Jon Rosenbloom

Please define "easy to work with"! You want loads of footcandles, but you want soft light, and you want it to be easy? How about a 12'x12' checkerboard lame, or silver lame? (Of course, you'll need the sun.) (Isn't there a 30K softsun?)

Well, I would think you would judge my opinions on their merits. Psuedonyms have a long and distinguished history in the world of letters. I will offer my previous posts in defense of my civility.

Sorry, but I feel a little freer w/ my opinions and set "gossip" if I retain a shade of anonymity.

I don't get that. You can have all the footcandles in the world and still "work in the toe;" just stop down. Maybe it's a quality of light issue, or it's easier for the actors ...

One of the great things about being a DP is you can say "This location doesn't work for me."

I quote my own post: "You will need to cut a 16" piece of 2x4 to attach as a "foot" to each end of the spreader. When it's up in the air, the length of the feet will be horizontal. The reason to put the feet on is that vertical studs inside a wall are generally 16" apart, so your 16" "foot" gives you a reasonable chance of applying the force of the spreader to something solid. A bit of rubber mat on the outside of the feet always helps." 95% of the time, you do not need to screw the spreader into the wall.

Thanks for the info. I wonder, also, if the extreme cold didn't have some effect on the film. BTW, wouldn't they be Southern Lights?

With a DI, how does one calibrate what you see on the monitor in the digital environment, so you get what you want on the internegative? Does it involve several "answer internegatives?"

I meant a light chastisement :) . Anyway, your guys will risk less damage if they use the feet. Good Luck! J-Ro (IATSE, Local 52)

Sorry, I only glanced at the other replies. I want the Director to understand the physical realities of film-making. Don't shoot one direction, then ask to turn around, and then ask to turn around again. Have the patience do things in the right order: Block, frame, light, shoot. Things will go much smoother if you don't panic, and you take the time to do things in their proper order. Understand the diffference between pre-production, when big decisions are made, and production, when the plan is put into action. If you're a student (whoever you are, actually.), don't ask for "The Godfather," on a DVX-100a w/ 3 inkies and a Zip light w/ a broken bulb! In the same vein, don't ask why I can't just turn on the lights ... If you can, observe some big sets. It takes maybe 100 people, and tons of equipment to make "The Sopranos" look like "The Sopranos." Last, understand the GFC paradigm, which Jim Denault - who now shoots "6' Under" - taught me: Good, Fast, Cheap: You can have any two, but never all three.

Pole-cats are ok for what you're planning, just don't go nuts w/ the weight. When you're actually rigging, it will be a lot easier to tell when you've reached it's limit. One thing people always do wrong w/ pole-cats is that they try to keep the walls from getting marked up by the suction cups. The suction cups are what make the rig work! If you don't want the rings on the wall, either put a mousepad between the wall and the suction cup, or, don't use a pole-cat! Whatever you do, don't put showcard, paper tape, or anything slippery on the suction cups in an effort to keep the walls clean. As for the boom rig of a high-boy: You can do that too, but it's not really any faster or safer. It takes up a lot of space on a tight set, you need 3 guys to move it, lots of sandbags, rope, you have to figure out of where to put the base, and you have to get everyone to move out of the way when you want to move it. Also, they can tip over. As for Kevin's spreader rig: I meant to chastise him for not have 16" feet (made of 2"x4") on the ends of the spreader. I wrote a detailed post about spreaders in the last month or two. Click on my name, and the look through my posts to find it. J

David, Please elaborate. Do you mean that a top of the line DI done by top pro's can equal a blow-up done by the night-guy at DuArt? Can you compare the workflows of each method? (That would make for a good FAQ.) My prejudice against DI comes mainly from films like "Story of the Weeping Camel," and Sokurov's "Father & Son," which appeared to be beautifully shot on film, and then DIed into a video look. Thanks, Jon R..

Webster, I had the exact same reaction ... So muted! Where was the sharpness you would expect in such a pristine environment?? Where was the saturation? Did you find yourself comparing "March ..." w/ "Winged Migration" (35mm, no DI.) Well, you see during the credits that they had s-16 cameras, and I'm not going to fault someone who spent 13 months in Antartica for shooting s-16mm instead of 35mm. I will question reflexively doing a DI instead of a photo-chemical blowup. (There is a DI credit.) I suppose it helped w/ their few f/x shots, but look at what gets sacrificed.

