Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC

Thanks Daniel. Thats a huge complement, Janusz Kaminski is my favorite cinematographer. Sorry Matti, I don't have permission to release any footage or stills till after the film premieres at AFI Dallas film fest.

24N (23.98p) is good. In 720P 24 (59.98p) the camera records 60p (59.98p) but flags only 24 (23.98p) of those frames... much like the varicam (in which case I think now a days FCP knows how what frame rate you shot where as before you would need a frame rate converter plugin). When you shoot 24N (23.98p) it shoots 24fps (23.98p) so it leaves a lot more room on the cards for info.

"Grip it and rip it!" I've seen a lot grips get into camera operating but not so much DPing. I think it may because a lot of the grips I know work closer with the camera operator and the gaffer closer with the DP. Not totally sure tho, just my wild guess. Glen Winter, smallville's DP was a grip before he was a DP. But he's the only one I know.

If your captureing off a deck at uncompressed 8-bit HDSDI (1280x720) out you need to capture it at 23.98pfs.

No problem. Its really easy with the Varicam to share footage, figured i might as well. I think the in camera way is the best. I used to do most my stuff in post, but now a days I have a clearer vision on how i want the project to look and I shoot closest to that as I can. Since the Varicam is a Lin camera I still want to shoot a lower contrast image as if it were Log and adjust it in post. A lot of times you don't get to define a look on set if you don't have time to do tests. The way I have set it up is I found a key to fill ratio I like during tests and on set I will shoot a chart at the start of every tape. Then I can basically let the dailies colorist know to increase the contrast so X shade of gray is black on the chart. With the workflow on this film I will be able to be the dalies colorist on the whole offline and apply my own look to the HD offline as a template to what to recreate on the online threw a davinci and for the film out.

So unfortunately I had to pull out of "Love Money" because this feature Switch and Love Money ended up wanting to shoot at the same time. I ended up going with Switch because I had a personal investment into the project. Anyway, we did some camera tests with the varicam + pro35 on friday to determine what the Pro35's ground glass looks like on a film out. This film has a lot of slow motion so the Varicam was our camera of choice and the Director loves the look of the pro35, I'm not in love with it but it does give the film a certain look not seen in most HD productions. During the test I came up with a Key to Fill ratio and did some filter tests. Check it out. BPM = Black pro mist CS = Classic soft WPM = White pro mist I'm a big fan of the BPM, but the amount of halation that I was hoping for didn't show threw on the test. I do like the WPM, but its really softens the contrast, granted we can up that in post and we are planing to do that but I think that it will come out with a little to much of a glossy look, which isn't this movie. I think on set I will go with a little harder looking light but the same key - fill ratio. The key light being one stop higher then the iris looks great when you color time the look down a bit. I rated the Varicam at 320 ISO with the pro35 and -3db. I wish Clairmont had some Digi primes in stock for me to test so that I could show the director how shallow you can get the digi primes, but all they had was T2.1 canon zoom and I wasn't a fan. I messed around with a paint box that they set up for us and I quickly found it useless and impractical to use since we weren't going to have it on set. So I dropped it and learnt the in camera options. Once we are in camera prep I'll create a Knee, gamma, and toe for the camera that looks the best for me and gives me the most information for color timing, then load that on a card and sync our Varicam and HVX's to it. Really not a fan of cinegamma look so I'm going to try and stay away from that. All the tests were shot with a lower contrast video mode. Hopfully we will get to see our film out next week.

Very nice lighting.

