Jim Keller

You know, I'm going to be an iconoclast and say that the best place to make an indie film is wherever you happen to be. There will be positives and negatives to working anywhere. But if you let your geographical location be an excuse, you'll never get anything done. Rather than trying to figure out where to go, look at what you can do, and then do it.

Reversal films are films where the camera shoots a positive, not a negative. In the old days, consumers called these "slide" films, and they were popular for home movies and news photography. They have a distinct look, but I'm going to side with Michael Nash in that "glossy" is a very qualitative word and probably means different things to different people, and there's a lot more to achieving a look than just the film stock. Perhaps if you could cite some images or videos that you think capture what you're going for, the folks here could be more help.

That would depend on the effect you're going for. If you want the door to look "solid" then, no, you'd want to keep the opacity at 100% on the middle layer. But don't be afraid to play with it in AE. Its still-image previews are quite accurate. Not knowing much about your project, I'd be inclined to select an angle where the actor was visible through the glass on the far side of the door, leaving the opacity of the "door" layer at 100% but setting up a mask where the window is, and then removing said mask once the pass through of the door is done. (Having the actor appear through a solid door is easier because you wouldn't need to mask). Seeing the actor this way through a window by a door is relatively easy, since that window will be present on all three layers. You may have to play with mask opacity to get a good effect to see the actor through the glass door itself. All that said, depending on the specifics of what you're dealing with, you may be able to "cheat" by setting the "door" layer at a lower opacity. That trick was popularly used in the days of optical compositing to hide mask edges, and very few people noticed... Shooting on location is going to give you one more wrinkle: You want to make sure your actor never obstructs or is obstructed by the open door, since you're going to need to mask it out. Ideally you would want to remove the door for the shot with the actor, but since you can't do that, select an angle where the open door (and its shadows) will truly and sincerely be out of the portion of the shot you will need to composite. If your actor is good at repeating action, you may also try shooting a version that is split into three shots: 1) Actor walks up to closed door. 2) Actor walks through open door (with door to be added later). 3) Actor walks away from closed door. It requires a truly *amazing* actor to be able to splice these together into a single shot, but audiences are quite used to seeing many cuts around an effect shot (rendering the effect shot -- the actor actually passing through the door -- much faster and therefore cheaper and easier to get away with sloppiness). And, finally, if you have access to a greenscreen, it's even easier (though not necessarily better) to shoot the actor walking on the greenscreen and to the composite as outlined above, but without the worry of getting the architecture perfectly aligned.

Oh, I should go ahead and add that I tend to use After Effects for my work, and there I would simply create three layers. Layer #1 and Layer #3 are identical -- the actor without the door, and Layer #2 is the door in between. You would then need to do a mask (either simple or complex depending on your angle) on both Layer #1 and Layer #3 to transition between them as the actor passes the plane of the door (e.g., a mask which starts surrounding the portion of the actor that is leading, and then expanding and changing shape as other parts pass through the door). If you have a higher-end compositing packing, this is probably easier, but I don't have that kind of budget to play with. :)

How were you planning to composite the shot? Different software would result in a different workflow, and hence dictate a different way of shooting it. Also, it may be easier than you think to do the effect physically, without compositing, if you're planning to work on a set you'll be building rather than on location. I've seen the effect done (on stage) by sliding glass in and out of the way (setting the lights so they catch glare as another person opens it, but there's effectively no glare when the door is closed -- the glass can then be slid out of the door, the "ghost" passing through it, without the audience seeing it) and by mounting lights in a doorframe to pick up some scatter off of atmosphere pumped down through the top of the door, though I'm honestly not sure how well those would translate to an on-camera application.

Oh, and I should also add that shooting wide-open can exacerbate chromatic aberration for the same reason.

Three cats. 14-year-old faded Calico named Tigger, 6-year-old grey tabby named Bagheera, and an unknown-age (8-12 probably) black longhair named Cosmic Creepers. Two who have since gone to the great scratching post in the sky, both orange tabbies, Sarabi and Simba. And yes, I know, the Mouse has his hooks in me pretty bad. :)

More light on the film will give you a better image density (reducing grain for many color films), but doesn't affect the sharpness of the image. Light diffracts more through a larger opening than a smaller opening. Therefore, a larger aperture (f/1.4) gives you a more diffracted -- and hence less sharp -- image than a smaller aperture (f/5.4). That said, for the portion of the image that is in focus, most end viewers won't notice. Where the difference becomes more evident is in the depth of field the different apertures give you. It's really only an issue when sharpness is important, such as in scientific applications.

You may also want to try Discreet's Cleaner or Apple's Compressor, which aren't free but which go through and remove redundant information to get the file size down. (And the file size is what causes the long download times.) I personally think Cleaner does a much better job than Compressor, but some of my co-workers disagree, so I'm sure Compressor has its advantages. :)

And, at the end of the day, the quality of your lens has far more to do with the quality of your finished product than whether you shot it 4:3 or 16:9.

I have a 70E, which I bought as a collector's item and only used once to see if it still worked. (The registration sucked, in case you're wondering). My memory is that the loops should fill the available space.

