Patrick Lavalley

I carry my cold/wet weather gear in one of those North Face base camp duffels, and then I've got a smaller roll-top dry bag that I keep on the cart to stuff my extra layers into when I'm not using them. Keeping the insulating layers in a dry bag is nice so that they don't get soaked.

I wear an Ibex Merino wool hoody in the winter under my Patagonia Nano-Puff jacket, or if it's really cold my Patagonia DAS parka. I prefer synthetic insulation here in the Northwest because it performs better if it gets damp. That being said, I also have a North Face down jacket that I wear when its cold and dry, because down really is the best insulator for those conditions. Check out "feathered friends"- they make really nice down gear http://www.featheredfriends.com/ The North Face, Mountain Hardware, and Patagonia all make good down gear too. Get a good down coat with an insulated hood and you'll thank yourself- just don't let your down get WET. Down is rendered ineffective if it gets wet. Like others have said, you'll thank yourself for getting a good, warm pair of boots and a bunch of good wool socks. Check out the brand "Darn Tough" for wool socks. Boots are usually a personal thing, for extreme cold I wear a big set of Sorels, but they're cumbersome to walk around in much. I've also had good luck with my Salomon Quest boots under a set of Neos overshoes. Changing socks partway through the day will do wonders, because no matter what your feet will sweat a little, and your socks will get a little damp which will make your feet cold much quicker. Make sure you dry your boots out at the end of each day, because multiple days of wearing them for 12+ hours will eventually render them less effective. A good set of raingear is a MUST. A lot of folks like North Face. Gore-Tex or eVent is great. If you're on a budget, REI's line of eVent gear works really well, and will save you a bit of money. For the best gear money can buy, Arc'Teryx is it. You could easily spend $1000 bucks on a full suit though....Personally, I always have a set of non-breathable rubber rain gear in my bag for if it's muddy, or just really really wet. In my experience, all waterproof breathables eventually fail.....

Please email me at patricklavalley (at) gmail.com if you have one for sale. Thanks!

I am in the market for a Yeager Senior camera cart. I know these things don't go up for sale very often, but I thought I would check. Thanks a lot!

You have to be careful with acetone, as it will eat the plastic if you use too much or leave it on too long. A 1st that I worked with removed the disks completely, and said that he never used them, and would rather not lose them. Lens marks definitely seem to be more accurate. Also, indexing via finger position helps a lot too...

Chris- my experience is similar to yours as far as distance is concerned. I found myself running the reciever out on a 50' BNC most of the time to get it closer. For 5k they should be better...

I've got quite a bit of experience with the CamWave system from IDX. It does a great job most of the time, but it has fairly limited range in my experience. It's not cheap, but certainly cheaper than the Boxx system. The image it transmits looks great, and it can be powered from V-mount batteries OR via 4pin XLR

I would like to buy a used Modular 51 larry bag, and/or a smaller bag to use for on-set. Let me know if you've got one to sell. I'm not too concerned with condition unless it's really trashed. Thanks!

I've been waiting for someone to make an AC pouch out of some sort of non-water absorbing material. I work in the rain a lot, and over the course of a day my pouch can get soaked. Something like a drybag material, or the stuff that they make the North Face duffels out of would be good. It would offer more water resistancy, as well as be easier to dry out once it got wet.

I usually carry a small lindcraft AC pouch with the following: Lumacolor non-permanent pen Sharpie Ball point Pilot g-2 Chalk holder Surefire 6P lipstick brush Stubby t-handle screwdriver 3x5'' note pad Pen style jewelers screwdriver with flat head and phillips tips Lindcraft canned air pouch which usually has a water bottle in it, and a pouch for my crappy cell phone. And a radio. In my pockets, I have a leatherman sideclip (best tool, no longer made!) and a Benchmade folding knife. Sometimes I just take the belt off though.

I use black and white sticks on my dumb slate. Synch slates tend to have color sticks I've found. I think that shooting a grey card or color chart with a skin tone of each setup is probably more useful to a colorist, but I could be mistaken. Get the black and white sticks, or get what you can afford. The don earl slates from filmtools are pretty awesome.

LL bean has good tote bags, as does this place http://beckelcanvas.com/products_type.php?products_type_id=2

That sounds like a good setup. Everyone's kit is going to vary, but I think it's important to know the items you WILL need, and always have them, the items you will PROBABLY need, and keep them close by (or on the cart) and the items that you MIGHT need and keep them on the truck (or in the car etc...) I carry the WILL need items on my belt and in a husky open top tool bag, the rest gets spread out depending on circumstances. I think it's helpful to have an array of bags/totes that you can put stuff in depending on circumstances.

