Adrian Sierkowski

Highly recommend pushing for a wardrobe test day. and a makeup test day. it will effect all of that. . .

If you want to kino-form factos you're used to, you'll be looking at Quasars which are in Kino Housings. If you want something everyone loves, you're looking at a skypanel S60 -w- chimera Or you can go lite-geat litemats. The 4 and 2L especially

Depends how you want to quantify that. Truth be told, the camera that the studio is already set up to use, and everyone knows how to use, is generally better than a new camera everyone has to relearn and which needs to be rewired/built into the studio workflow. And dynamic range and color reproduction aren't really that big of a deal when you have total control over the set in the very flat lighting those types of shows involve.

In china-balls many people wrap lite-gear LED ribbon around, say, a toilet paper roll's cardboard core, and throw that up in in a china ball. I have done it wrapped around the Styrofoam spheres you buy at arts and crafts stores to make a solar system and you can then use a D-Tap adapter to power it up off of a camera battery, or if you want, buy any 12V batterypack you may need.

Actually I kind of liked index cards, personally. especially these: https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Self-Stick-Premium-Weight-61400A/dp/B073SFFC9C

When we had to do coke it was, I believe, infant formula. And yes, the actress did snort it-- though I do not think, generally, that is what is done. It was a long time ago. As for the burning-- that didn't seem to be a problem given how quickly you light and then stop-- Though I do wonder if you could prop it just right to combine a small vap-pen in the pipe somehow and then you just put the torch close to it.

Well when we had to do it we used a real crack pipe which we bought from amazon. It's called a glass pipe. For the crack we used rock salt, but we didn't actually burn that. I honestly forget what we used to actually be smoked, but I do recall we covered it in a cut and I think just replaced it with herbal cigarettes.

Instead of building a whole frame as a square you just use one section of the pipe attached to a stand; basically forming a T, if you can imagine that, and then hang your cloth from it. Only really works for interiors where you don't have wind and the like and just need something put up quickly.

I tend to always keep track of my own hours and fill out my own time-cards as I really don't trust anyone else to handle that.

I am sure The Rag Place can make that up http://theragplace.com/ I've seen 4x4s of such material before, and asked for it on occasion; but honestly, normally on a 4x4 frame we're doing gel cuts. For interior work I much like a 6x6 or an 8x8. Normally we'd just T-Bone them, no need really to build a whole frame. Depends on the space, of course. Sometimes we need to use a 12x12 T-bone, even if it's just a living room.

Wouldn't an Alexa Mini tick pretty much all your boxes? It seems to be the go-to for owner/ops.

So? You like what you like. Your style is your style; it will evolve over time.

The red one renders obsolescence obsolete.

Honestly; I would say go with Litegear. It's known and people will use it.

I would say the one downside on the BM side -v- the Arri side is reliability. That isn't to say that the BMs are less reliable; rather it is to say that an Arri is perceived as being far more stable of a platform.

You're right! Sorry I'm thinking of https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shot-designer/id556342711?mt=8 Shot designer. Still dislike it. Mostly because I really want things to be to scale-- at least as best as one can. Didn't they use to make stencils?

Shot Put Pro, I think is the name of one of the programs. Personally, I hate it. I spend more time fiddling in it then if I had pen and paper. I use LxBeams if I have to for lighting plots-- but even then I prefer pen and paper and a good binder. Many people, these days, it seems are going into full on 3d renderings-- stuff like Maya which will also give you a quick and dirty pre-viz.

There are also a plethora of battery powered book lights: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Battery+Powered+Book+Light I'd look for one with AA or AAA batteries, as they're easier to find than the watch ones. I actually keep one or two of these in my cine-bag so I can light up the inside if needed.

Depends on the camera; but honestly you won't really get more "film like" noise; you'll get more noise-- which may not be what you want. As for the highlights; again it depends, but yes, it does generally move more of your dynamic range into the highlights at the expense of shadow information. The native of your sensor generally means that you have an equal amount of dynamic range above and below middle grey. If you up the ISO; you shift more stops into the highlights. if you lower ISO you shift more into the shadows. Pushing it results in more noise; generally, and lowering it can clip your highlights badly. As for stop on the lens you'd set your exposure to compensate for you having changed the ISO. For example, if you were at a T2 @800ISO and went to 3200 ISO you'd close down the lens to a T4 OR use a ND.6 to keep your exposure the same.

I wouldn't over think the technicalities on color channels. The same was true for film, to a certain extent that you could over-expose (or under) certain color layers-- and in truth that's part of the effect. As for the advantage; well 1, keeping control of your images is VERY important. It's often easier and more consistent to throw a filer on (costs less) than time spend in post doing it. Optically, any glass will chance the optical characteristics you're recording. You can see how the effect is being rendered "In real time" (granted you can kinda do this with a LUT; but you'd need to have made that LUT before hand and keep it around forever in-case of reshoots). If you have a reshoot, you don't need the LUT/correction you made on set, you can just use the same filter (will be pretty close). Many filters come in varying densities. You can see how exposure choices can change the effect on the day (or better in prep). And most importantly, because, well, you really want to do all you can to make the rest of the film process easier for those down the line. What I mean is, you have limited time and budget for EVERYTHING on set and so often the job is really about finding that happy medium where you choose the most effective path to the look you want.

Films a little bit of a different animal than digital-- with film you almost certainly would run the basic tests on the mags and lenses. This would be budgeted for since with film you can't see the problem before hand (and any producer who didn't want to do this is just, honestly, not fully familiar with film -v- digital shooting). But we are increasingly in a digital world-- for better or worse.

I think the real problem is that, on the whole, budgets are going down, and with the whole "what you see is what you get" mentality, it's often hard to convince producers that you need to run camera tests/make up tests/wardrobe tests. Sometimes, it's even hard to get a full prep day for the 1ACs around to make sure everything is working well-- and as for marks lining up, these days, it seems, there's more a want to rely on monitors for focus vs measurements. All this, really, comes down to money, and the fact that while there is much more content being made now than probably ever before; there really hasn't been that much more money injected into filmmaking. Now, I would say, for any well budgeted shoot, sure, you certainly can and should do camera testing-- but let's be honest here, when was the last time you really had enough budget for what you needed (as you planned) to shoot.

I mean; the real thing you need it a DoP and crew who are familiar with the camera-- that's how you get the professional look, you hire professionals. But, beyond that, you really have to be cognizant of your production design since the camera can only record what's in front of it. As for the Alexa, specifically-- hopefully you're working with LogC 4444 Pro Res clips, else you're really not close to what the camera is capable of (to say nothing of ArriRaw, though to be honest, I can't think of a time I've ever used it, LogC is plenty). And you also need to have a colorist whose used to dealing with the footage. Just throwing a LogC to REC LUT on in Resolve will get you an image that isn't flat, sure, but there's more to the final finishing touches than that. And I don't mean this at all to disparage your skills with the camera, or as a whole, but rather just to impress upon people it really is not what camera or lenses were used-- evne less so anymore-- and more about the people using them having the experience and resources to use them to the best of the technology's ability.

Fraizer lens/ Trex system lens comes to mind which would give focus basically from the front of the lens to infinity. If memory serves, the fraizer (from previously panavision) was something like a t 7.1 at it's most open.

Could always do it like the long slow dolly shot in Good Will Hunting.