Albert Smith

HILARIOUS!

Just completed a project for intel via our small production company Rubbish. Was on it from the start as a co-producer and then shot it. Was a great experience and can only hope to work on more projects like it in the future. Had a lot of complex setups with fire, lighting strikes, overheads, big elevator shaft etc. Definitely a much larger undertaking then anything I had previously done. Anyways thought the project might interest some, below are some choice stills and a link to full film on youtube (highly suggest watching in the 1080 or at least 720 options on youtube). Any questions, comments, criticisms more then welcome! mouse vision, vaseline on the lens trick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIn2xPzr-7M

more philip bloom... first footage ive seen that puts it to use in pretty standard natural light situations....looks ok...still some minor rolling shutter issues it looks like and definitely major clipping issues, digitally over sharpened edges seem present... Very videoy. its a $5000 camera....I dont think its giving you anymore than you really expected for 5k in 2010...Sony's camera is at like 13k I think so well see what that footage is like.

production design is a good portion of cinematography.. Unless there is a motivated reason for white walls it'll be boring, but it seems if the director is asking for that there probably is? What David said is what I was going to say....I think when trying to liven up a boring set playing with patterns of light and bringing some stuff up and down in the scene is the way to go....give it some depth...This kinda just assumes that your working with bad production design and the boring white walls are unmotivated but a dark wall with a couple streaks of light wether they be accent lights or street lights at night or the sun coming through a window a little to hot in the day. something else to consider might be having the walls painted light grey, depending on what your shooting on this white help with your exposure.

although a lot of old buildings are all 15amp alot of boxes are full of 20's now especially in places like kitchens. these lights are without a doubt designed to run on household.....why else make a 1800W light.

by far the best answer to this post.

Fantastic....and in reality probably better then some real RED reels I've seen.

This was a project shot for a local band and friends of ours "The Loneliest Monk" on a shoe string budget. Here are some stills and the usual where the lights went explanations. Overall I think the lighting concept here was "theatrical realism" or something to that affect. the film takes a almost documentary style approach in places but still has a fantastic aspect....basic premise being a girl is at a loneliest monk show and after the show ends she imagines loosing her parents and being taken through this world with the band. Anyways I always like to motivate light from real sources...from there I feel you can exaggerate or do w/e you want with that source....but it atleast starts somewhere real. At the same time I tried to utilize theatric Ideas like spot lights and clean shadows. I went in knowing I wanted it dark, In the end the hardest thing was probably controlling the level of darkness sometimes it wasn't low key enough and sometimes I pushed it pretty far with the underexposure I think. The above were both pretty much the same setup, I was able to fine tune it a bit in the 2nd still since the original setup was a little rushed since we were running behind. basically this: 2.5k HMI through an 8x for fill with 1/2 orange 2 mole pars above one straight down on the entrance the other hitting the pathway farther out edging the little girl. 2k inside coming out the door. one LED. I wanted a bigger car rig to light from the exterior but we couldn't get it. I wasn't sure how I felt about this one at first...but its growing on me The area where the light source comes from is a stage which we cut into from this shot. 5k from the stage and some smoke hitting the wall and the man behind the stairs. tweenie in the bathroom, 1k mole par through a silk filling the room a little....the man walked from the bathroom to the end mark behind the stairs. This is the end of a camera move of the girl walking through a corridor. behind her is a 5k and a led panel above and some other stuff but by now she has lost all of that and then walks into a 2k bounced of some shinny silver up high to mimic a industrial flood from the ceiling. Practicals on zip cords...you can see one in frame. there is another above the girl. Par can behind the girl source 4 accenting the wheel in the BG and I think something really small bounced off the wall....maybe a 250W work light I had around or something. . Source 4 along the wall as key. tweenie scrimmed way down through a silk for fill on the other side of the wall We were supposed to shoot this for dusk into night with first shots going off late afternoon... Last minute location issues caused a major panic and location move that set us back a few hours so we missed late dusk. 12light Maxi with FireStarters and 1/4 blue and then a 2.5k with 1/2 orange through some diffusion in the front. Fine tuned the Hmi to have the guy shadow the little girl as he walks up to her, pretty happy with that one.

Sources 4's for clearly defined shapes through the jigsaw. the above idea is interesting though with the plexi. sounds like a good situation to collab with the production designer.

your going to want to specify what type of bulbs you want in there too... They usually come with mediums, but if you want to get alot out one spots or very narrow spots does a lot.....they are par 64 bulbs.

Hahaha, This was just too good not to post. http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6823505/

Found a 12-light with fire-starters. Hoping that'll do the trick and not burn a grip's hand off in the process.

