Jon Rosenbloom

We did this a few weeks ago ... end up with something like 10 stops of ND plus 1/2 ctb, plus the camera scenic "shmutzed" the windows. Not a small job anyway you try it, but it looked kind of believable in the end.

Yes, but you have to move the turnbuckles on the track or the inner wheel of the dolly will hit them.

Quite nice. And, no club music!

I dig it. It's short, but it doesn't feel skimpy. It shows you have a good eye. Club music? Not my thing. Keep shooting!

Yeah! I actually shot something new and added it to my reel! It actually uploaded to Vimeo! Sure, I was lazy and didn't even change the song ... But, check it out! Some of it is good! Try to see which ideas I stole from David Mullen. Thanks for looking.: http://vimeo.com/20792283

Yeah, I didn't address the whole "business plan." If you want to serve big features, you need 40 feet of truck, and a big investment. If you're not a key, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If you go smaller, no one's going to rent grip only, so put lights on the truck by all means, but you have to have some HMI's, then you need a service dep't ... If you've got that kind of money, produce a good film and go for a white glove career! Good luck.

The gear is always the same, there's just more or less of it. As a working grip, I find the most important aspect of a package the layout of the truck, and the quality and quantity of the carts. If I need something, I should be able to find it, and pull it without digging for it. A really great truck will have a lots of carts that don't need more than two people to push. It will have a 4'x8' rack on sliders. It will have an apple box cart, instead of a god-damn hand truck that needs to get re-stacked every time it moves!

And here's a highly compressed clip of "Pie": http://vimeo.com/19328715. The photographic basics: 35mm. Fuji 250T, over-exposed 1/3 stop. Panavision Primo lenses, 85 filter. Transferred on Spirit to HDCam-SR, edited in Apple pro-res 422hq, up-resed to 8 bit, then 10-bit, out-put to HDCam-SR. Awaiting festival acceptance!

Watch "30 Rock." 99% book-lit.

Shoot without gels or filters, mix the lights, correct halfway to orange in post.

I could be wrong, but, I think you need a permit to put down a tripod, and our cash strapped city now charges $300 for a permit. Getting a permit requires proof that you're carrying insurance ... Why not go to Newfoundland and shoot sea-birds? Less hassle, and the air is cleaner.

Easiest job in the world: TV series Director. All the creative pressure is on the writers. DP and Operators know how the show is supposed is to look. Actors know their characters. You've got eight days to make a 43 minute show, so almost every scene is master, over, over and let's move on, so there's not a lot of getting too creative.

Altman designed that opening shot of "The Player" as a parody of long, complex steadi-cam shots. Some long takes that are marvels of simplicity: The "Kitchen Table scene" in Welles's "Magnificent Ambersons," (or the "Birthday Dinner scene in "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days"), and the empty pool scene from Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia."

I hope it's a dry heat. How do you feel about using soft edge nd's, and pola's if you're panning around?

I think that "we're going for a look" - usually "gritty" - thing is something we tell ourselves when we don't get to shoot on film.

People still ride on cranes??? What if you went in on a remote head system, instead of getting the whole beast?

Good to hear somebody's working! To get that aspect you mask the top and bottom of the image? Also, if you're out in the Texas sun, wouldn't you be able to work at a 5.6 - 8, or whatever, if you wanted to shoot anamorphic? Is the DI back to 4 perf more expensive??

May I rephrase David's argument, and say that film is a visual medium. It goes in through the eyes. That said, we all want to do the best we can as photographers, but it's the producers who decide on the format. That said, do we consider it progress that the operator no longer looks through a viewfinder?

Thanks, Rob. PANY ran out of G2's, so they "upgraded" us to the Millennium. I had planned on shooting with a 200 degree shutter, but the Millennium couldn't do it. (Still trying to figure that one out.) I will say that's the quietest camera I've ever been on set with. I'm rather humbled by PANY's generosity; I told them to give 5 old set of lenses, but they gave me a full set of Primo's. In the full screen quicktime window, I do see what people have said about Primos being too sharp. I hate the idea of putting a filter in front of a great lens, but they do see every pore of skin. Have to ask my operator, Billy Green, about the switch to Steadi-cam. (You're a New Yorker, too? Billy's a good guy to know.)

A few shots grabbed and reduced for the web from the Final Cut browser window. Technicolor did the transfer to HDCam SR, and then digitized that to Apple Pro Res HQ 422. The dessert case: I spent a long time worrying about how I was going to put 1/2 minus green on the doors of this dessert case. And I also worried about the daylight reflections going horribly blue, but after I did the photoboards on print film, I decided to just shoot it and ask the colorist to correct halfway to tungsten - so the reflected incandescent lights go warm, and halfway to magenta - so the daylight reflections get a weird purple tinge. The angle is dictated by the mirror in the back of the case. It's not the dead on shot I initially wanted, but the layers of reflections and sources make it a very thick composition. Shot almost wide open, I think, with no overexposure, no filter. http://www.cinematography.com/uploads/monthly_06_2010/post-1297- Here's the master shot, shot on the 40mm. Looking at this now, I think I should have gone with the nd .6 right away. We filled the actors with a 4'x4 Kino, to a 4 stop with the meter set a 120asa. I was eager to start shooting the scene, so I took my chances with the background. It is compressed three times over; maybe I'll be able to bring it down a little during the tape to tape session. Single on "Richard," played by Tyler Hollinger. The only lighting was a 4'x4' solid for negative fill, and a 2'x4 kino for the soft edge light. http://www.cinematography.com/uploads/monthly_06_2010/post-1297-12764895231723.jpg Last is a frame from our steadi-cam oner Scene 2. This is the 40mm. I was going through the lenses during the checkout, and I really liked the 40mm. It was my honor to have Doug Hart assisting, and he said "Yeah, that was Gordon's favorite lens." What else to say but, "Great minds think alike." It gives you a decent field of view, but it's still long enough to have a tiny bit of "heaviness." http://www.cinematography.com/uploads/monthly_06_2010/post-1297-12764903958746.jpg Shot about 6pm, the sun was absolutely blasting the street, so I put a soft edge nd .6 "upside-down" in front and crossed my fingers. I love the result. That's 4 of 17 shots we did in 12 hours, with two changes to steadicam, and barely a second to spare. "Pie" is really my very own vanity project - the only person who would ever hire me to shoot 35mm is ... me! But, damn it looks like a movie, and I can't imagine getting anything close to the image quality and ease of use with any other system.

