Nathan Martin

Might be better posted in the camera assistants thread in future. from my understanding melbourne doesnt have any more to offer than sydney does. And up here its about the same. John Barrys or Lemac. However Arri in sydney have some great stuff for very decent prices. i got a great bag from them for $240au Also BHphotovideo.com has decent shipping costs to australia. If your after a large portabrace PC-3 bag in black, ive got one id be willing to sell thats in pretty good condition.

thanks a bunch chayse, do you know if there is any crew booking agents elswhere in canada like toronto?

Hey there, i was wondering if anyone here knew of any booking agents for camera assistants in BC. I might be making the big move across to vancouver and wanted to check out which agents are good. cheers

I was playing around with this effect today actually. The way I do it is to make an additional iris. I cut a piece of black card to sit over the rear element of the lens, then cut the desired shape out of the card and tape it to the back of the lens. If shooting on filM you will need a bit of testing to check your exposure compensation

Hey there, i have a red short coming up in which an alien race lands on earth. for the actual landing the only sign of aliens is a strong white light beaming in through kitchen windows and it moves around the backyard. i have a fairly decent van package to light with however i believe it only goes upto 2.5k i was thinking i may need a couple of 6k's on some sort of a track just to get enough level to compete with my nighttime ambience indoors which im assuming will be around 2-2.8 at 320asa. the question is, do 2 6k's sound about right for the job, and will they be sharp enough and even enough to mimic a large orb of light travelling around the backyard (roughly 25' - 30' orb of light) the next setup im curious about is the first and only time we see this giant orb. it is sitting in a clearing within some bushland. Its being keyed in after the effects are finished, but for the source of light i was thinking of a couple of 2.5's on the ground through 251. the worry i had with this was that it may not give a good even coverage over the roughly 200 degrees of trees i imagine will be in shot. The other idea was to rig a whole lot of parcans to some truss at all angles, or putting in a couple of dinettes and angling the heads off to hit where i want. Any ideas? the final question is. There are smaller orbs travelling through frame and vfx and myself would prefer a reference in frame to give off light and provide a tracking mark for some of the orbs. The only idea i have so far is to make up some 12v peanut globes on xlr cables and run them off of fishing poles with some blue on them. any and all input is greatly appreciated thanks all

I was shooting in Canada early this year and it got down to 55 below celcius. The cooler with foot earners works well, the best thing to have on you though is large sealable plastic bags. When moving anything with glass or electronics indoors seal them in a bag so the condensation will form on the bag and not on the equipment

a little trick ive used before is to keep a pola in the whole time, and adjust it to get the right blue in the sky. This worked well for some things but if your shooting anything with reflective surfaces it can become a bit of a headache trying to get rid of the reflections and keep a consistant sky at the same time. the really hard part is trying to remember the blue you were getting the day before and matching it. obviously this doesnt make the subjects lighting match, but by keeping the sky consistent, it does help the feeling of consistency. on the other hand, i dont really like very blue sky's unless theyre needed. theryre very distracting.

if it needs service or repair, there is a guy in sydney i forget the name of who is quite good, but you can find out his details through sydney film school.

stung! my apologies, a dp i was working with a week ago was rating it at 320/200

shoot an omni or two into the ceiling somewhere behind the actor and shoot him half a stop to a stop under (no more tho or it will be black) b&w reversal looks great with faces underexposed (well in my opinion anyway) Of course it wouldnt be as simple as i suggested, thats just a general idea. the few times ive shot bathrooms i always found that rigging lights high worked well with getting rid of reflections in tiles. oh and it is a 200ASA film stock, i think you might be mixed up with something else adrian. 200 under tungsten and 320 under daylight

my magliner senior has served me well the last 4 years but honestly, after 2 years everything gets a little loose and wobly. You can tighten it all up again but it comes loose faster and faster as time goes on. And the caster wheels on the front completely rule out dirt, sand, and most grass. A friend has the yaeger and sons senior and it seems great but hard to get here in australia. A few assistants round the place have just gone to steel fabricators and gotten custom carts made. It gets a little pricey and usually they arent collapsable but the ones ive seen are the best carts ive used. Very solid, and usually made to fit perfectly in their van or truck.