I was running tests a few weeks ago with some HD trailers for a project I shot. I tested Uncompressed HD 1080 and I found To get the best results you should compressed right from your FCP sequence. I think it pulls from the raw files without re-compressing, and I found when blown up a 800% you can see flaws in the Uncompressed HD to compressor H.264 as well as color shifts that were not there in a FCP sequence h.264 compression. David, I highly recommend Apples Compressor, and if not compressor try Sorenson... which is really easy to learn but I like h.264 better. I cut a reel for a DP here in Vancouver from DVCAM masters last year and finished the project by giving him a few nice web conversions for his website threw compressor. Attila's Reel Here are my online Compressor specs and DVD specs. COMPRESSOR SPECs for Online (2.35) "High" Quality Compressor Bit Rate File Extension: mov Estimated file size: unknown Audio Encoder AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz Video Encoder Format: QT Width: 480 Height: 204 Pixel aspect ratio: default Crop: (L: 0, T: 49, R: 0, B: 49) Frame rate: 29.97 Frame Controls: Off Codec Type: H.264 Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On Pixel depth: 24 Spatial quality: 80 Min. Spatial quality: 50 Key frame interval: 50 Temporal quality: 50 Min. temporal quality: 50 Hinted for QuickTime streaming server COMPRESSOR SPECS for DVD Studio Pro Name: MPEG-2 3.7Mbps 2-pass 16:9 Description: Fits up to 150 minutes of video with Dolby Digital audio at 192 Kbps or 120 minutes with AIFF audio on a DVD-5 File Extension: m2v Estimated file size: 37.88 MB Type: MPEG-2 video elementary stream Video Encoder Format: M2V Width: 720 Height: 480 Pixel aspect ratio: NTSC CCIR 601/DV (16:9) Crop: None Frame rate: 29.97 Frame Controls: Retiming: Nearest Frame Resize Filter: Linear Filter Deinterlace Filter: Line Averaging Adaptive Details: On Antialias: 0 Detail Level: 0 Field Output: Same as Source Aspect ratio: 16:9 Field dominance: Progressive scan Average data rate: 7.6 (Mbps) 2 Pass VBR enabled Maximum data rate: 8.9 (Mbps) High quality Best motion estimation Closed GOP Size: 15, Structure: IBBP DVD Studio Pro meta-data enabled

Do you find that some days so much pressure is put on you to complete 75 set ups that your lighting suffers because of it? How do you prepare for such a day without knowing how many set ups there are? Do you fall back on your experience to get it done?

Sounds like a tight shoot. How many set ups perday were you doing on that show David?

:o Mine hasn't come yet! I'm sooo stoked now.

Heh. The other day I went to Pans Labyrinth, before the movie started a big picture of a camera popped up with a big red cross threw it. lol.

I would have liked to see both Alfonso Cuaron & Darren Aronofsky on that list. <_<

You got me Frank. One project isn't framed for scope... you can probably tell which one by watching it. I had the reel letter boxed at first but I got some hate mail because of the matte, so I cropped it in compressor. The reason why it is not Scope is because some of the film is shot on the varicam and the 1280x720 resolution looks like poop with an anamorphic film out.

Thanks for the complement guys! It was flash exposed S16mm film... its pretty risky but you let light leek into your changeing bag and vwalla fogged and burned footage! hehe. The over head shot was DVX. I agree, the title is a little out of place... but its there to draw attention to a slow starting reel. Might be nice without it though. The music is imogen heap.

How do you make sure the EDL time code off the one light matches the second (Best light) transfer? Is that info the colorist gets off the EDL as he is placeing the selects off the EDL? What do you mean Davinci with EDL > conform?

Totally. Its great to have knowledge in multi departments. I often do tons of grippin on set... gotta have that team attitude. I've worked with some dolly grips that knew more about the schedule and the shot list then the director or the 1st AD, and I've worked with Key Grips that could easily PM. I used to do Art Dept stuff before I did lighting and DPing... the knowledge that you gain from other departments only help you when DPing.

Aye. You-tube sucks~. Compression is toooo high. The int house stuff was a little bright. Didn't really put me in the suspenseful horror mood. And some of the camera work during the phone sequence was odd, what was the motivation for that? The dark basement shoots were a really moody and put me in the horror mood, I would have kept that low key look for the entire film. Good effort for a 24hour short. I've done a few of those back in the day and 24hours is not long enough to do anything special with lighting.

