Joseph Zizzo

mike, david makes, not surprisingly, a good point - a reality check from the voice of experience! can you move to a more friendly location? that will make your life a lot easier...

oh, and i meant to say, i thought freya made a good point about turning off the lights nearest the talent. you could just turn the flouro tube a bit, if you can reach it, just until it shuts off. as freya said, probably no one will even notice. then, if you are forced to use the '98, you will avoid that nasty green in fill side of faces. even if you are using a newr stock, you might want to do that if the window light is better on people than the overhead flourescents. (it usually is.) what school are you in, anyway?

hi mike, i know you said it is a student project you're doing, but if there is any chance at all of using a little more current film stock, there are a few that are very good in mixed lighting situations. fuji reala 500D is the best in mixed lighting, you won't have to gel lights or windows or change flourescent tubes. it is daylight balanced, and very forgiving in the shadows, so it would kind of solve all of your problems. you could then concentrate on the storytelling. oh, and its a bit cheaper than kodak. good luck, and have fun!

that is one of the most inspiring things i've read, maybe ever! thanks, stephen.

oh dude, lighten up... phil's post is an obviously over-the-top, exaggerated and cynical assessment of some circumstances in our business that don't happen to be particularly pleasant, but that are to some degree realities we must live with... better to joke about it and live to shoot another day, than to be bitter or unrealistic, i think... which goes to the original post of this thread, because in order to succeed, imho, one must ackowledge the politics of filmaking, and learn to sort of shine when one needs to, while at the same time maintaining one's personal and artistic integrity. one must show willingness to give one's heart and soul to a particular project, yet somehow avoid being played for a fool by those who control the purse strings. it can be tricky, at times... soooooo... in the spirit of humor, how can you tell a producer's lying!?

actually i think philmakes some good points - especially the part about the sucking up, the bootlicking, the schmoozing and the lying...! now if you can do all that, and you have talent on top of it, then you really have it made!

the only thing i would add is, if you don't rig it to any kind of condor crane, the wind can become a political issue, as well as a technical one. as kevin said, they are kind of expensive, so sometimes you have to fight for them a little. it then becomes embarassing if it's too windy to use them! i say this from experience, it just happened to me last night... fortunately i am working with an understanding producer, and a director i have worked with for a long time, so it was no problem. but just a word to the wise, don't fight to hard for a baloon light without first checking the weather forecast! joe

hey jayson, great choices, london and rome... make sure you have pizza one night at Bafetta in rome, evenings only. go to the daily market in the campo dei fiori. there's an awesome little wine bar right there for evenings (don't go to the american bar next door - lame!), lots of lovely italian women in there. there's a great little hotel there, too, callled Albergo della Lunetta. it wasn't too expensive last time i stayed there, but now nothing's that cheap, with the euro! on another evening go up to piazza della piace, and stop in the bar della piace. beautiful place to have a glass of wine, lots of locals.... in london make sure you hit portobello road on saturday morning, then go up to the cafe lisboa for coffee after. its up on a little street off the north end of portobello road, keep walking up and asking directions til you find it. let me know if you want/need more info, and have fun! joe

etienne, are they made by seiko? i found something by that name on their website... where do yoiu get the stuff, anyway? thanks, joe

btw, adam, nice work. i would think the club scene you referred to the one on your reel... very nice subtle, simple beautiful photgraphy.

sorry dude, i meant push a stop and rate at 2000! of course if you push a stop you rate 5229 - or 18 - at 1000! what i meant to say was, i have heard of dp's underexposing 5229 2 stops, and then pushing a stop. actually, i think the way it is done is to rate at 1600, so you ar underexposing 1 2/3 stops, then pushing a stop. i have never tried it, i always wanted to test it first, but never got the chance. and i agree, either the 18 or the 29, or really any of the vision 2 stocks, hold up to a 1 stop push amazingly well. that's realy vision 2's strong suit, underexposure/fine grain, imho. fuji realla seems to be the only stock you can get any grain out of these days. oops, i think we've gotten off-topic here!

