Jump to content

Jim Keller

Basic Member
  • Posts

    290
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Jim Keller

  1. I'm curious to ping the collective mind of cinematography.com on this one... I'm looking at a project that's going to involve a lot of actors isolated in otherwise unlit spaces. Sort of like this: The cameras I habitually shoot with (JVC GR-HD1, Panasonic AG-HVX200, and effectively every SD camera I've ever used) tend to produce a lot of noise in the dark portions of such an image, especially the greys but conspicuously in the blacks as well. Because I generally shoot HD to finish SD and the cinematography is generally secondary to the information being conveyed, thus far I've been able to ignore this. However, this project will be finished 720p and the look will, in fact, be an important element of the storytelling. To make matters more complicated, I'm going to be intercutting a lot of animation, which of course will have their blacks/darks look very pure unless I add noise to them. I'd love to hear what all of you think about HD cameras and their handling of blacks and dark regions. Which cameras are better than others at this? Can any of them produce a rich black like what audiences are used to from film? Are there workarounds you know that make the darks look better on HD? I've noticed several HD television series have this same issue, so I'm assuming it's endemic to HD vs. film, but I'd love to hear if there are ways to make it better. (And, no, shooting film is not an option unless you want to be the investor who loses his/her shirt on an internet-distributed film project.) Enquiring minds want to know. :) Thanks in advance!
  2. Kodak's problem with X-ray is the same as its problem with film. There's been a digital revolution. X-rays are now being taken to a chip instead of a piece of film, and displayed and shared electronically instead of on a light box. And instead of banking on their market dominance to lead the revolution, Kodak stuck its head in the sand and tried to pretend it wasn't happening. That is the attitude that has to change if they're going to survive.
  3. The Kodak digital imaging engineers are some of the best on the planet, and yet have had their hands tied for the past decade or so by upper management that wouldn't know a good business move if it bludgeoned them over the head, handed them its passport, and called the cops on itself. Hopefully Gates can see Kodak's potential and prevail on them to embrace the future to grow the company by embracing new technology, thereby putting it on a secure footing to keep its film division going for what film is good for, as opposed to just driving the whole company bust because of management idiocy. Just my opinion, of course...
  4. I've had to jump into a role day-of on several occasions, but I've usually been able to bump someone else up to the larger role and jump into a smaller one instead. Worst was a production of Romeo and Juliet I directed, in which the Friar lost his voice the morning of a two-show day when we were already scheduled to be down a performer. Nothing like rewriting Shakespeare!
  5. And also budget for an entertainment lawyer to give the contract a once-over. Many agents are quite sneaky, and could probably pass the bar if they bothered to take it.
  6. The good thing about P2 cards is you truly can re-use them indefinitely. Make sure you've got two copies of the data before reformatting them, however. We dropped $4k on our P2 cards when we first bought our cameras, but haven't spent a penny in stock since, except for the quite negligible cost of DVD-DLs. We still haven't hit breakeven vs. continuing to shoot DV, but the quality is so much better I think it was worth every penny. And, no, I haven't found a great source for P2 cards, yet, either. Since it's really a Panasonic-specific medium, my guess is that you're going to be paying about MSRP anywhere you look.
  7. For celebrity actors, IMDB frequently has information (though you probably need to pay for the Pro version to access it). I've never seen numbers for celebrity crew in their database, however. Gary Busey's quote isn't listed, though, as they only typically get the information for the A-list (Sorry, Gary). That said, when you're dealing with smaller agencies (Busey is signed with a smaller agency, but not one I've dealt with directly), they're typically very accommodating of anyone calling up with a bonafide offer. Worst they'll say is, "No, thanks." Don't waste their time with hypotheticals, though. When you're ready to put an offer on the table, call. The trick is, look at your budget. Ask yourself what you'd be willing to pay for the actor. If you're only paying scale, you're saying to an actor "I don't think you're worth any more than all the other actors I'm hiring." Is the celebrity actually worth more than all the other actors? If so, find a way to show that! If the project is good, celebrities will sometimes go for a back-end deal. If you're shooting somewhere that is a great vacation destination, they'll sometimes take it for the free trip. When approaching someone to work below their quote, you've still got to offer them something. We recently got a well-known celebrity for well below his usual rate (but still significantly above scale), just by telling the agent that it was a good project and being willing to work with the celebrity's schedule. It can be done. And you don't even have to know what his usual rate is. If it's genuinely what you can afford to pay the celebrity and you're not just trying to lowball, the agent will sense it. If they believe in the project or believe it will be good for the celebrity in other ways (such as expanding his/her playable range, introducing him/her to a new market, doing good for the world, etc.) then they may get excited about it, too. Believe it or not, it's not all about the money for most actors, and the agents work for the actors not vice versa.
  8. Sounds like you need to fire your producer! :) Seriously, though, there's nothing wrong with saying, as you're being interviewed for the position, "How much experience will the crew have?" When they say, "Oh, we're grabbing a bunch of film students from the local community college, but they're really great!" you say, "Then we're going to have to add about 50% more time to the schedule." When I walk in knowing I'm going to have to teach (in my case I'm usually teaching acting), then I'm fine with it, and so are the people who need to do the learning. What's annoying is when I've been promised professionals and get amateurs. They think I'm an arrogant ass (which, of course, I am, but that's another matter) because I'm telling them how to do their job, and I feel insulted that whoever brought me onto the project really thinks this is the level that I work at. When everyone knows up front that you're going to be the experienced mentor on the set, then everyone's expectations are set appropriately.