I've also coated mine with that "plastidip" stuff to good effect.

On some of the items I've found it's best to initially put out a little more money for an item you won't end up replacing- like a leatherman (the Wave is my favorite), a good flashlight (surefire), and a good soft tape and steel tape. It might hurt a little more in the beginning, but you won't have to spend the money again (or for a long time anyways) if something breaks or fails. I like the 16' fat max tape because it's a little less weight when hanging off my belt and it's a little more compact- and I don't find myself going beyond 16' with my steel tape- but your mileage may vary. I would add a good HEADLAMP to the list. I have a Petzl one that uses AAA batts. Princeton tech also makes good ones.

ALWAYS back your footage up in 2 or 3 places. Just putting it on one hard drive is asking for trouble. Also, it helps to do a quick check of the footage in FCP or whatever editing program you use. With FCP the added bonus is that this allows you to log and transfer the footage as you go which saves some time for the editor and also allows you to make sure none of your files are corrupt. I try to have enough P2 cards so that I don't have to format them until my footage is double backed up and has been quickly checked over in FCP. Also, maybe a paranoid thing, but I try not to fill the cards to capacity. I leave 2 or 3 minutes on them if possible. Again, maybe a paranoid thing but I know I've had problems with other types of storage mediums that are filled to capacity.

What Chris said. I will say that those letus units are NOT sealed very well, so you may be able to get away with using a hair dryer to gently warm up the unit and hopefully evaporate the condensation.....

Has anyone tried grease pencil/china marker? Might be kind of a pain to erase, but I think it would stay on. I think they even use grease pencils when scuba diving.

Any particular reason that you need to transport the camera fully built? In my opinion it would be much safer to carry a case containing the camera in its parts than to have a camera hanging off your back, bare and exposed. I haven't seen what you're asking about, however you could potentially custom build something using an old GI issue ALICE pack frame. They are made out of aluminum, so you would have a fairly solid base to work from. However, this would be my choice for such an endeavor, of course this would mean transporting the camera in a case: https://www.kifaru.net/militaryhaulers.html These packs are very comfortable, good for hauling loads, and really rugged. They are expensive, and require a lot of lead time as they hand make each one to your body measurements, but for carrying heavy loads on your back by foot, there really isn't anything better.

