Saul Rodgar

Well, there was one up for grabs on ebay this week. It sold for a mere $1400, mind you. Since they are not made anymore, most people who have one are hanging on to it like dear life. So not only is a question of where can you find them, but how much are you willing to pay for them once you find them. http://cgi.ebay.com/CineMeter-II-Light-Met...1QQcmdZViewItem

Game is shooting on RED because of it is high quality image acquisition, BUT in great part due to its thematic content (Sci-Fi / video-games) and incredibly high CGI post production requirements, which call for that look. I can tell you that because I prepped that movie and there was a lot of talk about shooting on HD, WHICH MADE SENSE FOR THAT PARTICULAR MOVIE. Also I have looked at some of the footage created with a RED for the movie Dark Country, which also calls for a lot of special efx. Wasn't particularly impressed. Looked sterile and stark, with some garish-video looking colors, reds particularly. Lots of sharpness, contrast and latitude, for sure. I can't speak for Soderbergh's projects, but it looks like it is more of a situation where the camera is used when called for specifically, for its "look." So it looks like is being used in a case-by-case scenario, and not an across the board situation. Just wanted to clarify that. I don't think is the right camera for EVERY project, as some would claim. It does seem like you have a winner product in its class, though. I just hate this black or white world where RED users and pundits call your product the "slayer of film". Two different mediums, two different looks, for two different uses; in my humble opinion. Cheers!

Well the problem here is that film school is an industry, really, first and foremost. I mean how many people would be unemployed if it weren't from kids who go to their film programs. Hell, they want to continue misleading these young minds into thinking they will graduate from film school and go make blockbusters: it is in their best interest. Nobody is going to kill the golden-egg goose. And most students SO want to believe that they will be the exception to the rule, that they will find someone with $50 + million to go make a movie with, it is obscene. I see it all the time. And if someone dares burst their bubble, watch out! So it is a choice, a self-delusional one, but a choice nontheless. Also it's about being young and in college, with a million possibilities ahead in life. No one really expects to come fresh out of college ready to get a Nobel Prize in physics anyway, or win a high-profile corporate law case, etc. Who wants to do that boring poop anyway? But film, it feels like anybody can do it. It's the ART thing, the so-called "democratization of the arts" (which is a good thing otherwise). I guess that is probably why most people out of film school get so disproportionately hopeful. It's like rock and roll: if I had a dollar for every time I heard that such-and-such college rock band was going to make it big, I could finance my own big-budget films. Yeah sure, anybody can make films or play guitar (and they should). But are they going to make a living out of it, put their kids through college, retire on it? How hard can it be to be an Oscar winning DP or director anyway, right?

I quote from my response to a similar thread: Bubble burst, welcome to the world of film making. I don't mean to sound cynical or mean, but that's how this is until you can get a reel that will sell your skills to the right people. And then there is the part where you have to find those right people and somehow show them your stuff and convince them that you are the right person for the job. I can't speak for everyone, but I when I started working, first I had to volunteer as a PA. Then, if one does a good job, and they need someone they may call one back. And then one slowly climbs the ladder, if lucky enough to be in the good with the powers that be. Especially in this line of work. Every one of us wants to be a famous Director, DP, etc. right off. I don't know where people get the idea that this industry is glamorous. These days I work on three of four features a year doing something I much rather not, so that I can go do what I really much rather do mostly FOR FREE in between features. Unfortunately, that's just how it is when nobody knows just how talented and deserving of $1000 a day we truly are. I see twenty-somethings who have gotten some student film prize while in college maybe, and upon graduating they have to start working as a PA just like the rest of us, be it LA or London. It's called paying our dues. A lot of people buy a digital camera thinking that it will propel them to where they want to go automatically. While it certainly may help, it is not automatic. Just try asking someone like David Mullen, ASC how easy it is to secure consistently high-paying gigs. And we are talking about talented, experienced and recognized people here. Sure, it helps if you know the right people, but otherwise, it is just a darn hard slog BEFORE one can actually start making some cash doing this film making thing. I don't mean to give you a lecture, but hey, you asked!

The SD rushes clip looks pretty darn good for the compression first from HDV and then mpg4 or whatever you used. Good work!

