Tim O'Connor

Flathead! Cool! From where?

Do you use Final Cut Pro? I do and I've been editing for a long time but I'm now getting more into modifications in post. Could you say how to bring the dark areas down in Final Cut Pro? Is there a way to do so without also bring the entire picture down? Thanks.

Excellent, thank you.

Hi Mitch, I went on the Abel Cine website to see about the Movietube and one of the things that I read was the review by the Belgian DP who loves it. I'm curious about a couple of things. He wrote: "You must increase the level of detail to +3 in the camera, just in combination with the MOVIEtube ST, otherwise the images will be blurred." I'm pretty sure about this but, since the HVX-200 has detail and vertical detail settings, as well as coring, he's talking about the first detail setting? "With reference to zoom and distance, do not set metrics. Set numerical values. This way you can set the camera values better. You have to be fastidious in ensuring that the sharpness in our case is e.g. 95 and the zoom is approx 83." Okay, I know some people prefer/trust the numbers rather than the ostensible distance measurements. Also, it seems that he's saying don't go any wider than 83 (when the zoom is set to up to 99 scale as opposed to mm.) and I can see why but what does he mean by adjusting sharpness, in his case to 93? Maybe I'm just spacing out because I'm up late reading on here when I should have gone to sleep long ago, but I have an HVX-200 and I can't think of what else he might mean by sharpness. Thanks.

With the price of drives having dropped so much (just got a 500GB Maxtor for the price of what a 250GB or so would have cost a year ago!) that 1GB a minute is not going to be a big issue I think. Appreciate the details on workflow too. Thank you Mark.

How close to your talent/set can you be and how tight is your frame? The reflectors from camera stores tend to be the collapsible ones that generally are helpful when held close to the talent just out of frame and provide a nice bit of fill and/or a glint in the eyes. They also tend to be expensive and for an "audition" would be more than I would want to spend. I would guess that your local grip rental house is probably closed now, being Saturday night and all, but stores like Home Depot usually open early even on Sundays. You can get something there called beadboard which is inexpensive and can be useful for bouncing light. They also should have some white styrofoam that you can see if it would be useful. A store that sells art supplies will have some FoamCor but for early Sunday if you go to a place that would be open like Walgreen's (don't know if you have them but they're big pharmacy and everything else stores) and look in the aisle near the colored constuction paper and crayons you'll find some white or white one side.black the other poster board that could give you a good bounce with the white side and be useful with the black side as well. Office supply stores tend to open on Sunday mornings, or by noon anyway, and they'll have poster board or presentation board as big (although rectangular) as a camera store reflector but probably cost only ten or fifteen bucks. White poster board/FoamCor gives a good bounce although you'll probably need to be decently close. It can however have a little more punch than a soft sided camera store reflector but that's kind of like having a bigger light in that you have the option to back up a bit more or stay closer and get more light onto your subject. You also can buy one of those reflectors that goes on car dashboards to protect the interior and keep the heat out if you can find the ones that are silver/gold. Not the same as a white reflector but still can pretty useful and cost about five bucks tops. You might even like the different look, especially the warmer look from the gold side. If you have to throw some hard light a long way, say deep into a dark alley, a mirror is amazingly powerful on a sunny day. You may find that you'll want to bounce the hard light from the mirror into a softer reflector like poster board and redirect it. You could also put it through some diffusion but that would take a lot more work, materials and hands. BE CAREFUL about bouncing light if you use a mirror. If there are people driving by and you bounce some light into their eyes, you could easily blind them and they could lose control of their cars! Even if they're not driving, people could trip while walking. Also, although this is not necessarily common, a powerful enough light left reflected long enough onto the right substance could heat it up and ignite it. Just for the record. Good luck! Next time they pay $ !

I've used both for a long time, although not on every shoot because sometimes I simply don't have them. I've noticed that since the digital age, many people say that they want their whites to clip at 105 IREs and they use the zebras to measure this (in those cameras that will allow that setting.) Maybe I've just had it ingrained in me, but I'm hesitant to do that, especially since I remember the days when a blown out sky would sometimes cause audio noise ( a distinct, faint buzz) every time those shots with blown out areas came up. I learned how to use waveform monitors/vectorscopes working at television studios and on commercial sets by talking to the engineers. I used to look for a good book on the subject but except for occasional short articles and the manuals that came with the equipment which do presume a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the reader, I've never found a good text. Has anybody?

Yes, you guys are on the money. Talked to him briefly today and we're going to scout this location on Sunday but wide is the key. It is a practical location so not a problem with being limited by soundstage stuff in frame if I go as wide as possible. I'm thinking that in addition to going wide, I'll also get up as high in the farthest corner as I can to diminish the impact of the actor in the shot by shooting down at him, which seems to fit what the director wants, although I'll wait till we really talk and I get to see the space. Fisheye is a good suggestion but probably not what he wants in this case, I'm sensing, although thanks for bringing it up. It's a fun job. The guy is serious, thoughtful and has lots of good ideas, some of which just need a bit of translation now and then, but it's good to be working with somebody who, despite the fun I had with this particular note that I posted, is a nice change from many of the run of the mill directors in the business who aren't near as excited about finding the right look for a project that isn't the "right look" that they got from their last favorite film or commercial or music video.

I got a shot list from a director today. Haven't reached him yet to discuss this shot: INT. BASEMENT - SAME12 We see L. through a lens that makes him look far away and SMALL. On this set, the camera is restricted by the real walls to being not more than 8-10 feet away from the subject. I'm thinking the reverse telescope lens?

Always used a Nagra with those. Is there a local audio rental house or camera rental shop that could help you out? It's certainly a good question for here but somebody near you may have both an answer and a piece of gear. Good luck.