Thanks, Phil. Some friends here reassured me that it's a really insignifcant cropping.

Hi, A short film I shot back in 2003 is going to be aired on the local PBS channel this Fri. We shot the film on video in 4:3 on the Panasonic SDX-900. I realize this is a "broadcast camera," but this is the first film of mine that's been broadcast, and I actually had a nightmare about this last night. We never framed anything w/ a TV broadcast in mind, and I am now a little bit worried that a lot of image is going to get cut off in the broadcast. Do we need to make some sort of dupe for broadcast in which our OAR is a little reduced and matted, does the broadcaster handle it, or, do I not need to worry about it? Thanks for any info. BTW, the film, "Superstore," is part of WNET's "Reel New York" series, shown at 9PM (10pm?) Friday night. Depending on the answer to the above questions, I will hope that someone will watch! :) Jon R

I met a fellow while skiing at Taos named Tom Zanes (Xanes??), who has done a lot of interesting work for National Geographic. Think he lives in Abq. or Santa Fe; not Arizona, but close by western standards!

Yeah, they're great little cameras. I've only shot 3 or 4 shorts on 100a, and my attitude has been that if the image on the monitor looks good then we can make that image appear again in post. It's kind of haphazard, so I was wondering, since you're doing a feature w/ some hope of some kind of projection, if you're doing anything to be more precise about the digital process.

I'm pretty sure the John Thomas, DP from New York, who has posted here was one of the DP's on SATC. (How many JT's can there be?)

Couple questions: Are you shooting in 24p or 24p advanced? What kind of monitor are you using? Any video tech's as part of the crew?

I know you said 1/8 silk, but, how 'bout a 1/4 stop silk dipped in tea? You regulate the "warmth" of the silk by the length of time you leave it in the tea.

They're both made by Thompson, w/ the same ideas in mind. Xenon lighting system, true RGB feed, and I think they share some proprietary algorithm's developed w/ Kodak so the machines can preset the color-correction according to key-codes. I don't know what the difference is between the two machines; maybe the Spirit has a few more bells and whistles, or works better in HD. Sorry if I'm a little fuzzy on the technical details. I've done supervised and best-light on the Shadow to beta-SP, and I LOVE the results: very cinematic. I have an advantage because I had some excellent lenses, I stopped down, avoided stray light, etc... - all of which comes from experience. In any case, I wouldn't hesitate to use the Shadow again. One last; if you're not going to supervise, you should prepare some notes for the colorist. You don't have to give T-stops and footcandles, but general directions about the mood of a scene, or scene to scene continuity. Question for experts: How long has the Spirit been around?

Aha! So you must have no matte-box or shade protecting the lens ... Just as I suspected! :angry:

30' to 40'?? From the post? W/ a remote head?? I think that's called a Phoenix Crane. You could call the IATSE Local 52 office (212 399-0980) and ask them about local owner-operators.

The question is, if you think the script is terrible, but you need the work, what do you do with it? Fortunately, being a DP is really fun, and really absorbing, and usually you've got enough stuff going on so that concerns about the overall quality of the project get blocked out. Or, as one director said to me "I need your photography to be really good to make up for my bad narrative"!

A number of issues: Are "noise" and film grain the same thing? Or, is noise - the "tape hiss" on analog tape - something that happens to look exactly like film grain? More importantly, I know we've discussed this before, but how about getting some film dailies for comparison? I'm not saying to print everything, but is it possible to lobby producers to print a couple of lab rolls so they can be seen as they actually exist in physical reality? For example, that exr100t shot looks pretty awful, but think of all the variables involved in that image: How old was the tube on the Rank? Was the transfer to digital or analog tape? Who was the colorist? How much noise-reduction was applied? What kind of noise reduction? How many generations from the transfer are we looking at? If the production won't go for printing a couple of dailies rolls, try to arrange w/ the lab to at least print a test. I'm not repping the labs, but, it will cost very little, or they might even comp you the 200 or 400 feet of the print. The best way to get rid of grain is to shoot an optimally dense negative. The only way to really verify your exposure technique is to look at the film projected, or, dig into someone's pocket (maybe your own) and supervise some of the transfer. If you just hand it off to someone and say, "make it look good," you'll have a much more difficult time assessing your work. As far as the original question goes: If you "nail" your exposures in camera, all you're trying to do in post is to get the closest approximation of how your film would look if you actually printed it. Of course, you get what you pay for.