Saul Rodgar

Umm, I don't think I understand . . . Please explain. Negative fill? You mean putting dubetyne on the windows? I don't think that is what you mean, but then how would the practicals show up? Keeping "ambient and fill light down and let only your key lights play" what key lights, pray tell? I just shot these stills, along with 7217 pushed one stop uncorrected for daylight at T3.4 with bleach bypass in mind. This is what I got: Every 3 feet away from the end of the tunnel the light dropped one stop. I had no choice but to shoot it like that. No big lights and large crews to fire them up either . . .While I like the results, I had originally sugested Diana to draw the curtains to get a controlled envrion. Here we were loosing light constantly. On something like this you could use the HMI's to get you some more fill on the close ups. I didn't have even a reflector board unfortunately, but I was going for the stark chiaroscuro look. Unless you like something like this I would try to draw more curtains and get other lights on. Robert and Hal have some good points, though.

Not quite, it would be 1/3 stop OVERexposure, you are going the opposite direction. The sequence (in 1/3 of stop increments) looks like this: . . . 50, 60, 80, 100, 125, 160, 200, 250, 320, 400, 500, etc If you underexpose 250 ASA 2/3 of a stop you go down to 160 ASA. If you overexpose it 2/3 of a stop you go to 400 ASA. What I meant was to push your stock a full stop to 500 ASA to get more light out of it and then underexpose 2/3 of a stop to get more contrast and grit. So you would set your light meter to 320 ASA even though you are shooting it at 500 ASA. It is kind of confusing if you are not very familiar with the push-pulling processing. I wouldn't try it on 16mm unless you are going for that extreme look. 35mm holds up a lot better.

R-ight! Sorry, overlooked that SMALL detail! "2 windows on the lower side of the drawing, west oriented, at the 10th floor, but very poorly lit because of the shadowing blocks of flats nearby, and the snowing weather." I guess you are a the mercy of what you can bring up the stairs or elevator and your practicals. I would put a 2k without diffusion in the hallway (as a back light) with the door open so that it streaks in, draw the curtains on the windows (but it would be nice to get a little to some blue daylight leaking in), fill the room with smoke and turn on some moody practicals. You may or may not want to underexpose and push your stock to give it more contrast, grain and mood (push process one stop but rate it 320 ASA instead of 500 ASA: therefore underexposing 2/3 of a stop). If your actress moves in and out of the back light light as she finds stuff and you frame her against practicals, the curtains with some daylight leaking in and the hallway light, it should look really good. If you keep 2 to 3 stops contrast between the back light and the ambient light in the room you will be fine. But it seems like you are going to have to go with what you have pretty much unless you move your location or rent a crane/condor and a big light . . . Which you said you can't afford. So make the best out of your limitations, is what I am trying to say. Please post the results here when you are done and don't forget to give me credit as "consulting DP"! :lol:

Of course, one just needs to be able to find the Iscorama 1:2.66 lens . . .

It looks like they couldn't figure out to squeeze the image to get the anamorphic aspect ratio right though. I found it to distracting to find the movie interesting . . . to bad.

Welcome to the club. You are going to have to be very flexible and resilient, for this is a tough business no matter where you are. Just do any kind of video job that comes your way until you have a body of work in the video field that you want to pursue. The XL2 is a good camera. Good luck. ;)

This subject has been dealt with in the past quite extensively, I suggest looking it up in the archives.

Of course there are no right ways or wrong ways to light any given space. Only whatever works for you in terms of time, budget, number of fixtures and of course LOOK. I personally would light the small dressing room by putting a 2k fresnel or par can aiming it at the screen some 15-20 feet away and use that as a natural diffused key light. Just make sure to place it in a way that the camera would see the bright spot source. You could find that you may only need a tweeny or something like that on a menace arm over the walls for hair light to be done lighting it, since you have a mirror and the walls will bounce so much light. For the other room I would put the biggest light you have outside the main window and shine it in simulating sunlight. The distance you place it at will depend on how big it is and how much light it outputs. A smoke machine would give you a good atmosphere but would bring contrast down so that is up to you. I would also use some strategically placed practical lights on nightstands to pump up the light a bit if you need that. It just depends how much fill light you want. Chiaroscuro usually is represented by hard light with no or very little fill. So you are going to decide how much light is enough. But I would probably keep the fill 3 stops under key since Vision stocks have a lot of latitude, if you want contrast. I am thinking Blade Runner, when Sean Young goes to Harrison Ford's apartment for the first time, although that is not supposed to play for daylight coming in, just some unidentified light coming in . . . Again, there is no right or wrong, so just have fun and make the best of whatever equipment you have. But that's what I would do. Other people would light it differently though . . . Good luck!