  9. Just remember, you are allowed to say, "I'm rolling, use the monitor!" :)
  10. Folks, From the producer's point of view, I don't care much what word you want to use, I care what work you can do. If you can do the work of a cinematographer, I'm going to consider you a cinematographer. There are high-end cinematographers, there are low-end cinematographers. What matters is the work, not the word. And if you want to be credited as "that guy with the camera" instead ... so be it. :)
  11. If it's not spelled out explicitly in your contract, then you're in a gray area. If it was "work for hire," meaning the company hired you to produce this item, paid you for doing so, and gave you explicit instructions on exactly what the end product should be, then most likely they would own the copyright. If you generated the project and then licensed it back to them, then you own the copyright (though, obviously, as they have a trademark interest in their company, you would have issues with re-use). This is something that you should consider specifying in future contracts. If the company owns the copyright, then they can re-use it, re-edit it, re-distribute it, sell snippets as stock, etc. without consulting you (though any contractual re-use fees would be required). If you want to just duck the issue this time, I'd say simply put c-in-circle 2009, all rights reserved. That's sufficient for most U.S. and international purposes.
  12. No you don't. I'm always trying to muscle in to look through the camera itself. :)
  13. There are a couple of databases maintained by/for the industry of what various people's quotes and credits are. They're quite expensive to access, so your best bet might be to make friends with someone in a development office who would be willing to sneak a peek for you.
  14. Personally, I like the monitor to be there because it lets me know, in real-time, if I'm going to like the shot or not. That said, I always forget to look at it when the camera is actually rolling...
  15. To bring the debate back to the issue, I don't concur that directing is 90% casting, unless you consider hiring a DP, production designer, recording engineer, editor, composer, foley artist, mixer, etc. to be "casting." Good performances are, of course, essential, and you won't get those from bad actors. However, great actors in a movie that's technically incompetent is not a good movie. If you've hired great people in all departments, you can make a competent movie by merely "riding herd" and making sure everyone's visions are meshing nicely.
  16. I would add the 1903 The Great Train Robbery to either of the above lists. The 1916 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was also extremely innovative visually, and though it didn't age well story-wise, is still worth noting as a "great" IMHO.
  17. If you've got a camera with a built-in light meter, you can get a decent approximation of reflected light by setting the shutter to 1/50 or 1/60 (a 180 degree shutter is the equivalent of 1/48 shutter speed) and metering either the wall or the whole scene and seeing where it suggest putting the f-stop...
  18. FWIW, we bought Maya here and upgraded the computer it was installed on six months later. Maya refused to migrate the license. We now use Lightwave.
  19. Bearing in mind that this is not my field of expertise, and would welcome input from those who actually do this sort of thing regularly, here's my thoughts: First and foremost, if at all possible shoot a test or two with the film stock / video camera you're going to use. Any rule of thumb is at best a starting point. As for the rule of thumb, if you can get the light off the wall to be a few stops higher than the light off the actors, it will go white on camera. Use a good incident light meter and set the camera for your actors' faces. (If you can costume the actor in black in a dark grey instead, it will also help). Then I would use a reflected light meter off the walls and make sure that they're reading two or so stops (depending on the results of the tests) higher than what I've just set my camera for. That should preserve details while still having it go white. Another thing you can do is to literally paint the shadows, highlights, and details on the set, using various shades of grey, and then light it very flat but at the same level as your actors. Never done this myself, but seen it done very effectively by others...
  20. I've used the After Effects "Lens Blur" filter to do this very effectively. I tend to use it more for background objects than foreground, but it creates a very natural-looking depth-of-field effect.
  21. Do you have the option to paint the walls? Gray can be made to photograph white without pushing the limits of your medium's dynamic range...
  22. That really depends on what you're trying to do. Different software has different things it's good at, and something that does a great job for children's cartoons may not be the right choice for science fiction effects work, which may or may not be the right choice for animated scientific illustrations or title cards. If you could give us a general sense of what sort of work you'd like it to be able to accomplish, we'd be a lot more helpful.
  23. I've always wanted to get back to the original script for Metropolis and do it using today's techniques and conventions. The inherent tension between the political philosophies of Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang resulted in a script (and hence a movie) that has many more levels of meaning than any of the subsequent "re-envisionings," but the film remains hard for most contemporary audience members to watch and appreciate. Sadly, I don't have that kind of money to play with.
  24. Another thing to check is that there are a few encoding programs that have settings that can really lead you astray. My counterpart on another mission was accidentally encoding a second copy of the FLV file into the file headers (effectively doubling his file size) because his encoding software was set logically, but wrong. If you're not already doing so, try using good compression program (Squeeze, Episode, etc.) to both strip out unnecessary information and maximize your video compression.
  25. Oh, geez... on that front my closet looks like a camera store exploded. Every negative size from APS to 4x5, and every brand you've heard of and one or two you haven't....
×
×
  • Create New...