Jonathan Bowerbank

I only noticed it once during a circular dolly track shot of Shia and Megan early on in the film. The sun was low, and you could clearly see the camera's shadow on Shia's back. It could have been edited out since his back pretty much took up the whole frame...so who knows why it was left in. Edting wise, the whole film was quite a mess...but if I were editing I probably would have crumbled under the pressure of fitting all that content into 2 1/2 hours also. I also found the twins very annoying, and possibly offensive to blacks with their simian physique, gold teeth and ghetto accents...pretty distasteful. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm still really pissed about Jazz's death in the first film. And you'd think with all the resurrections goin' on in this film, they could easily bring him back to life, especially with a huge shard of the "All Spark" still in existence.

Really, nobody has said anything yet? Saw it yesterday...almost completely intolerable and distasteful. Just when I was starting to respect Bay for the first film (I was even a fan of some of his stylistic choices in past years) but this one is just bad. About 75% of the film is filled with annoying banter between the completely uninteresting human characters (Megan Fox excluded), and the Transformers as characters themselves is nearly completely obliterated from the plot. There's a great story in there, having to do with the Transformers history on the planet Earth...but it takes backseat to all the personal drama going inside each individual human's head, that honestly, I didn't give 2 bits about. And all the racial stuff has already been widely covered in other critics reviews. All of that aside, the Transformer battles were pretty sweet and a lot of stuff blew up. Ben Seresin's work was fine. From the pacing of the film and how much content there was, it looks like he had to move fast, so everything was quite simple. And the amount of 2nd unit work probably took up more than half the film, so I can't really pinpoint who's work was whos.

Nice find! Looks like a great source for some of the more obscure foreign films out there. I'm about to watch Happy Together by Wong Kar-Wai :)

See: "American Gangster", shot by Savides

I always love how the geniuses of filmmaking have the facility to provide us with simple truths such as this.

That's cooooooool, I've never heard of that method before.

Perhaps some chalk powder would work. It probably wouldn't sink into the ice (probably a little, but not as much as ink), and if the ice melts around it, it'll most likely just clump up and be easy to scoop away. http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-47-804-8-Oun...792&sr=1-20 I don't know for sure, but it could be worth a try.

Kimwipes are better :) DS, just go out and get some Panchro lens cleaner fluid and some Kimwipes lens tissue. Spray some Panchro onto a sheet of tissue then wipe the lens in a circular motion from middle of the lens out. It may take a couple passes, but it should wipe off eventually. I wouldn't fret too much about it.

Yeah, Panasonic thought to do that with the Varicam and other DVCPRO tape based cameras, making it easy to unscrew the deck and eject the tape if there's an error...but I guess they figured it wasn't worth it on the prosumer models. If Ben's camera isn't covered by its warranty anymore, he could take it to this little Mom & Pop shop that I've gone to in the past. They fixed a Digital8 camera of mine YEARS ago that had a similar problem, and they could probably do the same for Ben's. It's "A Plus Electronics" on Van Ness & Pacific. Really nice Russian people in a small junky shop, but they're good and guaranteed.

The Polarizer app on iPhone is pretty cool (flinches from Tim's slapping motion)

That's what I was thinkin' Just shot a feature on a stock HVX, and did a lot of my own focus pulling, and managed to do OK. DoF isn't too critical considering the chip size, and you can judge pretty well when something is reasonably in focus. Considering what type of equipment you're working with, you just have to make compromises when you're wanting to work on a longer lens and follow an actor.

Does it let you fast forward and rewind on the tape? I know back in the old S-VHS days, if there were similar issues, we'd just FFWD to the end of the tape, then rewind back to the beginning. Perhaps it'll reset any weird glitch the camera is having. In the meantime, were you able to at least playback the footage and capture it?

Would this work? Third item from bottom: http://www.ortec-online.com/electronics/cables/adapters.htm

I assume you're only interested in lights with a Tungsten filament, such as halogen bulbs. As Kinoflo do make Tungsten balanced bulbs, and they're a great soft source. I've used smaller Mole zips here and there, and they're fine if you're going for that quality of light. I have a couple Photoflex fixtures and softboxes, and use them A LOT. If you have egg crates and flags, they're not too difficult to control and they're very friendly to pretty much any subject's face.

Do a prelight a few days before shooting, and figure out what you'll need.

110' "safely" There's still room on the spool of course. If you have one in a mag on the take up side, I suspect it'd be just as good as using a core if you're rolling 400'. Although the daylight spool itself can be noisy sometimes.

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read an article somewhere that said they shot all the engineering deck in a Budweiser factory, and they were extremely limited as to how much they could dress and how many hot lights they could use, because it could effect the beermaking process. Why they didn't just build a set with lots of pipes and light & dress it as they wanted, who knows? And yeah, once they rescued Capt. Pike, I assumed he would stay captain because of Kirk's youth as well...but I guess they had to wrap things up

I was already used to it from watching "Fringe" a lot, so I guess it didn't bother me as much. At least in Fringe there's usually a meaning to the flare (when something new is revealed, a clue, etc.).

Just saw it, and really really really enjoyed it. It was more about reintroducing the characters than pushing the story along, but I believe it when people say it's a shot in the arm for the franchise. It was fun, funny, and really had a lot of moments where I was gripping my seat. And I especially liked the contemporary renditions of all the classic characters we're all familiar with. I felt the actor playing Bones McCoy really nailed it, and managed to get a lot of gitty chuckles out of me, as Bones has always been my favorite Trek character. Highly recommend it to all my SciFi philes :)

Does the footage only look like it's out of focus, or is that also smearing of the image that we're seeing? If so, it could be a serious registration issue, it looks like the pull down claw may not be engaging, so your film is basically running free through the gate. Or it could just be a mag issue, and the film wasn't pressed firmly against the gate, in which case an out of focus image is easily explanable.

Probably just needs to be calibrated. There are some independent meter calibration companies, but you could get in touch with Sekonic and find out what they think. Minolta, although they're not making them anymore, are kind of the standard when it comes to color temp meters. A new company has since taken over their manufacturing and is releasing their light and color temp meters under a different name...not sure how great they are though.

If the sun's still peaking over those hills and coming in strong through the clouds, don't you guys think a reflector or mirrorboard would still suffice? I could see how the HMI would be necessary if you plan to shoot once the sun has completely set and the sky is still orange, but if the sun remains visible as a source, I would think you could still get some good punch out of it with a simple reflector.

ahhh, thanks, did a search but that hadn't come up :)

Your thoughts http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/store...elNo=Content030

Haven't heard of it...but it is one of my favorite scenes in "Adventures of Baron Munchausen"