Hal Smith

ROXIE 'Cause I hate you. VELMA There's only one business in the world that's no problem at all. Nuff Said? (PS: Cinematography.com formatting wouldn't let me enter the above in proper script form, what gives Tim?)

Ever see a Van Gogh up close? I mean REALLY close? I've seen two with the freedom to view them from any distance, including so close that my nose was one inch from the surface of the painting, most recently, "Portrait of Alexander Reid". There is a level of three dimensionality, color, and detail up close to a Van Gogh that would be very difficult to translate into words. And yet his paintings can be viewed in poorly reproduced prints and still recognized as great art and wonderful images. I think all great art, including movies, is like the above: the creators are working on such intimate levels of detail and understanding that "everyone" gets it, the student who's barely beginning to become aware of art, the sophisticate who understands the work more fully, the creator's fellow artist who is very aware of the intricate nature of the techniques used, and the public, who don't know art, only what they like. The reason Stephen Spielberg is Stephen Spielberg is that he IS aware of all the detailed work that creates a motion picture as a work of art. I think his only weakness is he isn't quite crazy enough to transcend his art form totally, like Stanley Kubrick and Vincent Van Gogh were. But that's another subject and a book that needs to be written, "Insanity and Great Art". Edmond, OK

Great point - I've been doing exactly that with radio studio wiring for years - good quality studio wiring like Clark, West Penn, and Gepco can be purchased in more than 10 colors. Colored tyraps would work very nicely on the ends of plain black rubber SO stingers to identify circuits. I'll be including that idea in my bag of tricks. (colored tape eventually gets all gooey - tyraps won't). Edmond, OK

I'm rusty on my TV operating engineering but I believe that since black is IRE 7.5% and white is 100% IRE that an 18% gray card should be 18% of the way between 7.5 and 100 therefore = IRE 24.15 ((.18 X (100 - 7.5)) + 7.5 = 24.15). Edmond, OK

Man, ain't it the truth, a good script and a miniDV camcorder can be a good movie with rotten picture quality, a million dollars worth of equipment and no story = no movie, period. I feel your pain, I'm kinda in the same boat, I've got a pretty good story idea but turning it into a screenplay that works is not easy. However I am becoming fast friends with Syd Fields and Final Draft. :) A motion picture without sound is a silent movie - - - Sound without a motion picture is the radio - - - A motion picture without a story is so many pounds of scrap plastic with some weird chemicals on it? Edmond, OK

One way of going cheap with lighting is to use theatrical, rather than motion picture, lighting gear. I've bought cast aluminum Strand babies (6" 1kW fresnels) off ebay for less than many rental places want for a week's rental on an Arri baby. Lamps can be purchased as cheap as $8 or so. There's a company importing imitation Source 4 Pars that are going new on ebay for $70 buy-it-now with three lenses - they're worth checking out. I bought a Strand Bambino 5kW Senior for $100 off ebay that needed a little fixing in the shop, no parts, just some fiddling. I suspect that a well spent $500-$1000 would put together a lighting kit including stands that would cost that for a week or two's rental. You'd have ugly yellow and orange Home Depot stingers, etc. but it'd all work. You definitely would have no bragging rights at the Cinematographer/Gaffer/Grip bar after work but plenty of controllable foot-candles on set and location none-the-less. :) Edmond, OK

John, If I shoot 5285 under the daylight color temperature it's balanced for, I get a pretty faithful rendition of the original scene's colors. How does one get that sort of control for negative/print film combinations and possibly through more steps involving IP/IN's etc.? I'm getting the feeling that in truth modern films are just as difficult to handle as three strip Technicolor was, it's just that the scientific, technical, artistic, and craft aspects of modern film systems are understood by more people. Edmond, OK

Very interesting, I watched "Lost in Translation" the other night on DVD and was struck by how the shots of Tokyo looked. I would describe the colors as looking "blended". Edmond, OK

David, By "low-contrast" do you mean a stock with greater latitude. IE: one that shows more detail in the blacks and is less apt to blow out the highlights? A completely different question. You're bothered by people not signing posts. I use my real name as my username - okay with you? Edmond, OK

I frequently see questions on the Forum about running times, lens calculations, image sizes, etc. There is a great page containing links to calculators, etc. on Panavison New Zealand's website at: http://www.panavision.co.nz/Main/kbase.asp?cat=13 Enjoy! Edmond, OK

Tammo, There's a great page containing links to calculators and image sizes on Panavision New Zealand's website at: http://www.panavision.co.nz/Main/kbase.asp?cat=13 Edmond, OK

