Matthew McDermott

There's a conversion chart on Abel Cine's website. You can't directly link to it because of the way the site is set up, but it's in the rental section under HD/SD lenses. Their link is www.abelcine.com

Personally, I can judge contrast well by eye but wouldn't trust myself to not use my meter for determining the shooting stop. I can guess pretty well in some conditions but since it's not particularly difficult to take out the meter and get an accurate reading, why risk it? There are some controlled situations, when doing interviews for example, that I use the same lights and from the same distance that I know I'm going to get a 4.0 or a 2.8 or whatever. That's just rote memorization and experience though rather than really being able to "read" the light.

Landon, I hear what you're saying but frankly you're going up against a lot of societal bias and precedence. Not to mention the biological fact that there is a difference in mindset (reasoning ability, ability to make ethical assessments) in someone that is 16 and someone that is 25, 35, 45..what have you. I thought like you when I was 16. I thought society was giving teenagers a bum wrap, that there was no difference between myself and someone with more experience or age. Now I'm 30 and in the simpliest terms: I was wrong. The average 16 year old, despite thinking they know what they're doing, does not have the life experience that they think they do. How many relationships have you gone through? How many times has someone cheated on you or you cheated on them? How many close relatives have died? How many siblings or friends have you sat through coping with alcoholism or drug addiction? How many times have you been short on rent and had to sell half your CD collection or throw a rent party to get by? How many car accidents have you got in? How many countries have you visited? How many productions have you been on where everything goes wrong with the weather, the light, the actors, but you've got to pull something out of it? Directing and writing, much more than cinematography relies on life experience. It relies on empathy. The only way to get that experience is though actually living; there is no substitute. This is not to say that you don't have a great script and won't be able to pull it off, or the financial wherewithall to make it happen, but to discredit the need for experience and maturity in being a good artist and filmmaker simply sounds like inexperience and a lack of maturity. I too can work 16 hours a day but after doing it a few times you don't advertise this fact. You want to get home to your friends, your girlfriend, your family. Not that you aren't so committed to filmmaking that it keeps you up at night think about how you're going to light your set-ups the next day, but eventually you learn that there is more to life than this. And you learn that there's no point in doing days this long because creativity, safety and ultimately the production as a whole suffers when working such long days. Even on a twelve hour day, the last hour is bit hazy. I too can work on 3 hours of sleep, but again, creativity and safety suffer. In fact working on that little sleep--especially after working a 16 hour day beforehand--is just as bad as being totally drunk on the set. The experience you'll gain after making your crew do this more than one day is that they'll either a) all quit, b ) work so slowly due to lack of sleep that everything begins grinding to a halt, or c) you'll end up spending a ton of money on overtime. The end result is that no one with any experience or degree of professionalism will want to work with you and your shoot will turn into a nightmare that everyone talks about in bars over drinks, accompanied by the phrase "I don't ever want to work with him again". Need I say, you don't want this to happen. Money may bring everyone to the set on time but ultimately you do have to make your film.

"Turn over" means the same thing as "roll camera"--as in starting or turning over the motor on the camera. I've not heard it used recently on any shoot in the US, but have heard it used in the UK. Maybe that's just the crews I work with though.

The aluminum foil trick works really well for long throws. It will in all likelihood be too harsh for short distance use. If the position of the sun isn't cooperating with your subject positioning try using the aluminum foil side to bounce into white and then onto your subject. You do feel like you're baking rather than making a film with all that foil around, but if that's all you have... If the DIY bug gets into you, you may be tempted to try and make a silver reflector out of foamcore and spray paint--as I did once when I needed a larger reflector panel than I had on hand--but speaking from experience, the paint just doesn't ever really dry. It does dry to the touch but will rub off on anything it touches with any force. The foil is a much better option for your needs.

What you're trying to acheive by using a slower shutter speed is introduce a bit of motion blur into the image. 1/25th will give you this but go any lower than that and dialogue will be strange. The lips will blur and not appear to be in sync. But as this is a surfing film festival that probably won't be an issue all of the time. I used to use lower shutter speeds when shooting DV but have given it up. It doesn't add that much to the image. One thing you may want to try for action images is actually go the other direction and use shorter exposure times (1/125th, 1/250th, 1/500th). It eats up light, but as you're shooting in broad daylight this shouldn't be an issue. What this will do is freeze more of the image. Think the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. Used judiciously it can have an interesting effect. Reflectors should be fine for filling in shadows. If you can't afford actual reflectors, white foamcore is acceptable though the throw isn't great. One problem you may encounter is that you simply have too much light. Beaches, little shade, overhead sun... all nightmares for lighting. If you do interviews or have dialogue in these situations you may wish to invest in or beg/borrow some sort of overhead frame and diffusion material to soften the light. Another thing for filtration: the contrast between the sea and sky may well be too great. ND grads will be invaluable but require a proper mattebox to be used effectively--not screw in filters. A good polarizer will help too. All of this will quickly blow your small budget unless you can swing some deals. If you were worried about $900 in film stock, be aware that most basic decent 4x4 mattebox for your camera and a couple filters will be more than that. The up side of this is that this sort of gear doesn't quickly become obsolete like DV cameras...

