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Patrick Neary

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Everything posted by Patrick Neary

  1. Big TV it is! thanks to you both for the comments-
  2. Hey- The BL is/was a wonderful camera. You might also look at a CP-16, which is a pain to thread, but has 1.85 lines scribed on the GG as standard (I think they all were that way). Reflex CP's can be VERY quiet as well.
  3. Hi everyone- Are there any commercial shooters here who regularly shoot super-35 (rather than academy) for TV spots? It seems like a no-brainer, but I'm curious if anyone has run into any kind of downside in doing this... thanks for any insights-
  4. ...and don't even start with that french 16mm "Bow-Lew"!
  5. Hi there- I've never heard it pronounced "Ah-ree", but that has a bit more sophisticated ring to it than the nasal "air-ree". But then I always say "ah-ton" where everyone else I know says "ay-ton"!
  6. ...and the 10-100 vignettes at the wide end, correct? I assume the 10mm end doesn't cover super-16? (and Leon- it's nice to see someone else on this board who likes the 16 BL! I sold mine several years ago, thinking it couldn't be converted...I thought it was a great camera though, despite the whole blimp thing. It never scratched film and NEVER had a hair in the gate, and much steadier registration than most SRs I've ever used!)
  7. just bring along a small furniture blanket (or steal some crew member's jacket) to wrap the camera if it's too loud. Usually it's not the camera that makes the noise, but the mag, or that little gear that drives the mag, so if you cover that up, everything should be fine. But these cameras are about as quiet as they get, assuming it's properly maintained and the mags are loaded correctly.
  8. I bet the repair guys don't see this very often... >>The Sun, a British newspaper, has reported that production on the Tim Burton-directed "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" has been delayed after "a £300,000 camera was dropped into a giant vat of 'chocolate.' " The Panavision Millenium XL was reportedly rigged improperly by wires over the fluid set piece by a technician.
  9. yikes- if you go back in time a bit and can find the "cameraman's handbook" from vern and sylvia carleson, i remember that book having a pretty thorough section on the BL-1 and 2 cameras, including blimp wrestling.
  10. Hi- disregard if you already know this, but on the BL-2 if both the handgrip and body switches are set to "on", then you won't be able to turn the camera off with only one of the switches- they both must be in the off position. The handgrip switches always seem to be sticky, so maybe that might be part of the problem?.... good luck tracking it down!
  11. If it's just the composite BNC out, then that seems kind of like listening to a CD through a fast-food drive-through speaker...
  12. Lightning strikes has exposure data on their website. When I've used them, I go by that, and place the units at a distance where the flash is about 4 stops overexposed in relation to the rest of the scene, but it depends on your own ideas of what lightning should look like. You can flag or net the light just like any other units.
  13. "Film Lighting" Malkiewicz "Matters of Light and Depth" Lowell "Motion Picture and Video Lighting" Brown (a great reference for grip-ology too!)
  14. The AC's I've used usually just point the camera at a card and stick little pointers made from gaff tape onto the card (so the tips touch the corners of the frame line in the camera's viewfinder.) It takes a few minutes, but is more exact, I would think, for the specific camera/groundglass you are using.
  15. I had a set of Cooke Speed Panchros for an Arri 35, and I really liked their quality- sharp, but soft in the way they handled contrast and color. I kind of miss them!
  16. Patrick Neary

    Light meters

    Hi- You're in good company, I remember seeing pictures of Nestor Almendros with some kind of old weston meter- Any meter will work, your shutter speed at 24fps is about 1/48th, and i think the westons had a 1/50th mark, so you could read from that for normal speed stuff. You might want to check the meter's accuracy against a still camera or another meter though, those westons are a bit old!
  17. to further add to John's idea- I recently shot a 35 short for a friend where an HD (HDcam, as it turns out) intermediate was one of the post options. Instead, the director had the neg telecined one-light, very cheaply, with key code numbers, cut on FCP, and is now having the negative cut; conformed to the numbers from his FCP edit. And we get a nice, sparkling 35mm print from our negative, all at less cost than even an HDcam intermediate route! (sorry for the run-on sentence!)
  18. according to the doc, he had Ed Di Giulio modify a "rear process" Mitchell BNC just to handle the fast lens. I don't know how a rear process bnc is different from a regular old bnc?....
  19. Respectfully, I think the argument/discussion is more that the -images- from the f900 (when blown up to big screen) look like poop. I'm pretty forgiving, but every movie I've seen that originated from the f900 (and output to 35, and presented in a theatre) looks soft and mushy and awful, no matter who shot it.
  20. Patrick Neary

    3 New HD Cameras

    hallelujah. this forum seems to have been hijacked for the last couple months-
  21. although it's slightly dated, and not a tech manual, "Masters of Light" is packed with great interviews and valuable info that's still very relevant. I learned a ton just from the interview with Gordon Willis. other favorites on my shelf are "Film Lighting" by Malkiewicz and John Alton's "Painting with Light"
  22. Forde Labs in Seattle and Flying Spot (telecine, also Seattle) both do exceptional, pro-quality work with super-8.
  23. Here's my meager 2-cents- although i suspect your best resource will be your contact at Hyroflex. You won't really have to worry too much about the loss of yellows and reds that shallow, especially in a clean (you hope!) swimming pool. The color of the walls and floor of the pool might be painted blue, so they could enhance the overall colorcast of what you're shooting. A UV filter will do nothing for underwater clarity, which is a result of particulates in the water. I did a lot of underwater still photography, and never heard of anyone using cc filters or polarizers, or any filters really. I'm not sure what kind of effect, if any, polas would have underwater. Your focussing issues may depend on the housing. If you are using a dome port matched to your lens, then the infinity focus is generally at twice the diameter of the port, since your lens is focussing on an image created by the dome lens. Again, Hydroflex will have all your specific answers. I hope you report back on how it goes, and what you find out!
  24. Hi- You can look at some of Canadian director Guy Maddin's films for inspiration- "The Heart of the World" (on a DVD with "Twilight of the Ice Nymphs") is outrageously fun, and really looks like it could have been shot in the silent days.
  25. Didn't Kubrick (or Kubrick's MU-person) use white make-up for the actor's faces to better reflect the candlelight (and help compensate for the very orange color temp)? Maybe it was another film, but it seems like a good idea.
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