Whatever projector you use, it helps to make the projected image slightly out of focus to avoid moire patterns on the screen that the camera might pick up and therefore distract the viewers. In fact, since you are shooting film, I would go a little more out of focus, but that is because I have done it before and realized later I didn't go out of focus enough to get rid of the "video projected" image look . . . Just my opinion, of course. And it certainly helps if you can do a test to make sure how much to soft focus the image.

Cindy Sherman is a great example of someone who does that and she has a great body of work. Check her out if you haven't.

My (unspoken) concern was the K3 would be to heavy for not being supported itself and breaking at the lens mount. Olex seems to point at other problems with picture. I don't know if anybody makes an interface plate for Arri lightweight support bars for the K3. Les Bosher makes one for the ACL, I am sure he can make you one for the K3. www.lesbosher.co.uk/ S

POOR MAN"S VIDEO ASSIST! YEAH!

No. I was the lowly video assist guy. Had I been the shooter, probably I would have realized these guys were crazy earlier and would have walked away before the madness . . .

Wow, That's really crazy . . . 3-4 years ago we shot the Arizona portion of Akon's In the Ghetto video clip in Fort Defiance, Az. One of the locations was a local neighborhood where every other house was burned down or boarded up or somehow abandoned and completely tagged by the local gangsters. The moronic production team wanted real Native American gangsters in the video. So of course they call some, who arrive completely jacked up on crystal meth. I remember one who approached me and the sound guy, completely tweaking and carrying a hatchet in his hand, wondering who the director was. Well, right before we come back from lunch. Two members of a rival local gang show up, right? To make the story short, obviously a fight broke out right in front of crafty between the new comers and the other guys, including the character with the hatchet. So one of them gets stabbed, others get cut, and all of them get punched and kicked repeatedly in the ensuing battle. Then the newcomers retreat and get in their car and lunge it into the production crew - local resident- rival gang members crowd that was standing on the side of the road. No one was seriously hurt from that, but the two kids in the car are now going to get a gun, big rocks are raining on the car and the hatchet guy is running alongside the passenger side, repeatedly smashing windows and putting huge dents in the body with the hatchet, trying to nail the guy in the passenger seat in the head with his blade as the crew watches in horror. So now we have to scramble to get out of there before the two kids come back with whatever fire power to settle the score. And as we try to do that, that douche-bag director Lil X wants to get footage of the warriors covered in blood celebrating their "victory" in front of one of the burned houses . . . I have never felt so much scorn for the producers and director of any project I have ever worked for. These people were the biggest jerks EVER, and I have seen bad producers too, their egos were incredibly overblown and the fact that they put the entire crew in jeopardy to get a shot was astoundingly criminal. Besides, they treated the crew like we were subhuman too, it was really sick. I have no respect for these people whatsoever. Shame on them. If you are ever unlucky enough to work for Lil X, Mister Terry et al, watch out! You can view the video below, the neighborhood I refer to is the one labeled "Navajo Nation, Az" and there is some footage of the gangsters before and after the battle. The guy with the bandana covering his mouth is the one who carried the hatchet. http://www.videocodezone.com/videos/a/akon/ghetto.html

Nice rig! What kind of (massive) lens is that? It looks like a 500/1000mm for 35mm still photo, which of course would double up for 16mm. Wow! Got to love those Pentax M42-mount K3's The only thing you are missing is a miliframe motor for that puppy. I once saw one on ebay but didn't buy it, which I do regret from time to time . . .

GORGEOUS, David!

Maybe someone should really start a forum called "surviving your own stunts.com" :P Ahh, the allure of Jackass! Man accidentally hangs self in amateur stunt VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A man was recovering in a Vancouver-area hospital after an attempt to film a mock hanging as a stunt accidentally became the real thing, police said on Thursday. The 23-year-old man thought he had protected himself by wearing a harness when he went to a suburban park on Wednesday to have a friend record him dangling lifelessly from a tree, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. "Unfortunately things did not go as planned and the male was unintentionally hung from the rope he had placed around his neck," according to a police spokesman who said the friend initially did not realize anything was wrong. Neither man was trained as a stunt actor, according to the police statement that added: "The 'Don't Try This at Home!' disclaimers on commercials and movies are there for a reason." http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080111/od_nm/...RbS0BBqdBGs0NUE

