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Bennett Cerf

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About Bennett Cerf

  • Birthday 11/29/1978

Profile Information

  • Occupation
    Cinematographer
  • Location
    Los Angeles
  • Specialties
    I love making films. It feels like the challenges always give me a chance to grow. In addition to being a cinematographer, I was a local 600 camera assistant from 2000-2014 until I got my MFA from AFI.

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  • Website URL
    http://www.bennettcerf.com

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  1. Ahhh, blinders! That's the term for it. I never knew that! Ok, thanks! The search continues! I appreciate the help guys! Bennett
  2. Thanks Edward! I contacted Mole a couple days ago and spoke with them about it. Since the pentalight is waht I'm hoping to use or emulate without using more than house power, I'm wondering if anyone has tried to replace the bulbs with LED mr-16's or tried to make a light like this at home.
  3. I'm about to shoot a music video in a month and I'm looking for an old school device that we used to call the decapod. There were a bunch of versions of it, but I think the final version available was made by mole richardson. It was like a maxi brute made from mr-16 lights. Here is a 2008 article about it (it's most of the way down the page). http://icgmagazine.com/2008/march/ttmarch08.html Has anyone seen one lately? If I'm not able to find the old decapod, I'll likely have to use a giant LED strip or matrix. Does anyone have experience using those? What might be the most cost effective version of that? It would need to be able to pulse on and off all at once and I'm probably need 4 of them if they were like 4' by 4'. Thanks so much!
  4. Hey everybody, I'm looking to buy a motion control system that can repeat pan, tilt and dolly moves. I've looked at the $3300 dollar motiontimer and the $17,000 cineblock. Has anyone tried to use either? Has anyone tried to use either in realtime instead of just timelapse? Are there any ither choices that i'm forgetting that do pan tilt and slider?
  5. I'm working on a spec commercial where we have a man racing a dog in pool. The director would like to have a shot for the spot where the camera looks directly up at them swimming. We will have a red camera in an underwater housing which is 28" long. We'd have to have a really wide lens to get that angle and it'll look really warpy. I'm not sure I like the perspective of it. I'd like to shoot on a longer lens using a big mirror. so I can put the camera at a bigger distance from the subjects. Does anyone know where I can get an optically smooth mirror that's like 4' by 4'. Store-bought mirrors have that thick glass on the front of the silver that does odd things to the image (like doubling and strange refraction). That might be fine since we're in a pool to begin with, but I'm wondering if anyone knows of an optically smooth mirror that I could rent that is that size.
  6. I was leaning towards the menace arm idea and now it's feeling pretty settled. Watching those rostrums getting pounded by the surf really has me thinking that I should stay away from getting hit directly. I think the tie line idea would certainly help to stabilize the end of the camera, too. That's a good suggestion. Smart thinkin'. I'm looking at the location today so I'll get a good idea of what to do. Thanks so much guys. You're experience is going to make mine much better. I'll report back when I've shot it.
  7. Thanks guys. I'll try to figure it out with a day at the beach beforehand to figure out the spot to be in. Yeah, it's a real toss up with the wind wobbling the menace arm and the goal post getting sloshed by the waves.
  8. Hey everybody, I'm doing pickups for a short that I shot, so I have some time to get this shot right. In the film, a woman throws her mom's ashes over a cliff. The director wants to cut in a slow mo locked off shot from directly above the impact as it hits some rocks just before the tide washes over it. The camera will be light–HVX200 and the camera won't need to be more than 8 feet above the water. My original idea was to get a couple mambos and rig pipe to connect the stands, then rig the camera to the pipe in the middle. That way, the camera is more stable. I've started to rethink this considering I could put the camera on a long menace arm so that it doesn't disturb the flow of water and could be stable on the beach. Any thoughts on the idea?
  9. Thanks for your quick response. I agree with you that the cost and time doesn't outweigh the small detail he wants out of the shot. My first instinct was to see the trees passing in the foreground. Depth is usually my aim, right? I talked to the Key Grip on the show I'm ACing on, and he suggested rigging Camo net to 12x poles rigged to high rollers. All of these are great ideas. But I think pushing for the cheaper and less laborious and prettier approach is the correct way. I agree with your idea. Thank you.
  10. I've got a scene to shoot where two actors are walking side-by-side between two rows of trees for about 40 feet. When I'm tracking in front of them for the two shot, they will go in and out of shade from the trees. When I do the OTS shots on either of them, the director does not want to see the trees in the foreground, so I have to cheat the actors to one side of the trees. The branches will no longer shade them if I go outside the rows. I'd need some kind of shadow that's about 8' long to mimic this light gag. So my question is: On a dolly shot that's 40 feet long, how do I have the actors go through 4 bands of dappled light that are in sync with the tree trunks. Keep in mind the length of the band must be riggable to accommodate a dolly passing under it and two guys going side by side, each rolling their bikes on either side of them. This would be the configuration from above: Tree====Tree====Tree======Tree bike=====================> actor====================> actor====================> bike====================> dolly=====================> Where could I hide the stands? If I had to rig to each tree, what would I have to use?
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