Jon Rosenbloom

In 15 years of gripping, I don't think I've ever seen an instruction manual for a car mount. Maybe I have, but it would have consisted of incomprehensible pictures or diagrams. The best I can suggest is to assign someone to fiddle around w/ the stuff till you figure it out. Allow a lot of time, like 6 hours. Other advice: Hood Mount: I should have four feet that rest on the hood. You should have four points to secure it. In other words, you should have four ratchet straps working on the hood mount. The kit should include some short (6") "gutter straps" that help connect the straps to the car. When tightening the straps, it helps to have two people who can work opposite straps in unison, otherwise, you'll just be pulling the rig toward the strap you're ratcheting. Side Mount: The suction cups rest on the outside of the door, the "fangs" slide into the window well. One strap can secure the hostess tray. Last: ARE YOU CRAZY?? Find someone who knows what he's doing! The damaged grip gear, camera gear, vehicle, and maybe personell will be a lot more expensive than the cost of a decent grip.

Does the xtr eyepiece flip to the right side of the camera?

Oscar, that is definitely ten cents worth, can you translate your method into incident readings? Francisco, I don't think anyone has asked which compositing software will be used on the project. That would be good to know. Also, you are going to shoot the plates first, right???? Last, do whatever you can to get out of mini-dv for this. Chroma keying is based on color, so obviously a system that works in 4:1:1 is going to be inferior to one that works in 4:2:2. Mini-DV might work, but it will make everyone's job more difficult. Also, have a lot of duvateen on hand so you can set up big siders on the green screen, as well as a teaser. Good luck!

C-stands won't quite do it for that much weight. If you could get two 8 step ladders and span them w/ a 2"x12" plank, it might work. To attach the camera, you could screw a batten strong-back onto the plank, drill a 3/8" holl through the upright batten, and then screw a 3/8" bolt right into the camera. Don't forget to put a bunch of sandbags on the bottom rungs of the ladders. Are you going to operate??? (Probably not.)

No, you are not looking for an A-Minima. That's a specialty camera. I'm curious why you would want to buy a camera. But forgetting that, I think an Arriflex is probably the best way to go. I like the Aaton's, but both my AC's are wary of their reliability. Have you looked on eBay, or Mandy.com classifieds? I think you can get something really nice for $20,000. As far as the lens, if you can afford only one, get the Canon 7.8-56mm T2 zoom. Don't waste your time, or compromise the quality of your work, by buying a shitty zoom. There are plenty of producers who will force you into using inferior glass, so why volunteer to do it by putting one in your package?

Wow, haven't read this thread in a while. What I really want to emphasize is to read Ansel Adams's book "The Negative," especially his discussion of local contrast. He explains it a lot better and more thoroughly than I could possibly do. In general, your understanding of the process is correct. For myself, I wouldn't get hung up on "printing up to key." Your camera report should indicate some scene info (DAY-INT, NIGHT-INT) and the timer should print to that instruction regardless of how the neg is processed. (I only worry about that if, for example, I'm shooting a day exterior and the sun has set!) Also note, though, a very important part of the process is shooting tests. Harris shot tests for "Birth," and I - on my two student films - shot tests. As far as seeing the samples: Sure, that's quite flatterring. I could send you my reel, which has some clips from both pulled films, as well as clips from normally processed s-16. Also, you would do well to just buy a few rolls of slide film and do some experiments on your own. Best, J

Maybe you should IMDB some recent race car movies and find out the names of the Key Grips involved. Herb Ault comes to mind (very nice guy). LA based, I think his company is named "Grip Tricks."

Newfoundland, the easternmost provice of Canada. It is harsh and beautiful, and perfectly safe for a 3 year old. (Just hold on to her on the cliffs.) Go in last week of June, first week of July, so you can see icebergs and whales (at the same time), millions of sea birds, caribou, etc ... The food is pretty bad, but the people are wonderful. It's a great place to bring a bolex, though it is prone to a lot of fog. Also, I had a tough time photographing there because it's hard to decide where to point the camera, and taking the time to really shoot something means you have to stop exploring ... It's definitely a different kind of place. I think a little like Iceland, in that "Nature" is the unmentioned elephant in the room. Go in third week of August and people will already have huge stacks of wood piled around their houses in preperation for the winter ahead. Anyway, enjoy wherever you go ...

