Micah Kovacs

I can get you an answer on the Jumanji stock if you give me a few hours. I'll just ask Tom himself.

Well, we already have 2 2.5ks in the budget, along with 2 1.2ks. I suppose I could swap out the balloon light for a 4k. But the highest stands I have are mombo combos and that only gives me 26' of height. I don't think I can squeeze a two day condor rental in there. So is the output really that poor then?

I have a short coming up and I already have a 4k HMI balloon on reserve for two night scenes - the only problem is I have no idea what to expect from it. I'm most concerned about the output, because I saw some photometrics of a 4.8k that only gave 2.8 fc when it was 50 feet high and 50 feet away. Because we're shooting on the Red, I'm hesitant to boost my iso for fear of the grain - I wouldn't go higher than 500. So is this the kind of output I should expect? What about wind? is a light breeze a major problem? and how about the helium? Does it take a lot and how expensive will that be? (we don't even have that budgeted yet) If I just want some general moonlight, would I be better off putting up a 2.5k fresnel? Thanks in advance!

and I don't mean I disagree with David, I mean that I disagree with this:

I disagree that everything a DP does (i.e. lighting, lens choice, stock) is purely technical - it mostly involves working with light which I see more as an art. Light is what puts mood and texture on screen and conveys emotion so it is NOT a purely technical job. I leave the technical stuff to my gaffer. Even lens choice can be artistic since you have to select the right focal length and find the right depth of field to convey the proper mood and sub context in a scene. A film with the world's best angles can be ugly if no artistic thought is given to light, lens, and stock

Don't forget the haze. I think it's a must to smoke the room if you can. There's no better sign of an abandoned and untidy room than a visible haze of "dust" in the air. And you can play around with the three dimensional shape of the light - like if the house is really run down, you can have/simulate holes and cracks in the walls that let in sharp beams of light through the "dust". I like Chris's idea for sodium vapor colors - I imagine an abandoned house having orangeish light, maybe motivated by windows covered in aging paper, I don't know what I'm trying to say :D This is what I mean with the light beams and haze:

We've all seen the threads asking about how you can become a cinematographer, but what about becoming a gaffer? Is there any special education required? Are there positions you must work up through to become a gaffer? And what are the requirements for the perfect gaffer? - a dedicated passion for light, etc...?

you need to check out this thread at dvx user: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=85829 it's very long and is about someone asking the same question you have. Some people actually ordered them and posted pictures (on page 6 I saw pictures) I'm shocked - they actually look legit. and they're really not too far from the B&H price which is only around $100 to $200 more. I may look into buying a few of these.

on an Iwerks 3d cam - dual 8-perf 65mm - they use 30mm prime lenses. But I'm not sure how that would translate into HD. and with the lenses parallel or crossing focus point, that is called the "convergence" of the lenses: "In stereoscopic display technology, an object at the convergence point of the lens/camera axes will appear at the plane of the display device. An object in front of the convergence point will appear in front of the display device and an object behind the convergence point will appear behind the plane of the display device. Therefore it is desirable to adjust the convergence of the axis of the two cameras to place the viewed object at a visually appealing location." So you must make the convergence adjustable so you can choose roughly where the depth at the screen will be. If the lenses are parallel, then you are making infinity be at the plane of the screen which would produce a highly undesirable effect. It might be useful to mark off points at 15 and 30 feet for easy convergence presets - you'll just have to figure out a way to measure this. and it might be better to have a large DOF because the viewers eyes will focus on areas of the image at different 3d distances and other areas will be put out of focus naturally just like the eye does in real life. (I think haha)

yeah, cheap fog machines are really the way to go. Not only are they inexpensive to buy, but their fluid is cheap and widely available too. But since they have smaller heating elements they do require that annoying "duty cycle" so they can get back up to flashing temperature. not sure about black smoke though - dark smoke requires a very hot fire that can break things into elemental carbon (the thick black plume which blocks most light) Any smoke from a machine is vapor which is white and can let light pass through easily - and white fog can be colored I believe but not to a thick opaque black. So I think you'd actually need a real oil/coal fire or something

Usually different models of fog machines have their own suggested fog fluids not because they want you to buy from them, but because of the machine's "flashpoint". Each machine has a different temperature that it flashes the fog at, which is the actual process of making the vapor. If the fluid's too heavy and the machine isn't hot enough the fog will come out wet and leave a sticky residue. If the fluid's too light the machine's too hot, the fluid will burn and create toxic byproducts in the air. Both of which are not good at all. So the only really safe solution is to look at the recommended fluid for your model of fog machine. Higher end fog machines create fog at higher temperatures and have larger pumps so they can produce a greater volume of fog. Cheap fluid in those machines might burn and wouldn't produce a very high yield.