That particular guy may be a jerk, since it looks like he is trying to make a buck off of the project, but believe me: I am confronted by this situation ALL the time. All time worst: I did some HD to DV conversion work for a guy who six months later kept on calling me as I was working on a feature film to resolve some issues he had noticed six months earlier on the tape I gave him. Sure, I believe in customer satisfaction. Thing is he, never bothered telling me about it then, but now he was going to submit that same tape to a film festival and the deadline is something like two days later. So he wants me to do this, like by tomorrow. And I am working 12 to 14 hrs on this feature, right? And he is calling me and texting me real desperate-like. I told him I couldn't deal with it until the weekend. After a lot of back and forth exchanges where I tried to explain my predicament and his not being very reasonable, he actually replied that he had given me $20 dollars six months earlier. So what kind of person was I for not drop everything I had going on then to rush to his aid when he had neglected to tell me about the problems when he first noticed them six moths before? Some nerve on this guy. Sorry if I was brash on the earlier response anyway.

That particular guy may be a jerk, since it looks like he is trying to make a buck off of the project, but believe me: I am confronted by situation this ALL the time. Sorry if I was brash on the earlier response anyway.

Bubble burst, welcome to the world of indies. I don't mean to sound cynical or mean, but that's how this is until you can get a reel that will sell your skills to the right people. And then there is the part where you have to find those right people and somehow show them your stuff and convince them that you are the right person for the job. I can't speak for everyone, but I when I started working, first I had to volunteer as a PA. Then, if one does a good job, and they need someone they may call one back. And then one slowly climbs the ladder, if lucky enough to be in the good with the powers that be. Especially in this line of work. Every one of us wants to be a famous Director, DP, etc. right off. I don't know where people get the idea that this industry is glamorous. These days I work on three of four features a year doing something I much rather not, so that I can go do what I really much rather do mostly FOR FREE in between features. Unfortunately, that's just how it is when nobody knows just how talented and deserving of $1000 a day we truly are. I see twenty-somethings who have gotten some student film prize while in college maybe, and upon graduating they have to start working as a PA just like the rest of us, be it LA or London. It's called paying our dues. A lot of people buy a digital camera thinking that it will propel them to where they want to go automatically. While it certainly may help, it is not automatic. Just try asking someone like David Mullen, ASC how easy it is to secure consistent high-paying gigs. And we are talking about talented, experienced and recognized people here. Sure it helps if you know the right people, but otherwise, it is just a darn hard slog BEFORE one can actually start making some cash doing this film making thing. I don't mean to give you a lecture, but hey, you asked!

If Hitchcock were alive today, would he be using chroma key backgrounds and/or CGI as proposed by Scorsese on this short? Probably so, since he used rear-screen projection -his time's analog version of chroma key background- so much in his films. Now, here is a mind -boggler, would he originate on video? I know these themes have been discussed ad-infinitum on this site. However, this is a particularly poignant subject, since it involves Martin Scorsese making a film "the way he (Hitchcock) would have made the picture then, only doing it now, but the way he would have done it then," and the ramifications of the statement since there were no chroma key and computer technology in Hitchcock's time. Wouldn't Scorsese just do it the way Hitchcock would have done it then, without computers? I have a film-theater owner/ projectionist / classic-film print collector friend who is adamantly disdainful of the (over?) use of digital technology to make films these days. He prides himself in not having sit through any Hollywood feature films made after 1985. One could perhaps call him a snob. He loathes to think about the day when all movies are released digitally to theaters. Does my friend have a valid point, in that digital technology is making films "cheap"? Sure, the advent of technology is making it feasible for a lot more people now that ever in the past to express ourselves. However, we all know, in terms of film preservation, polyester prints -if properly kept- will last 100 years or more with no loss of quality. Whereas digital technology is so new there is no way to tell how long a DVD will keep for, other than few years. So what if ALL films were originated, edited, color-corrected, scored, effected, released and distributed digitally? Would something be lost? This digital-at-every-step-of the-way scenario is very real and in some cases already happening in a major way. So, for the sake of argument, how do films that employ digital technology fare when compared to the analog oldies? The short answer is that these are just tools that are available to filmmakers to create with. Yet people like my friend claim there is something lost to digitally "compromised" movies, akin to people who claimed that CD's could never equal vinyl records. So when this up-coming production model threatens the whole "classic" production model, from acquisition to distribution, what then? Could these two models co-exist? I personally would hate to get to the point where physical film is actually gone from the world, aside from the film archives. "Remember film?" So, what would Hitchcock do? I'd just like to be devil's advocate on this one.

Is this another (unfunny) joke?

