Mathew Rudenberg

ooʇ uɐılɐɹʇsnɐ ʞɐǝds noʎ ǝǝs ı

Could you be more specific? What light do you want to shine through the window. How big is the window, how far away from the window will the light be, etc. Generally for tenting you want to get a frame slightly bigger then the window. So for a 6 foot window I would get an 8x, 3 8x solids for the sides and a 12x to drape over the top so you don't get light leaks. You want to go with duve rather then grif because a hot light can melt plastic which will cost you in L&D.

I don't even know what 4k means to Canon - the 5D 2 and 3 barely resolve 700 lines when it's described as 1080. Perhaps that means that the new 4k model will finally resolve 1080 sharply. That would certainly make it a better option for a cheap C-cam to rig in places where a fully dressed red or alexa wouldn't fit.

The rolling shutter is pretty noticeable just from the flourescents. I wonder if that would cause similar issues with HMIs. It kind of looks like when I try to take a still with my iphone under HMI lighting. Here's a still where it's particularly obvious. I find Shane's boundless enthusiasm tends to rub me the wrong way. He comes across as a Canon shill. Take this quote: "When you harness 4K into the small footprint of a 1D, give it the processing power to record to little CF cards with no external recording devices needed, then deliver an image that crushes the F65, Epic, Alexa in one fell swoop." I find a claim like that rather hard to accept, but maybe I'm just too cynical.

Most likely they put the light on a dolly. Looks like it's a soft source so it's probably a Chimera of some type, could be a Briese since those are popular with higher budget music videos. Could be put on a crane instead. Either way you'd probably have a lamp op to keep it panned towards the actor as the platform moves.

Ridley Scott on shooting 3D: "3D has been a wonderful exercise but I was brought up as a camera operator so its really about lensing and all that kind of stuff. So with the help I’ve had from a wonderful cameraman and his technical team its been, for me, a pretty straight forward ride. That said I’ll never work without 3D again, even for small dialogue scenes. I love the whole process. 3D opens up the universe of even a small dialogue scene so I’ve been very impressed with that." Sauce

When I've tried the broken mirror approach I've found it hard to hide the shapes of the broken pieces of glass in the reflection. As a result I tend towards the use of aluminum foil or baking trays depending on the the necessary size of the container. Mylar works great for a large area effect but is noisy. I have heard the broken mirror approach recommended many times so I wonder if I was doing something wrong.

Art Adams posted an interesting LED comparison. Basically he set the white balance to tungsten and shot a variety of LEDs and one KinoFlo with the same whitebalance. This illustrates the color difference you can expect if you're planning to use these units in a tungsten dominant environment. Here's the comparison. To my eye it looks like the MoleLED is the clear winner. Here's the article.

The standard practice for large sets is to build up a base level of ambient top light and then to finesse details on the close ups. Balloon lights are great but expensive way to build ambiance since you need to top up the helium each day. They're particularly useful if you're shooting in a location where you are not allowed to rig lights (a historical building for example) or where you can't easily place stands (like an ice rink). Also, they often make sense cost wise if you're only shooting in a location for a short while - it's often cheaper to bring in a balloon op and a couple of balloons rather then add a pre-rig day with a rigging crew to put up lights. The standard practice for large sets is to use spacelights, often hundreds of them. On Lemony Snickets Chivo and Buckley used 1800 spacelights with a huge silk beneath them. The reason toplight is used is simply because we spend relatively little time shooting upwards. The multiple hardish sources become much like a single soft source, and for closeups one may well block or turn of the lights directly overhead to replace with more pleasing eye level sources, such as the large bounce in the image you included. While HMIs are sometimes used Tungsten is usually preferable as you don't have to worry about hot strikes and lights going down for no reason (as much).

Sounds like a fun build. This is the route I would take: Several 12v SLAB batteries (Sealed Lead Acid Battery). They're big and heavy but are also cheap and seem to last fairly well - you can buy replacement batteries for UPS power supplies in various sizes and strengths. Then you want to find your maximum output for least power, LEDs are somewhat more efficient then CFL's so that might be a good route. You can buy 12v LED turn signals for cheap, or all kinds of LEDs for boats and cars. The trick will be your globe construction. I assume you want a perfect sphere of light which means the battery will need to be inside the sphere. This means you need several sources around the battery so that you don't see the shadow of the battery. You'll also need to be able to change to a fresh battery whenever it runs dry. I wouldn't go with the china ball - too delicate. I would try to find a plastic sphere that can be unscrewed into two parts, frost it, and create a support cradle for the battery to sit in the center out of transparent plastic. For practical purposes I'd probably build at least two - one battery powered and one that could be plugged in. That way you won't have to worry about the battery running out when you're lighting or doing a shot where you could hide a cable. Good luck!

A low budget alternative to balloon lights is to buy a weather balloon (or several) and instead of attaching lights to it point powerful groundbased lights at it (such as pars) in order to create ambiance with the bounced light.

The show actually went 3D rather last minute, strangely enough. After some debate I believe the schedule was not, in fact, extended. We did get slightly more lighting gear and crew, especially the camera department. I would say that between going over a couple times and shooting slightly less coverage the difference was compensated for. I should also say that there are definitely rigs that can go handheld or steadicam with Epics - just the particular one I used (with Red ones) was too heavy for that.

