Cody Jacobs

I find the cord under the leg method to be a bit annoying for the same reason. Infact I've seen more people nearly pull the all too taught cable out of the head by sticking up on a stand that had the cord under the leg then I have lights falling over from the cables being tripped on. If I think that is a possibilty I just leave enough slack beneath the stand to make sure they'd have to drag it for a while before it was ripped down. And also just making sure cabling is for the most kept free from heavy traffic areas, and if it is then have it protected or marked. As far as keeping the tie down screw fully screwed in when the head is not in use I have been doing that for a while simply out of habit because I once worked with a gaffer who did not want his tie downs bent or lost on set or during travel by leaving them partially screwed in. So its become a matter of instinct for me to make sure they are unscrewed before putting them onto a stand, and thus not very frustrating to deal with constantly forgetting.

I just had the great pleasure of seeing 'The Good Shepherd' down at the ole' cinemaplex and good god if Robert Richardson did not floor me again with his amazing photography. The movie was also very interesting, however I was far too busy drooling over Richardson's work to pay attention to much else so I suppose I'll have to go see it again. I thought what he did for night exteriors was really beautiful and although similiar to things he had done before it seemed different and enjoyable. Also the silhouettes they accomplish in that movie will bring a grown man to tears. On a side note does anyone happen to know if Ian Kincaid gaffed this film for him? I didn't get a chance to catch it in the credits and they only have a New York specific gaffer listed on IMDB.

If the hertz rate is not consistent will you get flicker from a kino or does the ballast regulate the voltage to the head?

Was HD camera package your first choice or just something put into your lap by production?

Thanks for the response...I had had some heat issues with 8'' Jr's before, then again they could have just been extremely shoddy.

What is the safe range of tilt for a 2K open faced fixture such as a Mighty Mole?

I think what you have coming in through the window is pretty nice on its own. I would have considered losing the other HMI and kino all together. Or perhaps not to go quite as contrasty bounce the HMI into what looks like wood floors in that apartment for some warmer room tone and then placing the kino on camera to give the subject a little detail with frontal fill. Then again I don't know the mood of the story at this specific moment and so forth.

Perhaps this topic has been discussed before, but I'm interested in hearing peoples general opinions. My question is what are some examples of your favorite camera moves from the hundreds of films I'm sure we all have seen. For me two Robert Richardson examples stick out. The first is from Casino in which the camera starts out perched extremely high above the sign of a bookies joint as Joe Pesci enters. With incredible fluidity the camera booms down to eye level with Pesci and turns into a long steadicam shot that follows him as he weaves around the crowded establishment to collect on a debt. I never even thought about how intricate of a shot that was until like the fifth time I watched the film because it fits in with the aesthtic that Richardson and Scorsese created so well that it was practically unnoticeable. The second is more of a general example from Natural Born Killers in which the camera is constantly swiveling and canting this way and that motivated purely by the intensity of the character(s) being photographed.

I was working on a student production a few days ago that used solely daylight heads. We were running off house power with your typical blend of 15 and 20 amp circuits connected to about 7 smaller HMI heads, a package which consisted of 4 1.2k's and 3 575's. As this was equipment from our school it was an amalgam of new and old fresnel and PAR fixtures mostly from Arri, though two of the 1200's were old Sunrays. Each of the 1.2k's had their own dedicated 20amp circuit just to play it safe while the 575's were connected in-line with a few kino's and a dedo spread out on three 15amp circuits. We didn't have any issues with popping breakers or anything of that nature, but a peculiar situation arose with the newest of our Arri 1.2k Pars. For some reason the connection between the male Edison of the ballast power cable and the female Edison of the line providing house power kept heating up to the point of nearly melting. At first I thought this might be caused by the fact that we had a rather long cable run to get to the light which was placed outside even though the stinger was beyond the proper rating for such a situation. So I switched the head to a line that ran a much much shorter distance yet the problem still persisted. To double check I made sure that each of the lines I had tested the head on were indeed 20 amp circuits and that nothing else was running off of these. As we had insured before this was still the case. So this was apparently not the issue. To further test what could be happening we checked to make sure that the lines were secure and free from anything that might be cause excessive impedence and sure enough they were fine. I then tried running the ballast off of flicker free mode at regular 60Hz output just to see if for some reason that might have been doing anything. Of course the troubled continued. Unfortunately we wrapped for the day before we could test any further, and like most student shoots the schedule was too hectic and time consuming to get the head out again and try a few other options. Now I established that it wasn't a faulty stinger because I tried different ones. So as far as I could tell it was either a bad ballast or an issue with the head itself. We couldn't afford to spare a ballast from another light because they all had to contine working so that variable was not tested. I'm just wondering if anyone had any technical guesses at what might have been going on just for my own curiosity sake. Thanks.