Tim O'Connor

I've been working pretty straight out since my last post but I made a couple of calls and I hope to check out the 2-D and the mechanical suggestions on Friday afternoon. Thanks for all the diverse and continuing help!

These are all great suggestions. I'm most familiar with changing the speedometer gear since I've seen that necessitated so often with hot rods that need to correct for new gears in the back or other changes, as Bryan mentioned, but I'll have to find out if a car from the 90's still uses that kind of technology. Thanks!

Thanks, David. That's definitely a good start. Sounds old Hollywood. I've seen kerosene used in various ways before (usually to simulate battlefield fires or post- battle smoldering /still burning ruins, and it's always been outdoors.) With that black smoke, I wouldn't want to be indoors. Don't need to be anyway but I wonder if any of those old old films were? By the way, I just read some back posts and learned of your upcoming gig on "Big Love". Congratulations. Also, I'm WAY behind in my movie-watching but looking forward to seeing "Akeelah and the Bee" -(even if I'm the only one who hasn't yet!) If I do the torch scene it's likely to be in a pretty big sand pit and probably with a detail from the fire department (we could handle it but the pit can be seen from the road and there likely will be calls. Two weeks ago I shot a low budget short and we had several police details just to cover the concern of passerbys who saw the prop guns -but apparently not the lights, camera, track, dolly, trucks...!

This is probably more of a props question but I've seen grips save the day with ingenious solutions and knowledge of old tricks. 1. How can I get/make one of those classic movie torches that explorers carry? 2. I have a Crown Victoria (1997) that I'd like to see the speedometer read above 100 m.p.h. but then tilt up to see the road in the same shot. Older cars had cables that ran from the back of the speedometer to a gear on the transmission. I've seen grips detach the end at the transmission and attach an electric drill but usually they still couldn't get high enough speeds. Can you solve these? Thanks!

You might want to check out DV rack at www.seriousmagic.com/dvrack.cfm I haven't used this system but it looks pretty cool and it's designed for a laptop. You could also probably play DVDs through it and see what you get for readings for fun.

"have you tried putting a small xenon bulb from a flash unit in the muzzle?" Are you using real guns? Because they give muzzle flash. It's the blank guns with solid barrels that don't, so how would you put any kind of lamp in one of those?

Thanks, Scott. Excellent suggestion. In fact, the DV30 has, in addition to normal 4x3, and letterbox, also an option called 'squeeze' which I haven't explored enough, so I will do a lot of tests. I do have a couple of stories from friends though who shot 4x3 and that saved them because they could move certain shots to hide a boom or something, but hey I guess you should be framing right in the first place - although without a monitor, preferably shaded, the camera viewfinder or LCD viewfinder is not always easy to use even to see the image enough to focus, much less see a grip stand leg in a far corner.

That is such an awesome point! I've gotton some of my best jobs by realizing that I at the time didn't stand out enough from the other applicants and so threw out some "dare to be great" (Thank you Lloyd Dobler/Cameron Crowe) possibilities -and then of course backed them up. So many of us know we can do the job (or we hope, suspect, doubt but still want to) and yet we forget to be bold. Not arrogant, but offering something new and special that will help realize the project's possibilities and the director's goals. Think of all the first time directors who were given veteran DPs, by the studios, who sometimes were great and sometimes did things the way they always did them.

I've shot several shorts with Panasonic's DV30 and many clients have liked the "movie-like" setting. If you go into the camera settings, you can see that it lowers the detail setting, increases the chroma, changes the AE settings, turns on a skin detail feature for softer close-ups and shoots in a frame mode. Some people have told me that they can't stand it and that with that camera they would shoot with the regular video setting and do any adjustments in post. What do you think and if you're one of the ones who would work with it in post, what programs would/do you use in Final Cut pro? Also, I've heard conflicting reports on using the letterbox mode. Yes, it's not true 16x9 but I'm told that shooting 4x3 and letterboxing later -easy with Final Cut Pro - is a waste because more information is captured (shooting with letterbox "on") because -I'm hazy here - either fewer pixels are "wasted" with the letterbox mode or there is less unnecessary compression than would be with 4x3 images of information that will never be used (i.e. above and below the letterbox frame.) Thanks.

