Daniel Smith

Fair enough. Each to his own. But come on... 'Neighbours' is where it's at :D You just can't beat Harold Bishop.

Richard, please excuse me for sounding thick, but by knowing your sense of humour on this place, I'm not sure if you are joking or not. I'm assuming you're joking, right?

No. Well, not exactly. A T stop refers to the aperture of the lens. A low aperture like T1.8 with give a very shallow depth of field. Whereas a higher aperture like T22 will give a wide depth of field. To understand it properly you need to know how depth of field works: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials...th-of-field.htm The T stop in films alternate from shot to shot to control the depth of field, to ultimately, tell a story.

Hi. On average, how many films do you watch a week? I probably get through about 4, on average.

Fair point. It wouldn't be a TV license, and a one off fee for the digital box, it would be both the TV license and the connection fee for NTL or telewest, but, even so. It would probably make more sense if the TV licensing group and the digital providers combined both fees when the analogue channels are cut off. (And as far as the music channels go, if I was to be 100% honest, they mostly play crap now anyway so they're not exactly a key selling point, and I think studying the photography is about all that's worth it)

Well... I agree that most of the material shown on the 5 standard channels are crap, but with a digitalbox, I'd say it's worth it. Good comedy on UK TV Gold, discovery channels, history channels, music video channels, news channels e.t.c.

Oops, how can I forget 'Night at the Museum'.

V for Vendetta Casino Royale Children of Men

But hold on... isn't this style just a rip off from Quentin Tarantino? Or did Tarantino rip off Alejandro González Iñárritu? (yeh, I had to copy and paste that name..) Personally I thought it was ok... No higher than 7/10. The only reason I watched it was because of the ratings. I know this is slightly off topic but if there's one thing I'm sick of, it's certain actors always playing the tough guy who never gets beaten. Brad Pitt, Robert Deniro, Al Pacino, Michael Douglas, to name a few. (From the films I've seen anyway) I personally hold more respect for the actors who have the balls to play the parts that no one likes. Like Sean Bean in 'Ronin' and Bob Peck in 'Jurassic Park'. Now those are good actors. They just don't seem to hold as much respect with the majority of the audiences. Sorry if this makes me sound immature but I would have liked to have seen Brad Pitt getting knocked out in that scene from 'Babel'.

I'd probably give it 7/10. Definitely worth watching. Ben Stiller plays his 'Meet the Parents' character, so nothing new there, but none the less he's still funny. The cinematography was pretty mint, reminded me of 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' in a way. Probably because of the rich, warm lighting scheme. What did you think?

Wow.. interesting to know it was shot on digital.. I didn't notice. And you OWN an F900? Personally I thought the idea behind it was pretty good. The fact that he had a time limit, and that he HAD to keep his heart pumping fast to stay alive. It was just the perfect foundation for a completely mental action film. An original foundation. (as far as I know) Not that I'm attacking your opinion, just saying.

Hi. With film, the sensitivity is normally measured by either ISO, ASA or DIN. In video, the norm is at whatever lux the capture device reads (0db), and any increase in gain is measured in 'db'. Are there any kind of standards for db ratings? The reason I ask if because on a film I made yonks ago the DP had a light meter, and I now regret never asking him how he got it to work with the digital camera. What good would it be if my light meter started asking for an ISO or ASA rating? And if the light sensitivity between cameras set on 0db differ, then what it says on the light meter could may well be wrong. Unless the lightmeter has presets for different cameras, which I highly doubt. So, how do you get a light metre to work with a digital video camera? Thanks. EDIT: ohh... dammit... this just occurred to me, do you input the lux sensitivity into the light meter? And then input the amount of gain? (i.e. 3db, 6db, 18db?)

It's got to be Conrad L. Hall for me. Call my choice mainstream if you like but I don't care. Through his cinematography he tells the story, creates beautiful shots, and manages to keep it looking realistic. I've only seen one of Gregg Tolands films (Citizen Kane) but that guy was way ahead of his time. And David Mullen's work on Northfork looked very interesting also. And he's always willing to lend a hand around here.

Not necessarily... some people aren't into experimental cinema, which is fair enough. They simply, do not like it. Just as experimental film lovers choose not to like mainstream cinema. But there's certainly nothing wrong with liking only mainstream Hollywood cinema. I think when I begin to make larger films, I'm going to use as many mainstream Hollywood techniques as I possibly can. Why? Because I want to be original, rebel against what everyone else is doing and throw hammers through the walls of conformity.

