Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC

Finally this movie is a go. We had our first production meeting today and I got to meet my gaffer who I haven't seen in a year. He's a really talented commercial Gaffer/Key Grip. A lot of commercials, up here in Vancouver, use one crew as swing grip and electrics. I think its perfect for this project. It defiantly makes things simpler for me because sometimes I have difficulty communicating with two people when the crews are small. Often times a gaffer will be near me while the key grip is setting flags on small crews like this and you need to be constantly tracking people down to repeat something you just told your gaffer. Plus commercial crews up here are really elite because it?s a small community and they get paid more then grips and elx on union shows. The union up here has a lot of dead weight and its great to be able to work with a crew that when you call for a light that needs to go up in the air they will actually run, not walk, to the stash and nab a light, all the do dads he needs to rig it, and just throw the whole thing up and focuses it in minutes. I find it?s a much more efficient way, for me at least, to work. One problem I?m having is setting up camera test to coordinate with a post color-grading house. The executive producer is so focused on getting the project in the ?can? that he doesn?t want to pick a post house yet. However on this film we are going for a unique look, which is going to be generated in post. I really want to go to this post house called Digital Film Central whom I?ve had a lot of meetings with over the year and seem extremely good and have a brand new place. I want to build a relationship with them for future indie projects. They have an Arriscan, Arrilaser, and a Baselight color corrector. Not sure of the color management they have but I?m sure its good. They have a 2k DLP Projector to grade off of as well. They work in tapeless 16-bit TIFF workflow, which is ideal. I'm concerned about this testing thing. Why go into color correction and create a custom LUT/"Look" after the shoot when we can do it before? This way I can light to that calibration and latitude saving us time and money later on, and we will end up with a better looking project. This applies to a film out, HD DVD, DVD, and digital projection. It will also allow me to self color grade the dailies and offline edit so the director can become accustom to the look of the film from start to finish using that custom LUT generated in prep. Without that knowledge on set we might as well have a DIT because I will just be lighting to the camera's latitude rather then the end product, which will still be a figment of our imaginations before then. I think we would all sleep better, especially our nervous executive producer, director, and producer knowing we got a great picture after each day. Digital film central is not the only option but they are the best in my opinion. With tapeless workflow's we save our self from compressing our image numerous times and if we end up doing a film out we will notice sampling errors which will show up on film as squares of color rather then picture detail. The test consists of two test days at Clairmont where I would program the Varicam camera with setting to best suit the film and save those on an sd card. I would need to do lighting contrast tests with a stand in, after which the Director and I would need to go to our post house with the footage and create this custom LUT for our Whistler look and Tahoe look for the film. During my test at Clairmont I would also do latitude test with a chart. This chart we would apply our custom LUT to and would let us know our new log space latitude for the picture. Then we could store these charts and pictures of our stand in on our computers to have on set as uncompressed TIFF's. I would take these Tiffs and go into final cut and mimic the contrast and color using the software?s own color corrector, giving me a, sort of, custom LUT for the offline edit and dailies. I think if I'm able to get the Executive producer to meet with Digital film central guys that that would convince him that they are the post house for our project. The shoot days are approaching and producers seem to not want to deal with this right now. Which sucks, but it that?s the case I?ll just have to color correct the dailies and use that as a rough template for what we will have to do in post. Advice anyone?

Two brave lamp ops? Hehe Your going to need a scissor lift just to get the light on the parallels, hehe. Sometimes when we need to get a light onto a parallel we use a crank stand to send it up most the distance... but then it takes some strong guys to lift a light that heavy onto parallels. Then on the parallels we put the light on another crank stand and send it up. Gotta strap that sucker down tho.

I've operated them from condors before. They are a really good light for casting light over a large area. They are comprised of an array of Par-64 lamps. They usually come in pan able vertical rows of 4 lights. Allowing you to aim each row. Just like any PAR array fixtures they are referred to by the number of lights on the fixture.

I was only kidding. Its a lamp op joke. Honest. P.S. Much love and respect to all the grip brothers out there.

When someone asks you if you are a grip, just respond with "Do my nuckles drag on the floor?".

I love it when the under dog triumphs. Keep dropping jaw's jim.

I was watching a bit of Munich today and one of the favorite shots in the film is this one :: Munich :: What kind of different techniques there are to expose for glass reflections?

DVX100 is a really great camera and the tool I used for years. It's rugged, light, easy to learn, good picture quality, easy workflow, affordable, works well with Final Cut Pro, and a great stepping-stone to learning filmmaking.

Looks awesome David. How come you didn't go back to the neg for telecine? Was the neg to contrasty after the skip bleach?

China balls or chimera balls are great.

I've got 1800 ft of Fuji Eterna 500T 8673. I'll sell it all for ¢30 a foot.

Absolutely. This is why they use soca cable. If you want 2 out of 6 lights on, you just disconnect their head (that?s attached to the splay) from the power source or kill it from a dimmer board.

They have 6 1K nook lights placed around a wagon wheel type shape, all pointing straight down into a silk cylinder, the bottom can have diffusion and gel clipped in. It uses Soca cable, which is AC bunched up into one cable and given different heads in which you need male splays (turns the soca cable into 6 individual AC heads) to connect to a distribution box, where you can control each lights output. They are really cheap to rent, not sure how much they are to buy or where to buy them. I'd call a local rental house that has them and find out where they buy them.

Even DVCAM on broadcast looks really bad in my opinion. If you compare channels like Spike TV (or local low budget stations) to A&E or NBC you will notice the difference between DVcam broadcast and Digibeta broadcast, in that realm its not even a resolution issue, thats due to compression. DVCam to film would be unwatchable for me in a theater.

Thanks David, I have a few more questions. Was the practical on the table not working as an eye light? Do you prefer the look of spectral eye lights oppose to diffused eye lights?

Hey David. What were the actor's faces exposed at in the resurant scene? And what stock were you shooting?

I always found quicktime conversion to add a lot of aliasing and compression artifacts. Now a days I make a new sequence and clip out single frames from the project and place them all into the new sequence. Then I export it through compressor as a Tiff sequence and then pull into photoshop then compress and correct them if needed. If you have interlacing problems there is a de-interlace filter in compressor.

Great short! Loved it!

Aye. Lots of misinformation.

Yikes. I really love your work on features.

Looks cool Matt. Whats the story about?

I really enjoyed the opening sequence. Some great stuff in there Corey!

Looks awesome David! Loving the low angle MS. The sky looks great in the background.

Awesome!

"We better get some insurance against the director." - Lily Tomlin