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Matt Sandstrom

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Posts posted by Matt Sandstrom

  1. You said "shoot 25P", that's all, which the camera cannot do. It can create it, though, from 50i.

     

    yes, i understand your point, and you're right of course. it's just that i mentioned in the same sentence that the camera doesn't have progressive ccd's so i don't see how anyone could misunderstand, hence i thought your comment became one about terminology only.

     

    /matt

  2. hey,

     

    the music video i posted some stills from a few weeks ago has now been released. it will be on scandinavian tv as well as the usual websites soon. go to my homepage and click nom de guerre. (other super 8 work on that page are the short film sisten i är en skit and the videos for lisa lindal and 1978 if you're interested)

     

    http://www.mattias.nu/

     

    /matt

  3. that's a matter of terminology and it should have been obvious from the first half of my sentence what i meant. i think the distinction is pointless. there are many ways of gathering 25p material, some good, some bad, most in-between. if the stream you get consists of 25 progressive frames per second i'm gonna continue calling it 25p. will you get better results with a true progressive ccd? probably. will you get better results shooting interlaced and creating the 25p in post? maybe. believe it or not either way it's not gonna change my mind. :-)

     

    /matt

  4. that's not as stupid a question as one might think, but alas you can't. the tape is the same, the tape speed is the same, the data rate is the same, i think even the track width is the same. it's just the data itself that's different but it still doesn't work. a little like a hard drive that would only let you store quicktimes, no avi's, or word documents and no plain text. ;-)

     

    /matt

  5. so the button on the light is wired back to the ballast and doesn't really "switch on" the light? i seem to remember using light heads that really had switches on them though and not just striking buttons. that would mean that both, not either, have to be in the on position to strike, no?

     

    /matt

  6. really brightened up the room and dialated my pupils like crazy

    hard light tends to look brighter than it is, especially if you look into the light, while the opposite is true for very soft light. 1500 watts of light is more than enough for a small subject even at a low asa but very little for an entire room.

     

    /matt

  7. i've been taught to switch the light on first and then the ballast, but i've no idea if this is required. it should be autosensing, but it seems like a good idea to be far away from the lamp as it strikes, should it choose to explode or leak some of that striking voltage. ;-)

     

    so in short, i also would like the real answer to this question. thanks.

     

    /matt

  8. check out this music video i shot. it has plenty of domestic 150w bulbs. :-) i also had redheads outside of the frame to fight the falloff and get some more reach with the same directionality. the color matched up nice, but i did get some weird and rather extreme shifts on the green-magenta scale. i think that's due to kodachrome emulsion having different color balance at different exposure though.

     

    http://www.familyplanning.se/ and click lisa lindal, third top.

     

    /matt

  9. Can I use high wattage domestic bulbs or will thy provide too much heat next to paper lanterns?

    i use 150w domestic bulbs in ikea lanterns all the time. in the large ones it's absolutely no problem but the smaller ones do get hot. not a problem in my opinion, but there's really no way to completely avoid the fire hazard when you're working with those so be careful.

     

    /matt

  10. Has anyone got any advice that could prove usefull based on their own experience of exterior shoots with HD?

    yes. see above. :-) i still think you should block it to your advantage, but if you can't keep the sun behind the actors, can't be under a tree, can't put up big silks or scrims, and so on, then there's really only one option: bounce in as much light as you can on the shadow side. the larger the bounce cards the better. it will work ok from a technical standpoint, but honestly you're gonna *have* to cheat it a bit or the shots simply won't cut together.

     

    /matt

  11. Sorry, i often forget to elaborate on what im planning - we have an exterior shoot over the course of a 9.00-3.30 day. Our only light source will be the sun and this will be constantly changing position in the sky. It is also important that there is continuity of character movement within the scene.

    if it's well rehearsed there's no reason you can't at least consider shooting one direction in the morning and the reverse in the afternoon, if you want to follow my advice of using the sun as a backlight. but it doesn't always work, that's for sure.

    Ive had a lot of people talk about taking out light rather than adding it but they often fail to mention why - maintainting exposure?

    yes.

    softening harsher shadows?

    yes.

     

    it also looks more natural than a bounced fill. when i bounce the sun i like to use it as a directional key rather than an overall fill. that's less natural i guess but it looks more real than the fake glow you often get otherwise.

     

    /matt

  12. color space is really the wrong word. digibeta and dv use the same color space, i.e. the exact same colors and shades can be accurately represented. the difference, as explained in the article, is that dv chroma is sampled at a lower resultion, thus your matte will also have lower resolution, by definition, there's no way to get around that. a lot of the separation is carried by the luminance channel though, especially with green as opposed to blue, so with a good chroma resampler it's not a big deal. a one pixel wide hair for example is separated from the green background not only because it's not green or blue, but because it's brighter. a good keyer will see this. i'm not an expert in either greenscreen llighting nor keying, but i develop final cut plugins in my spare time so i know a lot about how the image data looks and works, from lots and lots of experimenting and analyzing. lighting evenly and avoiding spill is much more important than what format you're shooting on.

     

    /matt

  13. i was wondering what techniques experienced DPs call on for exterior shoots of this nature

    i think the problem is that we don't know what nature that is. anyway, for me it's all about blocking. if you can have the actors face the right direction (sun as backlight is often especially good) in front of a background that's easy to work with, and limit moving in and out of shade, you're almost done. i prefer using hmi's to shiny reflectors even on a small budget and limited crew. much easier to control. of course if helps that daylight is so faint in sweden most of the year that a 4k often is more than necessary. ;-)

     

    /matt

  14. As a hobbyist filmmaker, I can spend less than $1.0K on a Bolex and get the job done. Why would I want to spend five or six times that amount to achieve the same result with an A-Cam?

    it depends on what the "job" is. the a-cam is smaller, less noisy (even less in ds8 i guess although it's far from silent), has multiple crystal speeds and so on. i think the premium you pay for it being new is very small. this is what all these features cost. would i buy one? i'm thinking of the s16 version but unless they build a diy conversion a ds8 is not on my shopping list.

     

    /matt

  15. Those names all sound German or Scandinavian

    well, some of the awards are designated as international awards. ivica zubak is an extremely croatian name, and norwood cheek is almost as typically american. the fact that all the winners of the german awards have german names in not very surprising. :-)

     

    /matt

  16. isn't workflow a much bigger difference than image quality? i'd chose between p2 and hdv first, but i'm really waiting for a prosumer xdcam which doesn't seem completely unlikely, does it? i've used the imx version and having a cheap random access medium like that is fantastic. and on the hd the variable and slightly higher bitrate than hdv really helps too from what i've seen.

     

    /matt

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