I was just watching the special features section on the "American Graffiti" DVD and Ron Howard, who acted in it, talks about how the film being shot in Techniscope (a name for 2-perf that was usually utilized for budgetary purposes) gives the combination of the 2:35:1 ratio with some of the feel of 16mm. grain. There are a lot of great comments and insight on the DVD from George Lucas, Haskell Wexler and many others.

Hi Phil, How do you feel about the look of Nikon still lenses as opposed to renting cine lenses? I know somebody who has been buying up various Nikon still lenses and gets a good look with them and his Brevis, so for the money I'd say that he's doing pretty well and it's a nice equipment package that gets him work but I wonder how some of those short "films" would look with the same attention to lighting, production design, etc. but with a much fancier lens package. Thanks.

Cool. When you dimmed them, did you actually bring them down with a lighting board or did you shut some off or do something else, as I imagine that using a dimmer would lower the color temp.?

Wow, those are some amazing images. It looks like you're breaking new ground with this camera. I'm doing some calculating here and, being not one who works on bigger productions, I'm impressed at the scope of the equipment. I believe that spacelights typically are 6K (unless they have some lamps shut off.) Would you ever have all 150 spacelights on at once or is that rigged that way for shooting in different parts of the set? If you had 150 spacelights on at once, that would be 900,000 watts? WOW! Plus, if you used some of the other lights, you'd have over a million watts? When you rate the RED ONE at 320 ASA, do you find that it stays consistent to that speed throughout the spectrum of light levels and stops? I use way, way less expensive cameras so it may be different but I find that even when a video (or digital cinema as people like to call it!) camera can be rated fairly reliably at a given speed, it is often not consistently linear in its response like film stock across the whole range of stops and will often get "slower" at the more open end of the lens. I use my Spectra a lot but because I know that the cameras I use are going to vary in "speed" between the response to the light levels for an 8 as compared to a 2.8, I measure footcandles and find that a good way for me to work. Then at some point I'll go to the waveform monitor (on the occasions that I actually have the use of one) or else the good old zebras. Good luck David and take care of yourself. You're working pretty hard!

Which video cameras do you tend to use when putting a net behind the lens? Thanks.

Hi Jacqueline, "Salaam Bombay" is a great film, 1st feature by dir. Mira Nair and DP'd by Sandi Sissel, who has her whole own commentary track on the DVD. Really interesting. (I wish that there were more DP commentary tracks.) "November" with Courteny Cox is fun to watch because it was shot on a DVX-100, went to film-out and had a theatrical release. DP'd by Nancy Scheiber, ASC, who is on the commentary track.

The last shot of "The 400 Blows"! What a masterful use of freeze frame, the best use ever. I have never seen a film made before this one that ended in a freeze frame, although zillions of examples after this. Does anybody know if this is the first film to end with a freeze frame? WARNING: SPOILER comment below: SPOILER Antoine Daniel, with no place to run, turns and BAM!

Cool, thanks!

Thank you Jaimie and Saul. Where could somebody get these connectors? Where could I get the "c" shape like brackets? The connectors that I saw were wood too but didn't ask their origin at the time and don't have the opportunity to ask that person now. I haven't seen any type of track connectors in grip equipment catalogs (probably because they're already selling track with the extruded nipples.) I haven't seen any connectors at pipe supply places that would allow a dolly to clear them. That's cool that you used the 20' lengths. A bunch of them and you could have one heck of a dolly shot. I'd probably have to chop them into 8' or 10' lengths because if they were for my own projects I'd probably be using something smaller than a truck that could accommodate 20' lengths. Thanks.

Unless somebody has access to having some of the pipe ends extruded, which would be pretty costly, what would you recommend for connecting lengths of pipe? I've seen some people use connectors that you can expand by adjusting them with an Allen wrench through a hole drilled in the side of the pipe. How about seeing if you could scrounge up or get a deal on some stainless steel? It would be lighter than regular black steel pipe and yet stronger than aluminum I think. You'd have to TIG the crossbars but it would be nice to have all that gear. I've seen aluminum about the size of dolly track used in soccer goals and it's nice and light (relatively) but I think that if you want to carry a couple hundred pounds, even just an operator, tripod and camera, steel would be sturdier.

What will be different about the new dolly? Are you revising this design? You did a nice job plus it looks a bit like the tunnel dolly in "The Great Escape" which is kind of cool.

Thanks. I think that the second one might work well for this because it would be easy enough and yet a bit fun for me because I'm curious as to how believeable laying in just the isolated ball would be in a shot from the side as compared to a shot straight on from behind the batter.

I'm doing a fun, free project for the local softball team and would like to have a scene with the pitcher tossing an unhittable pitch because the softball dances a bit. I have a couple of ideas but I'm wondering if anybody has any suggestions for a fast down and dirty way to do this that might not look incredibly cheesy. Mildly cheesy no problem. I do have access to a good sized green screen but can't do any roto work on this one. Thanks.

Hi Mitch, I'm not sure that I understand your language here. When you say P2 gear, are you referring to the P2 Store or something else? Thanks.

When you say direct to disk, I think that you mean your footage is stored on external hard drives? Is that correct? If so, what drives are you using? Lacie, Maxtor, ...? With that codec do you happen to know the storage space to time ratio, e.g. Mini-DV is approx. 13GB/hour stored on an external hard drive. How much space would 400' of footage take up in GB? I have a film project coming up and I'd much rather have a telecine that would put my footage onto a hard drive than onto any kind of tape, primarily because of my workflow. Any of the higher format tapes would require decks to be rented in order to play the tapes for capture and that would be pricey. Thanks!