so right, pars are always more bang for the (electrical) buck. what about shooting 5229 and pushing a stop? that'll give you a little more to work with, and you don't really pick up much grain in 35, esp if you're shooting for telecine... i've even heard of people pushng a stop and rating at 1000, but i haven't been gutsy enough to try that yet!

that is cool, michael, but it would be cooler if you could search by movie title....! i was looking for frame stills the other week for lighting references. we were doing a spot with different looks from different decades in it, and i needed some visual inspiration. also, i knew i wouldn't be able to be at the final telecine, so i sent the refs along with my own stills from the shoot, to the post prod supervisor. it wasn't that easy finding the ones i wanted...

doggicam's got this rig here, its for a pov shot (dancer's arm and legs in the shot, but not head) of a dancer during a broadway-style performance. i think it's what i want to use, i can put the 235 on it:

what's the best way to rig a 235 or 3c in pov mode (on the chest, next to the head, or other such...), doggicam? thanks!

you're the first dp i've ever heard say they use fc when metering! and when i was a gaffer, i worked with some old-school guys... like haskel wexler, e.g., he expressed his light measurement in f-stop, and he used those fractional thirds-of-stops, like 2.5 and 6.3. the first time he said, i'm "reading a 10 here", i didn't know what he was talking about... until his assistant whispered to me, "8 and 2/3"! i know many times i have to do the conversion from fc to f-stop in the course of calculating photometrics, depending on how the photometrics table is written. but in terms of using them on set, for me its just an extra mathematical step i don't need in the middle of a shoot. i'd rather just put all the filters and everything right into the meter, and call out the f-stop from there. for me, its simpler... that said, i do know what you mean, john, in this sense: anyone who uses a petax spot meter, which i do, reads in ev, and then calculates how that absolute light reading relates to an f-stop at a given asa rating. actually i do it the other way, i look up what my shooting stop is in ev, then i spot-meter the set to check the shooting stop. in that sense, i agree with you.

i absolutely agree, there is no substitute for experience. you definitely want to err on the side of too much light. i use pars all he time for this reason, they give out a ton of light. and we are always bouncing or going through diffusion nowadays, so you need a ton of light. for tungsten work, i love maxibrutes and minibrutes (also called "9-light fay"). they each have 9 pars, individually switchable. (forgive me if you know all of this already.) the minibrute is awesome: it gives you as much light as a 10k, but uses the power of a 5k. then there is the parcan, with one 1k par 64 in an amazingly simple and indestructibe housing that controls a lot of the spill for you. great, cheap light. you also want to take into consideration, and be able to approximate, how much light a given diffusion will eat up. that said, i must admit that i'm still constantly asking the grips to change the grid cloth to light grid!! slow learner, i guess... but it helps to have a plan B, something you're sure of, that you can fall back on, quickly, if what you're going for doesn't work. and do use those photometric tables, especially when planning a setup where you need tons of light for slo-mo or skinny shutter or whatever... they have saved me more than a few times. as far as lux and footcandles go, i wouldn't bother. its just a system of measurement, and no one uses it anymore. meters all read in f-stop now - i don't even remember what a t-stop is, i don't think. a very smart dp once said to me, never memorize what you can look up. in other words, keep your mind free to riff. for me, its all about what frank and adrian are saying: its a long-term learning procees wherein you develop your talent by trusting your eye, and in the meantime paying attention to the technical stuff, so you can repeat good results.

a small lightening strikes unit is my personal preference for this type of effect. with a lightening strikes, you know you have a long enough decay, and you can hold the control unit in you hand and flash it yourself while you're shooting (or have the director or gaffer do it). you can vary the duration of your flash in real time, which i find to be a bit more expressive (or something) than intelligent lighting. and you have plenty of power if you want to overexpose. from what i have heard recently, dataflash is being phased out. i used something new a couple of weeks ago, i will find out what it was for you. it was a less expensive option, like the dataflash, but there seemed to be more control over the duration of the flash... anyway, it should look cool in slow motion! have fun...

thanks, andrew. you wouldn't have any particular episodes you like, would you? narrow down the search a little...