if he is looking at a steadicam in the range of 2000 dollars i dont think it would be logical to pay the extra to get a rig that can handle 35mm, as the extra would be between 30 and 80 thousand. I have no experience with movcam but have heard good and bad reviews, for what your looking to fly though it should suit well. The later of the two i would advise against. It may serve your purpose for a few months but it will almost definatly break, and maybe smash your camera in the process Glidecam make some ok rigs for the price range, and if you come across some more cash the steadicam flyer is a lot of fun. And it has a high payload for its size

hey Tom, great stuff, ive got a 40d which i was going to get a intervalometer for, i was wondering what you use for the panning in shot? is it a post pan, or are you using a remote head of sorts? cheers

i think porn dp's will be delighted with the release of the scarlet next year. 3k res, low price tag, and small enough to put it anywhere....... i blame my fathers upbringing of me for any bad jokes that come out of my mouth

Wikipedia has lied to you. there are lots of cameras with native 16:9 ccd censors. The standard for dv cameras before about 5 years ago was a 4:3 native 3 ccd arangement. But thats only because the broadcast standard was 4:3.

wow, such a great idea. I dont expect you would be shooting any sync sound in one of those things though. Also, if the bubble has open ends to allow access from one end and air intake from the other, there must be problems with air flow, such as hair blowing in the wind.

i dont know about poland but here in sydney, probably the best camera assistants i know are female. I was taught to load by a female focus puller. It is very hard to crack into the industry as others have said though. I have only been working for about 4 1/2 years but i still get to points where there are long waits between jobs. I think one thing thats important in making it to become a camera operator is that you have to maintain your long term goal of being an operator, however you need to be just as passionate and involved in the other roles you must pass through before you get to your goal. The only reason i still get work as a camera assistant is because the people i work for can see that i wouldnt want to be anywhere else but there doing that job. Even though they know that i dont plan on doing it forever.

depending on the size of the area you can just dump dry ice into a few shallow containers of water with fans behind them to blow it into place

running a wireless ff is fine, I was running a bartech on red the other week, but we were running off the rigs power, i have heard from a few sources that you can run power from the camera through the lemo accessories out, however if there are big fast pulls then the load becomes too high for the accessories power supply, so i believe most people have been running power from the d-tap on the redbricks.

hey all, if you search the iPhone appstore for "iseek4k" you will find a free app that's very similar to David eubanks software

ah the monitor and vf, yeah i wasnt saying there was any problem with them, lemo and fischer connections are great, i was talking about the minature vision out cables. The mini xlr audio connections arent so bad, but the vision is aweful. I might also sugest a good viewfinder bracket, the arm that RED sells with it is good but not sturdy enough for something your putting pressure on all day. Plus as soon as it sags a little bit your horizon is out and you feel like your operating drunk.

as long as the fluorescents arent really old they should have a high cri, so they should be fine.

i had a strange problem on an sr3 once. Looking through the viewfinder i would get a honeycomb pattern accross the whole frame when the pola was at a certain orientation. I talked to the guys at panavision and they were surprised by it but we nutted out that the sr3 (as oposed to the 2) has a groundglass made of some kind of fibre optic wafers (i dont know what it is actually made of) that have a polarization effect, and when we cross polarized infront of the lens the honeycomb would pop out. Lucky it was on a test shoot just outside of panavision sydney when we realised. oh and sort of on the topic, its good to see some good musical taste on the board hehe, My In Flames shirt is in the wash

i dont think i could put in a good list but my current favourites are Matthew Libatique Dion Beebe

he was recently in town for the Australian Cinematographers Society 50th Anniversary and was caught grabbing my friends girlfriends ass. hehe it sounded like a good story. I have heard from someone that he is the only cinematographer in the world who has a clause in his contract that allows him to drink on set while he is working. I dont know how true this is but it seems believable.