In this area I am an expert - my "day" business is radio broadcast engineering. If you're going to go direct to laptop I advise using an external soundcard. Laptop sound systems are usually have worse signal-to-noise ratios than the external ones due to all the digital trash inside a computer. There's a large collection of external sound cards made for both Mac and Windows machines. I have experience with the Creative external Audigy and Extigy USB sound boxes for Windows machines, they work very well. For Mac you might look at the Lexicon Lamda ($199) on www.sweetwater.com - I have no direct experience with it but I've used at lot of Lexicon pro gear over the years and always had good luck with it. Edmond, OK

There's a company in Oklahoma City called L. E. Acker. They have an about 1200 sq.ft. building jammed to the rafters with all sorts of casters, wheels, parts, adapters, etc. I haven't built a dolly from their stock yet but I've renovated road boxes with their parts for about half or less what new casters would have cost. I suspect every city with any kind of an industrial base has a place like L. E. Acker. Edmond, OK

Inverse square law is exact when the rays of light are diverging from a point. If the rays are exactly parallel to each other than there is no drop off in intensity with distance. A softlight's beam has a central area where the light rays are effectively parallel, therefore less drop off of intensity with distance. Practically, when the physical size of the light is considerably smaller than the area being lit, then expect inverse square behaviour (the "u" is for our UK forum participant's comfort). The actual physics of a softlight are more complex. Imagine standing close to a soft light and forming a framing box with your fingers while looking at the light. If your framing box is small enough that you see only a portion of the softlight and then move farther away, your fingers enclose a larger and larger area of the light's face. So what's happening is inverse square is still operating but as you move away your fingers are enclosing more of the light's face area and therefore more of the total light coming from the fixture. The converse happens if you walk closer to the light, you enclose less area as you move closer, but also less of the light flux. When you walk away, the enclosed area is increasing by the square of distance, while the light is dropping off with the square of distance, therefore no change in the light flux through your fingers, the opposite happens if you walk closer. If you take a 20K fresnel, scrim it way down, and place talent very close to it (don't scrim it way down and I think we all would expect vfx - hair on fire), expect a flat beam. Conversely, the same light lighting up a building at night will be operating pretty much in the inverse square region. If you placed talent inside a box built out of a diffusion material and then evenly lit all six sides from the outside, there would be no change in light intensity anywhere in the box. I may be shooting a "heaven" scene for a short film this summer - I've been thinking about how to construct a practical set that would create six sided lighting. I could throw a pile of CGI money at it - if I had the budget - but it wouldn't look right. The car chases in "Bullitt" were done at 24fps, no undercrank, no VFX - that's why they look so darn good - and why that film is so revered (IMHO). I just read that in one of the chases, a stunt driver lost it and trashed an ARRI 2C second or third camera, which can be seen lying on the road in pieces in one shot. Anyone got a clip of that scene? (but I digress, as usual) A large constellation of small lights is another way to "beat" inverse square. There was a still photographer working in the LA area years ago who used myriads of very small lights to light portraits. I regret I can't remember his name, I had an elderly friend in Gadsden who had a portrait of herself in her youth shot by him. It looks similar to, but not identical to, a modern portrait shot with umbellas, tents, etc. It's quite striking, having that slightly different look that fascinates the eye. Symbolically inverse square can be expressed as: new intensity = original intensity x (old distance/new distance)^2 For instance: move a physically small light (like a little Lowell open face) from 25 feet to 35 feet that has 100 footcandles intensity at 25 feet. 100fc x (25/35)^2 = 51.02fc Move same light from 25 feet to 10 feet. 100fc x (25/10)^2 = 625fc Edmond, OK

The larger tripod heads fit 150mm bowl legs, hi hats, etc. Just what exactly is the 150mm referring to? How is it measured? Edmond, OK

Digikey, www.digikey.com has them in many different styles. Make certain you're looking at DIN, not miniDIN connectors. Their website can be a bit trying to find stuff on - their search engine assumes you're a knowledgeable electronics industry type. See if they still stock # 275-1001-ND. That's a 4 pin DIN male inline plug made by Singatron. My summer 2005 catalog lists it for $0.56. They charge a handling fee of $5.00 on orders under $25.00. You can always find something to pad an order if only some tools. Edmond, OK

Grab every chance you can get to see these movies on the Big Screen. From time to time the film series at a museum or school will run 35mm prints of some of these wonderful B&W films. You ain't seen nuttin' till you've seen these jewels up big and bright! I once had a print of "The Big Sleep" (1946) at home to test a portable 35mm projector I was fixing for someone - I watched it a bunch of times, I'm not certain if I ever really figured the plot out - but God are the women in it gorgeous - first of all, of course, Ms. Bacall. The pictures aren't bad either. :) Edmond, OK

That's why I was concerned about the word "mirror". The Arri 2's use a rotating shutter that has a two sectors with a mirrored back side. When the mirror is aligns with the lens as it rotates, the image is reflected 90 degrees through a prism and then projected on the back side of a small ground glass. What one sees in the viewfinder is the front of the ground glass. There are different ground glasses available for the camera with various aspect ratio outlines etched in them. For instance, mine has an outline that frames 1.85 flat. So as you probably can see, an Arri 2 with "mirror" trouble is an Arri 2 with troubles indeed! Edmond, OK