"... I know that things are very different, much more hectic, and have much less room for error than the smaller productions I have spent the bulk of my career on..." Actually ... :) Just show up on time, and work without complaint or comment.

Check out M David Mullen's threads on "The Sophomore."

"Any pro's want to chime in"??? I don't how to take that. I refer you to my recent "In Production" post.

Is this for interiors? 1.2k HMI's go for about $500/day, plus insurance, etc. You could spend half that on a couple rolls of full cto, or 3/4 cto and gel your windows - if they're not too big.

My very own "In Production" post! "Pie" is a 4.5 page script I wrote a few years ago, which I knew would be "simple" to shoot, if I ever got around to it. The script involves a 4 page conversation between two men, seated at a table in diner, and a ½ page walk and talk on the sidewalk outside the diner. Simple stuff ... not so simple when you decide to go ahead and do it. The whole production comes out of my pocket, and, as with many discussions on this board, the basic riddle of doing this film was how to shoot it in a location that I couldn't "own," with a minimal crew - 1 grip, 1 electric - and still have it look professional. The first answer was to find the right location: an attractive diner, with enough windows - some of which face north - so that I could work fast and do little, or no lighting. The next answer was to shoot on 35mm. The next answer was to get a real dolly, since adjusting a 35mm camera on sticks soaks up a lot of time. The camera and the dolly sound quite pricey, but this is part of the story where I say it helps to have been a grip (and aspiring DP) for 11 years; I had some great references and relationships behind me when it came time to ask for "donations." For a 4.5 page script, I bought 7500' of Fuji 8553, which in 3-Perf gave me a 21:1 shooting ratio. I got the film off a show I was gripping on, and I'm sure I had asked them for 250D. The whole deal was ready to go when I learned that 8553 is in fact a tungsten stock. The 85 filter would get me down to 160asa, and if I did my usual 1/3 over, that would put the meter down to 120. A little risky I thought, but the price for the film, plus the reliability of the short-ends was too good to pass up. If the day was cloudy, I figured I could go LLD, or skip the filters and correct in post. If it was really dark, I could push one and probably still get a good image. That was the beauty of shooting on 35mm. It turned out to be a blue sky day. (The only problem with shooting on short-ends is that they were all shorter than advertised! Not a killer, but it does throw the actors a little bit when they can't finish the full scene.) The lighting package consisted of 2 1.2k par HMI's, 1 575 par HMI, and 1 small, med, and large Kino. I had dreams of creating hot "Robert Richardson" slashes of light with the "big" HMI's. I also had a hunch that the sun would do the same thing if we timed things right. The HMI's never got plugged in. I had also thought the small HMI could liven up the background of some shots, but since I designed the shots to hide the fact that we didn't have any extras, the 575 stayed on the truck as well. Better to have them, and not need them, rather than vice-versa. In the end, all we used was the 4x4 kino for fill, the 2x4 kino for a little edge, and a 4'x4' solid for negative fill. Some of the shots look out the window to a background that is lit by direct sun. This is where we used the kino for fill and a bit of nd .6 on the window, but, it's also where we really put the 8553 to the test. Fuji advertises a very long shoulder for this film, and I believe it. Also, on our EXT walk-and-talk, the meter read 8 on the fill side and 22 on the sun side. Again, the film just ate it up. The actors walk to a car, which was covered in a fine layer of pollen. Of course we cleaned it, and got a giant sun reflection in the roof. It's actually ok. The film holds it, and the 40mm Primo stays crisp. (If I ever shoot another car w/out a 40'x40' silk, I'll try to remember the pollen thing.) It might be guessed from this discussion that my photography is rather boring. I prefer the terms "efficient" and "transparent." Every time I panned the actors onto the short side, I thought it looked cool, but out of place. Does that mean I'm disciplined, or unimaginative? I guess the final cut will tell. For me, shooting this film was all about trusting the lenses and the film, the nice looking location, the indirect sun, and making the day without doubling the location fee, and - most importantly - without wearing out the actors. If I eliminate the ugly, figure out a plan that minimizes the work the crew has to do, and expose the film well, I feel like I've done a good job. I have lots of people to thank, but I'm not sure they want me to blab about giving away free stuff, or labor, so, we'll just have to wait for the end credits to roll. Until then, my gaffer was good enough to post a set of great BTS shots: Thanks for reading.