The crews up here are amazing... union crews anyway, not so much the indie crews. The union got rid of seniority last year here with the exception of dispatch... so now its really elite. The film scene is cool. Not nearly as big as LA but its pretty good. The end of spring and summers are insane... and if there is a big show in town like Fantastic 4 or X-Men... everyone is working for the next few months. When the big shows aren't here, the indies pick up.

Thanks Frank. I chose the Fuji over the Kodak because of the discussion to do a bleach bypass, but when that option was removed it came down to myself wanting to experiment with Fuji stocks that I hadn't shot. Fuji matched the insanely low Kodak quote so I went for it. I loved how it looked in the end, however it did really have that red mushy look in the facial shadows which I hate, but I think kodak is even worse in that area. I hear 7229 does a great job in the shadowy areas, thats the stock i want to experiment with next! The DVNR hasn't happened yet... but the project right now is insanely noisy hoping this long awaited DVNR has good results. I'll let you know how it goes. I don't think the director will do a film out. He already has another project on the go and has always intended to go with HD projection at the festivals. Its just a short film and 35mm outs are soo expensive. If it did happen, it would be something the canadian government paid for threw some kind of grant program. I'll bring it up next time Eric and I hang out... might be totally into it. Thanks Matt. Norm is a really close friend. Not sure why Norm isn't on here. He probably views it, just doesn't post. He'll come on eventually, its only a matter of time. :-) 90% was handheld, the only part that was on sticks was the begining. There is a event that happens durring the film that constitutes the change in style. The camera shake was Norm shaking the camera on the directors cue, we did the lighting effect with the buildings breaker.

