Gus Sacks

The trailer does look fantastic. Roger Deakins does incredible work.

I actually just got really lucky, and a Local 600 AC who'd quit the industry sold me all of her gear for about 250$ (all worth about 1000$+)... So, I lucked out... Hey, Rory ;)

I worked on a shoot called The Narrows where we had the D20 in NYC, in May.

Yeah. We'll just have to modify the end of the shot. Food for thought. Thanks, Andrew.

Are you talking about the shot where water is sliding down the foreground in the frame? At least that's what it looked like to me. I still have yet to figure that sequence out. If I could meet Chris Doyle (which I might later this year) that's the one question I would ask him. It looked like more of a shutter manipulation than a frame rate.

You'd want to get signed with SAG anyway. Go to Sagindie.com, they explain all of their different contracts. It doesn't really matter what the actor's normal day rate is. Like, if you're filming a 35,000$ short, that mandatoraly sets their day rate at 100$. Now, some actors might be willing to go for this (B-list, low low A-list), but, no... bigger name actors wouldn't. Though one a recent indie I worked on low A-listers did it for 250$ a day. So, who knows? Either way, you will want to get signed (it's not too big a pain in the ass - sometimes it is), because even if it's not a NAME actor, it will more than likely be a SAG actor, though that doesn't always mean quality - same as non-Union actors are quality in a lot of cases. Hope that helps.

Well, it's just silly to compare anything to THE CRANES ARE FLYING. :P One of the best films ever photographed, without a doubt.

Yeah, we settled on it the other day. We're just having issues squeezing in the studio time, but we'll manage. Did I mention I was producing this as well? (i.e. I'm cutting my own budgets! :( But, it's part of the fun. Thanks again for all your help. I'm sure I'll be back here in a few months with some other questions - perhaps in a different forum :) Gus

The Oscar voters for Cinematography are Cinematographers themselves, so I don't think they got confused over what good cinematography was vs. art direction... He's a genius; it's true. But what's the mark of success? Us talking about him, admiring his work, being inspired by it? Or a golden statuette?

one of my favorite DPs alive... www.benoitdebie.com

Well, what skateboard dollies can boom? Haha, if your students wanted the best, they'd beg for the good stuff.

See Russian Ark, they did it in one take. Also, the DVX performs very well in low-light, but adjust your settings so the blacks dont go grey.

I thought they made light boards you could employ in controling HMI lighting. True, we don't need 50K of light, but you're right; we are going to need a few big lights at least. I'm considering doing plate photography more and more, actually.

What about placing a diffed Lite Panel on the dolly, running off of battery? The directional nature of it could be reduced.

I get what you mean, but we want to have the overall effect that it's becoming daytime, so you'd have to account for the background being exposed the same as her. That's why it's going to be fairly difficult correctly lighting night for day if we do decide to go that route. I'm pretty sure we're on the same page.

http://emrl.com/resources/film/camera/arri_16bl.pdf Pages 4/5 list them. I'd just be a bit wary of using the wides with the lens blimp. I don't really know how that would work.

These are all really good suggestions and comments. Thank you very much for them: Shane, Jon, Chris, Hal and Michael. Jon, you're right. Back-projection, etc. is as old as dirt, so I was incorrect in saying they were CGI. It might just be cheaper to rent out a studio for the day and go at it that way. The only thing I'm a little nervous about is matching the steadicam plate with her movements. We'd have to probably shoot the last part of it (the wide with her in daylight) on location when we did the plates. Continuity, continuity, continuity :) And, yes, I've seen Citizen Kane. Chris, I don't think that would actually allow the scene to be correctly exposed. By pulling the iris we'd just be leveling it back to where we began. To make a difference we'd have to close down a lot to make it appear dark, and then as we added light the iris would be adjusted for it, so it would appear normal. Hal, that's kind of what I was originally thinking (cutting away to the car windows as the light begins to spill on them; houses as it creeps around corners). We might do that to establish things, and perhaps cut away mid-shot, but we'll see. We're having a meeting in a week or so. I also just checked out LitePanels makes a 4x4, 8k system that might be kinda neat if used effectively :) oh, to dream... Thanks again, everybody.

