Joseph Zizzo

for such a contrasty look, i would stay away from 5218, personally. you could use 5222, if you wanted to go with a b&w stock, but the b&w stocks are older and therefore not very sharp, compared with newer stocks. i would use fuji eterna vivid 160 if you are going tungsten, or fuji 64D if you are going daylight. i have been using them alot in the past 2 years for that kind of result, they are just naturally more contrasty negatives. for me, it is always a struggle to try to get this look out of a vision2 stock, both in camera and in telecine, unless is i am dealing with a low light, night-time, very low-key scenes. it seems like the emulsion is just not engineered for it. with the two fuji stocks i mentioned, you will get a naturally more contrasty look, and controlling spill and bounceback, as michael alluded to, will not be so much of an issue. i think you are right on track witht the octodome. you nees a large, soft source like that, or a chimera, and the grid or crate is essential for control. but if it is just a single subject as in the reference photo, you might want to go a little smaller on the source, like 4', say. this will give you the quality of light you are looking for, and will allow you to control the light more easily than with a larger source. try to find that sweet spot for the source, where it is close enough to fall off nicely on the subject, but not so close that it balsts the floor, or that you can't get your cutters in. have fun! ps - for a look at an example of that fuji eterna vivid, refer to the lexus spot at the linked website below. different application, but you get the idea:

it seemed to be rolling normally, that is the weird thing...

the neg was checked, and i looked at the dailies. we are just missing takes, from two different setups, and unfortunately they are key scenes. both times the camera was locked off, i was at the monitor and the assistant rolled it, so we probably weren't rolling when we thought we were. bummer. that said, we got a lot of amazing stuff handheld with that camera, that i couldn't have gotten with the prod. their edit won't be what they wanted, exactly, but there is a lot of beautiful stuff there... sorry there wasn't better news, thanks for all the input. don't let this happen to you!!

this is it, exactly:

that is the guy i was talking about, i was just waiting until a reasonable hour to call him... thanks!

well, what has been requested is a wide shot is of a major nba star working his gps device while driving, with the camera in the back seat, in the middle of the car, looking straight out the windshield, over his shoulder. i imagine we will see the entire winshield, so the side tow is out, i would see the tow vehicle. i would prefer not to have him drive the car, with a bunch of lights and rigging on it, and towing a genny. the car is a prius, so it can't handle much anyway. and, i would like to get a bit more than a couple of 1200's coming in the side windows, for balance, so that the exterior doesn't get too hot. the shot is all about the dashboard and the gps, so i need good exposure inside the car as well. and i need to get the lights far enough away so that i don't see them... but i think i may have have found the answer since my last post. i have been given the name of a guy with a camera car that can push a process trailer. i'll let you know what happens with it....

does anyone know of a process trailer on the west coast (US) that would allow for a forward-facing shot out of the windshield? obviously the conventional process trailer is set up to look in all driections but out the winshield, from which point the camera sees the tow vehicle. the director on the job i'm on wants a wide-angle shot looking straight out the middle of the windshield, no compromise... the car is a prius, so there is a limit to what can be rigged to/towed by the car itself. the job is in arizona (bright!) so i'd like to get more than a 1200 par coming in the side window. good one, eh!?

fran, i misspoke there, its that the image can shift a bit, not go out of focus. same difference i guess... i don't think the camera was ever not rolling. that of course was the first thing i thought of, horrifyingly, but i was using a pistol grip with a side-to-side toggle switch on it, and i always saw the shutter going in the viewfinder. besides, if ever the camera didn't start when we thought we rolled, it would have started when i thought i was cutting, and we would have footage of the crew or the assistant's shirt or whatever. there is no weird footage like that in the dailies, so that probably didn't happen. in addition, some scenes cut out a few seconds in... so the camera definitely rolled, at least initially. the whole thing is very weird and i am totally freaked out over it. i don't know when i will ever use an a-minima again! we did loose the loop once early in the day, and we ended up with a bit of spaghetti in the chamber, but we discovered it and covered the scene again. there is no further danmage to the neg according to the lab. i'll keep you posted...