OK, I don't normally like to toot my own horn (especially since the mistake I'm fixing was my own), but I'm so amazed with what Final Cut Pro (5.1.4) could do, I just had to share. I made two critical mistakes when shooting the original footage. First I trusted the automatic aperture on a Sony DSR-PD100A, which I'm guessing was baffled by the unlit white wall behind the talent, but displayed just fine on the built-in LCD screen while taping. Second, when the talent showed up wearing bright red lipstick, I told her to bring the rest of her makeup up to the same level instead of take the lipstick off. Well, when I digitized the footage, this is what I saw: My first thought, of course, was to schedule a re-shoot. But I decided to see what Final Cut Pro's built-in filters could do. After some experimentation, this is the sequence I came up with: First, I applied the "Desaturate" filter at a -50 to increase the saturation. Since the background had effectively no color (except the very slight beige tint) and the camera was correctly white balanced, this brought out the details of the talent without doing much to the background. Second, using the "Levels" filter, I adjusted the gamma to make the talent's features my middle value. Third, I used the "HSV Adjust" filter to reduce the overall saturation and bring the colors back to something more naturalistic. And, finally, I did a simple "Brightness and Contrast" adjust. Final Cut Pro was able to render all but the last step in realtime on my old Dual G5. Now I'm really looking forward to playing with verion 6!

That's not strictly true. Cleaner actually intelligently searches for redundant information to allow greater compression for the quality than Premiere alone can do.

I'm not a Vegas user, but the problem you're describing is typical of a video codec not being correctly installed...

Believe it or not, with H.264 merely reducing the number of pixels does not correspond to a linear reduction in file size. Typically my 640x480 files are only 10-15% bigger than my 320x240, despite the fact that your rational brain would say that the 640x480 should be 400% bigger. If you're using a recent version of Final Cut Pro, you can use the "export using Compressor" option and create a new Quicktime export setting (or temporarily alter an existing one) to set your file size at whatever you prefer. You will do far more to limit your file size, however, by reducing the limit on the data rate, but you will sacrifice quality as a result. I recommend running it through at several different settings and seeing which give you the best balance of quality for file size to suit your needs. If you're not using Final Cut, Discreet makes a program called Cleaner which allows you to do the same thing (and IMHO with a better interface). Most editing software will let you set the file size of the Quicktimes you export, but few give you enough control over the compression to meaningfully manage file sizes. Hope that helps...

I concur that you should consider your local community college. Most put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that their courses will transfer to the Cal State and UC system, and the most important thing you're going to get in film school is experience. And, if you take two years at a junior college and then transfer to a UC or Cal State, people will only know where your ultimate degree is from, not what school you started at. The programs at every California community college I've had dealings with (Pasadena, Santa Monica, Cypress, and Fresno) have been perfectly competent for someone to get started in.

Compressor actually was Apple's answer to Discreet's Cleaner. I believe Cleaner is available for PC, and supports most Mac and PC file formats. (Even as a Mac user, I still use it because it can do Windows Media, which Compressor can not.) I'm not going to say Cleaner is "as good" as Compressor because the two packages are actually quite different, each with strengths and weaknesses.

I had very good luck rolling my own with an inexpensive bulk loader. A 100' spool is a 100' spool.

There's also Yale Film and Video in North Hollywood, CA. I've never used them for 8 but I've been extremely happy with their 16 work. http://www.yalefilmandvideo.com/ Be sure to read their subject material policy under "terms" before sending them film, however.

You could make a case for what is known as "fair use." This is a doctrine that allows you to use excerpts from copyrighted material for critical or satirical purposes. However, as you mention, this is a gray area, so it's probably best to get permission. With a few exceptions (the copyright owners of "Happy Birthday" being the most obvious), most authors repped by ASCAP/BMI are very reasonable about cutting breaks for starving artists.

Mine was an Arri 16M in college. It was a non-major class where the entire class co-operated to make two student films, and I got drafted to DP the first one (like everyone else in the class, what I really wanted to do was direct). I fell in love with the camera and became so protective of it that I horned my way in as camera assistant on the second film so I wouldn't need to let it out of my sight. :)

If you are going to open a dialogue with the copyright owner of the other film, you should under no circumstances do it yourself. Spend the money to have a lawyer who specializes in entertainment law do so on your behalf.

OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I liked the terrible 1978 remake... :)

Not that anyone actually cares, but my HD1 arrived today. Very lightly used on eBay with a Pelican case for a smidge over $1000. I've only run a few tests, but so far I'm very impressed with the quality for the price.

Calling the WGA is a good idea, but I'd advise against opening the door with the copyright owner of the other movie. That then gives them cause to claim that your movie is, in fact, based on theirs. (Yes, the logic of "They contacted us so this must be a derivative property" holds up in court.) Though a polite and informed producer will appreciate the courtesy, how many polite and informed producers do you know? You're far more likely to get a "cease and desist" letter and/or an invoice for rights than you are to get a polite "thank you for letting us know."