Patrick Neary

sure you can make it 10 minutes long, but no-one is going to watch more than 2 minutes of it! AC had a great article a few years back about cutting reels, full of great insights and ideas!

hi again- like i mentioned before, there should be a round knob/plunger-thing at the base of the handle (where it attaches to the shoe) that you pull straight out and hold it out- that releases a pin and you should be able to slide the whole thing out of the shoe (up or down or sideways, it's been awhile- look at the shoe and you will see a stop-pin, just slide the handle out the other direction) It might need some gentle tapping to pop it loose if it's been stuck there for a long time. If that doesn't work, make your peace with it and use it to hold useful accessories!

...or really splurge and just buy a good set of 72mm close-up filters and screw them on the front of the lens, sans tape. B)

hmmm. is it possible you've put a newer zeiss lens into a blimp designed for the the older zeiss, or even an angenieux? I remember there being some kind of f or t-stop reference mark on the blimp (for lining things up when you mounted the lens in there) but that may have just been on the prime blimp. sorry to not be of much help!

welcome to filmland- I have a friend who moved cold to LA 2 years ago with very little grip experience, but doggedly pursued any kind of grip work he could get and within two months or so hooked up with a small rental outfit and was very busy. Too busy, in fact, I couldn't get him anymore on my shoots! He had great attitude, was really fun to work with and worked his butt off no matter what the circumstances. Another friend who is very busy as an editor/director of TV stuff said he figured out that if you want to make a living doing this, you have to take all the poop work that no-one else wants, and hopefully the work eventually gets better. If I was looking just make money, I think I would expand my search a bit outside the "industry"...good luck!

Hi- Probably the blimp is marked for the T-stop, so f2.8 (wide open) on the lens is t3.3 (also wide open). To get the handle off you pull the front round knob/button (on the base of the handle) straight out to release a pin and slide the handle up or down out of the shoe- hope that makes sense!

Hi- With my VERY limited experience shooting second unit (or "additional photography") on a couple TV movies ("P.U.N.K.S." for Disney and "Miracle Dogs" for Animal Planet) it was obvious that it came at the time, after principal photography, that the productions were running out of money. So I didn't buy a 1 bedroom flat in a suburb of london with those paychecks... :) If you have the contacts already to get the work, it can be a great job!

Hi- I've used the adaptor on one short and hope to never use it again- Optically it's junk, and severely limits your close focus and range of useable focal lengths. Especially if you're finishing for TV/DVD, it just doesn't make any sense to use it. If you're projecting it to a big 16:9 screen, it's a toss-up whether the bit of CCD surface area gained can overcome the softness and generally crappy quality of the optics.

Hey- I looked at these very scenes awhile back with a director as reference for another project, on a dvd player with exact 2x, 4x, etc speed control. At 2x (assuming some accuracy from the player) they played normally which suggests they ramped to 48fps (this was the end of Tennenbaums). Just eyeballing it, it certainly wasn't faster than 72fps.

great posts! thoughtful composition seems to be a lost art anymore, so many movies are nothing but collections of standard close-ups and Over-The-Shoulders...why is it so prevalent? maybe directors directing from their video village, editors working from tv-sized screens, or timid conservatism driven by some sort of bland-is-best television mentality? King Kong was rotten with close-ups (okay, some very nicely lit close-ups!), as was Gladiator, two movies (off the top of my head) that really should have been big-screen experiences. Watching some older films is a real treat because filmmakers clearly thought about camera placement. It's so rare to find a current film that uses the camera as something other than a machine just to record talking heads.

well, if you still drop by these forums Mr. Prieto, a huge congratulations!

I'll beat Mr. Pytlak to the punch: :) http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/16mm/why...0.1.4.3.6&lc=en I didn't know folks were still using the Elaine. The last time I asked about it at Panavision, they looked at me like I was asking about a deformed cousin they had hidden in the closet...maybe i just misinterpreted.

these pictures were taken on the set of the bar in the ballroom, so maybe it was an issue with flouros. not to belabor the point, but on the "Making of" doc, there are a couple shots at the end, one in the hotel lobby and another in a hallway, where you can also see the 25fps sticker.

Hi Tim- When I was a staff photog at the Daily Zero (yes, your very own hometown rag) I would shoot the hawks (those days in the kingdome) and occassionally run into the NFL Films guys (they weren't there every game). One thing that impressed me beyond anything was how FAST those loaders could turn around a mag- it looked like they were performing a magic trick!

there are a number of BTS pix of Kubrick on "The Shining" where the camera is clearly marked 25fps, and I've always wondered why he would shoot 25 on a feature that was clearly theater-bound, and how many other films of his were 25fps? How often is 25fps used on non-US features?

favorite swag is one of those Birns and Sawyer floppy sun hats that you can tie up the brim for a more rakish look- worst is an old-style Arri Crew baseball cap that looks more like a feed-store hat.

Hi- Call your lab, some have a minimum footage charge. You might be able to make your movie TWICE as long for the same price! :)

Hi All- For any of you who are pilots AND shooters (like me) and live in/would like to live in Batavia, OH (not like me) I see that Sporty's is hiring a video production-type person. thought I'd pass it along here... http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop (scroll down to the bottom left hand column.) I bet it would be a fun job!

my understanding is that (despite the subtitles) it WAS fiction... :) I thought the HD tended to swing all over the map (in the print I saw, at least) from very video-y (the party scenes) to gorgeous and very filmic. There was an obviously standard-def shot of the airplane in-flight that was a bit jarring. oof, kinda brutal too.

sorry Rolfe, your post was clear, I promise I'll read more carefully next time! although I have to say I haven't shot any spots that ended up with 2+ hours of footage (more like 40 minutes to an hour) but really with only a few set-ups involved, (and, i like to think, my consistent exposures:)) the grading sessions have usually gone pretty fast. And on top of it all, I doubt the deadlines would have allowed a return to telecine after editing!

Hi- I just made a page of lamp icons in freehand mx so I can cut and paste those into floorplans i draw up in the same program. If you use freehand, I'd be happy to send you (or anyone who wants one) the freehand file of the lighting units (they're color coded and labeled). You can shoot me a note at spotcrew-at-1925studios.com, and i could email the document.

howdy- that first one looks like it was made for an underwater housing, judging by the eyepiece extension. The other one has the Arri "APEC" exposure control- The ancient Alan Gordon catalog I have (I'm so glad I still have it for some reason!) shows the Arri with that door installed- at the time it was about a $2000 upgrade.

Hi- Whenever I've done a film spot, we grade it during the telecine. I doubt I'm the only one around here who wouldn't trust the telecine guys with a one-light, there are too many ways to screw it up. :o

Page 180 of "Film Lighting" by Malkiewicz- James Wong Howe talks about using tin coffee cups as reflectors... and that's probably the most civil response you're going to get on this board in regards to your absurd comment...

that's because 80% of the film is tight close-ups. Is the editor working off a 9-inch monitor, or did they even shoot wide or medium shots for this film???