Alex Wuijts

Thanks Stephen and John.. John, I've no idea about the Eyemo lens mount, so maybe you can judge by these pictures below. Left is the lens hood, the middle part holds the aperture ring and the lens elements, the right part holds the focusing ring, with distances in meters. Forgive me for the poor quality of my phone camera. Hope that works.

Hey guys, I've got a 100mm Cooke Panchro in front of me and I'm curious about the history of it. The lens barrel says Cooke Deep Field Panchro, 100mm, 4inch, f2.5. It's got black and dark green paint and it says 'War Finish' on the side. Can anyone tell me more about this lens and when it was made? Serial# is 280807. Thanks!

This 'ring of Hollywood' is enough to ruin it for me everytime, especially when it's about war. In war all idealizing or romanticizing is perverse, and personally I want war movies to reflect just that. I'm not saying the Hurt Locker was all bad, I'm saying it was just bad enough. As far as acting goes I more or less just saw a couple of stereotypes interacting, no real psychology to it. I was especially let down by the last scenes where he's in the supermarket surrounded by cereal boxes to show his level of alienation from American society. Yeah we all know US supermarkets can be quite surreal, thanks for telling me for the millionth time.

Hey Satsuki, thanks for the kind reply! I'm still new to vimeo, so I'll look into it.

Does the video playback smoothly? By the way, the commercial is a school project. It's to support an anti-bullying campaign.

Hey all, Here's a commercial I shot for a student/director from the Utrecht School of Arts. It was shot on the Red. I would like to hear your feedback! http://www.vimeo.com/9782953 -Alex-

I thought the film was OK but nine oscar nominations?! To me it was a typical Hollywood story shot in a verité style that gave it a little edge but ofcourse is very trendy nowadays, maybe more in Europe than anywhere else. Personally I like that style a lot so I didn't have any problems with it. I especially admired some of the very dark scenes, but as far as story goes this film left a lot to be desired. To me the film seemed to be in conflict with itself, trying to show the soldiers who serve in Iraq (and the Iraqi people as well) as ordinary people, but it somehow couldn't resist some of the heavy stereotyping you would expect in a typical blockbuster war movie. I think the last scene was exemplary, where the main character walks alone to the horizon like some kind of Lucky Luke cowboy, with heavy rock music in the score. Most of the scenes left me with a typical feeling that there was something missing, that it could have been a lot better if it weren't for all the bombast.

hehe, that youtube video made me laugh. [you]"What makes you, like, explode?" -[girl, spits on the ground] "people" She's badass. Good luck with the film Ernie, looks like you're enjoying yourself which is great.

Sometimes the camera won't boot (build 17) when you have the viewfinder and LCD screen plugged in because it lacks the necessary voltage. The little screen in the back will just show the message "booting...". Unplugging the LCD screen before startup is the solution.

"You have to be careful when using the Easy Rig with an SR with an old style handle. It is slightly tapered and there is a danger of the Easy Rig sliding off the handle. I added a small loop onto my rig to keep the handle in position." Yes we encountered this as well. We firmly secured the rig to the handle because of this.

My experience with the easyrig is with the 2.5 and the SRII. While 'babying' the camera - holding the camera in front of my body - I found it difficult to keep the horizon level because the string was pulling it sideways. It did make the camera very light and a little steadier.

The dining room. Lamps above the table had 250W bulbs dimmed down a bit, and the lamp in the background had a 100W bulb. I only did some minor color correction on these stills. Hope you like them! Material was Eterna 500T. Stop was F2.8-

Here are some stills from the short film I mentioned a few posts back. The one below is lit with just a 200w (or 100W, not sure) bulb above the table. The table itself created a nice bounce. I didn't want to fill in the background to keep it a little dramatic.