Yes, you can. I am in the same situation, actually . . . Found this, hopefully it will help us. Click on the link and go to the bottom of the page, there are some links there . . . "The Daily Beery Blog has a post up entitled "What to Do if Your Payroll Company Suddenly Closes." The post points out the particularly disastrous tax season timing of Axium's closure. As it is shut down, Axium presumably will not be able to send out W2s to the employees of all the productions it has handled this year. Furthermore, given the circumstances, cast and crew employed by Axium in 2007 may want to make sure that their withholding taxes were properly filed by Axium to the IRS. The site links to EFTPS Online, the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System, which allows workers to do this." http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/2008...ory-unfolds.php

Wait, you had to cut one or two inches but there were only two frames burned? That's odd, unless the film around the burn frames just burned the hell out of shape. Usually you can just cut the one or two frames without much ado. And yeah, a splicer will come in handy. Projectors usually only burn film when either: 1) The bulb is brighter, hotter than it should normally be. 2) The film gets jammed in the gate with the projector bulb going at full blast. (The bulb would normally burn the film if it weren't moving at whatever fps. Projectors that let you still a frame on screen have a built in douser that cuts the light down automatically when the projector stops with the bulb on) 3) A combination of both instances. So without more info, can't say more about what caused it, although it sounds like it jammed somewhere and it just burned two frames at the gate. Film usually jams if there are splices that are done incorrectly, but this seems to be camera original, so who knows? But keep that in mind for when you spice it again. I would sit closer to it next time, trying to see what happens (and to stop it fast) if it does jam/ burn film again. Good luck! S

No, I can't blame people for trying to make the best out of their medium, but it is like apples and oranges, to coin a phrase. 35mm IS NOT 16mm, therefore 35mm DOESN"T look like 16mm. And you actually said it yourself: "trying to get the absolute best out of what ever medium they are shooting". Which doesn't mean make that medium something else it isn't. Making 16mm look like 35mm is making 16mm something else it isn't. I always see all these people wanting video look like film, or whatever. Just take video or 16 mm FOR WHAT IT IS and not for what it isn't, NOT FOR WHAT YOU WISH IT COULD BE. It's like some inferiority complex: I can't afford 35mm, so I must absolutely try to make 16mm or video look like 35mm, to fool everyone, when it is a non-issue! 16mm is beautiful for what it is, warts and all, period. Make the best of it, yes, but not try to make it be something it isn't. There is a difference there. The "it could almost fool ya" paradigm . . . Twenty-first century alchemy. Additionally, it is just a lot easier and cheaper to stick to what you know is what is going to work for you and just go that way instead of spending lots of time and money trying to make something else be what it isn't. You are free to do what you want, of course. I just find it is like spending all this time to make a beer taste and look like champagne when you could just go and get champagne and save the time and the rest. If you can't afford champagne, well, you drink beer! BEER IS GREAT! But, hey if it makes you happy to find the way to make 16mm look like 35mm, knock yourself out. 'Nuff said.

The most obvious way to get that look from 16mm is to open your lens' f stop all the way and shoot it that way. That'll definitely give you shallow focus. You are going to have to carefully design your lighting situation/ setups and stock choices. Also you may try arranging the subjects in the picture so that they are in different focus planes and then change focus between subjects, rack focusing and so on, which can be hard for an operator without a follow focus attachment and/ or video assist, especially if the subjects are moving. Or just shoot 35mm and stop trying to make something behave like something else entirely. It's like trying to make champagne out of beer. ;)

It looks good. The lighting is very naturalistic. Looks "unlit" which is a look in itself, not a put down. I am working on a similar project, but I decided I wouldn't post any grabs until we do the HD transfer, because the NTSC grabs look so crummy . . .

I see. A zooming circular black matte (its special-effects-editors real name) in post would be easier to control in case you can't find anything that works for the "in camera" end of things. Otherwise you could find a big enough black foam core board, cut a smooth-edged circle in it and move it back and forth from the camera to the actors. I would go in and out of focus probably but I don't see a way around that, even with the little metal shutter/ iris Tim talks about (which would just stay out of focus) unless you do it in post, which is fast, control-able and easy. I would, however, shoot at 16fps to give it that fast motion look that most silent films had. Just an idea.

iris in and iris out? what do you mean?

Not all lenses are created equal. Some will cover the format in their entire range, and some won't. It just depends on the lens. Angenieux has some great-looking, affordably-priced S-16 zoom lenses such as the (gigantic) 15-150mm T1.9 long zoom of the 17-65mm T2.2 short zoom. You will notice these two lenses are pretty darn fast but not very wide. Expect to pay BIG bucks for something wide and fast, both on the zoom and the prime lens categories.