"except something that can be powered from a car" If you already indicate that you can get a vehicle in there, then you could run some small units, say inkies, off an inverter and run a 100' stinger or so so that you shouldn't pick up any audio from the car idling. This might help with part of your situation. I often use a 700w inverter but I wouldn't put more than 600w on it and it does beat on your alternator a bit, no matter what they say. Perhaps with the small units, which if gelled are going to be even weaker (but perhaps you can get them in close) you can expose for the orange flames and still get decent light on the campers' faces without having them look too obviously lighted. If you have some helping hands , people often dangle strings or something in front of the lights to create a flicker effect on faces. There are other ways of course but that's an easy cheap one. Good luck.

Cool. I'm a member of Apple Pro Care which gets me a one hour one on one training session on any application once a week with an Apple guru at any Apple store so I can bring my Mac and check it out. Thanks.

Thanks, Michael. That actually gave me a good laugh, reminding me of long ago when I was a p.a. on a car commercial with this famous director and the company had come to the East Coast to get away from "L.A. scenes" I think they called it. So we convoy to the last shot of the day, the car on the beach but whoever scouted it aparently didn't know or report that at this time it was low tide and the beautiful sandy beach was also rocky and seaweedy below the high tide line. I guess that they couldn't frame or shoot around that so they had the p.a.'s carry five gallon buckets of sand (heavy!) across the street to the inland marsh and create a "beach" there with the marsh water and no rocks. At this point they shot looking in from the street ( looking Westward) so the sun set over their "beach" just like good old L.A..

Has anybody ever shot at sunrise for a sunset scene or at sunset for a sunrise scene and how did you make out? Also, has anybody ever shot at pre-dawn for after sunset or after sunset for pre-dawn? Thanks.

How did you get David's examples of shots in your quote/reply and David where do you get stills like those you posted? Is there a site where shots from films can be seen? Thanks.

Thanks David. I appreciate you're taking the time and I guess that I can sign in from now on with my name. I guess that I've liked the fact that I've been able to ask with anonymity some questions here that people who know me - and there are several who are members here -would likely expect me to know. I do a decent job of lighting and shooting and even though I've of course seen mired values given before, and even know that MIRED stands for micro reciprocal degrees, I'm not proud that I never learned how to use them or learned some other things for that matter. Thus marks the last anonymous post of DPinthewilderness.

Thanks, David. The media teacher at the high school is a friend and around during the summer so we can definitely do some tests, both with gels and with the school's video cameras, which have menus to adjust the chroma information recorded. Yes, they don't have a lot of lights, and not very powerful ones either, so I may have to see if I can help them find some additional units to compensate for the lower light levels when the gels are used but this will be a fun and worthwile endeavor. By the way, this occured to me regarding " a few layers of CTB" : When combining CTBs, or CTOs for that matter, isn't there some strange math in that say two CTBs combined is not exactly the same effect in changing color temp. as one might expect? for example, if Gel A drops a 5600K source to x degreesK, then adding an additional identical gel, B, is not going to simply drop the color temp. the same additional amount but rather combine them to do something different? (I'd just go out and meter this but my color temp.meter is MIA; I don't have the money just yet for a new one and I bet you probably can explain to me the MEANING of whatever my meter results would be anyway, if you would be so kind.) I have another question but it's different so I'm going to post it as a new topic in the lighting forum regarding shooting sunrises and sunsets. If you could look at that I would really appreciate it. This forum: getting to talk to all these people- it's just great. Thanks to everybody. It'd be like if when I were a kid and wanted to know how to throw a curveball, instead of asking the best pitcher in town, I could go on a forum and talk to Nolan Ryan or somebody!

Hmmm, David, my local high school is always attempting to improve their (blue-screen) chroma-key shots and I was able to help them separate lighting talent from lighting the bluescreen, using tungsten for everything. It worked well and they were pretty happy; I eliminated the spill that their set-ups were getting but using green or blue lights is a new trick to me and a cool one! Would they get a richer, deeper blue screen if that were lighted with blue-gelled lights and if so, could you recommend (as specifically as possible if you could) what gels should be used? I'd be glad to go buy them. It's nice to be the good guy once in a while. Thanks!