An iris open would be very simple... my director asked if we could just do digital day-for-night, which, unless we controlled the light in some way would look pretty scary in terms of matching actual night. The shadows, directional light, etc. An iris open would look pretty funky, haha. Simplify is good advice, though :) The 270d nature of it will more than likely change with a cut. I guess this would be a lighting question... but I've been in the presence of them before, and did my research on Arri's site, but how many 12K or 18Ks would I need to really light for day, and do they make any kind of Variac for HMIs that strong? Thanks, as always, Gus.

Hey Michael, The reason for no 12Ks is the cost, but as it appears it might be expensive either way. I know the rigors of flying 20xs, and the pipe dream of moving them is, yes, simply ridiculous. This is why I get my bad ideas out first ;) 6 months ahead. Why we don't want to do CGI? Well, the entire film is about lucid dreaming. It's not a series of simply dream sequences, per se. The only "magical" things that occur really have to do with the character and how her surroundings (nature) changes. No flying or anything that would normally require CGI... Personally I just don't like using green screen, but if it came down to it, of course I would. It would just possibly be a pain to match the plate shots of the sun/surroundings while lighting her in the 'studio'. If we have a good way of doing it, then yes, we'll do with one shot. But it's a big if that we have time to explore now, so I felt why not? I thought of some in-camera things we could try, but this tenting in a city block idea was just a wild try at it. We're not trying to mimic Gondry, but he certainly does have some tricks up his sleeve. Dreaming is healthy; I think. :huh: :) Thanks for the honesty, Gus. The Truman Show clip makes sense,

So I'm looking forward to shooting a short film on S16 in January. I know it's about 6 months away, but there's this one shot that's already got me a little nervous. Well, not nervous, but I've already been thinking about it all of the time when I'm not on-set, and I wanted to know if anyone else has an opinion... The scene begins and it's night-time. I know how to light for sodium vapor, etc... but. Basically, here's how the shot reads: She throws her inhaler on the ground and she?s off. Mariah starts running down the street. She picks up speed as the urban townhouses zoom past her. Mariah let?s out a liberating SCREAM. As she SCREAMS the night begins to turn into day. BRIGHTER and BRIGHTER, LOUDER and LOUDER. She keeps running and by the time she closes her mouth, it?s completely daytime. She stops, standing in the center of an intersection. Beads of sweat glisten on her forehead, but she?s not out of breath. A loud ALARM starts to go off. The world around her starts to change. The intensity of the sunlight begins to fluctuate. The dream is falling apart. MARIAH Oh nononono. Please. She starts breathing hard. Anxiety starts to spread. The ALARM gets LOUDER. The sunlight fades out. Complete DARKNESS. And the director and I want to do this in one shot without any CGI. We were thinking of tracking with her, at a medium shot, 1/4 profile on her left side. We would start in a wide, and she would pick up speed enough to move to a medium. It'd be shallow enough dof where the background (brownstones) would kind of whizz by. She'll be running pretty fast - we'll have tons of dolly track. Now. Our budget isn't gigantic, but it's not small, either. We aren't allowed to employ any 12Ks to produce the daylight, so I'm thinking we're going to have to manipulate either sunrise or sunset, depending on the locale (where the sun is at perhaps a 45d or lower angle). At that time of day I don't think the sky itself will be too, too much of a problem (it'd be like day for night almost). Here's where my experience level's going to show (haha, perhaps embarressingly)... If we fly some 20'x solids high enough, a number of them, would we be able to completely block the sunlight of a fairly horizontal sun, so that it would be stopped down enough that we can light with the sodium vapors, and then as she ran closer we take away the solids so that the light begins to spill all over the place, and then eventually she'll stop, we'll whizz around her 270d (this will probably be Steadicam) and see the sky in transit, ending up on a head-on away from the sun, in a CU (which will present some shadow issues perhaps). And then as the dream ends, we bring the solids back in. If anyone's willing to lend an opinion, it'd be so nice :) Be harsh. I need it, already, haha. Thanks! - Gus

I'm pretty sure it's a sleeping bag ;)

If you ever found one; let me know. I'm looking for one, too...