Tim O'Connor

Happy Birthday (if it really is your birthday!) Keep up the good work.

By the way, can't wait to hear you attempt saying you "must be daft" with your Texas accent. That'll work.

You're one of the people on here I have to thank for imparting that. There was one thread where you, David and some of the other folk on here really hammered that point and I flashed on it today as soon as I read that line. Was Adrian in your class?

Bring back the tubes! Bring back the tubes!

I think that I've made out better with the camera in low light than a lot of people because I don't look to fight it too hard. Say I'm shooting a conversation on the street at night. With a couple of small lights, I can get light in people's eyes and a couple of good solid exposures in the frame, maybe a slash of fifty-five foot candles on one side of a face a bit lower amount of fill and the background reads like a city background at night with rich colors from neon signs and red lights and I've got enough points in the frame so that I tend to avoid getting a lot of noise like some people. I've thought many hours about what it's like to sit in five footcandles of light at a bar having a deep conversation or standing on a sidewalk under an old streetlight and how hard it is to reproduce that feeling and how artificial it can look, particularly with the slower film stocks used in older movies and especially dramatic television shows that didn't take any chances and so you see a burglar in the bushes in what is supposed to be the dark but there must be 250 or more footcandles on him and that just doesn't look convincing. Thus, I've found that some scenes are shot in I way that I admire tremendously, in barely any light, with fast stocks and yet I've come to feel that it is often necessary to use more light than I want to but that if done right it may well come closer to setting the scene effectively than in the gutsy nine and a half footcandle scene that ultimately doesn't work. I think that using a fast stock and shooting at a key of 25 footcandles on a sidewalk that would have 12 footcandles in reality is okay. Yes, it's double the amount of light but in a realm where doubling the light works and doesn't lose the background. I was checking out the Sony today. It seems great in a lot of ways, enough so that I was backing off on my usual aversion to GOP recordings, but I was surprised to read that it's 4:2:0. I guess somehow it was sounding so good that I was expecting 4:2:2. Anyway, you have a girlfriend who studies painting in Italy and you think maybe you should have an HVX-200 too? Dude, that just wouldn't be fair.

Yeah, I agree about the spectrum. I've shot some people with really dark skin and at times there seems to be a blue tint in there or perhaps more that it seems to come out on the skin when reflecting light. It looks kind of cool. I've been amazed at how well I've made out with some shots in the past year when I underexposed to play it safe (with the HVX-200) and then was able to pull it back up in Final Cut Pro and they looked really nice.

I heard somewhere that there is a plug-in effects package that has a filter to simulate the tube look, especially the light trails!

I use my light meter often with my HVX-200 but because determining a speed for the camera is going to be one that varies, because it's not linear and the same at 2.8 as it is at the other end such as you could consider the ASA of a film stock, I like to use footcandles. I find that 64 footcandles gets me a 2.8 with just about one slice of a 60-70 IRE zebra on the nose of a light caucasian face and I can work from there for tweaking for that stop or go elsewhere and quickly establish a reference that seems right rather than the way with film you could calculate the change in footcandles based on the change in stops just like in the charts. Last year though using this method I had two caucasians next to each other. One seemed by eye to be slightly fairer skinned but his face (not sweaty or shiny at all either) reflected a lot more light than the guy right next to him. Even when I put him further from the camera than the first guy I still threw a net up so that I could keep them looking as if they were in the same light (which they were.) At one point they were talking right next to each other, less than a foot apart, and the normal guy had the one slice of 70 IRE zebra on the noise that was my starting point for that shoot and Mr. Scotchlite next to him was all zebras. I haven't been shooting a lot of non caucasian faces likely but I've been wanting to so that I can explore some variation in shooting skin tones. I don't know why I have to go this far back but I remember reading in ASC magazine about when "Lethal Weapon" was shot how there were exteriors in which Mel Gibson was in the sunlight and there was a 12K on Danny Glover, who was standing next to him, because the DP had to either bring one of them up or the other down.

This was the first Red camera I used. Good old three tube camera. They stopped making it because the movie studios were threatened.