Agree, but good job otherwise.

This list is curated by some one who has spent half his life in Mexico. There are some good movies made in the last ten years in Mexico, but I think the oldies are the best by far. My bent is towards culturally, politically and historically important movies, as evidenced below. In somewhat descending chronological order: La ley de Herodes is a good political film that could teach you a thing or two about the political madness Mexico has gone through in the last forty years, ending with the 70 year rule of the PRI political party in 2001. I would try to get Cabeza de Vaca. It is hard to find, but it is a great film about the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish. Potential plot spiler: Cabeza de Vaca was a Spanish conquistador that was captured by the natives and taken to the ways of what the Spanish called "savages". He becomes one of them eventually is found by some other Spanish soldiers. It's a great movie. I found it on Netflix here in the US on a fullscreen version, which is bad, but better than nothing. Any movie by Jodorowski except El Topo and Fando & Liz, which -however good- were made in Mexico but could have been made anywhere. Santa Sangre and particularly Holy Mountain -which along with the above mention titles- have a heavy handed psych/ surrealist tone to them, are very true to what Mexico is, in the opinion of the French Surrealists that visited Mexico in the fifties: the only true Surrealist country. Que Viva Mexico. A gorgeous B/W docu-drama made in the forties before the country even began to get industrialized. Along the lines of I am Cuba, a jewel of a movie. The Rebelion of the Hanged. A classic movie made from a book by Traven about the exploitaion of the natives in Chiapas in the first half of the last century. Much of that still happens today. Great B/W cinematography. La Perla. A true pearl of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema in the forties with gorgeous cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa and adapted by a book by John Steinbeck, who also wrote the screenplay. Anything by Luis Bunuel of his Mexican period. Too many to list here: El, Viridiana, Los Olvidados, The Secret Life or Archibald de la Cruz, Simon of the Desert, Nazarin, The Exterminating Angel. Great movies all. Mexico seen through the eyes of Hollywood: The Night of the Iguana by John Huston with Ava Gardner and Richard Burton adapted of the play by Tennessee Williams. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, another John Huston great movie with Humphrey Bogart by another book by Traven. There are some good Mexico scenes in The Lady from Shanghai, by Orson Welles. Anyway, have fun watching any movie you decide to view!

I agree with most of Richard's post. I would add that the equipment rental/ studio space rental business is incredibly hard to keep up with. Why? Because there is always something new out there that people want. So if you have HPX 3000 cameras, people will want Red. If you buy Red cameras people will want F23's, etc. Having worked at film/ video rental houses for ten years, that is the story of our lives. If you have the bread and butter acct's that Richard talks about above, it is a little easier to stay afloat and keep up with technology. But honestly I just can't even believe how fast technology is advancing. And being that these cameras are not cheap, just how many cameras can you afford to turn around or to have idling there waiting to be rented out. That happens everywhere, but small markets are particularly prone to be terrible. Rental houses in LA have to constantly buy the best, newest gear and can't make much on them because there are SO MANY rental houses renting the same gear, ultimately driving the rental prices to ridiculously low amounts. And so, for that same reason, people that go to a smaller town on production most of the times bring the gear from LA, Miami, or NY, etc. I am not saying it is impossible to do. I just think is very hard, because the competition is so fierce and large amounts of money are required to invest and upkeep with constantly evolving technology as well as just keeping the facility open through the lean times that would surely come. I hate to sound pessimistic, I just think the chances of surviving WITHOUT your bread and butter all-year-round accounts are very slim. As an idea, maybe talking to your local/ state government about any potential subsidies/ partnerships they may have to open these facilities. Here in New Mexico, film productions have whipped politics to a frenzy and Gov. Richardson has made it possible for some people to get a state loan for partial funds to open a $100 million + film studio facility through a State Legislature bill. I know some other states, such as North Carolina, Louisiana and NY are very aggressively following in the heels of NM with the subsidies/ loans/ tax rebates to attract film bussiness. Good luck.

Yeah, I would agree: it looks good! But it does need more interior shots like Adrian said and more diversity in content. In other words it looks like it all came from the same project. Also and this is just personal critique, a lot of the interior shots the image look pretty flat, like there was no other lights than overhead practicals. I realize that may have been the intended effect. But I would shoot more interiors with controlled lighting, which is what most people would like to see if they are looking for a DP. Pretty much I am reinforcing what Adrian said. Good stuff though.