Some how the director of a short film I shot cut a trailer out of a 20min short film and released it today. Check out ASHES FALL TRAILER! My apologies for any grammar and spelling errors... ?Ashes Fall? was shot on Super 16mm (2.35: 1 aspect ratio) using Fuji 8673 500T. The camera package was an Arriflex SR3 with Ziess Super Speeds from Clairmont cameras. The only filtration being a set of ND?s and we also had a diopter set. Originally we wanted to do a bleach bypass on the negative but our post house, Rainmaker digital, who was giving us free post, told us that doing a bleach bypass on the neg with S16mm was a risky move because of the perfs on the S16mm negative and that it was an extremely busy time for there lab and to do a bypass would force them to shut down their workflow momentarily. In hindsight, without a bleach bypass I would have shot with a ¼ Black Pro mist filter to give all the highlights a bit halation. Because of the camera work involved we went with a completely wireless system from the video tap to the focus. Camera Operator Norm Li, who is the all star indie camera op here in Vancouver, did an amazing job on this film. We did a 2.35 matte in post but Clairmont cameras only had a 1.85 ground glass for the SR3 (Don't ask me why they just didn't make a 2.35 one for us, which they offered to do but didn't end up doing it. Probably to busy.) so Norm had to crop the 1.85 GG to 2.35 in his head while operating the camera in crazy action sequences. It all came out perfectly composed. When coming onto this project I knew I would love working with new director Eric Maran because our early conversations were so great. From pre-production all the way threw this production we were on the same page. I?ve never worked with a first time director as prepared and talented as Eric, it made for a great experience. Our one location was an old church converted into a children?s dance hall. We didn?t have to do any pre rigging, all we needed to do was do a simple exchange of the existing practical and fit them with some par bulbs. First day of shooting was intense. Our 12kw Generator was over heating with half a load on it and lights were going out during takes. Needless to say I swear I saw my Gaffer Dustin Allen smoke over 100 cigarettes in that one day. The location had a large stain glass window which when looking at with the camera, we had a 6k HMI blasting threw, and when facing the other direction we opted to save our generator the trouble of over heating and faking the look with a single flag dressed with an assortment of colored gels on it and then blasting a 1k threw it. On this shoot we decided to do a lot of color temp mixing and were not concerned with mixing tungsten and daylight as well as other colors. I love how film looks when mixing color temperatures, not so much with HD, however I have seen it done well. The building was surrounded by trees which did not blend with our story, which took place in Africa, but luckily each window was stained yellow adding to our Africa feel and most windows were trace papered and then blown out for our day interiors. We also shot the majority of the day interiors at a 90º shutter angle. Night interiors we would key light with a blonde or redhead threw a 4x4 of heavy or medium diffusion frame and had a little backlight candlelight effect on some of the characters. We created the candlelight with a mixture of tweenies, inkies, and peppers on a magic gadget bouncing off a 4x4 bounce with silver lace. We used no fill for anything. I prefer using ambient light for fill or create such a soft source that it wraps around to fill if I can. I shot wide open to give the film a very shallow depth of field look. I feel it adds to the many tense moments threw out the whole film with the exception of the opening. I stuck a ND .3 in for my night scenes and over exposed everything by 1/3rd of a stop, giving me a rating of 250asa. This allowed me to create a higher contrast threw my lighting and still shoot wide open. Unfortunately I learned the hard way, that shooting wide open with a focus puller you?ve never worked with before is a bad idea; some of the footage came out soft... really soft. I knew something was going to be wrong because the 1st AC had a really bad attitude. Its really hard to judge focus on a 10" SD monitor from a wireless video tap... won't make that mistake again. I over exposed a bit to insure I would record all the information I needed to allowing me play with my contrast during our tape to tape HDCam SR (4:2:2) color correction using Rainmaker Post?s new Pablo color correction hardware. The Pablo was pretty cool, but it was not real time and we had to wait for corrections to render before watching it, which slowed us down big time. I wouldn?t use the Pablo again without its real time box. In fact, if I had known Rainmakers Pablo wasn?t real time, I would have gone with a DaVinci 2k. The film is almost complete; all that is currently left is the DVNR process and some sound design. The film was accepted into the AFI Dallas International Film Festival the other day where it will premiere in late March or early April. Production started back in August and shot over 3 days, its been a long process getting this project threw post but I am very proud of how its come out. Camera Operator: Norm Li 1st AC: Josh Corvan 2nd AC: Austin Balfour Gaffer: Dustin Allen Key Grip: Chad Skinner

This is a great book to buy. Its the lighting techs handbook aka Harry Box.

Here a union Op makes around $54 a hour, 1st AC $39, and a minimum for a DP is $75... with a good agent he would probably 10%-30% over scale. Those figures are rough and I'm drawing from memory because the rate resource is not up for some reason. Production Designers get boned with a $32 a hour rate... ouch...

I find Lamp Oping fun on some sets, but it can be very boring at times. On the union shows here in Vancouver, full Feature rate is $25.16 over 8 hours, then time and half for then next 4, then double time after that, last i checked... probably went up slightly because its a new year and we get raises every year for the next 3... i think. Gaffers get around $32 a hour, $27 for Best Boy Elx, and $29 for Genny op (Who ends up making the most because they make the most double time for being first and last onset). And if you have a FE ticket you get a $2 raise. Keep in mind that most shows negotiate a scaled down rate, however that is mostly the TV shows. The lowest show being 19% scale. The British Columbia and Yukon Council of Film Unions took down their rate info for some reason so I'm going off my, questionable at times, memory. For indie stuff its like Mr. Mullen said... $100-$300 per day. Commercials are usually above union rates and Music Videos are often free gigs and or very low pay. Most the indies i've lamp oped on were $225 a day and $300 for the gaffer. I think the pay is good... but its only good as long as it lasts. My last lamp op day was back in november. And i've been available since then... its just super dead in town. But the time off gives you more time to focus on DPing. However it would be nice to get at least one day call per week.

Looks awesome for a DVCAM raw neg trailer Richard. Can't wait for the trailer off the timed HDCAM SR.