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Tristan Noelle

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Everything posted by Tristan Noelle

  1. In the making of documentary on the "Young Frankenstein" DVD, Hirschfeld says he would light the wide shots very contrasty and dark to set the sense of place and mood for the scene, but for the close ups he'd fill them in more so the comedy would play better. Sort of a way to have your cake and eat it too I guess. Apologies in advance for the digression, but because I have the book handy: "...because I was satirizing the look of the original Frankenstein, I asked the lab to develop the negative to about a 7.2 Gamma to better match the more contrasty negative used for the original. The increased development time (equivalent to forcing or pushing) gave me the desired degree of contrast and decreased the amount of light needed for the F/4.5 stop that was used to carry the depth of the larger castle sets." - Image Control, Gerald Hrischfeld, ASC, p. 74
  2. I'm always impressed by parody films that really nail the look of the genre they're spoofing. Gerald Hirschfield's work on "Young Frankenstein" is a great example of that, and he has some great stories of finding that look. Brandon Trost's cinematography in "MacGruber" is great, it looks like a big budget action film. His comedy work in general has a lower key and edgier feel that stands out from a lot of contemporary comedy work.
  3. I used a PL mount Angineux 25-250 f/3.9 on a short with a Red One MX (may have been a slightly different model lens than the one pictured). Ran in to issues with the minimum focus distance which was about 6'. Made it hard to get close to the actors and shoot in small locations without diopters. On the wide end had some color aberrations and noticeable vignette-ing; but I think that particular lens needed serviced.
  4. Large portions of "What Dreams May Come" 1998 were filmed with Velvia. I think the 50 ASA, I'd have to dig up the American Cinematogapher. I used to shoot 35mm Veliva 50 when I was shooting landscapes and nature photography in college, very cool film. The Wikipedia claims that a lot of commercials were photographed with it, and it's replacement for cinematography was Fuji Eterna 160. But that's Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvia#Velvia_in_cinematography Tristan
  5. No problem and best of luck. One last thought. This may be out of budget if you don't have insurance, but DC Stages (just east of downtown LA) has a lot of the old sets from Law and Order still standing. I gaffed a commercial there recently. I'm pretty sure they have an interrogation room set up with a two-way mirror. Then it would be bringing flats for walls and to place the real mirror on. May be worth giving them a call to see if they have one standing. http://www.dcstages.com/ Tristan
  6. Caleb Deschanel talked about doing this scene from Being There: Quoting Caleb Deschanel in "Film Lighting" (Kris Malkiewicz, p. 126): "In Being There we did an interesting scene; we built a set for when Peter Sellers is being made up for the television show. It was all mirrors and it was impossible to be inside the room without actually seeing yourself. So we actually made one end of it from a two-way glass and shot through that. No matter where you looked, you would not see the camera because the camera was actually filming through the mirror."
 
 For my two cents: if you have the budget to get a one-way mirror and making a false wall with it, it should work. Optically it should be like looking through teleprompter glass. If you can keep all the light off of you and your camera behind the glass, you shouldn't be seen. A glass supply place may have a small sample pane, like 12" by 12", that you could shoot through and determine if it will work. Hope this helps, Tristan