Well, I think downloading movies at DVD quality would be awesome, and considering I'm on 4 megabit connection, I could have it done in under 3 hours. But it's sort of overkill don't you think? I've seen good quality feature length films at 700mb. You can barely tell the difference between a movie compressed to 1400mb and a DVD movie. And what about the poor sods on 56k modem? :lol: *Saying this, presuming you mean exact DVD quality, not a compressed version at which people can't tell the difference between.*

Funnily enough, been doing it for a little while now lol Not that I could really help out a huge amount though, I'm not that experienced in it. Was doing Delphi for sometime before. Well it sounds asthough you're starting off sensibily and building up, not trying to create a huge business right from the start. Well, don't take this in a patronising way or anything (you know what you are doing, I know that) but this is personally how I would start off: Find the cheapest hosting service avaiable. Allow people to buy 'credits' via Paypal. To start with, host the files for free to build up a rep. Then once it's started building popularity, start charging, but at a promotional rate. (say it's to celebrate the big launch or something..) Allow people to gain more credits by signing up to various advertisments, which in return pay you say 10 cents. (for instance 25 credits if you sign up to sony.com or something..) Build lots of hype by offering promotional vouchers in local newspapers, write into magazines telling them about this new fantastic online service, get a random e-mail generator and spam everyone. (Not that I approve of that last one... but hey it's what I would do) Offer demos on the web site, and research heavily into different codecs and bitrates to see what the smallest amount of data transfer you can get away with is. Just what I'd do... maybe what you're already doing I'm not sure.

And we thought we'd lost you for good... :lol: How's it going Landon haven't spoken to you in some time. This business plan sounds like it has some good ideas backing it up. But, if you don't mind me asking, what kind of finance do you have backing it up? Streaming short and feature length films in real time, in a competitive nature, would take gigabits upon gigabits of bandwidth to achieve. What sort of bitrate will the videos be streamed at? Only reason I ask is because I do programming and have run servers in the past and *from what I know*... unless you have thousands upon thousands to invest in this project, you *will* have to call on investors. And investors want assurances, not ideas. Not trying to poke holes in it or anything just curious. Hope it goes well for you. Personally I haven't got the balls to do something like that so I've got to admire your confidence. Anyway good to see you around here again and, happy Christmas! (I'm posting on the cinematography board on Christmas day.. yeh.. I have a life)

So you were thinking of making a 'Happy Christmas' thread... too late, beat you to it suckers. Only kidding. Happy Christmas and new year. Have a good one. From Dan.

I think it should be, why digital can still keep its place in a film era. Sorry I just hate it when people think that it's a case of 'one of the other'. Our mediums are better than our artists.

Robbie Williams probably isn't a bad choice. (well.. it is musically.. but we won't go there) Robbie Williams + Kylie Minogue - Kids ? (Song anyone can listen to + nice and exciting) And, would you have a link to this guys reel atall? I wouldn't mind seeing this style myself.

That actually looked pretty good. Not just saying that, it really did. Out of interest, what did you use to make the splash sequence? That also looked very impressive.

What 8 track recorder is it? Aslong as it records at 44.1KHz 16bit stereo or over (it probably does), it should be fine. It's the microphone and pre-amp you have to worry about. Bare in mind that microphones designed for musicians are very much different to broadcast mic's. Mainly in frequency and directional response. Also check if the recorder has phantom power. Because condenser microphones won't work without it. Unless you get a seperate pre-amp. Which would boost the quality but, you're talking more money. (you *will* need slates to synch the sound in post)

I'm trying to get hold of some examples of this myself but a friend of mine shot a film out in Bulgaria with an XL1s with a 'Tiffen Black Pro-Mist' filter. Generally all they do is soften the contrast but don't create as much of a 'halo' as a standard pro-mist filter. It won't directly affect the depth of field... unless it cuts down on levels of light and forces you to open the iris even further, but it will certainly help remove that sharp digital look that a lot of people don't like. (Personally I don't mind it.. it's purely subjective)

Hi. I've just been converting some video files today, and was quite shocked to see that some compressed video (353kbps) looked higher quality than uncompressed DV. Does windows down sample video to a lower quality if it cannot handle it for realtime playback? Thanks.

DVD2AVI will convert the vob files into a raw AVI file. Been using it for years. Or WinAvi. WinAvi is probably more user friendly.