thanks for the insight, nathan. i usually go to you guys when i shoot 16, but in this instance the camera came from handheld, mainly because they had some film from another job to go with it, and it was a "low-budget" - $100,000 - music video. would you still want to look at their camera? we only had the spaghetti situation once, there are no scratches, and the film never broke or tore. nor was there ever any loud or strange noises coming from the camera. but it did take the assistant a very long time to load it, 15 minutes, and he does have experience with the camera. this was not his first time out with it, and in general he is one of the better assistants in ny. is this a possible indicator of something not quite right with the camera? on terms of loader error - what would it be, that the loop was not set to the right length? i am going to call aaton about it right now. hopefully they can lend some insight. thanks again, and good luck on your new endeavors.

thanks all for your input and sorry for the slow response... well, today my initial dissatisfaction with the a-minima seems trivial - we now have a problem of missing footage. the director tells me that in the editing process, he is finding that takes we both know we shot just aren't there. i don't know how this could have happened. in some instances, there are gaps in a roll, in others, the roll ends short of what the footage was, and in other cases, there appears to be a roll out. of course as luck would have it, all of the later and (better) takes are missing. i must say, this is my worst nightmare come to life... fran, the footage we did get looks amazing, thanks for asking. about the lens mount, i was strongly advised by my ac, who has done an amazing job for me on so many other shoots, to use the focus motor. his reason was that he believed the lens could shift a bit when the focus puller grabs the follow-focus, as a result of the rubber gasket. in very low light - and we rode the edge the entire job - combined with long lenses, he was afraid this little shift could affect critical focus. but this was just a problem that i struggled with, no one else realizes or was affected by it. before the missing scenes, i thought the biggest problem was the reloads. while he said he had used the camera before, it took him probably 10-15 minutes to reload the camera. not the mag, just the camera! obviously this bacame a tense political situation on set - esp on a music video - but i thought i had weathered the storm when i heard the footage looked great (we shot in ny and they took it back to la for telecine). but now, this... i guess my assistant's experince with the a-minima, was, uh, minimal... and i thought i had done my homework, too. i searched this and other forums on the subjct of the a-minima, i read over the manual, and i had a conversation with my assistant about the job and my expectations several days before the job. i concluded that since we were going for a handheld, fashion-style look, i could get some great stuff with this camera - and i did. but now, much of it is lost. has anyone had this problem before with this camera? what the hell happened!!?? did the camera loose its loop, or jam? was it a loading problem, or did the camera malfunction? thanks to all.

i just used the a-minima for the first time, and i must say, i was grossly disappointed! it took forever to reload, the eyepiece is fixed in a not very ergonomic position, and the flexible lens mount situation made a remote focus motor necessary. which means rods and a baseplate, which adds weight and obstructions to maximum handhold-ability. so in the end, not at all what its cracked up to be, imo...

the events are context for emotion... what a great way to put it. that is certainly true of "in the mood for love", an extraordinarily compelling film both visually and dramatically, you just can't look away. there is an emotional tone to this type of film that is hard to describe, let alone achieve. another one i love is "vera drake". that film just captures the events and their imact in the characters' lives, as well as the time period in which they take place so well, its sublime. dick pope really struck a perfect chord in that one, sort of an opposite approach, look-wise, to mike leigh's other fine films. someone mentioned "point blank", another incredible film of depth and tone. are there any hal ashby fans out there? "coming home" and "being there" are similar in the powerful way they create time and space for the story to unfold in...

for the effect you're going for, you really want to use a single fresnel. ideally a big fresnel, so you can, as jonathan said quite accurately, back the light up and even out the beam. this concept is essential, in my view, for creating a sunlight effect, and a fresnel has just the right kind of photmetrics to imitate sunlight, especially at full flood. and you definitely want to use some sort of window effect. if you have the power/budget for 3 redheads, you have power for a mole-richardson studio 2k fresnel (not a baby junior). if you can get your hands on one, they are much cheaper than hmi's. for a small fresnel, it'll give you a ton of light, and it'll be of the exact quality that you are looking for. actually, a 1.2 hmi fresnel (not a par) would be a good choice, too, and would also be pretty cheap, since everyone tends to work with pars when using small hmi's. if you can afford a 5k fresnel, that would be ideal, because you can back the light up even more. but if not, then go with the 2k, or the 1.2 hmi fresnel... if you follow jonathan's other excellent suggestions, using smoke and keeping the bg down, amd maybe gel the lights with lee "wheat" (763?) you'll achive an excellent late-afternoon effect. have fun!

