Phil Connolly

Depends on the video projector - 3 chip DLP projectors don't tend to flicker since the refresh rate of the mirrors on the chip is very high. But single chip DLP's can cause problems with the colour wheel causing strange artifacts. I did a project with a single chip dlp projector and got some strange colour and ghosting artifacts but it wasn't a problem for the type of production and only an issue on freeze frame, and no flicker problems: I've not used LCD projectors so not sure if they flicker, but its probably not worth the risk.

I think it would be interesting to test the blackmagic with super 16mm lens. Even with the crop its still going to be higher resolution then 1080x1920 bayer sensor in the Ikonoskop and that camera holds up pretty well on the big screen. So it could be a good cheaper super 16 alternative to the Ikon.

Hi Ed It would be fine. To work out what size lamp in watts you can use you multiply Voltage x Amps Since in the UK we are running around 230v and the average mains socket is 13Amps, you can connect: 230 x 13 = 2990 Watts - so plenty to run a 2Kw light.

If you watch the feature length version of Wizard of speed and time, they have the camera mounted on a motorbike, running at about 2fps. So thats likely what they did for the short.

I'd heard and I'm not sure if its true - that operators monitor in negative, so the white golf ball becomes black in the view finder making it easier to see.

If your trying to boost or clip the background to get a solid white you are going to run into danger of clipping/modifying the whites of the foreground objects. Ideally for the best results you want the grade the foreground object separately to the background - rather then doing just primary global corrections. This means your going to have to resort to power windows or matte's, perfectly do-able even on the 5D but quite labor intensive. So could be hard work if you have to create roto mattes and in general 5D footage is difficult to grade as it starts to fall apart quickly in quality, when you make larger adjustments.

I think there were.some real fun and different visual ideas and it was quite bold for something of this nature. But the Tv coverage was hugely let down by the director - Hamish Hammelton. He's too much of a wing it concert director. This show needed to be planned and scripted more and the coverage could have been more cinematic. The coverage and vision mixing was deeply random and it was obvious the director was busking. Ok for a rock concert dvd with lots of iso's and post production but huge mistake for the olympics. Sound mix was horrible well. Shame we got glimpses of amazing images but lots lost in the shakeycam mess. Danny Boyle must be pissed off right now.

Just finished this micro budget music video. Just an AF101 - 20mm pancake lens, tripod and 3 red heads + bed sheet. I think Leigh Alner the DOP did a good job with limited resources and it came out nicely.

Good comment, I've been caught out on this one as well - thought it was running at 25fps and it was. But in vari-speed mode and no audio recorded.... Doh - Lucky I only lost a few bits..

Yarp, 50Mbs Mpeg-2. In the Uk most delivery is still on tape Digi-Beta for SD and Hdcam-SR for HD. But more broadcasters are taking files, particularly for commercials and music videos etc.. 50Mbs is good enough quality to give the video a decent chance of surviving re-compression down to 2-3Mbs for transmission. Tape deliveries are cached to server for transmission and when I worked in transmission we 50Mbs for SD.

Hi Fran Most Broadcasters will tell you what file format and bit-rate they require. Its best just to stick to that. In the UK one of the standard delivery formats for SD is 50Mbit/s Mpeg-2. Generally they want all deliveries to be the same bit-rate/format so their are no issues with trans-coding. So even if there are more efficient codecs, mpeg-2 is still used a-lot in transmission. Even if you can get similar quality with smaller files the broadcaster may specify a certain file size and you just have to stick to it. The BBC spec is very clear on whats required in the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/dq/contents/television.shtml Maybe your broadcaster has a similar document for SD submission's.

I'm sure the cast can sing. But the musical numbers still have very noticable auto-tune - plus heavy compression etc... Its a shame because in the context of the story, the performers are rehersing so a more natural sound would be appropriate. I don't understand why it needs to be so produced and 'perfect' as it kills lots of the texture of the music. Plently of Beatles recordings, have slight out of key elements in the vocals and the harmonies - its what makes it sound real and gives it personality. I imagine the raw vocal recording prior to autotune on Smash sounded pretty good, it probably wasn't neccesary to crank it up so much. I think a more natural live sound, would be more in keeping with the tone of the show. Normally I wouldn't nit pick, but the show is really great in every area so its a shame it drops the ball on the music production. I don't worry about the autotune on Glee, because the show is much less interesting. I understand many people often don't notice Autotune - but then people often will happily watch a film in the wrong aspect ratio etc...

I've enjoyed the series so far and I think the look works really well. Slick but natural and unfussy, camerawork really serving the story. Unlike the terrible autotune - which takes you out of the story, everytime the robotic vocals kick in. Not that this is that relevant to a discussion about the cinematography :)

The only way to achieve it in camera is due to long exposure times - so the cars move a decent distance while the shutters open. Your best bet would be to use a timelapse feature on a DSLR as I believe you have longer exposure times then the Red. I attempted the effect with an EX1 once and it worked sort of ok - but I couldn't get the exposure time long enough (eg over 1 sec) to really get the smooth blurred lines - the effect was more staccato. Still looked pretty good though. The effect might be achievable in post with the right effects as things like motion blur can be added - but it rarely looks as convincing as what you can get in camera.