We spent last Sunday to Friday at the cabin location which represents the first week of principle photography on the movie. Jason and Myself actually stayed at the cabin the entire time which was really nice, and other people stayed a few nights here and there. Staying at the cabin throughout the week gave us a lot of time to talk about the next days shooting plan after wrap and before we started each day, and also to get the place organized and even pre-lit in some cases before the rest of the crew showed up. The week went really well, and we kept the pace up with an average of 17 setups per-day, with our largest day being 24 setups on Wednesday. 17 setups is really good considering our days have been fairly short, usually around 10am until 6 or 7pm. The short days are a lot easier on everyone, especially when you factor in that it takes almost 2 hours to get to and from set each day. Shorter working days also means that it’s essential to keep the pace up and to work quickly. On this shoot, the name of the game has been simple lighting setups. I usually try to make my setups as simple as possible anyways, so it’s been pretty natural to work that way. Our lighting kit for the cabin consisted of a 575 watt PAR HMI, a 1200 watt PAR HMI, a Mole-Richardson 1k fresnel, a 4 foot 4 bank Kino fixture, and various practical globes/fixtures along with two 4 foot open frames with LEE 251 diffusion, and a selection of white/silver bead board reflectors. The HMI fixtures were by far the workhorses of the shoot, and I often found myself shooting them through 251 diffusion outside of windows, or aimed at white bounce cards inside a room. We were limited on power at the cabin, with our circuits being only 15 amps, so the 1200 and 575 HMI’s allowed us to get a tremendous amount of light output while still keeping a safe overhead on our circuits. There were a fair amount of living room scenes that I wanted to motivate very naturally, so I brought in the 1200 through a large sliding glass door/window as a soft backlight which I would then augment with fill from a silver board, or the 575 bounced off of a white card. Coincidentally, our 1200 also played outside of the window in essentially the same place, the only difference being that we would limit the amount of fill on faces and walls and instead let the light take on a harder more back lit “moon” feel. The kitchen scenes took place both during the day and at night. For the daytime scenes, I brought in both the 575 and 1200 HMI’s through a bank of windows approximately 6 feet wide and 3 feet tall. We diffused them using our 4×4 frames of 251 outside the windows, and then taped 6mil clear visqueen to the inside of the window to diffuse the light even more. The end result was a very bright, but soft key light that lent a feel of overcast ambiance coming in from outside the window.We would tape additional diffusion in key places on the window depending on how close the actors got, this helped us keep people from becoming overexposed as they got closer to the windows. For the night-time kitchen scenes Jeffree, Luke and Alex were sitting around a kitchen counter eating dinner. Our sole source of light in the scene was provided by a large (approximately 12-14” in diameter) smith-victor “bowl” light with a 500 watt 3200k medium base globe inside of it. We rigged it to a ceiling beam via furniture clamps, rubber gripping pads, and a short piece of 2×4 with a nail-on plate attached. We used a cardellini clamp and a gobo head to position the light where we wanted, and then clipped a single layer of opal diffusion to the light to further soften the source. The cabling was routed along the ceiling and out of the room, which allowed us to move the camera and actors througout the space without having to move stands or other lights. It was really essential to keep the space relatively open, as the kitchen was fairly small. To top it off, we added a very small amount of atmosphere to the room with some fog-in-a-can. The spill and reflection from this overhead source was enough to light up Paul (played by Luke Clements) as he stood to eat dinner. The way that his closeup was set up, the spill and reflection created a soft beautiful back/side light. Another interior location was a bedroom where John (played by Jeffree Newman) sleeps. We lit the scene using a 1k fresnel gelled to half-blue and bounced into a white card. We had also considered lighting the room with a small practical lamp, but decided that a naturalistic moonlit feel was more appropriate. I used the tungsten pre-set on the camera so that the scene went slightly blue, and kept the light more or less perpendicular to the camera to create contrast and shadows. For a reversal on Paul we simply used the same setup and moved it in or out depending on the amount of light that was needed. After the first day or two, everyone became pretty tuned into the various lighting setups that we used. Kyle Glenn was the only official grip/electric on the shoot (everyone helped out when they could) and he worked very hard and very quickly to make these lighting setups happen. This week went extremely well and the footage is looking really great. I’ll try to get some interior scree grabs up soon to help illustrate the setups that I just mentioned. Stay tuned at http://www.theforgeproject.com for more info about our on-set data and dailies workflow, as well as notes about camera operation, framing choice, and exterior shooting!

Hey Everyone, The production is coming along really well- we shoot a week from tomorrow! Good news- We've secured status as a non-profit project partner through Film Action Oregon. Potential investors can now receive a tax write off for any donations.

As I was entering my last term of school at the Art Institute of Portland, I became aware that one of my professors had been approved for a sabbatical the following term. I was very lucky to be asked to shoot this feature, and in preparation we have set up a blog that we have been using to update everyone on the process. While in school, I have been able to shoot a bunch of short films, but this will be my first time doing a feature. It's really exciting, and I am really honored that I was asked to shoot. If you would like to keep tabs on our production, visit www.theforgeproject.com. We'll be posting up there as often as we have updates, which should become more frequent as we get closer and closer to our first day of shooting on May 4th. The title of the project is "Forge", and it's a hard science fiction story that deals with nano technology as well as brain-computer interface. Check out the blog for more details!

I witnessed the posts, which were needless to say totally out of control and completely unprofessional. The crazy person posted a photo of Roger operating a camera mounted on a Ronford Baker head, and asked him if it was an O'Connor head. Roger replied that the head was indeed a Ronford Baker, as he usually uses, and then this guy flipped out and claimed that the reply was rude. Apparently the guy was indeed hounding both the webmaster and Roger through email, making threats etc, so they decided to pull the plug (and I don't blame them...) Obviously, you can't apply any logic to this. It's just really unfortunate that it had to ruin it for the rest of us. The professionals that take the time to contribute to forums such as this one are an amazing asset, and I'm sure myself along with a lot of others are very grateful for their time. I've learned a tremendous amount from online communities such as this, but unfortunately there are those select few who feel the need to screw it up. For those more internet savvy than myself, are there any solutions that could keep that guy from coming back when (if) the website returns?

From what I've seen, those green tubes do a really excellent job of lighting up a green screen.

Depending on the fixtures you may be able to buy the special chroma green tubes from Kino Flo. Other than that, I would imagine adding plus green might be the ticket?