Chaz Buhrmann

Thanks for the advice Travis, we plan to get stuck into it this weekend. I'll go to our Home Depot equivalent and have a look. If they have the same stuff it would save a lot of time for us. Does the light come off soft or a little hard?

Thanks everyone for the all the help. I will try to make one or two shiny boards tomorrow. We did some tests at home with daylight coming through a large window, but the light seems to fall of quickly leaving a lot underexposed. We will definitely need a large soft source coming from above for the wide shot and from side in close ups. We are going to try and make some frames to group our lights together to put behind a frame of diffusion. But as you said David, after gelling and diffusing the lights the output will be quite little. I think if we can just work out how to harness the available light coming in through the window the soft light from above should provide enough fill - I hope. As the window is not full width of room I'm concerned also about the light on the background. I hope that the shiny boards will compensate enough light so we can get a semi-clean bokeh. Hopefully we will have some test footage or images to share soon so that we can get some more help. We really appreciate the help and feel very privileged to get help from you David, whom we have a deep admiration for. We may not be good cinematographers, but we are trying very hard and are very excited to learn about cinematography. We simply love this forum and it has been invaluable to our filmmaking eduction. Thanks. Chaz and Kat

Thanks David, I'm starting to get the fundamentals of it. Just one more question - the second image, the wide shot, is that lit just with a large source through the glass as you can see? The top of the table in the foreground looks well lit, I was curious as to whether there might be a second soft light overhead to pump up the ambiance? Or is that large source(if bright enough) enough to light the entire scene? Chris, is there an easy way to make a shiny board? We live 16 hours drive from the nearest rental house so it's just not practical to rent this time. Thanks.

Thanks for the quick reply David. I really appreciate those who have the time to help others out. By bigger lights what can you recommend? It is hard for us to get hold of HMI lights here. Is there other alternative? Can grouping smaller lights behind a frame of diffusion give the same look or do you really need that concentrated power of bigger lights? We aren't hiring a dop for this, it is a more personal film for us, so we don't have a lot of experience in lighting other than basic principles and a few short films. Would it be possible to go into more detail with the setup and placement, diffusion, etc? You say they light with one large soft source - in the image above, is the only thing pulling them out from the background the focus or are they separately lit? Thanks again. Chaz

The other two images:

Hi everyone, We are going into production on a low budget short film soon. We have watched a lot of films looking for something similar to the feeling and mood we want to create. We really like the way The Prestige was filmed(very up-close and personal, not too many wide establishing shots, a lot blurred backgrounds), we feel this style is suited because we are filming with the hvx and the sgpro rev3. What we are wondering is if it is possible to create a similar lighting to the scene I have included stills of. This is a self funded low budget film we want to submit to festivals in Australia. We are fairly limited in regards to lighting equipment. We have a couple of 1k fresnels, some 1k pars, 500w floodlights, reflectors, bounce boards, etc. I see in the wide shot at the end of the scene they are siting next to a long glass divider with what looks like some large source lights coming through. Is this the same light you see in the close-ups? The lighting looks very soft. We don't need to light a wide shot like this. Just the close-ups. If anyone could help us with their opinions or information we would be very grateful. My other question is do we have sufficient power with these lights or are we just kidding ourselves? I know we need a lot of light to reduce grain in the background as much as possible. We will be filming on location so pre-testing is difficult. Also, I notice the light in the background is forming in elongated circles. We have used nikkor primes before and seem to get octagonal shaped light from daylight and regular circles from night lights. What is causing the light to augment the way it is in the stills? Is it from anamorphic lens? Is this king of shape possible with nikkor/zeiss primes? Thanks everyone in advance, Chaz The other two images are in separate post below.

"correctlyer" - that's funny! I always find myself using words like that too :lol:

I think you are confusing premise with plot. The premise is the overall concept that governs the story, more of an abstract idea based on morals, philosophy, etc. It would be impossible to tell what the premise of his story, if he indeed has one yet, from this small text. I see a lot of people using premise incorrectly.

Thanks for the link and the info. I was just surprised at the dearth of speed cranks available. I would have thought more companies would have manufactured them (including redrock). Looks like I'll buy the chrosziel :)

While on the topic, does anyone know where I can buy a decent speed crank from? I can't seem to find much except for a chrosziel one from bhphoto. It's for the redrock micro folllow focus. Thanks.

I use 1/50th(PAL) for normal shooting and 1/1000th for slow motion(depending on light). If you run a test, you'll see shooting at a much higher shutter speed will give you far better slow motion. I'm not sure of the other uses for such high shutter speeds.

OK, this should point you in the right direction. pan and zoom in final cut pro: http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_pan_scan.html Hope that helps!

I'd say scan them at the highest quality(600dpi or something). You can then animate pans and zoom or a mix in adobe after effects. Here's a link to an easy tutorial to follow: http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_...zoom/index.html Strange link, but it works :) Good luck.

Very nice work indeed. The shots in the field are quite beautiful, ilove the colours. I'm excited!

These are great. I also loved the composition, not a bad shot in there. The GG in the first clip is a little distracting. The second clip is a lot nicer. Chuck a better adapter on there and you're set.

LOVED the stop motion! The giant carrot was very cool. Although I think that was mist or fog rather than over-exposure?? I like :)

That's a fantastic short guys. All aspects were top notch. Great sound design. Definately some fo the best footage I've seen from the DVX100B. I thought the fade to black on the crane shot was good. Keep up the good work, I'm looking forward to seeing more from you guys. ;)

Nice work, can see similarities between your films and M. Night's earlier stuff. Keep on the same path and you may well be a great director in the future. Don't get conned into making cheap trash with adult actors involving sex and drugs, that takes no imagination. Isn't anyone else sick of seeing the same old Hollywood formula?

Please post those set pics, would like to see them :)