Hi Alexander By coincidence, I attempted the very similar shot last Sunday for a music video I'm working on. See attached still, this shot was taken at about 5pm - so the suns low and contrast is a bit high. We were working with a tiny budget with no room for lighting. I think our result was a bit too contrasty but not terrible and I'm hopeing when we come to grade the footage that we can soften the contrast on the faces a bit. We were shooting on the Panasonic AF-101 which wasn't ideal, as its lattitude is quite limited. For the style and concept of video were going for, I think the lighting was acceptable - but if I was going for something more glossy - we would have had to look at lighiting it a bit more. This sort of thing is very difficult in the UK anyway, as the weather is very hit and miss. In terms of using a reflector, we were using bed sheets and they worked fine on the close ups, but didn't really do very much on the wides. But you can get away with a bit more contrast in the wides. The Sun will move during the day and if you don't have much of lighting budget this is going to be a problem. We got round this by working fast - we only shot at each location for an hour or so. You might be able to cheat your close ups and move the performers round a bit to more favorable angles. But the main challenges we found with working on the beach was the wind. Reflectors are just huge sails and you will need plenty of support to hold them down. We also stuggled keeping the performers hair under control in the wind. Good luck

Generally I just go for a decent H.264 file at a sensible bit rate. Something around: 1280 x 720 @5 -7 Mbs With a key frame every 6 frames Use two pass encode As per the recomendations on the vimeo site: https://vimeo.com/help/compression

Yes the Ikon has better dynamic range then the 550d, the best thing about the camera is its lattitude and the flexibilty of the RAW footage in the grade. It also provides an interesting look that has a lot of the super 16mm asthetic and doesn't look too digital. I shot on one earlier this year and had quite a few problems however. We lost quite a bit of footage - it played back on the camera but when we copied it to a hard disk it was unusable. Unfortunatly we didn't spot this till after the shoot. I would recommend your are paranoid about checking stuff back on the set. Also have a copy of after effects on your DIT computer to check every shot back before wiping the camera card. Are you getting the card reader or backing up off the camera? If you backingup off the camera it takes 2 hour for a 80GB (15min) card, so maje sure you have enough storage. The other fun thing the camera does is divides the image into 4 quaters and gives you different black levels for each quadrent - if you notice this on the day you need to re-calibrate the camera which sometimes fixes the problem. Otherwise you might not notice it until you start to grade the footage. Its fixable but annoying. We were pretty paranoid about looking for it and re-calibrating the camera, but a lot of our footage has this problem and is going to take time to fix. I think using in camera gain increases your chances of getting the split screen effect - so I would avoid gain at all costs. Note that the camera is rated at about 250ISO, so for night work your going to need fast lens and plenty of light. Also watch out for lens flare if you have a really bright source in the shot, you get these odd vertical flares that cut off abrubtly along the center of the screen - see pic I'm not trying to be overly negative on the camera as it can produce nice images. But you do need to know what the problems are and issues to look out for. Its possible some of the issues have been fixed with firmware updates. I personally wouldn't use the camera again, the footage I lost nearly killed the short I'm working on and the quad screen issue has been a pain to deal with in post. We also lost half a days shooting when the camera froze and refused to boot up and required the hire company come out and fix it. I think its an interesting camera and a great look, but its not mega reliable, if your used to sony's and canons that you just turn on and they work. The ikon needs more TLC - if your prepaired to do that you can get nice results. If I had to use the camera again, I'd have a spare camera on standy by and record the HD-SDI out onto an external recorder as a back up. Good Luck

As others have said - its probably best to add grain to the image in post. Also, I'd consider shooting in 2k mode - the cropped sensor is going to help match the field of view of 16mm. A 35mm size sensor - looks like a 35mm size sensor, in terms of depth of field and the way len's behave. The other advantage of the cropped sensor would automatically make the footage softer and would make it easier to achive deeper focus. Then maybe look at using 16mm lens, since I belive they would cover the 2k part of sensor.

If you can stretch to the Rode NTG-3, you won't be disappointed. The sound quality is very close to the more expensive Sennheiser 416 and a lot better then the similar priced Sennheiser ME66/K6. Its worth paying a bit extra for a mic as its something that's going to give good service for years, its a lifetime investment.

I'm in post production on a short that we shot of the Ikon. Once we've conformed the footage and colour corrected, I'll post some clips. Theres a few screen caps on my blog - http://team4films.wordpress.com/ - these arn't properly colour corrected and still a bit magenta in places. When I get more time and I've gone through the online and grade - I'll post in more detail.