Hey, a reply! I was bombing worse than Chris Rock at the Oscars: I looked yesterday, and there were something like 44 views and 0 replies. Anyway, here's a better link if anyone's interested: http://www.cinequestonline.org/2005/theate..._view.php?m=571 It's a pretty straightforward job of photography, though that doesn't mean it was easy.

Is it too whorish of me to mention that a film I shot is on view online in the digital theatre section of cinequestonline.org? It's a 12 minute film, shot on the Panasonic SDX-900, and it was the subject of some discussion in these forums. Oh yes, the title is "Superstore." Thanks to any who take the time ... J-Ro.

Is it too whorish of me to mention that a film I shot is on view online in the digital theatre section of cinequestonline.org? It's a 12 minute film, shot on the Panasonic SDX-900, and it was the subject of some discussion in these forums. Oh yes, the title is "Superstore." Thanks to any who take the time ... J-Ro.

Mr. Mullen, Was there any chance that you could have had film dailies instead of video? What kind of relationship do you have w/ you dailies colorist? Anonymously, J-Ro.

Points very well made. Is it more precise of me to say "unbalanced, but balanced"? Also, let's warn against the idea that symmetry and balance are synonymous. Best, J

[i would say that the rule of thirds IS an issue of balance, it's just the most "normal" and "comfortable" of ways to balance space withing the frame. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My objection to the rule of thirds is that it's always just thrown out on its own (usually in High School photo class) w/ no explanation for WHY it works, as if the instruction to divide the frame into thirds is the be all and end all of composition. Line, perspective, balance, visual weight are much more powerful tools to have at your disposal, and they're really not difficult to understand. (They're certainly easier on the brain than 24p pulldown issues!) For instance, I'm no MFA, but here's what I see in The Usher: Hopper heightens the drama of the scene by presenting an intentionally unbalanced composition. First, he breaks w/ convention by putting the thick vertical column dead center in the frame, which is visually disquieting. Moreover, the painting is tilted way over to the usher - she's at the right side (we tend to "read" frames from left to right), and she's brightly lit - adding to her visual weight, whereas the rest of the frame is pretty dark. What keeps the girl from capsizing the frame is the counterweight in the top left of the painting: the silver and white of the movie screen. Last, the seating rail helps define the usher's space, but it is also a plainly orthogonal element, there to lend depth to the image. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's great to go on a scout and be able to say, "There are no good orthogonals here, let's keep looking."

Centered C/U's are a personal choice of Anderson. (Think I read that in AC.) This is one of those topics that invites the espousing of absurd generalisations. But I'll give it a shot: Narrative film-making is not about the photography; it's about the actors acting. The vast majority of what you see on TV or at the theatre are varying degrees of closeups of actors' faces. If you're shooting 4:3, or even 1.85:1, and you have a medium 2 shot in which you have to see two faces, there are only so many ways you can frame the shot. Orson Welles was really able to "expand" the frame. Remember the scene in "Citizen Kane" in which Kane is told he's bankrupt? Static camera, Welles starts out dominating the shot in C/U, but as he gets the bad news, he walks to the back of the set and shrinks in stature. As the question is about the evolution of framing, I'll hazard to say that that kind of bold approach has been largely abandoned for framing that is a lot tamer. Movies are about the actors and the story, and I think that most producers and directors want to do everything they can to keep the audience "in the story." They don't want to distract anyone w/ "interesting" photography. If you can get away w/ it, then it's kind of a bonus. Yes, that's a terrible generalisation, and there are plenty of contemporary exceptions (like Lance Accord's work), BUT, don't most H'Wood movies kind of look the same? For example, is there anything in the trailer for "The Interpreter" that alerts you that the great Khondji shot it? Plenty of big time DP's could have got the job, and the film would hardly have looked different. Last, can we move beyond the "rule of thirds," and talk about "balance" instead?

ND gels for the windows, tape for the gel. Tape, or use some safety pins, bleached muslin to the cieling and bounce a pocket par into the muslin.

Back in January of '97, I worked on a movie called "2x4," on which Declan Quinn really embraced sodium vapor lights. He didn't just match Mole-Richardson lights to sodium-vapor, he had actual sodium-vapor lights as part of the package. It's been a while since that shoot, so don't ask for any details. I'm pretty sure it won the Cinematography prize at Sundance '98, so maybe sodium-vapors are not 100% awful.