Be careful here. I've found that's it's actually harder to light video than film. You have to really protect your highlights. Blown out highlights on film--say from a practical in the frame or a window--can look OK if that's the aesthetic you're going for but on video looks awful. You have to fit your lighting plan into the more limited range that video can handle. With that in mind, Carlos is very much right. Don't skimp on lighting. Camera movement is another issue. The light weight of the camera is more of a disadvantage than you'd think. Sure you can handhold for much longer than with some 25-30lb film camera but it's actually harder to get the image to be stable. The weight of the camera really helps you out. I can hold a much longer focal length steady on film or HiDef than miniDV. Keep your handheld movement as stable as possible. The amount of shake that is acceptable in the eyepiece or on a small editting monitor will only magnify when projected on a festival screen. The nearly inevitable deep focus of DV is another issue you'll have to deal with. Step back and use longer focal lengths whenever possible. This is why everyone tries to shoot DV wide open and with ND filters--to minimize the depth of field. I've never used Magic Bullet but have tested a set of filters from Digital Film Tools that adds grain to the image but have never taken the plunge. It's never really done it for me. How well you light, think about production design, costuming and camera movement will give you more a "film look" than adding a bit of noise and diffusion in post. As Carlos said, search this forum. This subject comes up frequently.

I pick up accents whether I like it or not--if I'm in the southern US I start drawling within days--I can manage a convincing generic British accent indefinitely and with a little bit of effort do regional accents. A little plastic surgery and we may be on to something.

I'll turn this around on everyone. I'm a US citizen but after briefly going to school in London and falling in love with it--I feel more at home in England than the US--would love to be able to work in the UK. There may not be as much work as LA but I absolutely hate Southern California; everything about it just drives me mad... Too bad we can't just trade citizenships/working papers. It's not like we'd be taking work away from anyone, two people in the same field just switching places.

Pete, You've hit on the crux of this issue: the Varicam is an excellent camera and, though I haven't personally shot with it, the F900 obviously produces a good image. If the image is good enough for your purposes, what's the point of arguing about whether it's nearly High Definition, or High Definition, or Ultra High Definition, or whatever? Agonizing about terminology does no one any good; arguing about image quality is another thing. And since you seem to be satisfied with the Varicam, why worry about it whether it's "really" high defintion? Once you do that its very easy to say that none of the HD cameras are really high def. when compared to scanned film. Do you have some sort of scheme to produce a better image from the camera? If so, let's talk about that rather simple academic terminology.

Phil, I whole heartedly agree. I really wanted to like this film but it's just bad on so many levels--story, cinematography, acting, costuming (what was up with the vaguely Asian knight?). If Mr. Fugua could personally give me back those two hours of my life, I might be satisfied. What made it all worse was when I found out in an Entertainment Weekly article that the awful quasi-Stonehenge wedding ending was added on after test sceenings and it was decided that a summer movie should have a happy ending. I guess I just wanted too much. What should we have expected from the Director of Tears of the Sun?

With all due respect, I'm not so sure the recorder section does record 960x720. First of all, that's a 4:3 aspect ratio and the Varicam is 16:9 native; it's capable of doing 4:3 but you're just cropping a section out of the middle of the frame. Second of all, when you import Varicam footage into a NLE system in comes in at 1280x720. Thirdly, from Panasonic's own literature the total pixel area is 1370x744 with an effective area of 1280x720. Unless there's something I'm missing here--some bit of software that sqeezes 1280 pixels into 960 before putting it to tape--that puts the Varicam into HD territory. Plus, if it's not HD why did all the monitors in video village cost three times as much to rent? :lol:

I don't know about the soft focus being intentional. If it was going out and then coming back in for emotional effect, maybe, but in the out of focus shots it just stayed soft. I think someone just blew it and didn't say anything or notice. If that's not what happened, it was a bad stylistic choice. Although the handheld long lens stuff was really shaky it didn't detract from the film for me. It was pretty intense at times but it didn't intrude into my understanding of what was happening in the story. But then again, I didn't mind The Idiots either... :lol:

Without those lights the frame may well have been empty. I'm only going on my first impression. If I had been on set, staring at the scene, I very well may have come to the same conclusion--that something was needed back there to add depth and texture. It's interesting to me because I just read the AC article about The Village and it's mentioned that Shaymalan sometimes has to talk himself into the meaning of a shot. This is akin to something I often have to do on set--rationalize a light that I know is unmotivated but is neccessary. I instinctually know it's needed but have to create some reason in my head as to what the real-world source would be before I can see it as anything than a big fixture hanging out there. In the film, my eye just went to those background lights...

