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Kris Carrillo

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  • Occupation
    Cinematographer
  • Location
    Los Angeles

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  1. i'm in too! got the call from stephen lighthill on tuesday (4/11). i was completely caught off guard because i wasn't expecting to hear from AFI until after the 14th. looking forward to meeting all of you in fall. it's gonna be a busy year!
  2. In addition to what you listed, I also carry a 4-in-1 screwdriver, small scissors, side-cutters, a pelican M6 LED flashlight, a folding allen wrench set, and a couple 10"x10" sheets of black wrap folded up. I started carrying around the small cuts of black wrap recently, and they've played a number of times when we're shooting an insert and we need to break up the light quickly. When you say 3-fer, are you talking about an edison cube tap? Or are you talking about a camlock or molepin single-to-three splitter? Just curious. Kris
  3. jonathan, very nice stuff. i like the first frame a lot. just curious what your set up was for that shot. what did you use to create that cool soft top light on her and the fridge? mark, looks great. did you have any correction done on the frames you posted? the reason i ask is because i think i see a little vignetting in the first frame, and i'm wondering if you added that in post. the second frame is gorgeous. good job. kris
  4. What kind of camera will you be shooting with? If you're shooting on video, you could trick the white balance to make the image go towards magenta/purple. Then you don't have to worry about gelling the light or using a filter on the camera. Go get some different colored sheets of paper and do a manual white balance on them. A pastel green would you give you a magenta tint, so just experiment and go from there. I think this would be the cheapest and most effective solution. Good luck.
  5. How big is the window? Gelling it sounds like a good option if it's not too large. Also, don't forget about Kino's. They're a little more to rent than tungsten units, but a whole lot cheaper than HMI's. You can use 3200 or 5600 tubes in them--I think these would be great for fill in your situation. Good luck, Kris
  6. All great ideas, thanks very much. The problem with placing a light at the end of the hallway is that there's not a lot of space outside that door to work with. The artist will be making his entrance through that door, which will be tented, because we'll be shooting day for night. It's not a bad idea, and if I convince the director that the artist doesn't have to enter through that door, then I can probably make a 1.2 HMI Par work. Kevin, I was actually thinking about the same thing--connecting two dollies together and having the talent stand on one performing into the camera, but I decided it wasn't right for this video. Your grabs looks really nice. Tim, I love the idea of a body-mount. I think it'd work perfect for this artist, and I remember reading somewhere how to construct one out of gobo arms and a weight belt. I'll probably add a Kino Kamio to the rental list. I also was trying to decide if track would be necessary. The hallway is smooth and level enough that we could just go on the pneumatic tires as you suggest, but with track, the dolly grip only has to worry about the speed of the move and not focus so much on steering the whole rig. I'm still up in the air on this one. rajavel, I like your suggestion about pushing some light into the hallway from inside the rooms. I'll probably open a couple of the rooms and light from inside the room out into hallway to give the artist a little side/edge as he walks by. I'll try to motivate it as television flickers or something. Thanks again, everyone. This is exactly what I needed, and I'm feeling a lot better about lighting this performance set-up. Kris
  7. In two weeks I'll be shooting a music video on a DVX100A in a hotel. The director wants to shoot the performance as a tracking shot in the second floor hallway. We're planning on laying about 40' of straight track and using a doorway dolly to lead the artist down the hallway as he performs to the song. Here's a shot from the location scout of the hallway where we'll be shooting the performance: For reference, this shot is from a Canon 10D with a 28mm lens. 1/30 at 400ASA. I took a reading under the overhead 2' 2-bank fluorescent fixtures and got a 2-2.8 split at 640ASA. (I rate the DVX at 640ASA and shoot 24p with a 1/48 shutter.) The artist will enter the shot from the metal door at the end of the hallway. I'm planning on shooting from a low angle to avoid seeing the track as much as possible. I'm also planning on hitting the artist with a soft source from just above the lens. My question is how would you approach lighting this hallway for a music video peformance? I'm limited by the space, in that if I shoot from a low angle, I would see any fixtures close to the ceiling. If I shot from a higher angle, I'm worried about seeing the dolly track as we move down the hallway. We'll be using house power, but we've got a decent budget for rentals. The artist has dark skin, and I'd really like to pull him out from the background using kickers, I just don't know where I can put them without eventually seeing them in the shot. I'll probably place his key light on the dolly near the lens, but I'm trying to come up with a plan for lighting other parts of the hallway and background. About halfway down the hallway is a skylight that provides some nice space to rig from. There's also a really ugly industrial wall sconce about 2/3 of the way down the hallway that I'm going to have the art department dress. It's actually puts out a decent stop, but the fact that there's only 1 makes it weird and we decided it'd be best to lose it completely. Creatively, I know this is nothing new as far as hip-hop videos go. We do have other set-ups that are more conceptual and will be a lot of fun to shoot, but this main performance in the hallway has to look good and I was a little stumped at the location scout. I'd love to hear any ideas anyone has. The rest of the video will have a more verite style and will be lit more naturally--it takes place in the hotel rooms. For this performance set-up I want to do something a little more stylized. One idea I had was to shoot at a shutter speed that would cause the overhead flo's to flicker. I thought it might be a nice cheap free effect, but it also might not even read since the levels are pretty low already. I look forward to hearing anyone's ideas, Kris
  8. Kevin, Can you talk a little bit more about using the Polarizer when shooting dark-skinned actors? My guess is that you use it for an opposite effect of what the pola is designed to do--that is increasing the reflections from specular light. That would also explain your requests of the make-up department to add a sheen to actor's face. I'm wondering if you set your lights and then dial in the pola to taste, keeping an eye on the highlights? Do you find that you're using the maximum effect obtainable from the pola, or somewhere in between? Also, does your use of the pola on dark-skinned actors include a shift in saturation that is desirable or negligible? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts because I'm shooting a music video in August and the artist is black--obviously I'm considering the pola now. ;) Thanks for posting your production journal. You seem to have everything under control and I hope you guys catch up on the schedule. Good luck this week,
  9. Constantine, If I understand correctly, you gelled your light, and then white balanced under it? That would negate the effect of the gel completely. You could have just as easily used the blue filter on the camera without any gel on the photoflood, and with the appropriate exposure compensation, your shot would look exactly the same. An even easier solution would be to leave the photoflood clean, hold a small piece of 1/2 CTO in front of your lens and then perform the white balance. When you pull the 1/2 CTO away, the photoflood would go blue and you wouldn't have to use any gel on it at all. In any case, I think you accomplished the moody feeling you were going for. But as Christopher said, moving the light further behind the subject would create more of a rim, and would be closer to an outlined subject, whereas now it looks more like a 3/4 backlight which is bouncing off something (maybe a wall) and partially filling the face. If you want the frame completely black except for a rimmed outline, you have to make sure your backlight isn't bouncing off anything and passively filling the front of your subject.
