Jon Rosenbloom

I was skeptical at first, but I think you did a great job with "Sunshine." It's kind of inspiring, actually. Thanks for the effort!

May I suggest Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia," and Orson Welles "Chimes at Midnight."

Jon,

 

My advice to you is to put as much thought as possible into the politics of being a DP. I can only speak from the POV of a grip. I have seen guys with no business calling themselves a DP at the helm of a $50M feature because of his "silver tongue." I have seen some of the biggest DPs in Hollywood become unhireable because they thought they were above politics. The successful DP's I have met are all just as good at politics as they are with cinematography. They all know how to keep studio execs happy, commercial agency producers happy, directors happy, actors happy. They are impeccable at picking and choosing their battles. This is a trait I have noticed almost across the board, those who lack do not seem to last.

 

Maybe you felt these students lacked the kind of thought or respect for a political answer. Maybe you are just tired of "playing the game." I urge you to put yourself in the shoes of others. Learn where the fence is and when you do, play both sides of it. You NEVER know exactly who is going to make it in Hollywood or who may hire you down the road. I cannot emphasize enough about doing whatever it takes to be behind the camera.

 

Then again what does a grip know...

Well, everything is political, (including gripping!) But, it seems to be one of those truism's that never gets explained. I know a DP who on every shot will max out a set's ability to hold gear, say he's ready, and then add a light and 6 flags after the actors are on set. His career does nothing but go up. How does he do it???

For me when I shoot, photography is the easy part. The hard parts are getting the job, and then dealing with the constant "how long is this going to take?" questions.

Could be its own forum.

I'm glad this turned out to be a worth while topic. I'll definitely try to remember to "tell them what they want to hear" the next time it happens. The other option is to be cheeky and say "Of course I can make look like a studio film, just give me a crew of 30, and 5 truck loads of equipment."

I never doubted my ability to shoot something good with their limited gear. What I doubted - and what surely came through as some other kind of doubt - was that I could answer the question "Can you make it look like a studio film?" honestly and to their satisfaction. About a script I thought was terribly maudlin and cliched, I once answered "Yeah, it's good ..." got the gig, and it turned out to be a rather touching film.

Yes, that is Mike Scott, from his solo album "Bring 'Em All In."

I agree!

 

Maybe you can at least talk them into buying some higher wattage bulbs for practicals.

Seriously Jon, I just glanced at your website and I'm sure you won't have any trouble producing something they will love even if you feel like screaming a lot of the time. Sometimes the limitations can even cause you to get even more creative.

 

I do know where you are coming from tho.

 

love

 

Freya

You're too kind.

I'm fine with embracing limitations, and I suggested - without seeing the location - that we might shoot with only sun, practicals, and negative fill. I guess they didn't buy it.

I left out, "we want it to look like a studio film."

I always feel that in an interview, the last thing I want to do is burst someone's bubble, or tell them they're terribly naive about what they're getting involved in. If I say, "I can make a compelling short with strong visuals with this camera, but it won't look like a studio film," I'm still saying something they don't want to hear. Game over.

"We're students, and we're going to shoot this short on a Panasonic HVX-200, and our lights consist of two Tota's and a Lowel kit, BUT, we don't want this to look like a student film ..."

After all this time, I still don't know what to say.

First, why would you sign a deal memo that says you're responsible for L&D? I've been a pretty good grip for twenty years, and, guess what, I've lost and destroyed plenty of gear and property in my time. That vintage car on Indy 4? Yup, I put a screw hole right through the roof. Poop happens. You own up to it, make an honest report and the producers eat the cost because it's in their budget and they know it's part of the process. They might not hire you again so fast, but THEY MUST PAY YOU. PAYMENT FOR LABOR IS WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANY SIDE CONDITION IN SOME ONE SIDED, BS DEAL MEMO. I know guys who have snapped the buckets of condors with their rigs; they get paid.

In fact, the expectation that the check-in list should equal the check-out is completely unreasonable. Anyone with any experience understands that it is virtually impossible for no L&D to happen on a job. (You acknowledge that in your original post.) So either your producers were extremely naive, or they inserted that clause IN BAD FAITH, knowing they would use it to stiff you at the end of the job. That would invalidate the deal.

Do not chalk this up to experience.

In my eternal quest to simplify matters, we could just think of diffusion as "light," "medium," and "heavy;" that is Opal, 250, 216. For frames of 4'x4' and smaller, these gels seem to work best; grid cloth that is taped beautifully to a frame one day is droopy and noisy the next. For bigger frames light, medium and heavy is 1/4 grid, 1/2 grid, and full grid. For extra light diff, you've got hampshire frost, 1/2 opal, and 1/2 soft frost. Extra heavy would be 129, or bleached muslin. A good DP will know better than to ask the grips to carry three 4'x4''s of everything, gels and grids (and an assortment of color); you're just slowing yourself down.

If you're on a tight budget, 250 or Light grid are the ones to buy.

Does anyone ever use silk anymore?

It's possible, but not a formula for a successful shoot. My rule of thumb is $1000/page is the threshold of getting picture and sound that will play well at a film-festival.

You'll want to look for a DP who owns the right camera, or someone (DP or camera assistant) who has a connection to a rental house. If you get the right kind of references, you can "ask" for the camera package. If you're PAing on big shows where the Key Grip and Gaffer own a lot of gear, now would be a good time to make some friends in those departments. Also, call Kodak or Fuji directly and tell them what you want to do, why film is important to you, and can they help you.

I would budget 1 roll of film per page of script, plus one more for good luck. I don't suggest short ends, because they're terrible for the actors, and they're probably rather scarce nowadays.