What I think a DP needs to do is know what part of the picture he or she wants to be at middle gray and judge the rest from there. If your overall reading says f4 but the subjects face reads at 2.2 and you want the face to be normally exposed then that is what you do: go from the reading on the face and if the rest is overexposed then you live with it or you even out your background lighting levels to compensate before you call it a day. If you want to underexpose the face then you expose your film accordingly, etc, etc. In other words, there is no "correct exposure" necessarily, it just depends what you are going for. Now, knowing what you are going for and taking the steps to get there is the hard part. But you have to experiment and learn from the mistakes that inevitably will happen. Normally, and as far as I am concerned, most modern negative film stocks will handle 10 stops of light detail. 5 stops between the middle gray and pure black and 5 stops between middle gray and pure white. Technically though, 3 1/2 steps under and the roll off toe is pretty steep. 4 1/2 over and the shoulder gets steep too. So you got 7 1/2 to 8 stops of safe usable range. But again, like you supposed, you have to shoot and get experience to know what works for you and the material you are shooting.

Wow, thanks David. Any word on pricing / estimated time of availability yet?

That has kind of been happening for a while in the feature world for a while. A camera PA is usually hired by production to be trained so that he or she can become a full fledged AC someday. While this camera PA is not sent out by the camera rental place and it is paid PA wages by production, it is never intended that a camera PA would replace a full-on AC -never right away, in any case. If persistent and capable enough, eventually this camera PA gets in the union and becomes a loader, starting the slow ascent through the camera department's hierarchy. Think of it as an AC-in-waiting. But make no mistake, no DP/ operator in his/ her right mind would consider hiring a fresh-off camera PA to replace a much more experienced AC. That mistake could be the last mistake that DP/ op made on a set. I mean, getting fired as a DP/ op for not hiring someone who is capable of keeping the camera dept straight, ranks as a sure-fire career-killer as far as I am concerned. Camera PA's are usually hired to help AC's to keep cameras in check, and it mainly involves moving A LOT of cases. Maybe on a short commercial, a camera PA can hold his or her on a little better. But it's still a tremendous liability to have such a person keeping track of innumerable details an experienced AC should.

Digital Imaging Technician, the tech that translates what you want to get out of the image to the camera electronics so that you get that on the recorder and not something else. If you use lenses that have back focus, that is something you really have to watch out for. I know of camera assistants that were summarily fired when some images were completely out of focus when viewed on large monitors even though on small monitors and the eyepiece they were apparently in focus. All of the digi primes (Zeiss and Canon) I have seen do not have a back focus ring, but a word to the wise, any zooms that have it will bite hard if not attended. This is different than on most SD broadcast lenses, where the back focus can go unattended and the picture may still look OK. HD will go soft focus fast. Good luck.

I did notice the pulsating strobes at the beginning, but I don't think they were a mistake. If they were left in the final print it means that's how they intended it. Otherwise they could have reshot that small part. Or it maybe started as a mistake and was embraced as a happy accident because the directors like what it contributed to the film. But they didn't make it to the final print just because.

The end credits list a "weather guru". I don't know what this means exactly, but here in New Mexico -if the weather is right- it's sometimes easy to tell when it is going to rain in the mountains, so maybe this person can tell exactly when lighting is going to strike ! ! ! As for the cinematography, it is the most naturalistic film I have seen in a while. Deakins took a lot of liberty with the exposure, I would say. Like David Mullen said about underexposure: "Sometimes you realize the director and producers didn't want it so underexposed after all". So it is great to see there are DP's who are corageous to make it look (sometimes completely) underlit like that. I visited their set a couple of times and I never imagined it would look like that at all. Great (under) lighting!

I understand and agree. But I sense some disdain in John's posts as to Doyle not being "worthy" of being called a great cinematographer. As if it was a personal afront that he has, deservedly or not, gotten so much attention.

Why not? "In the mood for love" and "Hero" by Doyle rival or surpass the best Luzbeki movie, in their different styles. This is such a bizantine discusion anyway, trying to debate whether Doyle is a great cinematographer or not and then comparing him to other personal favorites.

Wow! Kudos to David for consistently sharing great info that others would keep to themselves and selfishly exploit, a true class act. Up until recently I considered myself mostly self taught, but lately I suspect I have been inadvertently attending M. David Mullen's Master Cinematography Class! THANKS!

By all means please let us know how you accomplish this. It could be really handy info. Thanks!