hi eric, i was a gaffer before i became a dp here in new york, and it was a great path for me as far as learning and developing relationships are concerned. i'll tell you how i did it: right after film school, i was working as a p.a. on a medium-budget independent feature, and i sort of made it my business to become friendly with the electricians. i drove a van and i would (among other things) deliver lights that day-played back and forth to them from the rental house. when the feature was over, they recommended me to a gaffer who owned a lighting truck, and i worked for a year or two taking care of his gear and driving his truck on shoots, mostly small commercials. in the meantime, i started to get hired by other gaffers i met on shoots as an electrician, mostly on music videos. years of running cable, setting lights and distributing loads taught me what i needed to know to start working as a gaffer, first on smaller shoots, independent features, music videos, and then on larger commercials. i picked up some basic lighting skills and then some more advanced techniques. i learned about dimmer boards and the wonders of socapex cable. i went out to LA and worked on big music videos a few weeks or months at a time. i eventually joined the union... the biggest thing i brought to the table was enthusiasm. i always gave a dp a sense that he had no worries, i woud get it done for him in as little time as possble, and always within the time we had promised. and the other thing, as you say, is passion: coming up with new solutions to lighting problems, always on the lookout for new ideas. and always evaluating the results and trying to improve next time out. which i still do now as a dp... i hope this helps, let me know if i can help some more. joe

the best for me has been blain brown's "cinematography", from focal press. its amazing. it has something for everyone...

its an 11º shutter, its sort of one of the director's trademarks. you need an extra 4 stops, though, so plan for it. its definitely nothing to take lightly, especially on an interior - you'll be surprised at just how much light you have to pump in, and if you shoot high speed as well its worse. definitely use a photometrics table, and leave yourself a few extra footcandles, if you can afford to. its worth the trouble if you have the right subject, its an amazing look for a video. scroll down to find the videos called "feeing good" and "hypermusic" by the band muse: http://www.microcuts.net/uk/videos these are 2 videos i shot for david slade about 6 years ago - they were shot at the same time, on the same set, i'm sure you'll notice. it was all done at an 11º shutter, with the non-playback stuff often at 60-90 fps, on 5274 (200 asa)! and i think a lot of the playback was done at 50fps, with the track rolling double speed, and sounding like the chipmunks on speed. this was before the optimo or the hawk were widely available on that budget level, so we shot on a bunch of long lenses that were about an f4 wide open... he let me go to a 22º shutter for those. one good thing about those lenses was that they got me out from under the lights! man it was hot in there... hope this helps and, plan well!

its cineflex, and they make an aerial hd system based on a sony 950. pretty cool, i had never heard of it. for all those interested: http://www.helinet.com/v14.phtml

is there much difference from one maufacturer to another of HD tape? does anyone have a preference?

i'm going to use it for the first time next week and was wondering if anyone had any experience. thanks.

grainy? that's surprising, for a slower film... but maybe that's intentional. its tough to get grain nowadays. i like the grain of the reala, when a little texture is called for. i mean, why else shoot film?

i have been a big fan of fuji since reala came out, but i haven't had the opportunity to use the new eterna 160 yet. any experiences out there? i'm excited because it claims to have a contrast level i've mised at times, what with the eternas and vision 2 and the incredible shadow detail that those newer stocks give us. which i love, but some situations call for a bit more contrast. the fuji 64D is good in that regard, too.

thanks, david. do the hawks (or other) the pl mount anamorphics flare in a similiar way, with the horizontal line and ovals, etc.? i used a set of the elite, aka "russian", anamorphics once, which were great, but it wasn't the kind of situation where i could test for flares... thanks again.

does anyone know of a series of anamorhic lenses that produce a neutral or warm horizontal flare, as opposed to the panavision blue variety? perhaps with a pl mount, even? thanks.

oh i see, thank you. yes, i think the Z1 can be set to 1/60 in 50i HDV mode. it doesn't have clear scan, though.... too bad.

isn't 1/60 ntsc? i was told by the rental house tech support guy that in HDV mode, the shutter speed needs to be at 1/50 (50i) (or multiples) to be recording in PAL.