One thing you'll have a hard time getting around are the lab and tele-cine costs. I did my 6 page short (http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=46720) on short-ends, free camera, light and grip; it was still somehow $10k before I started cutting! Lab and insurance were the biggest expenses.

Oh yeah, get all your deals in writing!

Good luck!

Doug Liman Directed, DPed, and Operated "Fair Game," but he had a "Camera Operator" who is a top-notch gaffer, as well as a top-notch gaffer. Can't tell you how it looks. (Plus there's the whole Red variable to consider.)

Kubrick always had DP's, or a lighting cameraman, but his visual stamp is all over his movies.

A director's job is to tell the actors what to do, the DP's job is to tell camera, grip and electric what to do. If you're the director you can design the shots as much as you want - down to the color gels on the lights, but it really helps to have someone overseeing the photographic details.

I would guess the Kino is just in the upper left hand corner of the frame with beige tape, perhaps tan masking tape, covering what is in frame. It is made up to looks like a cabinet that is joining up to the fridge. If so, very clever!

I wish I was that clever, but, no. My post is about using lights that are not hidden. Maybe I should have said, "Find the flo tube."

To elaborate, I meant for the flo's to be in the shot. If you can't get the lights out of the shot, then you're stuck putting something believable in the shot. Without knowing the period of the piece, I'd just throw out the idea that a couple of bare flo's either on the wall or the ceiling, powered with some neatly run zip cord, might work for the scene. A lot of our work is getting equipment out of the shot, and it's a leap of faith to start putting lights in the shot, but it's a neat trick. Find the Kino!

Hello Guys,

 

I have a shoot coming up in which one of the scenes to be lit is a very narrow hallway , it's causing me some difficulties so thought i would come ask for some advice. The ceiling height is too low to hang fixtures and the hallway is very narrow, there are doors running the length of the hallway but we only have access to one which our character will be running out of (and towards the camera) (i was thinking of putting a small fixture behind the door, 300 or 500 with some diffusion perhaps, don't want the light to be too intense as it's just moonlight ambience)

 

The story dictates the character is feeling trapped and sees no clear way out of the hallway and the director wants a kind of tense but frantic atmosphere which makes me think backlighting would be inappropriate (light at the end of the tunnel etc).

 

I was thinking of bouncing a few tungstens off the existing fixtures but not sure if this will cause the scene to look overlit (as it's also a night scene), i was also thinking of unscrewing a few of the bulbs to leave only a couple of the practicals on and just streaking some blueish light down a wall to give some depth.

 

Any advice on what i could do with this most boring apartment building hallway would be very much appreciated, (we have tungstens of various sizes)

 

Cheers, Matt

Tape some florescent tubes to the walls?

I think it could cut faster and shorter. You've got some good shots, but I think it's too random. I would front-load the piece with your top shots, and excise the first dolly shot with the ugly white cinder-block wall.

Then again, what do I know? My reel doesn't do a damn thing for me.

What are your post-plans? I think even in Final Cut's Color, you can do a secondary correction in which you can key the red and saturate it while desaturating the rest of the image. Helps to have a colorist.

It's often used for "atmosphere." It gives a thickness to a set that you can't get by putting a filter onto a camera. I find it interesting that smoke tends to heighten the drama of a scene even though it's lowering the contrast in the lighting. I'm sure M. David Mullen- who has smoked a few sets in his time - can give a more complete answer.

"The Negative," and "The Camera" by Ansel Adams. No one has mentioned "The Five C's of Cinematography." Never mind the books. Get yourself a manual focus, manual exposure SLR, some slide film, and start shooting. The answers come much easier when you look through a viewfinder!

Are we not splitting hairs? How wrong do you have to shoot it for RedRaw vs. DPX to be an issue? I just graded a Red-shot short at a "big name" post house here in NY. Indeed, they ingested all the raw footage, rebuilt the timeline as DPX files, and we graded from there. The colorist mentioned that he would have to make sure the engineers would not reflexively put a LUT on the footage before we even looked at it. But, that took just a word or two. We "baked in" the look when we were done. Would I have been happier had we not worked from the DPX conversion? I don't think so. I had spent the past few months worrying I had underexposed the project, but we had all the latitude we could ask for, and in the end, we graded it pretty much back to how we lit it - without a DIT, or even a 17" - on the day. It looks just fine. Go figure.

What is the inertia like on that thing! If you do another demo like this, may I suggest doing a split screen with a "bts" camera that shows the position of the arm in synch with the demo footage.

Cheers.

So, what did you do?

No one has mentioned how important it is to get something for the dolly grip when the sandwiches come around. :D

Hey Lindsay, I took a look at one of your architecture interviews on your site. It looks great! I'm curious how you handled shooting quickly in an office with what I assume is mixed light: daylight, florescent, tungsten. Thanks.

I second Adrian's advice to just put matching tubes in your Kino's. The tough part, though, is if you've got light sources other than those Flo's. Anything that's not green will be captured magenta.

Film Forum in Greenwhich Village, Walter Reade Theatre in Lincoln Center, and The Museum of Modern Art in midtown have all the old movies. The megaplexes on 42nd Street and Union Square all have pretty big screens, as well as the Sony Lincoln Square on Broadway at 68th.

Basically, you want to build a bridge with support at only one end. You need a tower (rocky-mountain combi-stand), some cable (either wire rope with turn-buckles and shackles or ratchet straps), and some counter weight (sand bags or shot bags). You want it portable and stable. It gets tricky if you want to do a push/pull rather than a track across. Maybe a pick and shovel will work better to get those low pushes.