Mike Bove

Hi all, I'm wondering what would be the best way to cover a HVX to guard it from water during a rain scene. I know they make waterproof jackets that custom fit the HVX, but I'm looking to do something cheaper. Anyone have any tips or tricks they have learned to keep the camera safe? I'm assuming heavy duty trash bags as the usual, but I figure that would make it difficult to get to the functions on the camera. Anyone dealt with this before?

I however am very excited, personally I think it's a unique idea -- I just hope it doesn't take after Blair Witch too much...the way they are marketing this is brilliant, being very secretive, getting people to talk about it etc. I wonder how it will continue to be marketed the closer it gets to the release date -- will there be longer trailers with different footage or is this all we get? I've watched it lots of times already.

I agree! Very dreamlike. Unfortunately we don't have any HMI's :( I will definitely try out some of these ideas though, we have a fishtank so I'll try and work with that first. If not, off to buy some mylar!

Phil I think you and a couple others (probably everyone else) misunderstood me haha...the office building is supposed to be submerged underwater. The set itself is not supposed to be 'under water'. If you've heard of the underwater motel, think of it like that. The story is a guy going about his average work day, it just so happens the building is in the sea. So in his office, the light that would come in through the office window would be refracted (right word?) through the water thus creating a pattern on the wall / his face. Hope this makes more sense. Thanks all for the suggestions, I'll definitely try some out next week. And if anyone else has more ideas bring them on!

Sorry I did not specify. It's an interior of an office building, during the character's day at at work. Interesting ideas! Where would you be able to buy that fabric? I'm a bit confused on what that actually is.

Hi all, Wondering if anyone could help me in achieving an underwater effect, the patterned light you see from swimming pools or whatnot. The idea is the office building is underwater. Not too sure how to go about it, we're running a test next week of a couple ideas but nothing concrete yet. So if anyone's done this before, or can give me some helpful pointers, it would be appreciated! Thanks in advance, -Mike

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Well I'm not sure about the career part per se, I'll leave that question to other, more experienced people. But to venture a guess if you have depth of field charts and a good AC and camera operator, I wouldn't see the need to change fields. Except if you were out to be a camera operator, that may not be your best bet. If you want to be an AC well, AC's don't need to look through the viewfinder so you should be okay. The hyperfocal distance is the distance where, at a certain f-stop and with a certain focal length, you get the most depth of field possible, usually to infinity although there are some exceptions. A general rule of thumb is when at the HFD, 1/2 the distance from the HFD to infinity will be in focus. Something else to remember is that the HFD is not the figure you set your lens barrel to. HFD's corrospond to certain distances. Hope this helps.

It's funny, I just did the same paper recently. Mine was focused more on technical aspects, so I used a lot of text, but I did reference the web a lot, I suggest looking at the online American Cinematographer magazine if you don't have access to hard copies. I used the articles on Apocalypto and Collateral, just do a search for them. Good luck!

I go to Columbia College Chicago which prides itself on being the cheapest private media arts college in the nation...or something like that. The cinematography program here is the strongest and what the school is most known for and I agree with that. There's a lot of hands on stuff, great equipment to experiment and learn with and an overall good technical atmosphere. It's really easy to get on advanced student sets here and while they don't pay, it's good experience nonetheless. Granted it's not cheap but it's cheaper than most of the 'big name' film schools (USC, UCLA, NYU etc). And yes film school will not guarantee anything but ersonally doing the whole 'starting as a PA' thing and working up from there wasn't for me since I wanted to go to college. While I may be incurring some heavy debt, oh well. I don't think money should be the deciding factor of whether or not you want to get a higher education. That may be a bit naive.

I actually just had a crash course in this matter this past weekend. The problem was I had some HDV footage I wanted to edit into my reel but my computer doesn't support HDV, and my friend has a G5 which does. So what I did is edited it just how I wanted it, exported to my external HD, hooked that up to the mac and cut in the HDV shots where I had the blank spaces just how I wanted it. Then from there we exported it to quicktime files (both large and for the web), burned those to DVD and popped them back on my comp. So it is possible. However when we tried transferring the completed video from the mac back to my HD, it didn't work (thus we just burned a DVD). I am very impressed with the quicktime pro compressor. It shrunk almost a gig of footage down to 19.7 mb for applications on the web and it looks fantastic for how small a file it is. This may not be too technical of an answer, but hope it helps.

For the first time ever I've managed to get my reel online. It is comprised of some student work I have dont thus far. Feel free to check it out and tell me how good or awful it is. Any thoughts are appreciated! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oTq62Z-yMM Thank you, -Mike

For the first time ever I've managed to get my reel online. It is comprised of some student work I have dont thus far. Feel free to check it out and tell me how good or awful it is. Any thoughts are appreciated! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oTq62Z-yMM Thank you, -Mike

Hi all, When editing a cinematography reel, is it better to cut one segment at a time per project or just start off with a flurry of different images and intercut between several different projects? I've seen both methods done, I'm just wondering what people prefer, or if one of the other is the dominant style. Thanks, -Mike

Thank you Mark, I'll look into that. And Causing an accident is definitely a concern. These LED lights...I've never heard of them. Where would I be able to find them?

Hi all, I've just signed up to this site, this is my first post. My name's Mike Bove and I'm a junior at Columbia College Chicago, majoring in cinematography. I look forward to getting to know the lot of you here, these forums seem like a wealth of information that I can chew on for a long time. Introductions aside, I have a small shoot coming up next month and have a lighting issue. We're shooting on the dvx100a and a few scenes take place in a car driving around at night. I'm unsure what methods are available to light inside the car. I looked into kino flo's mini and micro kits that plug into cigarette adapters, but they are way beyond the no budget of this project. So does anyone have any suggestions of other methods of how to do this (cheaply)? Anything would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, -Mike