At the start of the year I shot a 3D film, we used a Red camera beamsplitter rig for A camera and an SI2k beam splitter for B camera. I used the SI2k because the the dual red rig weighed in at about 80 pounds which would have made handheld or steadicam work very impractical to say the least. Shooting through a prism affects your final color palette as it introduces a strong tint to the image. The red held up very well in correction, the SI2k less well. Now that there are Epics more freely available hopefully the SI2k 3d rig will quickly become a thing of the past. Here the thing - a 3D camera such as the ones I described consists of 2 cameras. At the simplest level that means that each mag change is two mags, the camera weighs twice as much, each lens change is two lenses. Also, since you're using a beamsplitter you lose half your light, so you'll need lights twice as powerful. That is not all however - not only do you need to change two lenses at a time, but those lenses have to be perfectly matched in terms of focus, iris, and zoom. Sometimes the lenses drift and you have to recalibrate them, this can also take time. The cameras also need to be phase synced and matched, and you'll be generating twice as much footage. However, I don't know if it's possible to quantify it down into an exact percentage of how much longer it will take to set up. A lot depends on your planning and choices: we put the red rig on a dolly with a slider, and many times we ploughed through setup after setup as fast as any 2d film. On occasion an issue came up and we simply had to wait until it could be fixed. In the end we finished the film on schedule - we did have a couple of long days, but don't you always? I believe that you end up adjusting elements (coverage, lighting, camera moves) to compensate for the gear you have to make the project work. If I were really pressed to answer simply, I guess I would say, yes, shooting 3D will take more then 10% longer then shooting 2D. But I think it's a little too complex to break down into something that simple.

So you're saying if a Canadian pilot were to shoot in the US using US crew and facilities the US govt wouldn't allow them to hire a Canadian DoP? If so that's pretty messed up.

If you join and pay your dues you will remain a member in good standing. You will not get the health or retirement benefits unless you work a certain number of hours however. I'm not sure the exact details of working up. I believe you are correct however, you only need pay the difference. Yes, you can use 100 non-union days to join instead of your 30 union days. However, it is a little more complicated as you have to collect a bunch of pay stubs and company letterheads, while using your union days will be very simple as 600 already has that information.

I'm surprised that people are still having this debate - The Red is pretty good with some quirks, in some ways the Alexa is better, in other ways film is better. My choice of camera is usually dictated by the budget and style of the show. What does does surprise me is the statement that the footage looks so much better then Red MX footage. I thought it was the same chip in a smaller package with more processing power, hence the ability to record higher framerates and larger sensor sizes. From what I've seen the image quality is pretty similar to the MX. David, did you find the footage on Big Sur looked markedly different before your color adjustments?

I went through this recently. You can't really just rent them for one day. A one day rental includes a prep day, which means a prep day for the tech, as well as the shoot day. In the end a modest package for a one day shoot will bring you to about $5K.

Working in the film business involves many potentially deadly situations. Rigging a 20 foot square sail surrounded by metal pipes directly over talent and crew is one of them. I hate to be a downer, but if you haven't been properly trained you should NOT attempt this rig. CSATF has courses to teach grips how to safely create fly swatters. If you haven't done your safety courses you have no business driving or rigging a condor. Better yet, find a grip with real experience and bring him/her on for the days you expect to do this rig. A simple oversight could lead to the death of your crewmates - this is not something to learn on the job.

So far I have found no way around this with strobes and the Red. Lightning Strikes paparazzi units are much better then any other flash unit I've tried, but they still give you a half frame 10 or 20% of the time. The alternative is to use a non strobe type light with a fair amount of punch and to flicker it (through a dimmer board or by hand if necessary). Mini-brutes (fay nine-lights) are pretty good for this since their small filaments lighten and darken fairly quickly - I wouldn't try to use a single big globe like a 5 or 10k.

Yeah, reading your post I thought an LED lightsource is the closest I could think of in terms of matching your requirements. Something like a 1x1 litpanel is 5600k color temp and can run off a small battery. However, it is simply not going to come close to the output you'd get from a strobe. My science is very rusty but a watt relates to work done over time. So logically a smaller amount of watts could provide more light if that energy is expended over a very short time period, which is what happens with your strobes. They're bright as heck for a fraction of a second, but how many flashes do you get per battery? Let's say you get 1000 flashes per charge and each flash is 1/300th of a second. Well, that gives you about 3 seconds of continuous light per charge :) To get a similar light output as you get from a strobe in the continuous lighting world we need much more power - In direct sunlight the smallest light I'd use would be a 6,000 watt HMI, and more likely I would use an 18,000 watt unit such as an Arrimax. I'm afraid you wouldn't be able to run those off of batteries. The cheapest and most powerful solution for continuous lighting in direct sunlight without a generator is this.

Probably, but it looks like the curtain is flagging the light off of the actress - you can see part of the shadow of the curtain on the table... The key falling on the actress is presumably softer as it doesn't seem to cast a shadow from the lamp. It does look like a fairly hard source however, but I'm always surprised how hard it is to get good venetian patterns...

Do you think arc wander would be less of a problem if you're using heavy fairly diffusion? I would imagine that the slight variation in the position of the point source would be hidden by a larger surface...

As far as I know it's impossible. You'd have to fake it with one of the techniques I mentioned.

Try looking up tilt shift lenses or split-field diopters. Otherwise you could just blur part of the frame, in post or by schmearing vaseline on a clear filter in front of the lens.

While Halogen lamps do put out some UV, I think you're confusing them with HMI globes which put out a dangerous amount. A standard incandescent lamp emits about 75 micro watts per lumen(µW/lm) of UV, and unshielded halogen emits 100- 200 µW/lm. Daylight, meanwhile, emits 300 - 600 µW/lm. Chances are the only way you'll get burned is if you touch the light without gloves. don't do it. Often there's safety mesh so if a globe does blow it doesn't spray hot glass over the talent.