Thank you, Michael. I remember a long time ago putting a Fresnel beam through Foam-Cor cut out with gaffer tape strips for a ventian blind effect and thinking that I'd just spot it in and then discovering that full flood produced the sharper shadows - because of course at flood setting the lamp moves backward and becomes more of a point source. Ahh, the good old days of learning on the low/no budget jobs when I was starting out and the joy of discovery kept hidden because I probably should have known that already.

The fact that you've read the book may be a great asset, depending on how you present yourself. In my earlier years I was often hired as a p.a. because my non-film background, e.g. construction was of interest to the producers of one feature about an ironworker since I was going to be in the art department (and I got paid, including five weeks of pre-production.) It helped once I was on board that I wrote a paper offering insights from a real ironworker on the script, which I got from spending an hour going through the script with my cousin who had been an ironworker for years. I didn't write that letter/paper/report until AFTER I was hired (based on my construction experience) and they ASKED me for my thoughts. What I wrote helped a lot though in gaining their esteem. On another film, I was hired because I wrote a humorous, but SHORT, letter about how I parralled the main character of the film. It interested the line producer enough to want to meet me and I got the job. That tactic could have backfired for sure but I was in a slump and so took a shot and they told me that they had four hundred applications for that p.a. job (it was set p.a. which was a blast, way better than the art department; you're next to the camera, the D.P., the whole show most of the time and you can learn a lot, whereas an art department p.a. may be fifty miles from the set buying a picture frame or something.) So, withh 399 other more experienced p.a.s; I probably would not have got that job. Setting yourself apart will help but they sure don't want another director. If you like the book or can say something positive about it, particularly one sentence that poetically expresses that you "get" it and would love to be a part of the team; that's good. Keep it short but if the book is about say dolphins and you've worked with, ridden or taught English to dolphins then yeah you might want to (humbly) mention that. Use the brevity of your letter to show that you can communicate a lot without taking up a lot of their time (a good quality for a p.a.) and that you're businesslike (and therefore imply that you won't be a pain in the neck on the set) and yet that there's something special about you that makes you worth interviewing despite your lack of experience. Good luck! Read Michael Shurtleff's book "Audition", a great book, about how he got a job with the Broadway producer, Joshua Logan.

you could get away with, and is also why most lights used photographically for illumination have parabolic reflectors and/or fresnel lenses I thought that the Fresnel lens was mostly for more diffuseness than an open faced light. No? (I guess that they do use Fresnels in lighthouses with relatively small lamps for the output achieved though.)

I would imagine that your resume is more important than your reel for a p.a. position. I'll tell you, I am so sick of people sending me links to their reels, headshots, resumes. It takes so much time I often don't bother with links. If you can (perhaps contact your local film commission or make a friend at the local rental house) get the mail address of the production office, often a hotel or temporarily rented office suite, and send a cover letter with hard copies of your resume and if you want your reel. Short, busineslike cover letters are appropriate but I did get p.a. interviews and work sometimes by finding out about the film and writing a more personal letter. Good luck!

Very informative. Thanks guys!

I have a regular 4x3 television. At the sports bar they have widescreen t.v.s and everything on ESPN is widescreen and fills the whole screen, i.e. no letterbox -the screen is a letterbox. If I watched ESPN at home, which I can't because I don't get it, what would I see? (i'm talking about regular ESPN; the bar isn't showing ESPN HD which I believe exists as a separate channel.) If everything I see on the widescreen t.v.s is widescreen, then does that mean that everything that everybody shoots for ESPN is 16x9? If I watched "Law and Order" on a widescreen t.v. would that be 16x9 and fill the whole screen? (It seems to me that on my 4x3 set that shows like "Law and Order" are slighyt masked.) I don't watch a lot of t.v. except to play DVDS so I haven't thought much about this before. Thanks.

Good to know! Thanks.

Hey, you guys are great. I usually shoot low budget and even in 35mm often still use a BL-4. That's no excuse for not educating myself on the latest cameras, etc. but I fell behind on this one and the word "studio" made me think of some big monster camera - and when I checked the Arri website before posting my question I didn't cotton to the fact that it's not a behomoth. I learned a lot. Thanks!