Jonathan Bowerbank

Eh, it happens more often than people realize. For instance even Haskell Wexler's been replaced...twice...by Bill Butler. In many cases, it's just a matter of communication, whether the Director & DP are speaking the same visual language. Does the DP understand the Director's vision enough to please him? It's not always a negative about the DP, sometimes people just don't click, so a change needs to be made.

Can prod. get a small generator, and gas on a daily basis to you? Will you have vehicles and plenty of gas? You could use a car power inverter to keep them charging.

I've done it the other way round. Shot movie film on my SLR, and home processed it C-41. The only change I had to make was a longer bleach bath, and it came out color correct and everything. So the chemical difference isn't a whole lot, it's just a matter of adjusting it possibly.

Download the manuals from Red: https://www.red.com/support/all/downloads/2/release_history/146 Give it a read through, and if you have the capability, load the PDF's into your phone for quick reference. There are pocket guides out there, but they're not as thorough as the full manual.

So long as you're not hoppin' around with the camera too much, you can always tape them on. Tear off a long strip of 1" camera tape, hold the filter up against the lens and affix'er. If you're concerned about it scratching the front of the lens housing, you can pretape the fronts of all your lenses to create a soft layer of protection. I thought about pre-taping all the filters, but I'd imagine you'd want to screw them into eachother should you have to stake'em.

Ahh, should read the article first: "Sigel avoided filtration, employing only very light Soft/FX for a few select shots."

Beautiful film, enjoyed every bit of it. Anyone know which filters Sigel used? For wide-angle shots where he was shooting up into lights, you could see artifacts of what seemed like Pro Mists. Don't know if I liked it or not...but it did work with the style & look of the piece for sure.

I'm only speaking in terms of personal preference, and feedback I've heard from "higher up" people who talk about other crew members. Keep it tasteful, keep it elegant, keep it personal. If you have a brand symbol or a cheesy/poorly executed nerd-dom tattoo, respectability can drop a little because people are asking "What's the deal with dude and the (brand name) tattoo?" It's great if you're doing it to represent where you come from, who you are, or out of respect for someone you know. Also it can just be a great art piece. It just depends on the type of jobs you hope to work on and whether you think your body art would reflect poorly on what other might think of your personal tastes in art in general.

Worked with a very experienced AC a couple weeks ago, who saw a pond, dipped his FF disc in it, and that seemed to work good enough for him :)

The Sharpie trick can backfire on you though, as the sharpie ink can dry on the Dry-erase tip and cause it to not work properly...acts as if the dry erase pen is running out. So I'd have a cheap expo or some dry erase pen you don't care about on hand for erasing Sharpie. Don't waste your Marks-a-Lot or Kleenslate

Piece of cake

Bring up all your concerns with your 1st AC. He/She will answer any question you have, how you should work, how he/she works, whether you're doing reports or not and what to do with exposed footage, etc.

How wide a lens we talkin' about and what stop you think? If the lenses breathe, you may be better off setting your focus at a position where you're hyperfocal, may not have to be INF, check your DoF calculator. Then if its coming towards you, follow it.

Sounds like you did fine James :) Good practice, yes, but hopefully we'll have to work like this less and less as the DSLR world gets more cine friendly.

As far as camera anatomy goes, check out "Professional Cameraman's Handbook" by Sylvia & Verne Carlson. It hasn't been updated in years, with the passing of Verne, but is still a wealth of knowledge if you're into shooting film. Whether or not you want to be an AC, the Camera Assistant books I think are very useful. If you want to work as a cinematographer, it's quite helpful to the camera department to understand what it is they are actually doing for you. So many hack shooters out there grow impatient because they have no understanding of why certain things take 1 minute from now vs. 5 minutes ago.

I usually just wipe the take number with my finger, so I know what take we JUST did. Sometimes, if I'm writing the next take number, then need to go do something else between takes, I'll come back to the slate not remembering if the number on the slate is the previous or next take. So I just don't write the next take number until we're about to go for another. On set there are too many things to think about, I'd rather just have a quick identifier of what we've already done.

I saw it projected digitally, in protest though, the wife had already purchased the tickets. Same thing I always see in digital projection, contrast ratios off, noise in the black and darks, no soul. Wasn't the best movie, but I may want to see it again in standard projection.

two separate and different things :)

Those lenses are also notoriously out of whack back focus wise when you're zooming around. So don't zoom in to get critical focus, if you do, when you zoom back out to the desired focal length your marks will be off and worthless. 1/2" paper tape around the barrel, and using a black stabilo/grease pencil or wet erase pen so you can erase your marks for each setup, and you'll be good.

I'm pretty close to getting a Backstage junior cart, I love how it packs up all compact into itself. It can be a little cumbersome I think if you're trying to get into your car quickly at wrap, having to disassemble everything, but its construction is pretty great.

I felt the flares in general were well motivated, except for maybe 2 shots. The establishing crane shot of the train station, and then one where we were in the opening of a supposedly dark cave where there shouldn't have been any source for a flare. I thought the movie was fun, but way too familiar, I saw too many Spielberg visual references all throughout. Nice at first, but it grew tiresome eventually.

Also, if the DP, Director and AD are standing around tapping their feet, you don't want to hand back and forth anything but the necessary...so best to just keep caps out of the equation and leave them at the lens case :)

Demand a full prep.

Frankly, you have to stop PA'ing. If you're doing the PA thing, as good as you might be at it, you'll always be thought of as a PA and rarely first in mind when AC's are looking for a 2nd. Look into some of the camera rental houses to see if they're hiring, and if not, just ask if you can stop in from time to time to learn the gear, or even help some of the AC's who come in to prep. Just stay present outside of the PA world, and be where the AC's are, that way they start to think of you more as a camera guy than a gopher.

Jerry rig ;) Or perhaps afixing a swing-away mattebox at an angle, then cutting/killing/masking off half of the reflected image with some black tape (not ON the filter, but along the mattebox), revealing the subject in front of the lens :)