I love simple lighting setups! Last weekend I shot a short film using only practicals and a soft overhead light I build with my gaffer, consisting of two woodboard with 10 40W bulbs each. The practicals were mostly 200 and 100W bulbs. For people in need of cheap and simple lighting solutions, the overhead light is a great idea. I put 1/2 White Diffusion to get rid of the hard shadows and soften it a little, and then I put a small skirt around it to flag it from the walls (also a good idea to reduce the risk of boom shadows by the way). The boards were placed on two pole cats which were secured to the ceiling. The room was 3,5m wide, but the pole cats held up nicely because it's not a heavy rig at all. Here's a picture: Story is about a mother whose son returns from the war in Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress syndrom. At the family reunion he suddenly attacks and hurts his little brother. We wanted the camera to roam freely around the room, so I didn't want any light stands in the way. I used the Easyrig to to a little weight away from the SRII and to give it a slight floating feeling. It was shot on Eterna 500T, stop was f/2.8 and I overexposed it a little. I always tried to have hotspots in the background when I had underexposed faces. I'll post some stills if I get them.

Hey Anthony, What do you mean with "How well they work"? And what do you mean with "a bit higher quality"? 16mm is - generally - an inferior format compared to 35mm in terms of sharpness because of the larger negative of the latter. The lenses used for 35 have to cover a larger negative area than 16, so you'll get a narrower field of view when using these lenses on a s16mm camera. 35mm lenses will not necessarily give you better quality. You're probably better off renting newer super16 primes. Make a test where you shoot a sharpness test chart (the one with different line pairs) with different types of lenses, including your super speeds. It's useful to perform this test with a slow stock, so visible grain will be less of an issue when judging sharpness. To perform this test: 1) Make sure your camera is on a steady surface. 2) Position your camera exactly in front, horinzontally and vertically, of the test chart, which you attached to a flat surface. Use a tape measure for this. The srII doesn't have a mark for where the film plane is, so you have to establish the exact position first. There is a very simple and precise way to do this using a wooden stick used to clear the gate and a piece of tape. I'll send you a drawing if you want. 3) Chose the minimal focus distance of the lens or, if you have a large test chart, a distance which fills the whole frame with the test chart. 4) Light the chart so you can get a good exposure with the aperture full open. Light from a sharp angle, so you don't get reflections on the chart. Don't dim the light, because lowering the color temperature means lowering the contrast and your perception of sharpness. Use scrims or nd filters instead. 5) Identify your test: be sure to note the camera type and serial number, date. 6) Shoot the test with the lenses you would like to compare. Make sure you identify all the lenses before you test them, for example: Ultra Prime, serial # xxxxxx. 7) Once developed, cut a frame of the different tests and make it into a slide so you can judge it very critically. This way you'll have an easy way to store the test for future use. Make sure you use a camera which itself has been tested on registration and flange focal distance. Good luck.

Yes, a little breath and a bunch of kimwipes was the way I was taught as well by an AC with 20 years of experience. Use a wooden cotton swab with a little acetone for stains that won't go away with the aforementioned method. Squeeze the cotton swab flat with pliers to clean hard to reach spots. You can use a toothbrush to clean the teeth of the focus and aperture ring.

Claire Denis and Agnes Godard.

Roger Deakins put some dutch angles in Doubt as well, although they felt a little out of place.

Thanks Adrian. If I would be able to have the models repeat the same motion a couple of times it would be a lot easier, so that definitely poses a problem.

Hello, I will shoot a short video for a fashion designer for a coming fashion biennale. Every one of her designs is made up of small, interchangeable parts. What we want to do is film the models at normal speed moving around, with the clothing parts constantly changing. We might even want to try out some slow mo stuff although our shooting format isn't decided yet. Any advice on how to achieve this effect would be greatly appreciated!

come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we didn't nd them :)

I've seen a cherry picker with three 6k spacelights gelled half blue being used to fill a pretty large area, 100 sq ft, like a low-budget balloon substitute. Not to be recommended in all weather situations ofcourse. I think we even had to ND them.

That's a very nice idea, putting the spacelights just above the windows. Did it create a soft skylight effect in the kitchen or were they just to light the cyc?

Hey Stuart, nice job! I have a question about the saturation level. Why would one lower the saturation in camera as opposed to in post? Thanks and good luck with the film,

That was a very impressive presentation yesterday. Sitting in the front seat I was blown away by the shots, especially the one with the girl sitting at the table backlit by a very bright window. Can someone tell me why the brightness of the projection seemed a little too high, judging from the color bars at the beginning?