Yeah, on the second pulled film, our chosen lab could only push or pull in full stop increments, and the effect (coupled w/ a really old Angenieux 12-120 lens) was a little too strong; the colors are just too desaturated. On the first film, (different lab) we pulled some shots 1.5 stops, but we had a much crisper lens so we got away w/ it. Last, I always start out overexposing a little to protect the lower values. Best, Jon.

All I've got in my set box is precut muslin, but if I had precut grids or other diffusions, then they could be "diapers" as well. I don't think it's "official" jargon, though, like "butt-plug," or "Gary-Coleman." (Hmm, "Bring me a Diva with a diaper on top of a Gary Coleman:" Has a nice ring to it.)

I've tried the search engine on this board a bunch of times, but it never works very well. In fact, I used "aliasing" as my search term, and the engine returned a grand total of one post. As for my curiosity about the technology, it's just that: curiosity. It's one thing to know that mini-dv is pretty good (I've had great results w/ the dvx-100a), dvc-pro is better, and hd is "really good," but I'd like to have a better handle on the how & why of each format. Anyway, I'm going to write off the aliasing as a result of looking at a dvd that someone burned. It's really not there in the vhs of my reel. Thanks, Rob, for your concise, and patient, explanation. Last, I'm told the film in question will be available at www.cinequestonline.org from Feb. 14 - 28, under the title "Superstore." If you watch it all the way to the credits, then I guess my anonymity will be blown; but that's a risk I'll live w/ :rolleyes:

I have to second David Mullen's support of Kino's. My little shooting kit inludes a bunch of pieces of bleached muslin pre-cut to fit into various kino's. A single kino w/ a "diaper" can look the same as a small booklight, or a baby w/ a chimera, or a double-diffused whatever. The unmentioned problem w/ kino's is they can be a little tough to control, owing to their length. Anyway, something I've long wondered: Suppose you've got an ultra-dino up in a 120' lift. If you rig an 8'x8' diffusion in front of it, does the light really get softer - the diffusion really isn't increasing the size of the source, or are you just knocking out some of the stop?

So you need more info? What I'm calling "aliasing" might be what you call stairstepping. In narrow vertical objects - like unistrut columns (the film takes place in a big warehouse store) - if the object has any kind of an edge light on it, the edge will flicker w/ any kind of camera movement. There's a shot where a woman walks past a row of freezers - all glass and aluminum doors w/ vertical flourescent bulbs inside, and the flo's - on the dvd the director gave me - display a lot of flicker. Now, the actors often have a little edge light on their arms or shoulders, but those edges don't flicker, or as I say "alias." The condition is limited to really narrow objects. Anyway, we shot project in 24p. But, now that I've brought it up ... I still don't get the whole video capture thing. If you shoot in a progressive mode, the tape that you pull from the camera is still interlaced. Why does it look any better than if you just shoot in old-fashioned interlace format? Furthermore, if I take the 4:2:2 footage from the SDX-900 and dub it to mini-dv, aren't I now working w/ 4:1:1 footage. How is it that this footage still looks "better" than stuff I shoot on the DVX-100? (Obviously, the same questions apply to film to beta work.)

I bet this has been ansered a million times, but, where does video aliasing come from? I just watched a new dvd of a short film I shot a while back on the SDX-900; it is rife w/ aliasing - mainly along vertical and "hot" edges, that throughout the rest of post production was not evident. My guess is this has something to do w/ Final Cut, or IDVD, since I cut some of the same footage into my reel (from mini-DV dubs) on an Avid and don't see any aliasing there.

Sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure that's what I heard. I can ask my boss and see if he remembers anything different.

Hey Pierre, By "Pulling," I mean the opposite of pushing. The negative spends less time in the developer; colors come out less saturated, and the high values get "pulled" towards middle grey. (This info is very well explained in "The Negative" by Ansel Adams.) Personally, I've "pulled" on 2 of the 10 short films I've shot. The first was a "girls" film, and I did it to create a softer look. The colors and highlights are still there, but the image has a very gentle feel. (Adams writes about the "local contrast" evident in faces; pulling diminishes the local contrast.) It worked so well, the next director asked me to pull his film. If you do it, I suggest finding a lab that can pull (or push) in half-stop increments. Also, I think Audiris might be correct about going over the edge w/ the under-exposure; they were reshoots that I worked on. Best, J-Ro.