  7. It's been awhile since this post, but I did end up testing and shooting the short, so I figured I'd update. For the lightning effect I used Mole Baby Fresnel LEDs w/ 5pin DMX (5600k), daisy chained with one on each window. Using a cheap DJ DMX board we just flashed the units by hitting the blackout key rapidly. The Mole LED's didn't have any latency issues when turned on and off with DMX; they were suitably responsive. I did try just flipping the on/off switch on the lamp's power cable, which was very delayed. We ended up shooting with an FS7. The flashes were gelled pink, so they couldn't be too bright or they'd lose too much saturation (hence the Baby fresnels). They played as sidelight or back light, and because they went through windows they never really filled the frame with light, so the rolling shutter artifacts weren't an issue. I'd use this system again for a lightning effect, but I'd want to test with the bigger Junior and Senior Mole Fresnel units for the intensity and see if they were as responsive. Being able to program different lamps at different intensities in the board and cue them when needed is pretty handy. I'll post some video when I get it. Hope this is informative. Tristan
  8. I did quite a bit of testing with black light recently and ended up shooting this teaser video which features some of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-cAibv-0Vw 1. The blacklight we used from one 4'x 2 bank kinoflo with 4' T12 bulbs. We just requested blacklight bulbs with it from the rental house (Wooden Nickel), they we're like $8 a piece in addition to the lamp price. I used another unit for rimming on the wide two shot which was 2 of those 18" fluorescent fixtures mounted in to a board; I got them from wal-mart and used them for testing before we rented anything. I can't speak for the LED units and whether they put out as much UV or more or less visible light as I never got to test them. Although I imagine they'd do the job; you can find youtube examples of some of those units. With the kinos I could roughly control output with the barn doors and by switching on/off bulbs, which was handy. On safety: We had our actress use sunscreen which has the interesting side effect of darkening the skin under black light, which was great for the effect we were going for. I would recommend it anyway. In the video you referenced, it appears they did not use sunscreen, hence more visible skin. Also, there are clear safety glasses you can get at harbor freight or home depot that will block UV light; good for talent between takes and crew. When you can, turn lights off so people don't look at them unnecessarily as they can cause headaches (at least the Director got one...). 2. Output/exposure: I didn't measure exposure for what we did. Black Lights output UV light and some visible light, which has a deep indigo color. I imagine the only real way to measure output of the UV is by taking a spot meter reading on the material/make-up that is fluorescing. Different colors and materials will emit different amounts of visible light, so test. For what it's worth, everything shot in the video was a canon 5DMkIII at 2000iso, mostly around an f/2. Lit with the 2 4' tubes from the kino, usually around 4 to 6 feet from the model. We had to get a lot of fluorescing to crush out sections that the visible light hit for the effect we were going for. it could probably be done with less light. But more never hurts as it gives you more options. A parting thought: I found the most saturated color rendition in our fluorescing make-up and clothing happened at very high color temperatures, around 8000K, again option different ones and see what you like. Our "white" light for the actor was daylight gelled w/ CTB (one or two layers, I can't remember) on a 1x1 LED panel. I hope this ramble helps you out some. If I recall anything else pertinent I'll post it. Tristan
  9. Some of you are probably hip to this, but I figured it deserves posting (as does anything dealing with1980s anamorphic cinematography). "Black Angel" is a short film that screened in some cinemas before "The Empire Strikes Back" in the UK. Its negative was recently rediscovered. It was photographed in Scotland by Roger Pratt and directed by Roger Christian. It was a direct inspiration to the look and feel of Boorman's "Excalibur". The director's video introduction explains it all better than me. Anyway, it looks fantastic. Tristan
  10. Thanks, Phil. I fear you're correct. It may just mean getting to a point where the director and I can live with it. The strikes are important at several parts in the script, but not ubiquitous. There may be a chance we can edit around the more garish artifacts provided we have options. We'll see. The Epic/Dragon is on the table for the production camera (pending our producer's craftiness) and if available for testing, I'll push to add that TI PL Motion Mount; RED claims it will counter the effect. I'd consider a global shutter camera like BlackMagic, but need the light sensitivity. Thanks, Tristan
  11. Thanks for taking the time to reply, guys. Pardon in advance if anything I say is mistaken as I'm still new to the whole DMX arena. I'll be testing an A7s (rolling shutter...), alongside a Sony F5 or Dragon. Length of the flash is something I'm going to look at and see if it can mitigate the 'partial-flash' artifact. I'm curious about the Arri L7-c as the unit doesn't have a built in flash or strobe function so whether the lightning is convincing will depend inherent delays in the unit; and whether the board setup I have can relay the programming quick enough. I want to use it because of the range of adjustments I can do without gelling; the film is a dream sequence and the director wants a variety of colors and options for lightning. I'll have some basic party/dj LED units with strobing functions I'll be playing with. Thanks John, I checked out that post. I'm going to try and track down some DMX activated shutters; I know they exist but haven't ever dealt with them. They may be the best of both worlds. One of the reasons I want DMX is the ability to reliably sync flashes to cues in a rear projected video; its a VERY experimental project. QLab can do it using a midi signal to a control board with the proper setup. I'll be speaking to a projectionist about it. Anyway, I'll update when do those tests. Thanks again. Tristan Noelle
  12. Hello, I'm curious if anyone has used LED fresnels (Arri L7, Mole Studio LEDs, etc.) for a lightning effect. I'd like to be able to cue a lightning strike thru the unit's DMX control. I want to avoid tungsten because of the time it takes the filament to dim completely down between flashes. However, I'm not sure if there is a delay in the LEDs that would prevent an effective strobing or flashing effect. I imagine I'll test it soon enough, but wondered if anyone had any experience or thoughts on the issue. Thanks, Tristan Noelle
  13. I've been googling but can't find the answer. Are 1 ton, 3 ton and 5 ton grip truck packages standardized across the industry? I imagine different rental houses would have roughly the same equipment for these packages, but what grip equipment determines the package? And where do the names come from (that might be obvious but go ahead and humor me...)? Thanks in advance, Tristan
  14. I'm not a very technical person, so I'm usually at a loss when terms like RAW, log, gamma and colorspace are thrown around; I don't quite get the full picture. Can anyone recommend books or papers, any good primer, that would help to get a handle these terms? How did you guys learn about this stuff? Regards, Tristan
  15. Have they mentioned the absolute size of the sensor or what lenses will work on it? Maybe I'm a bit thick but I couldn't find anything on Sony's website.
  16. When I'm feeling down I put in "American Movie". Some people find it depressing, but I love how Mark's passion for film keeps him going. To round out the three... "Ed Wood" and "Day for Night".
  17. You should be able to use the inching knob on the assistant's side to rotate the shutter. You have to push it into the camera body to engage it while you turn it. It threw me off a bit when I first used the 35-3. Hope that helps in some way. Tristan
  18. Thanks for the information John. I'll give that test a try.
  19. An instructor once told me to not chance using a set of PL mount Zeiss primes made for 35mm on a Super16 SR2 because the rear element could interfere with the shutter. Is that a problem anyone has run into?
  20. Here's five that come to mind. There's plenty of worthy films that could go on the list, but this is just a sample. Being There (my definite first) The Thing (1982) Barry Lyndon Pulse (the Kiyoshi Kurosawa one, not the atrocious American remake) The Searchers
  21. The Library of Congress posted some fantastic color transparencies from the 1930s and 1940s online. I'm always blown away with how sharp and modern these pictures look. Here's a few examples:
  22. The low contrast exteriors in There Will Be Blood are probably the result of the extensive lens modifications that Elswit, Anderson and Dan Sasaki did. It's covered in January's American Cinematographer here. I really can't wait to see the film but it isn't playing anywhere close to me (sigh).
  23. Happy Birthday (noticed on the forum) - from a Yank who loves Top Gear.

  24. I'd like to get the film gate and pressure plate polished on my K3. I've cleaned it up and removed the loop guides. Test footage I ran through it (before removing the guides) had several consistent vertical scratches on each frame. Luckily it was an old roll of Tri-x I had laying around. If it wasn't the projector, one of those were probably the problem. I'd like to start having fun with the thing. Does anyone know where I can get the gate and pressure plate polished? Could I do it myself? Thanks.
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