Rob van Gelder

As I said before, we had 1 or 2 6-27 Pana-zoomlenses that were made for Digital systems and the Digital Primes frome Panavision, so these were made for 2/3". The other and most commenly used zoomlenses were original 35mm lenses. Therefore the magnification factor. ( 25-420 or something like that and shorter lenses (20-100?) I don´t know the exact range anymore. Rob van Gelder, Bangkok, Thailand

It is possible that they tweeked the camera´s for certain shots. We had one technician constantly monitoring all cameras and adjusting exposure. For the nightshots (we had about 2 weeks of that) they might have used a longer shutter speed. For daylight shot´s I can hardly imagine they used a longer speed as we had almost always ND´s in the mattebox to get less dept of field. The constant adjusting of the iris was not always appreciated by the DP, we had one big monitor for 5 camera´s so that meant constant switching between de camera´s. The DP could never see any picture for a longer time as it was constantly matched (shaded) with the others. The camera´s were Panavised 900´s with Evertz downconverter at the back and most lenses were 35mm zoomlenses so that meant about 2,5 times magnification, eg. a 24mm on HD had a similar angle as 65mm on 35. Focus pulling was extremely challenging, no marks possible with the tigers, just the 7" HD-lcd screens as aid, or for one camera the big monitor. We did have the 6-27 digital zoom and some primes that rarely came out of the box. It was an amazing experience and my first big HD project. But after 5 months in cages we all got pretty tired of it! Rob van Gelder, Bangkok, Thailand

As I can recall, we shot at 24 FPS, so 1/48 sec. Some shots, specially those with the little baby tigers were shot on 30 FPS to be able to slow down the motion in post, as little tigers move very "staccato". Lighting budget was not really any problem, I would not say that the sky was the limit, but there were plenty of lights (18K, Helium balloons, etc) available. For some scenes with high speed actions we used 435 and Arri 3 camera´s, on various FPS. Rob van Gelder, Bangkok, Thailand

I was Steadicam operator and Motion Control operator on this movie. The problems you mention (poor blacks and noise) were - in my opinion - already visible on the set on the HD monitor. Besides that, for the motion control shots we had to do multiple passes to get rid of unwanted animal handlers in shot or to combine tigers that in fact did not really like eachother much. But light in the jungle changes every moment. Patches of light on leaves move around and there was often more than 20-30 minutes between a take and a clean pass. The guys at the post-production must have had a hellish time to combine them! About the videoish zooming: All tigers were really dangerous. That meant that we, the crew, had to be caged while the tigers were out of theirs. So to get enough footage, we always set up minimum 5 HD camera´s (Panavised CineAlta) with zoomlenses. We prepared the camera positions so we would get the most out of it, wherever the tigers would be. For that we needed the zooms. All camera´s were remote controlled or an operator had a separate cage for him and an assistant. In case of Motion control, we recorded the moves from all axis and lens movements and replayed them for the clean pass. The HD on the Steadicam was another burden, but manageble. It´s never fun to move a 1-meter long camera through a bamboo jungle or a prison corridor, together with actors. Rob van Gelder, Bangkok, Thailand

A Thai cameraman asked me if I could find out why the Kodak brochure about Vision2 500T (5229) uses several units like Fc and Lux "randomly". I know there must be a good explanation but I could not give it to y friend. In this brochure, we see a picture with 2 ladies and 8 red dots where they made measurements of the under and over exposure. These red dots are given in stops, from -5 to +1,5 stops. On the side we see a chart with technical details and one of them is the incident light levels: in Fc. Then on the right page we see several charts, and in some of them we see Lux/second So: why uses Kodak the Fc in the picture? Why not Lux if that is a unit they use in all other charts and calculations ? Rob van Gelder, Bangkok, Thailand