Dan McCormick

Hey Thanks for the idea, but I'm not sure if we could pull off a zoom on the track smoothly enough for it not to be noticed (it's a really long shot so we only have the stock for 4 takes, unless we add some cut points). What's a microforce, I haven't heard of that before? I'm pretty sure our zoom lens (it's pretty old) would cause an image shift on a focus pull, or would that be disguised by the frame-change during the track if the focus is kept on the womans face? Thanks Dan

Hey I'm preparing to DP a short film (my first), which is basically one long track (we'll probably have people cover the frame to allow cuts, but it should look continuous). One of my problems is we don't have a great deal of track and can't build a huge set (maybe 2 parallel 5-10 foot walls and a 10-15 foot back wall). The director wants the shot to start on a close up of the actress' face and track back as wide as possible. I'm shooting on 16mm (possibly super16 depending on the camera they give me), and don't have time to do any tests. Anybody have any ideas how wide a lens I can use before the shot becomes very unflattering to the actress or distorted around the edges? Thanks Dan McCormick

Thanks for the ideas. Fortunately, the film has been changed so there is now a set, camera movements and different lights so all is my problems are gone (or maybe now I actually do have problems). Dan McCormick

Hey Just wondered how tolerant professionals are with endboards on MOS shots. I'm a student, and today shuffled clapping with cable bashing when we were really pushed for time so I ended up endboarding a few shots. Would that normally piss people off or does nobody really care? Thanks Dan McCormick

Hey I'm a 2nd year student at Uni, and I'm about to DP a 5 minute "experimental" film on 16mm. We were given the brief today, and basically the film is a static shot of a mans face as he expresses a different emotion each minute for 5 minutes (yawn). At the moment it is 1 take and no camera moves, I'm not sure if I'll get much freedom in that but for lights I can do whatever I want. Hopefully it'll be shot in a studio, but I have a pretty good range of lighting equipment either way (I'd rather stay on tungsten as that's the majority of what we have) and as I might not get to DP on film for another year I want to make it look as interesting as possible. I'm working on a couple of ideas, maybe try to make it look like he is going down an old-fashioned elevator with beams of light going up him... Anything really, if anyone can think of a way to make this scene look more interesting I'd really appreciate it, and the more original the better. Thanks for your time Dan McCormick