that's true, walter, and its a great point. when the opportunity arose, there were directors more than ready to work that way. "saturday night fever" is i think one of the underrated gems from this era, i definitely need to go watch it again. i also agree with dan that psychedelic drug use - or more accurately the social revolution that was going on at the time - was the cauldron in which these films were made. it was the catalyst... which of course started in the 60's. people were throwing off the repression and superficiality of the 50's. the realities of the vietnam war could no longer be denied, with ghastly tv images flooding people's homes on a nightly basis, and people were doing drugs and having revelatory experiences. people didn't want to watch tab hunter ponce around as if none of this was going on, they wanted to see raw, honest movies that reflected and explored the brave new world they were experiencing on a daily basis. the insightful and fearless filmmakers working in that environment, with reams of untold stories to tell and ready to break with the conventions of the past, teamed with bold cinematographers, with lighter cameras and faster lenses and stocks to work with, made some of the best films ever produced.

the seventies was definitely a golden age for filmaking in general... "easy riders and raging bulls", which i'm sure you've all read, tells the story amazingly well. hollywood was lost creatively. they were trying to compete with tv on its own ground, with vacuous stuff like the frankie and annette series, and they were getting killed. so when dennis hopper came along and wanted to make "easy rider", they said what the hell, lets roll the dice, its cheap enough. when that film made a fortune, and at the same time the aforementioned technolological advances were happening, and with influence from the french new wave, director-driven filmmaking was born in hollywood. dp's were freed from convention, and they became collaberators with these amazingly creative directors. the art of cinematography evolved in leaps and bounds in this environment... has anyone ever seen, "the landlord", one of willis' early films, directed by hal ashby in 1970? it is kind of a harbinger of what we think of as independent film today, and its one of my favorites.

thanks, david, its first on my netflix queue!

hi all, i am looking for some good examples of a poor man's process for reference, in recent (or not so recent) films. does anyone have a favorite? thanks, joe

michael, nice effect, i wish i had used it on "jesse mccartney"! such a smart, simple technique...

you don't need inferno for such a simple concept! just trust your eye, it got you the gig... and this gig is all about photography, not post effects. let your instincts guide you though the shoot, and the telecine, and you will get what you are after. to answer the questions about "floetry" and "jesse mccartney" (and thank you for the kind words): in the "floetry" video, we shot on b&w stock - 5222 - and i used a battery of filters, depending on light, location, subject. i don't have the notes on that job here with me now, but i think the scenes i liked the best, like the interior of the cafe, were shot with the medium orange. the reds are a little too heavy for people with dark skin, as i remember - i think they worked best for dark-skinned subjects in direct sunlight. for me, most of the time the yellows didn't do enough. and while i am at it, i must give an enormous amount of credit to director, marcus raboy, for seeing the wisdom in shooting b&w neg. the job was all daylight and we moved so fast we couldn't really spend much time lighting, so i let him know i felt 5222 was really the best choice to get a contrasty, street-photog kind of look. he realized that was the case early, got behind the idea and made it happen. smart guy... on "jesse mccartney", we shot 5218. that video, a night exterior, is the perfect situation for a vison2 stock, whether finishing in b&w or color, imo: low-light night scene, exterior, with far away backgrounds and lots of existing light to play around in. i basically just had a couple of 80' condors, each with a big fresnel in it, and probably with a 4x4 opal on it. we used one to shoot, the gaffer leapfrogged the other ahead to the next scene. we used diffusion frames to soften further when we got in tight, used a little kino or bounce fill when we needed it... but most of the time we didn't even use that. the '18 is so sensitive in the midtones, a lot of the time whatever came off existing steetlights or bounced up off the street was more than enough to fill. for me that's the advantage of vision2 stocks. and its also why i don't think its such a great such a great stock for the look rolfe is going for. with a smaller set, with walls close by, subject right down on the floor, light is going to bounce around, no matter how much cutting you do, and the mids will get filled in. with vision2, that can't be avoided. if you look at the "darren hayes" video on my reel, that was done on 5218. i used so little light, and underexposed so much, i couldn't sleep the night we wrapped! and you still have such a great amout of detail in the shadows and mids... sorry for the long, windy post. have fun, and go for it!!