  10. I'm down for a lighting workshop in LA. I'm willing to offer up my modest 1/2 ton G&E package for a weekend. Just an idea Peter, but I've been trying to set aside some time to do some pretty extensive lighting tests involving all different types of diffusion, gels, filters and instruments. The thought was to sit a model down under a pretty basic lighting set-up, and then shoot digital stills, going through a bunch of different diffusion on the key, then going through some gels, and then maybe even switching out the key light with different instruments. I wanted to do this myself, just so I could see the difference between all these lighting controls and modifiers in a single controlled set-up. We did a lot of this kind of stuff in my cinematography classes, and it was really helpful, especially seeing the differences between different types of diffusion filters and strengths. If we did manage to pull something like this off, I'm sure we could post the stills here so that everyone could learn from them. Of course, the idea of spending a weekend doing basic camera/lighting tests would probably bore most of the seasoned pro's around here. I like Mr. Mullen's museum field trip idea, as well.
  11. I have a Canon 10D that I've used extensively for previz and location scouting. For me, it's nice to be able to show the director what I have in mind for composition, as well as helping to show less photographically-saavy directors how I want to expose the shot versus how it looks to his/her eye. I can snap a still and show the director right there what composition I think would work. I can also go home and mess with the image in photoshop and email or print it out to show the director what I have in mind for the look of that particular scene. Once of the features I love about my 10D is the white balance settings and the selectable color temperature. I can adjust the Kelvin temperature anywhere from 2800-10,000 degrees and see how it will affect my image. I've used this feature a couple times when scouting locations with fluorescents. I was able to show the director what it would look like if we corrected for the fluorescent light, or if we just let it go green. I went with Canon because I was more familiar with their selection of glass, but like others have said, I don't think you can really go wrong with either Nikon or Canon.
  12. one of my favorite diffusion materials to use right now is Reynold's Cut Rite wax paper. to me, it's somewhere between opal and 216. it's cheap, heat resistant, and doesn't spread the light as much as 216 does. it's so cheap, i tell my electrics not to save it and just toss it after we wrap. just finished a shoot yesterday at a bar, we lit the bar with 150 fresnels and 4' single kino's. we had Cut Rite on all the 150's and it worked perfect. it got me down to the stop i wanted to be at, it took the hard edge off the lights but kept them directional. we also doubled some up and put it on one of our kino up-lights and it got the job done. i'd recommend buying a roll of this stuff and keeping it in your bag all the time. for less than $3 a roll, you can't go wrong. i'm surprised that i haven't seen more people using it. the only downside is it doesn't come in large rolls. i think it's probably a 12" roll, so you won't be able to skin a 4x4 frame with the stuff, but for smaller instruments, like 650's and down it'll work fine. i've also used baking parchment paper, which is a lot heavier, more like heavy frost. it doesn't work as well, because it cuts so much light and it will eventually scorch and turn brown.
  13. j-ro, thanks for the advice. the 16" foots on both ends are a great tip. i also plan on using screweyes to tie off to. is it really a bad idea to splice two pieces together? the only reason i was planning on doing that was because 8' 2x4's will fit in the bed of my truck, and are easier to transport. but if it won't be as stable or safe, then i'll go with the 12' lengths and cut them to size.
  14. i will be using speedrail and speed c-clamps above the bar where there are beams to rig off, but on the other side of the bar there isn't anything to rig from, so i decided to go the wall spreader route. i will also have hi-rollers with speedrail standing-by, but it will be difficult to keep the stands out of the shot. thanks for the suggestions.
  15. i'm shooting a short film this weekend and i've included some 2x4 wall spreaders in our grip package. i'll be hanging 650w fresnels and 1k's with chimeras off of them. the distance i need to span is 12' and the ceiling height is 11'3". i plan on using two 8' 2x4's with a splicer to get the length i need. i've done some overhead rigging before and i always make sure to use safety chains on all the instruments. i'm interested in hearing any bits of advice from people who have rigged wall spreaders before. what did you do to make it safe and is there anything i should be aware of. we'll be shooting in a bar, and most of our lighting will be rigged from above.
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