Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC

Aye. There are all sorts of engineering menu's that other shows could have messed with, so you should check em all out. I've even had a camera that clairmonts film mode settings were tampered with... which is even deeper into the menu and the one thing I didn't mess with. Fortunately halfway through the shoot when i got a replacement body, i threw in my SD card to match settings and it was giving me a low contrast look, which is what i originally desired but couldn't achieve because of the the original body had been tampered with by another show.

I've never had problems playing DVCPRO HD through QT.

If you place your lights outside of the hallway (if there are windows) you probably wont need to do any flagging and if you want to see the whole hallway you wont have a problem with that. As well as if you threw light on the wall at the back of the hallway you would be able to have the characters walk into silhouette every time they entered a shadow area.

Absolutely be prepared, because your going to be working very hard for a long time day after day with no breaks. If your prepared you'll do fine. For me its always been pre visualization, whether its in your head or on a page, and tech scouts so you can communicate to your crew exactly what your looking for for each set up.

HAha... so true.

I don?t think that was shot in studio. I've always found objects in backgrounds become lower in contrast and seem brighter, and even more so the further away they are, simply because of atmosphere. Because of this you can push the look even more in color correction. Here is a still of a time lapse I shot and the sun is right overhead. The trees in the foreground go dark while the mountain is low contrast. All shot within the same lighting. I think Lubezki's dogma on this shoot was to use a lot of natural light. I think I read somewhere that the house interiors were shot in studio... but not the exterior stuff.

Hilite has a rubber type quality to it so it is silent when working outdoors. If its windy it wont make a peep, which is important. I've heard its one of the lightest diffusions. I haven't worked a lot with rosco gels, so I cant speak on soft frost, or any clear diffusions (just haven't had experience with them), but I've always considered it as the outdoor opal.

Love it Marc. Nice work on the lighting ques.

Silver Lame is great for hard bounces. I used it in a club scene I shot a few weeks ago. We would get grips on the bounces panning back and forth reflecting the hard strobes and lekos for some frontal strobe when there was little room near camera.

love it.

He's repped by http://www.radiantartists.com/

I don't know what its like else where but I've never heard of an instance where a VFX artist has worked for free. My brother is a VFX and animation teacher at Vancouver Film School and the first thing they teach their students is to never work for free, it sets a bad precedence within their community.

Saw this cool video earlier today. http://www.listentofeist.com/video.htm Shot by Shawn Kim for directors "Patrick Daughters". Any guesses on how it was shot?

Sweet! Sounds like you had a great time Matt.

Heh. I have an almost identical set up to accomplish in a few weeks. During the tech scout the way I wanted to do it is to place daylight fluorescent practicals behind the bottles at the bar glowing the whole background of the bar. In the foreground under light the tenders with 4x4 kino's with full grid underneath the bar bench. The background/dance floor I've got a various assortment of data flashes, lighting strikes, and 400w Joker's with Leko casings (panning back in forth). For shot #1 and #2 I'm going to have all my background effects going crazy. Then in the foreground key light, I'm going to motivate a soft source from the bar, probably a blanket light or 6x6 muslin frame with a mini9 light w/ 1/4 CTB (The director and I want to do a lot of slow motion coverage in the bar so I'm going to be lighting the bar to like a 120asa so I'll probably need more powerful lights than you), however you could do something similar with a 2k Chimera w/ heavy diffusion. For my #3 OTS coverage I'll play that same key light motivated from the bar lights. #4 is the most difficult to light. In our version of the shot it?s a steadicam developing shot that follows with our characters as they walk all the way to the other side of the club to another bar. I'm not absolutely sure how I?m going to light this shot while they are sitting at the original bar. The practicals in the background might be enough to give me some kind of silhouette and during the steadicam shot I can have them walk into a key and walk out. If not I was thinking of rigging a 4x4 kino w/ full grid or if that doesn't give me enough output, a flathead with full grid, backlighting them? really depends if I can see the ceiling of the bar during the pull back of the steadicam. However you don?t have to deal with that, so I?d do the kino rig in your situation.

After its all said and done Richard, do you feel a challenge like that will only makes you better at your job and perhaps define how you work for the rest of your career?

