Adrian Levander

Looks great!!

Hi, About to shoot a project where I'm also will serve as aerial cinematographer. It contains 3 days of aerials with drones straight so I want to be as prepared as possible, only have experience with simple drone shots before. Having experienced pilot with us of course, but, looking for some general advice really but also have som more specific questions: - Exposure? How to set properly. Shooting film so video-ass won't help.. Use spot meter? Study Ansel Adams? What do the pro-aerial guys do, especially back in the days when everybody shot film. Easy on the ground but feels harder up in the air. - Exposure? Only set it once when leaving ground, roll and then change if needed for next shot after landing? Or is it common to remotly ride the aperture when in the air? Or even ride it in shot? Is this normal? - Focus? Just set on infinity or like 100m? Hard to answer maybe without knowing more about the specific shots. Or do you ride focus with remote? Is this common in proper helicopter/drone shooting? Is focus pulling for helicopter/drone a special skill? - Aperture? For nighttime cityscape shots, will just setting lens at 1.3 at 500T stock be the best? Or should you stay away from 1.3 with aerials and be at like 2.0-2.8 for night (can the drop-off in focus become distracting and noticeable for wide shots in the air?) It's UP16 lenses so they're are pretty sharp at 1.3 otherwise - Exposure daytime? What stop should I aim for? 5.6-8? Even more? - Undercranking/Overcranking? If I shoot everything at 33fps and just speed up in post to normal if needed, would this create ugly artifacts for aerials? Is overcranking common practice as well and something that can be experimented with? - Filters? Any filter recommendations worth considering, for example might shoot mountains with snow (UV-problems?) Other than the standard ND/grads of course. thanks! /Adrian

Another discovery a friend made - when you have a lab spool film up to the minima daylight ones, you might loose like 5-10m of film. So I set my camera at 50m countdown and not 60m. To avoid disappointment :) Don't know if this also applies to your lab though or if you do it yourself but good to know

Hi! I just bought one of these as well.. Only used it on one project so far but I learned some stuff that might be useful to you. - When using a lens motor, the mount & camera body jerks when doing extreme pulls. I was worried that this would affect the footage but it didn't show up at all. The mount and gate seems to be connected in some way by design so the jerking doesn't matter. I believe. - All of my mags sound weird in one way or another. Doesn't affect footage but makes it hard to do sync sound. Good thing to try them all out if you plan on recording sound - If you plan on getting a video tap, it's good to know that the Aaton BW one is quite muddy and you don't see much if you film in low light. Your camera seems to be in a great shape tough! best /Adrian

Grattis!

Hi! There's a 50-minute film about his work on the sacrifice. It consists of on-set interviews with Nykvist about his lightning techniques on that film and on his collaboration with tarkovsky. I had the luck of finding it in my local library but doubt that it's been released with english subtitles. There is also a good 1 h 40 minutes documentary about the production of the sacrifice with more interviews with Nykvist and also brings up his work in post to achieve the look on that film. It was released with the anniversity dvd of the Sacrifice. I can also recommend the behind the scenes documentary of fanny & alexander. Found that one really interesting. think that one is one the criterion dvd. Pretty much what I can think of... Sorry for the poor grammar! /Adrian