This is from a Sony website http://www.sony.ca/xdcamex/files/xdcam_ex3_bro.pdf "A 2/3-inch-type lens** can also be used with the PMW-EX3 camcorder via the mount system by using a 2/3-inch type lens adaptor*** that is equipped with a 12-pin lens connector. This illustrates the breadth of lens choice,including even cinema-style lenses,to suit every specific shooting requirement. **In this configuration,the resulting focal length will be 1.37 times the actual focal length of the lens." Yes, probably many people know that what is meant here is that the lens change can have the effect in appearance of having a different focal length due to a different angle of view but the focal length does not actually change. Still, how many times are there postings on here, including from me once or twice in the past, of people who get confused about focal length questions because of perhaps working so far with mostly fixed lens cameras and not having yet worked often enough with several lens changes per camera to be learning more by experience than by manufacturer's publications. When I saw this, I recalled instantly what has been drilled into my memory by many members of this forum, "Focal length is focal length is focal length." or "A 50mm lens is a 50mm lens is a 50mm lens no matter what."

Cool, thanks guys. In fact, the first time I ever encountered a spring, er grip clamp at all was on a film set, although I've since found them to be useful for many other applications and have met many craftsmen who use them in non film fields. I think a lot of cool film tools have migrated into production by clever film people who see new applications for tools from other trades. I always figured that some savvy grip knew about furniture clamps and saw how they could have a spud put on them and be used to hang a light. I think that I first encountered a furniture clamp on a film set and so for me I saw how it could be useful for clamping furniture as well as hanging lights! Then there are the ACs who I've seen get their dentists old tools (don't know the proper name but they're metal picks) and applied them to cleaning cameras.

Excellent, thank you all. Daniel, are what you call grip clips the same as spring clamps? This is what I know as a spring clamp.

Why do so many flags and nets have this offshoot from the main stem but in thinner stock? 1. I'm guessing that it could be for strength. 2. Maybe it's for safetying, although I've never ever seen anybody use it for that. 3. Maybe it's for storage, to facilitate hanging on a hook/pipe, although I haven't seen that use ever either.

I wonder if when you do your test if orienting the filters at different angles might also cover you a bit in that if you pan you'll retain a polarizing effect longer than if you panned with only one filter at its best place for the first position of the shot?

Hi Robert, You must be busy or getting a lot of mail. Went to send you a message but system said that your mailbox is full. Tim

Hi Adrian, how are you? I got that far but when Chris mentioned the part about the square root of two, I wasn't sure how it is that it works out to opening up two stops as opposed to say one. I am sure that David is right. I just want to be sure that I understand the how and why of it.

Can you say why two stops? Also, if this is for R16, would you open up proportionately differently for S16 to do the same thing? Thanks!

Thanks John. It would be good to know as much of that as I can anyway, besides this gig to be more informed for future bids/discussions. I'll bet that some requirements may vary from show to show occasionally even on the same network but it would be good (and interesting) to get a ballpark idea.

This is from a solicitation for bids on an editing job. It seems to me that the proposed job is described quite vaguely, e.g. could be HD or SD, yet to be determined show lengths. Even still, is there a source for getting any given network's "TV standards"? "I would like to have pricing to this client by end of business today, tomorrow morning at the latest, so would appreciate your timely response IF you have proper broadcast TV editing/graphics/sound experience and credentials. "Please do not submit your resume/reel/pricing unless you are a broadcast tv offline or online editor with experience editing shows that air on TV, as TV standards are rigorous and require knowledge not only of how to cut a story together well but also how to meet strict sound + video (i.e., safe color saturation, brightness, audio levels, etc) standards of various TV networks. ... Must know how to follow network guidelines for legal video/network standards for audio + video parameters as mentioned above. Client does not know if it will be a 13 or 26 episode series yet, nor do they know if it will be a half-hour or full-hour format yet, nor have they decided on HD/SD yet so please quote both time lengths/formats + your cost per finished episode and/or the whole series. Please provide enough information + detail so I can understand your pricing and process. I will watch your reel and look at your client list/resume so please provide as well as your pricing. Expectation would be about 8 biz days - 2 weeks editing per episode. "

Cool, I'm going to check them out too. I save money when I can by differentiating between a job on which it would be dumb to show up with something homemade looking. or even simply unfamiliar looking to a client who expects to see what is typical industry equipment such as Mathews, American, Century,etc. , and my own projects on which I can save on a particular rental and get the exact same effect by using something I've made. For example, I have all sizes of scrims that I've made from simple rolls of window screen that I've bought inexpensively. I certainly would like to own more equipment but it takes time to build a kit and I've had go slowly and look for deals on used equipment and mostly what I'm still buying are lights. By the way I meant to say thanks on the forum to Robert for the great deal he gave to Cinematography.com members on his TVMPs. I bought four a while ago and they're great. I use them all the time with some studio lights I picked up that hung from a grid and weren't set up to go on stands. So, this is a belated public thank you Robert!