Thanks Frank. The HVX doesn't have frame lines like these other cameras from what I know of. Another DP on here named Norm Li used to have pro stickers made for DVX LCD viewfinder and HVX alike. Not sure where he got them from tho.

It doesn't record with the markers. It will record 16:9 and you have to matte it in post. However I think there is a large difference from 1.85 to 2.35, your compositions would be compromised if you switched from the two in post. 16:9 (1.78) and 1.85 are much closer in aspect ratio and you could change between the two much easier with just a little reframing. However I was preping a project this January where we wanted 2.35 film out but were concerned about having TV buyers wanting 16:9 for TV release. We came up with placing our frame lines at the top of the viewfinder (Which I think you can do with a F900) so that our compositions in regard to headroom would remain constant and if we did open up to 16:9, it would only affect the bottom part of the frame. It?s not the greatest compromise but better then not doing it in my opinion. Can't remember what doing that is called nor if you can do that on a Varicam.

http://members.netro.com.au/~bliss/largeimagepages/we.html Mark Bliss shot that. Who's a awesome dp. You should ask him, I'm sure he would let you know. I'm assuming he did that in Telecine. Let us know what he says if you ask. I used that commercial as a reference on this feature I'm doing and the director loved to: "Thats the best commercial ever."

good luck!

I totally disagree with the rental rep. I love the look of low con filters, particularly Black Pro Mist's, on the Varicam, especially if down converted to SD. If anything it might make a film out a little mushier. With the Varicam you will get a little image softening in general from a film out due to the resolution conversion, and then add your low con filters on top of that. I've never felt the need for a really good HD monitor because I don't use it to light with, it depends what you use if for. I've seen some DP's that never leave the monitor. They set exposure with gray cards and light from there communicating with their guys with radios. They are great for picking up mistakes. For me it?s almost impossible to notice focus on a 8? monitor, unless I have my face pressed up against it. It will also make spot mistakes easier.

They have a where to buy page on their site, its the last option on their interface. You can find a local resaler there. I remember getting a quote for FlexScan S2110W or FlexScan S2111W a year ago and it was around $1400, which was cheaper then the apples (which is an 8 bit monitor, just like most LCD's) at the time.

DVCPro (25): 4:1:1, 25 Megabits per second, 6:1 compression ratio. DVCPro 50: 4:2:2, 50 Mbps, 3.3:1 compression ratio (double the coded video bitrate to DVCPro 25.)

I've always love the Eizo Monitors. http://www.eizo.com/ Their Flexscan S2411W has 3000:1 Contrast Ratio with ContrastEnhancer, High Definition Digital Signal Support, 14-Bit Color Processing, and they look f*cking cool.

The style and mood of the film evolves all the way through out, but for the ?Whistler? act I want it to feel much harsher and moodier. Each location seems to have at least one dynamic developing shot that is done on steadicam in which will reveal almost every corner of the room. I think the plot of having one large soft single light source through large diffusion frames, w/ lite tools, will work to our advantage in this regard. As well as I'm not concerned about back lighting each character, I really want this film to feel as if everything is lit from natural lighting. For practicals I was feeling that if we put higher output bulbs in and placed some heavy diffusion in the lamp shades we could glow our practicals as well as use them as soft light source. From memory, in the magnum house the interior lighting is mainly from pot lights and I really hate the look of pot lights, I would rather motivate light from a practical on the ground. But I foresee moments where the only place to motivate light is from above and I would really prefer a soft source from above. Gel colors needed for the film are very basic CTS and CTB. But on the club scene I?d like to experiment with different types of blue, but staying away from the CTB look. The Varicam is rated at 320asa with the pro35, but a lot, if not all the time, I will be exposing the key light .5 ? 1 stop over. I?d really like to have consistency with contrast and have the key lights so soft and directionless that fill is not needed. Were going to a higher level of lighting with this part in the script and I?d like to under expose the backgrounds, and keep the characters shrouded in darkness. I want to portray whistler as an unfriendly environment. Not a lot of color temp mixing. The final look will be monochromatic, de-saturated, cyan/blue split, which we will do in the color grade. RGB/White light records the best (without noise) on our camera so all the scenes, except the club scene, should be white light.