On the print I saw (Burlington, Vermont) these stains were there too. If that is a copy-protection scheme, it's a seriously flawed implementation. It really just looks like the print is bad. It's not really that distracting as it is there only momentarily but it seems like a more aesthetically pleasing system could be used. Mostly I agree with you; I thought the lighting was truly impressive. However there were a few incongruous lights in the background that were entirely un-motivated or at least weren't convincing to me. It is nit-picking to mention it considering how good the rest of it looked, but they did bug me. For a place that is supposedly lit only by candles, oil-lamps, torches, etc. to have large swatches of light in the background just looked like there was some gigantic lamp behind a bank of trees. The composition would not have suffered to not have them there. There was a large warning at the head of the thread...

Thanks much everyone. I realize how you pronounce a word has little bearing upon your worth as a cinematographer but sometimes once something gets stuck in my head I've got to get to the end of it. Thanks again.

Maybe I'm fooling myself and I am the only person that says it that way. I've always thought "air-eee" sound far too nasal to be the proper German pronunciation. It makes no linguistic sense to make the A-R letter combination into an AIR sound. Hopefully they're some German speakers out there that can correct me on this. But then again I pronounce Aaton "ah-ton" as well. I can't think of a single instance where a double-A makes an "Ay" sound in French. Well I guess some people say "Jar-mooosh."

Perhaps this rather silly and basic question has been asked before but I couldn't find reference to it in the archives. How does one pronounce the word "Arri"? Is is <arr-eee>? Or <air-eee>? Since its a combination of Arnold and Richter, I've always assumed it should be said the first way but I've heard both spoken. I feel absolutely stupid asking this because I've used their equipment for a while and never gave a second thought to the way I was pronouncing the word until today when I was rudely corrected by someone. Thanks in advance.

David, thanks for being a voice of reason and practicality in this discussion. I am just starting by cinematography career. Though most of the jobs I do are shot on tape, I certainly hope film is around and in common use for the forseable future. I just shot my first film on HD and the quality was certainly excellent. But when comparing and balancing the cost of camera rental, image quality and camera size of HD v. S16, film would have been a better solution. Would I shoot HD again? Of course, but unless there was a reason why the production specifically wanted the use tape, I would advocate film first. It simply suits my aesthetic vision better than video. And that's in comparrison to HD; don't even get me going about the contrast range and huge depth of field of miniDV... While it is likely that HD cameras will become more like their film cousins in terms of ergonomics and quality, I'm not convinced that they will be better than film. Whatever "better" means... And even though digital may have taken over the journalism world, to my eye 35mm still film looks better than the digital equivilent (6-8mp). Admittedly, it is very subtle, but a quality difference is still there. So unless you absolutely need the speed advantages, why use it? We are in a profession where one of the primary concerns is aesthetics, so I don't understand why so many people seem to be willing to accept anything less than the highest standards. I acknowledge the economic concerns; they are the reason 80% of my jobs are shot on tape. I simply can't fathom why some people want to turn the economic neccessity of shooting on tape into a dogma that proclaims the death of something that in terms of image quality is simply better.

I think your f1.3 lens is going to be fast enough... Though I haven't seen the film yet, I can't imagine the excess of handheld can be any worse than "Irreversible". And I'm sure the content isn't nearly as sickening/disturbing. If you can get past the content it's a great film to reference for how low a light level you can shoot in without any supplemental lighting. Granted they did shoot Vision 800, pushed it a stop and fully embraced grain for dramatic effect. (And matted the image down to 2.35 from S16.) Definitely not appropriate for all,or most, situations but it worked in the context of the film.

"let's also remember that businesses have rights as well, and if anyone wants to show their art intact, they can build their own chain of theaters, pay for the prints and shipping, advertise...etc..." While it is true that businesses have rights to sell whatever they choose, I certainly don't think excising "objectionable" parts of a film without the creator's consent and then profitting from it falls under any reasonable sense of fair use. If a local church group made "clean" dubs of one of my films for its members' private viewing then I wouldn't have an objection (well I would, but wouldn't act upon it...) but the second they sold or rented the copies I would legally object.

Going back to "The Royal Tennenbaums", a tangent to this discussion is films being cut differently for video distribution. For example, the Blockbuster version of "Requiem For A Dream" had the sex club scene cut. If you hadn't seen the film in theatrical release (or as I originally saw it, on a Virgin Atlantic flight from London to New York--now there's a cultural difference...) you'd have never known the scene existed. Now this was undoubtably done with the filmmaker's consent as Blockbuster is such a huge distribution outlet that they can command such changes, but there's also the company in the US (whose name unfortunately escapes me...) that has been deleting sections of films that they find objectionable to their conservative Christian sentiment and renting them at their stores--without any consent from the filmmakers whatsoever.