Depends what machine is being used for the DI - but the chances are it would be pretty simple to convert the RAW sequence into something it understands at minimal cost. Since your going for a DI anyway its not going to add any major costs to the film out other then increases associatated with an extra 15 secs on the running time. You might need to add some grain to the timelapse footage - to better match it in with the 16mm. Or you might get away with a difference in texture - since a timelapse sequence is going to be very different to your live action footage. The look of the timelapse is jarring enough and people might not notice that it doens't have 16mm textures.

If your shooting on the standard Alexa - its probably better to shoot with spherical lens's and crop the result in post the 2.35:1. If you did use normal 2x anamorphics, because the sensor in the Alexa is 16:9 you would end up with a frame thats about 3.5:1, so you'd really have to crop the edges a lot throwing away a lot of resolution. So not really worth the extra hassel and cost of anamorphic lens's in that case. If you can find them (they are a bit rare) you could use the Hawk 1.33X anamorphic lens, they would convert the 16:9 image to 2.35:1 without cropping - keeping full resolution. They have some anamorphic artifacts but not as much as 2X lens's. Or if you can afford it, use an Alexa Studio, it has 4:3 sensor so if you use it with 2X anamorphic lens's - you get 2.66:1 - so only need a minor crop to get to 2.35:1. Also, with the Alexa studio you get a nice optical viewfinder. Also, if anamorphic is your thing, the Arri D21 might be worth considering if you could get a deal, as it has a 4:3 sensor as well.

Its difficult to give an answer not knowing the size of the area or lighting package. 200T could be workable, but 500T is probably safer. Night INT's are probably fine with 200T as you'd have access to power etc- but the EXT's can be an issue if you have to use a generator etc.. Most of the low budget night EXT shoots I've worked on, using small generators 2Kw to 5Kw. Have always needed at least 500ASA to get resonable exposure even with fast lens's. On digital shoots I'm normally working at 800 -1000ASA - so that I you can get good exposure off avalible lights. Any extra lighting is then just used to augment whats there, rather then trying to use it to light big spaces. If it were me, I'd probably go for 500T - and if I had more light then I needed, it gives me the option to stop the lens down a bit: F1.2 is a pretty unforgiving stop focuswise, even on 16mm. I think faster stocks look more natural at night then slower stocks - since avalible light reads better. Slower stocks requiring more additional lighting and can result in a look thats a bit lit if your not careful. It's really down to personal taste, personally I don't mind a bit of noise and grain. If I was going to shoot something on 16mm, it would because I wanted some grain and texture. If I wanted a cleaner look, I'd go for digital rather then struggling to achive it in 16mm. You could always pre-scout the EXT locations with a lightmeter and DSLR at night and see what you get with avalible light.

Just call the agents office in the first instance - I just ask to speak with the person who represents Actor X, you will either be put throught to the main agent or assistant in the first instance. The first thing I always ask is does the actor have any avalibly to work on any projects during the period of your shoot - since they could be on a 3 month shoot in another country and completly not avalible for your shoot. So get that bit out of the way before you even discuss your project, not point pitching it if its not going to happen. Then just tell them what the project is and what the comittment in terms of time is, a good adgent will probably want to know more about the project and why its worth taking it too their client. If it goes well they will ask for a treament or script and then its in the lap of the gods... I'd try to be vague about money up front, you don't want the adgent to close the doors based on the fee (if its a bit low), more likely you want them to like the script and get hooked on the idea - then its easier to negotiate on the money, if the actor wants to do it. I've done this a few times and probably sounded like an idiot on some occasions, but I've had some success and got scripts to big(ish) actors, even on projects I did as a student. Ultimatly it was schedualing that let me down as good actors are often busy and even if they like the project, its difficult for them to fit everything in. Of course it might be a bit more difficult in the USA with layers of people to get through, it might be a bit easier in the UK, but we have less mega-stars so UK actors in general are a bit more approachable.

I've directed and DOPed at the same time on a few jobs and sometimes its ok, on simple stuff you can work quite quickly and work on the fly. So I do like self shooting for factual and documentary type stuff. But I'm not a fan of directing and DOPing drama, I've done it a few times but I always find that I have to make too many compromises and spread my self too thin. I am competent on the camera side of things and used to work as a DOP/Cam op prior to getting into directing. But doing both jobs is often too much, your just too busy and things start to slip. I guess if you have a good gaffer and crew that would make it better. I personally struggle operating and watching performances, because I get too focused on the camera side of thing: making sure the framings nice, the pans are smooth and I'm nailing the focus - I find my self concentrating less on the performance. I love working with a good DOP because they bring stuff to the table and expand on my vision, usually its another person to bounce ideas off and try things out in a different way. I still do bits of shooting/directing, its useful when you need a bit of B-roll or just to go out with a camera an pickup a few extra shots. On the simple corporate/promo video, I often self shoot for budgetary reasons since not everyone would pay extra for a DOP, without cutting my rate - which obviously I don't want that to happen :) Ultimately, I guess its what works for you and some people are better at multi-tasking then others. But to be honest if your doing the jobs properly directing and doping and challenging enough roles on their own with adding too them.