damn fine movie about a boxer.

Ever try a small still head on a monopod stuck in a belt? The head doesn't have to be a good one because it's only used to establish level, not to tilt/pan. The belt can be a cheap Home Depot style work belt, perhaps with suspenders, with a small tool pouch swung around to the front. With a little practice walking you can get quite good with this kind of rig, I walk with my knees slightly bent to help avoid bobbing up and down. In effect the rig uses your knees as the arm of a Steadicam If you can take the additional weight, hose clamp additional weight to the top of the unipod (I've used the type of hand weights shaped like a letter "D") to add inertia to the rig. That helps to damp out small, inadvertant motion.

It takes 10,000 hours to get good at anything (See "Outliers" http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Outliers/Malcolm-Gladwell/e/9780316017923/?itm=1&USRI=outliers ). Given that truth: Buy a camera now (any camera you can afford), shoot absolutely everything you can get in front of the lens; rinse, repeat, repeat constantly. You'll get better with practice as you shoot. When you get to the editing point and discover you left out a crucial shot, you will just have learned something about coverage. When you shoot an actress in front of something bright and realize you should have metered for her face, not trusted the camera's metering, you'll have learned something. When something unexpected happens in a shot that makes for a beautiful image, you'll have learned something...Get my point?

Yes, those will work, see JD's post following what I was thinking of. Don't forget to protect the walls themselves with a block of wood with a piece of carpet or foam between the wall itself and the block.

Downspots on wall spreaders should work. Her walking through pools of light down the hallway with the bathroom in the distance will look good, the downlighting will sculpture her body nicely. The floor looks dark, that's good, it'll keep bounce light off the walls. I'd think about using a wide angle lens to accentuate depth if I could keep the lights out of the shot.

I think I'll let this go with two comments. WikiLeaks invited the State Department's cooperation in redacting anything truly harmful in the documents. The State Department refused, perhaps indicating that they knew nothing really harmful was contained in them. And... Nothing in the documents is classified "Top Secret". The Government generally classifies materials that are truly harmful to national security as Top Secret and above. Many of the releases I've read amount to professional diplomat gossip...like Gaddafi's having a hot Ukranian nurse for an escort, and Medvevev playing Robin to Putin's Batman.

So being a saint is now a prerequisite for being allowed to use the Internet's resources? Amazon's censorship of WikiLeaks is precisely equivalent to the Third Reich's burning of books. I suggest you look up Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' comments on the corrosive effect that suppression of "Unpopular Speech" would have on a democracy and how such suppression would inevitably lead to the destruction of that democracy.

I would like other Cinematography.com members to consider joining me in boycotting Amazon. They willingly, and with no protest, pulled WikiLeaks from their servers. The last thing we need worldwide is Internet companies who help governments censor the web. Google looked the Chinese government in the eye and refused to blink, Amazon moaned "My Ducats, My Ducats" and flushed WikiLeaks.

You can't go wrong with any tool that says "Klein" on it. For a multi-purpose screwdriver I recommend their 10 in 1. Usually available for around $12 or so. It'll handle #1 and 2 Phillips, small and medium straight blade, two sizes of square drive, and two sizes of Torx screws plus 1/4" and 5/16" hex head fasteners. For a box knife, look for the Stanley snap off point knife that has a thumb screw to lock the blade firmly in position. It's a bit rare but they can be found. I'll disagree with JD about multi-tools. There's nothing handier to have in your kit than a multi-tool when you need to climb up on a scaffold or the like to do something simple. I prefer the $100 or so Gerber's that have blades that lock in position. (Do you sense a pattern here? :-)

The collectible price is easy to understand. Manufacturers can get very sentimental about early production versions of their successful products. For instance: The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago used to own a very early Ford Model A in their collection, around S/N 25 if I remember correctly. Henry Ford tried to buy it for years but the Museum wouldn't sell. Ford finally came up with something they would trade for. Over the years Henry had had the factory save a few brand new cars from each model year in crates. He had a new Model A and offered it in trade for the Museum's. They accepted. Jim Jannard plays, and lives, in the league where a couple of hundred thousand dollars just might seem reasonable to him for a very early S/N Red One.

Look at the Sensometric curves on page 4 of this pdf from Kodak's webpage to get a feel for 7219's exposure range. 5219/7219

If you can put up with a rack sized piece of equipment, any synthesized audio generator from companies like Agilent/Hewlett Packard, Tektronix, and Audio Precision will be crystal controlled with accuracies many times more accurate than what's required for film. You probably have a commercial test equipment rental company not too far from you. A good place to start looking for leads is to look in the Yellow Pages for a calibration company, they'll either also be in the rental business or know who is in the Portland area.

Weld a deep well socket on the end of a long piece of steel tubing with a "T" handle welded to the other end. 1/2" EMT (thinwall) conduit would probably work. If you purchased all the materials and cut them yourself, a welding shop would probably knock it together for less than $20, maybe much less (a six pack or dozen Krispy Kreme's would probably get it done for nothing). Use the mill (factory cut) end for the socket to ensure an exactly square cut for the socket to sit on.

If Turner adds an HD service to TCM it'll probably have to be a premium service since HD will require paying for a large number of new transfers. Also more bandwidth on their satellite distribution uplink, local cable channels, and pay satellite services like DirecTV will cost them more money. Hopefully they WON'T fund an HD channel by accepting commercials like AMC.