Matt, that sounds like a great gig. Congratulations. If I may go a bit off thread here, Freya or anybody do you know what happened to Bill Forsythe? He seemed to put Scottish films on the map in the early 80s. I thought that there would have been a ton more films from him. He made some, sure, but I haven't heard anything about him in a long time. "Local Hero" is a great movie.

Come on, don't give up. Didn't Edison go through 9,999 (so they say) materials for incandescent light filaments before he got one that kept working? Pulling industry fabrics off of the grip truck is appropriate for jobs when say, you have a grip truck or at least can afford to rent some kind of kit, but for the low budget filmmaker buying the same material in different strengths and applications would cost so much that for most it wouldn't be practical. Sometimes. flying a thin bedsheet or whatever you've found can help you out when you need an overhead but don't have the grips and grip equipment to do it the typical way. Tying a material that will help you out with some line to a couple of trees or off some buildings can be effective and also safer than attempting to rent and use say a 12' by if you don't have the proper crew. It may not be as good but if you're making a small film with your own money it may give you a better shot than simply shooting with no diffusion of the sun at high noon and your actors eyes hidden in shadows.

I think that one of the great aspects of what might be called a "Hollywood" film is that they're often enjoable even if they're not that great because they can be just so watchable. Whether you want to get out of the heat and into an air conditioned theater for a couple of hours or have some laughs with your friends (often a mediocre comedy can produce a lot of fun when you go out after the movie) or if you're laying on the couch watching cable, Hollywood films often look and sound great and have people in them who are fascinating to watch, the stars about whom you often hear somebody say things like "I'd watch her read the phone book". I saw "Ghostbusters" in the warm weather but I split before it was over. I had watched probably 80% of it and although it was easy to take I thought that it also took the audience for granted, as if here we are, your favorite SNL stars and a bunch of other stuff, that should be enough. I thought that it fell way short of its promise, and I think that I appreciated more the entertainment value that it provided to people who recalled parts of it to lighten up a day while they were working. I appreciate your question but as a future world dictator you may not want to seem contradictory (as all the best dictators care about not being misconstrued) and so regarding your make an original film dictum, I'd like to mention that "Ghostbusters" if not a remake was definitely based on a decades earlier Bob Hope movie. Also, are you asking what is the best "conventional" Hollywood movie or "consummatte ...blockbuster" ? Are they the same? I asked a friend once what he thought was a good Hollywood film that anybody could enjoy. He answered instantly, "Rocky". I think that's a good choice. Yes, "Rocky" was a lower budgeted movie than its status might indicate when people mention it but it's still pretty good looking and watchable (despite Pauline Kael writing in a review that it seemed like the camera was never in the right place.) Just for kicks, how about "Casablanca"? Romance, intrigue, movie STARS, exotic locations (albeit on the back lot) a good story (and yes propagandic) and perhaps really Hollywood in that it is a great example of the system in which they were shooting a film without an ending yet written and when they got to shooting the first of two possible endings, they wisely saw that the first ending was the best. "Casablanca" is a great example of the anti-auter movie, the good movie made by not one but several screenwriters starting from somebody else's material, the unpublished play "Everybody Comes to Rick's", and then moving through the hands of a bunch of other departments all adding their contributions. Yeah, "Ghostbusters" was fun in a I'm glad I'm at the movies way and I would have stayed if I had gone with friends but by myself I felt that I could leave confident that I wouldn't be missing any big payoff.

I asked a computer friend and he said, "Some early Firewire drives used a different set of hardware to control the drive, and it couldn't handle video speeds. Everyone uses the Oxford chip set now." I've used Lacies and Maxtors. You probably know but make sure that you get a drive with a speed of 7200 rpm (as opposed to 5400 rpm) if you're going to be editing.

I think that this clarifies an issue that confuses a lot of people and drives a lot of other people crazy because they are right when they say that 'focal length is focal length' no matter what. The people who are confused probably haven't had as much experience in different formats and so they find out that a 50mm lens seems to give a different sized image in two different formats and focus on the focal length. This is a useful formula for people who want to know "what lens do you use in X format to get the closeup that a 100mm would give you in Y format?" I should have quoted Andrew, Chris, as I was asking about his original math. I see what I did now though, thanks everybody.