In the end though there is no way you can light the whole person...catching there feet and not have light hit the ground....their feet will be on the ground...so if you need that wide shot I would just put light on them and plan on taking some stuff down in CC....although the 7d isnt the best camera to be doing that with. if the talent is wearing lighter colored stuff you could under expose a bit and pop em with the backlight on the feet.....I would probably but the 1ks behind them and scrim them down up top so you have a subtle backlight on the top of them and have it pretty strong by their feet and do the reverse with the 650's in front pretty high up maybe with some opal so its not too hard...and use a lot of flags.

ah yea, my mistake...a 9 light maxi was what was talked about....but maybe it is possible to go bigger. Ideally I was looking to go 1/2 cto on the 12k (18k is looking not possible cause we are getting a 200amp geny) but realistically I was thinking I would wind up at 1/4 cause I would sacrifice color for power I think. the whole scene will be shot in 3hrs when the alley is heavily shaded so were good on that note, its a pretty short dance sequence. I wish arri made a 9 and 12 light maxi so I could check it out in comparison on that photometric calculator. Do you think (disregarding color temp) the 12k hmi will be significantly brighter then the 12light maxi with narrows in it? the idea is also to be able to stop down a bit to cut out ambient light (... make the alley fell darker) while keeping that edge semi hot on them.

btw, we are not putting the lights in frame the set photo is only a reference. I saw the post, and saw how it could come off like we are trying to get the classic rap video back light in frame effect. We are not!

agreed, great application. Used it in the mountains to track when I'd lose sun and it was pretty on point!

Ok so this is a classic budget thing. we have a dark alley scene for a music video, originally this was to take place at night but for logistical reasons the producers pushed for day and the director and I went over some looks and decided on shooting in a dark shaded alley in daylight with strong backlight. I wanted a 12/18k (looking like itll have to be 12k though) but of course this is costly and the producer doesn't want to have to do it. They rental house suggested a maxibrute. to me this seems ridiculous as a maxi is 9k and the 12k hmi has gotta put out something like 30k equivalent...right? I have seen par64 lamps put out quiet a bit of light but can the maxi really even compare? attached is an old set photo that kinda has the look we want accept less orange and stronger backlight....it will be prob at least 3stops brighter then this in the alley...in this photo you can see just a molepar alone give me an edge and a maxi in the backround I was reading this post as well: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=43769 people mentioned "Dichroics" are the best to try to use for daylight with a maxi...these are glass filters to put infront of the lamps for color correction or am I off? btw I know server space isn't cheap...but it is 2010 might the admin/owner think about raising the file upload limit to 1mb or atleast 500k so we could see some nicer stills? thanks for any info guys! this forum has been a life saver the least 2-3 years.

anyone push 7219? would love to see some results. I was going to try to shoot some stuff with existing light for a documentary style shoot and push 2 stops, am I crazy?

I would shoot f900 for sure. even if you dont know the camera at all...its just a camera...cameras are easy, read up on the manual before hand and keep looking around the internet searching out peoples settings and what not. Regardless if you shoot on the f900 with almost any settings your going to have way more data in your picture then the EX3 and alot more room to correct the image. this of course assumes its not a strain on the budget. then you might want to rethink it.

I just shot something in a bathroom about the same size. what i did was install to 300w bulbs in the overhead fixture and i went to a hardware store got a circular peice of sheet metal to flag the light around the side and then gaff tapped some diffusion on it. worked great

youll deff want a par as well. in that tight of a frame you shouldnt have a problem. I would say shinny board could work but it is alot less controllable and if you wont be able to shoot after the sun gets too low.

living in a place where people snowboard and there is an industry is probably the best thing to do. filming snowboarding isn't that hard of a thing to do, A good deal of guys out there don't know much, so if you do know what your doing your honestly ahead of alot of kids. Go buy an HVX or whatever camera everyone is using, will see what happens with all this new stuff...Go film whoever you can meet kids who are sponsored, meet their tms, meet marketing people at resorts, meet the park crew kinda anyone you can, and put together a reel and send it to people you would wanna work for as well. years ago I sent emails to all the production companies when I was alot younger pretty much everyone responded with something I remember. their are really alot of ins. if you are decent and around the right people there is no way you won't be able to get something going, but it wont pay much... start posting your stuff here too (www.snowfilmer.com) , there are actually some important people and connections to be made through there. alot of the work is hvx with a 35mm adapter, both music videos where shot that way and we used a shoulder mount rig with a monitor

Thanks. we shot TriX

So if I'm getting this right, basically the skate wheels concept is new and was adopted from all of the small and DIY dollies as it has been found to be somewhat better, or at the very least better in some instances. thats kinda interesting, is it thought that fisher or any of these companies will start building dollies with skate wheel systems on them.

I'm a big fan of this guy. Shot Half Nelson. http://www.andrijparekh.com/