I've noticed that night car interiors are most realistic when lighting is minimal. You wouldn't even need to have a moving vehicle. I would try a mini-flo "car kit" mounted in the dashboard/instrument panel, and use that as your only constant light source on the talent. Then you can put a fresnel in front of the car and have someone tilt it up and vertically across the car. It sounds too simple but it should look like a street lamp is passing over - you can gel it to match those low pressure sodium lamps too. You can also gel the mini-flo slightly blue or even slightly green to match the light coming off the dash. I'm not sure exactly how you'd manage tilting the fresnel over and over, but it would be a lot easier than a moving source and I think a fresnel matches the quality of a streetlight better than a larger kino.

It should work beautifully. I've seen chroma-keying being done outdoors on both large and small scales and it always seems to turn out great - and no worries about trying to get an even light on the screen. Here?s an example posted by Michael Morlan: and here?s his page with more pictures http://michael-morlan.net/pages/production...ourlove_vfx.htm

I second that - one of my favorite books actually. A bit expensive and I wish it had more diagrams, but I like it anyway.

Can anyone give me the link to a rental house with the cheapest rates you know of? The rental house also must be able to mail the equipment to anywhere in the US. It's just hard for me to find good, inexpensive rental places

3 point lighting rarely applies and you don't want to restrict yourself by trying to follow those rules. Experiment with a soft diffused key and try aiming a light up at the ceiling (if it's white) to raise the overall ambient level and get rid of most shadow problems. If the fill is too powerful then get rid of it entirely and try to use bounce boards/flexfills to help you out If you have a scene of two people talking on a couch and you want it to be more dramatic, you could use an inside cross key and fill in from the camera side Other than that, I would need to see your specific layout of the scenes to help you out

they may ban household light bulbs, but there's no way they could get away with banning specialty studio/stage lamps

I thought it was a bluish light too so you could use a gelled or hmi par (with a snoot maybe?)

thank you so much, one of the best sources that I've seen yet

I'm writing a paper about the whole "digital revolution" with video taking over film in the industry. I'm trying to examine both mediums and their limitations and then I will compare the different affects of these changes on cinematographers and independent filmmakers. And finally I will try to see whether the audience can tell the difference between video and film, and whether it even matters to them. I'll probably also look into some of the economic affects as well. So to get to my point, my main issue is sources. I need good, solid research sources whether they be books, articles, or internet sites about anything concerning this revolution. I really appreciate any help I can get. I've scoured my local library but I haven't been able to dig up anything helpful or relevant. First-person sources would be great too. If I could quote any of you guys on the affects you've seen I would be eternally grateful. Thanks in advance, Eric

yeah that's true, the morning will work well also and don't forget that the XL2 doesn't need a lot of light

In that image, it looks like they just used the sun as a backlight and exposed for the shadows. You could probably use some kind of gold reflector or bounce to bring back in some fill. And also in that picture, it looks like the sun is fairly high up so you might want to shoot between 1pm and 5pm. Not sure how you could deal with other angles besides having the sun behind the talent

using shutters gives a very different look than using something very unpredictable like an arc welder. But I guess it all comes down to safety in that case, both for the crew and the talent.

If you HAVE to go with DV and greenscreen then you'll only have good luck with a professional plugin like Kelight for after effects/shake I was able to borrow an unused license of it from a production house and it worked wonders on some poorly shot greenscreen DV footage. Amazing program really. Not sure if you're willing to pay $420 for a license though. Ultra 2 can't be much better if at all and that's $499. It's also important to watch the lighting on the screen (if you're not already). If you've got a meter, try and see if you're getting even lighting on the whole screen -- the goal being an undetectable variation if any. If the screen's small, kinos should do the trick, but if you can't get those, you'll just have to improvise.

I wasted my money once on a photoflood lighting kit so I'll suggest that you don't do what I did. I'm not saying that Smith-Victor makes a bad product, it's just that their lights are so uncontrollable. I now use a lowel dv creator 44 kit and I love it to death. It was inexpensive compared to most other kits and it is such a versatile set of lights. It's tailored to interview/3-point lighting but it's still versatile. So I also recommend lowel.