Adrian Sierkowski

here's something of mine 500T rated normally off of a Spirit 2K with a bleach bypass look applied. . . If it doesn't work, goto http://astro.temple.edu/~tua05046/paulbirch1.jpg this is a screen capture off of H.264 so not ideal, but all I have with me right now.

Looks just like a typical white cyc wall to me. Keep it simple to is probably best.

Film into script? Surely you mean script into film?

I havn't heard from Adam too much, sadly. I know he's out on LA and doing some work there, but the further away we travel the less we seem to talk. Drop me a line next time you're around the city. Life's kinda hectic with work at the day job and finishing up the Anthro degree, but e mail me. Adrian.sierkowski@yahoo.com

While I've never filmed in the Antarctic I have been out in some pretty cold Philadelphia temperatures shooting. The first piece of advice I can give you is to keep your batteries warm! The cold will suck them dry so keep them under your parka until you have to use them. Also try not to touch anything metallic with your bare skin. . . I'm sure others will chime in with more info.. . only other thing I can think of is let the camera acclimate to the temperature first, else you might get condensation on/in your lenses.

Most definitively the HVX with some lights can look phenomenal, though all in all, I'm not a Pannasonic fan. But, in any case, glad i could be of some help!

Thank Jean-Louis, I had come across them before but wanted to see if anyone had any experience with them. I'll give them a ring as soon as the week starts up.

I'm just going to chime in here and give my personal taste of the HVX: It doesn't handle low-light well IMHO. This doesn't mean it's a bad camera, in the least, just that I find it lacking when you're scrounging for light (this has less to do with the size of your kit and more to do with the available power on locations from my experience.) The HVX producers very nice pictures, though; i'm just more a sony fan myself. From what i head of their new prosumer XDcam, it seems nice. It's form factor, and the iris ring are nice little professional touches which should help in the end. What I would recommend is to look past the numbers, go out and find a rental house that has either or both, and see if they'll let you try them out. Or hell, even rent them for the day, and then approximate the type of lighting you'll be doing, bring it in to your editing station and fudge it up, see which once works best for the specific project. If this isn't an option, try to find someplace selling it, and see if you can at least fiddle with it before you buy. my $0.02

Good morning everyone. It's about 33 degrees here in philadelphia. And it looks like my SR3 battery took a dump. I charged her all night, and my volt meter is only reading 11.8 out of it. My #2 battery is at a healthy 26.7V Anyone know a good place for a recell? Most of the stuff I'm coming up with in my googling is for SR2 batteries. Any help would be very useful.

You've got some really nice shots in there with some which could use some tweaking in my opinion (such as the bearded man and the woman running up the stairs among a few others which look like lower quality DV). Now my monitor isn't the best, nor is myspace's compression, but a touch more contrast here and there, to add in some pop in a few shots might be nice to see. The editing is pretty good, and I like the music just fine; I would just focus more on choosing what best demonstrates your ability, so just pear it down a bit. Still, damned nice looking reel thus far.

Maybe some bounce board to try to scoop in extra light from off screen (bounce one into the other?) as to not have to worry about more power. Really about all I can think of unless you can somehow get more lights up there. But from your still you're not in too bad of shape, really, if you get your other lights in close (through some careful framing out on the wide shot)

Personally I'd look for a good Dp and editor. . . in theory, the director would be able to elicit good performances from his/her actors and the simplest of stories can become poignant and beautiful if covered in such a way as to make it so (Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for example has a main character who cannot move! Yet the film is still amazing, visually, and granted, well written, but the point still stands, I think that visual beaty can add more weight to an otherwise ordinary story). And of course a brilliant editor to help keep the story moving when/if the actor fail is VERY useful. Then again, I'm partial and neither option is ideal.

Andrew, remember me at all from Lucky Day? Really nice looking footage!

In my opinion a good DP should have an understanding of post and what must be done in production to help post, but this in no way replaces the expertise of the people who work in post.

I had just seen the Red Rocks, so it's nice to hear a vote of confidence in them. Now I just need to dig out my change jar. . .

Any leads on a good low cost whip? I have Chorizel FF which is in dire need of one :(

In theory, couldn't one just program a spreadsheet to do the math to figure out depth of field? I have a spread sheet on my Mogul phone to figure out approximately how much film to oder and processing costs for when I meet with clients. Could not the same thing be done and then just uploaded to google docs or used with excel mobile in terms of DoF?

Yep, you can load 100' into an SR3.

I've sent in film coreless on occasion and not heard any grief about it. Just write it on the can so they know, is my advice. Also, you can slip on a 2in core pretty easily, it's a bit or practice though to get it done right. I was doing it with 400' loads but I'm sure a 100' would also be fine. A little unraveling can be ok.

It's a damned good meter once you learn to use it. It also NEVER needs batteries. Great for a backup to some of the higher end meters for those times when there's no Radio Shack nearby

Thank you Carlos, Yeah i would like to shave another 30 seconds off of it or so and also drop out a few shots, but for the moment i'm still waiting on footage from some projects :( Thanks though, it's nice to hear anyone say nice things about it :)

I've never really had any trouble with DoF on S16mm. You just have to know how to modulate the light in your scene as well as the proper lens to use in order to achieve it. Fort myself on S16mm, I often shoot my wides with a 16mm T1.3 lens and then move in for close ups with a 25mm or a 50mm, depending. Or i might do the reverse, shoot wides with a 25mm then go in close with a 9.5 for special shots where I need deep focus. It's all about field of view firstly; once you figure out what area you want in the shot, and then what focus you want in the shot, you can run though a DoF chart to find the stop you want in the shot; then light for that. Maybe i'm doing it all wrong; but it's just how I work. As for the 35mm adapters. . . I don't like them too much overall. I'd rather spend $1000 on filters/lenses (still lenses being pretty cheap overall) than on 1 adapter for which I'd still have to buy lenses.

IN terms of homeowners insurance, the biggest drawback I've been told of (from a few people and agents here) is that it wont cover things used for professional purposes.

Motion Picture Lighting by Blain Brown has a few shots and then shows setups. One very nice one shoes the different of before and after x or y light is set up. It's also a very good read full of useful information on the whole on lighting with a good glossary.

Am I the only person who misses the old school CRTs? We have a bunch of Sony plasmas here at my day job and I'd say that they produce very nice blacks and colors. Just don't leave them on the same screen unmoving for 3 days else they might burn in. But all in all, Plasma gets my vote only because there's less of an angle difference in viewing them as i've seen. I hate that on LCDs. It made watching films at my friends house absolutely unbearable (more 1/4" and it gets darker!)