I fully agree with the concept of using a miniDV for the DIY School of Film . I've got a Sony TRV-30 miniDV (1/4" single CCD) that I've had a ball with. It's got enough image control to get creative and looks surprisingly good in widescreen mode on my Mitsubishi Platinum 55" CRT projection TV. It even looks better than some of the highly compressed, bandwidth reduced channels I get off DirecTV. I picked up a clearance Panasonic basic miniDV at Wal-Mart for $200 a couple of months ago so now I could even do a shoot that required a B camera (I actually bought it to use as a playback deck to reduce running hours on my TRV-30). My main interest is film but it's sure fun to be able to experiment with setups, etc. for $0.07/minute as long as one keeps it firmly in mind that film has a ton more latitude. I find that experimenting with lighting, filters, and exposure control gives one a pretty good film "look", all the talk about 24P versus 30i, etc. notwithstanding. Another huge benefit is you can edit footage with Avid's FreeDV ( http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp ) and start getting up on the learning curve for one of the industry's standard editing systems. If Avid's good enough for Walter Murch, it's good enough for me. :) Get an inexpensive miniDV and have fun learning - you can obsess about 16mm/35mm/Fuji/Kodak/MOS/sync, etc later. Edmond, OK

That's the definition I've seen in manufacturer's literature. There's some illumination ;) on MSR,HMI, etc. vs. Tungsten at http://www.highend.com/support/training/colortemp.asp They don't address film but there is a good graph illustrating arc vs incandescent light sources.

My Cyberlight Lithos run MSR1200/2's. They're 7200K, a bit bluer than daylight. They have a CRI of 85. Bulbman has a product listing for MSR's at: http://www.bulbman.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=6191 . Each lamp has a link to a specifications page. Each MSR lamp has several variants with respect to color temperature. There usually is a variant with a color temperature of 6K which nominally matches HMI's CT of 6K. Still photographers that have taken photos of my Cyberlights in action usually have come up with rather cold looking prints if not corrected in their versions of post. Video usually looks okay if white balanced. But when mixed with 3200K halogens, my Cyberlights look very much like very old fashioned arc spotlights - they're good for followspot and/or special effect looks but nothing else! No motion picture film has been shot of my lights but they will definitely look bad on tungsten films and somewhat blue on uncorrected daylight film. There's a whole other issue with MSR and HMI. Their spectrums are not continuous - all gas arc light lamps have "liney" spectrums. That can be a REAL bugaboo trying to color time for a specific look. Labs have a lot of experience with HMI color timing, they know what to do. I'd advise research and testing before you invest a lot of time and money using MSR's to light film. The only way I'd jump into MSR's is with the 6000K variants and only after checking with Osram, GE, etc to see if the spectrum of 6000K MSR's is identical to 6000K HMI's. You'd be on very thin ice with any lamp with a line spectrum other than what HMI's have. I don't know exactly how much trouble you'd have but there is a very good reason why Cinema technology tends to be very conservative - it's not just a matter of reinventing the wheel - it's a matter of just how expensive that new wheel may be after you've fixed all the new problems it's created! John Pytlak probably has some very pithy comments to make about all this, are you lurking John? Edmond, OK Addition: The posts talking about strange tints, etc. are reflecting all my gab about "line" spectrums and color temperature. The interaction between the line spectrum output of a given gas mixture versus the light color bandpasses of color film's color separation layers is very complex. I don't know for a fact that HMI's were developed with specific color film spectrum responses in mind, or whether or not Kodak and Fuji actively develop films with HMI characteristics in mind but I would be very surprised if they didn't at all. I'm not the only person working with film who has a Master's Degree in Physics who did their graduate thesis on Spectroscopy. Kodak and Fuji probably both have labs with Physics PhD's underfoot. :)

Leo, I have Russian ancestry on my mother's side - there must be something hardwired into my soul because your quote from Nevsky runs chills up my spine. My Uncle Howard (my Mother's brother) ,better known as Alan Howard, was one of the last Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Premier Danseurs, he's often referred to as the first American to take that role - Hah!, there were dancers in the company with long Russian names who had less Rus blood in them than my Uncle. American citizenship, certainly, but 50% Russian none the less. Hal

With the good marketing sense to describe yourself as "Fast Cheiney" the gaffer, I suspect you're working most of the time! Hal

A note from the Plot Police: If Brat's car is in front of the bank long enough after Black Mask jumps in for bank security to see it, then all hell would break out when he drives back to get Mom. By then one could expect the FBI and local police to be all over the bank. That would make a cute third act, no? Alex, your comments are a very nice mini-seminar in how to add texture to a script. Thank you! Edmond, OK