Andrew Rawson

Rob Cheung here in LA is cranking out some of the nicest custom carts out there. Just tell him what you need and he will custom design it and build it for you. His work is getting so well known that the Beverly Hills Police Department contacted him about building some gun carts for them :) He does it on the side so if you want to contact him send me a message and I will let him know and either give you his number or have him get in contact with you. I wouldn't want to post his number here without his consent. Andy

Oleg, Well...I don't know of any generator you could run in the trunk. Firstly it is a motor that runs on gas thus spewing out exhaust. Secondly the quietest small gennys are still loud. Sure, if you are working on a camera car or a trailer you can do this but it sounds like you want to shoot in a real car in a real driving situation. The only option I would use at that point is the batteries and an inverter. You know, even with the electronic ballast it will run for a while, and if you are shooting in those kind of conditions then I also assume you are not working on a show that you have producers and actors breathing down your neck so maybe it's not a really big deal if the light kicks out every once in a while. Sorry if I can't be more helpful, I can only tell you what I would do. Where are you by the the way? If you are in LA maybe I can help you out. Andy

Oleg, You know what I didn't even think about when I posted was that Joker Bugs are always electronic ballasts, I don't think they have magnetic for them. I know you want to use your light but if the shot is that important rent a 575 or 1200 LTM with a magnetic ballast. It will work with electronic ballasts for a while. I used this setup for a few years but often got frustrated when my 1200's would kick out during shooting, when I switched to older style magnetic ballasts the problem was solved. I think it's got to do with the magnetic ballasts not being as sensitive as the electronic ballasts as the voltage drops. Andy

Tim is exactly right. I run 1200 HMI's all the time off inverters and we simply parallel 3 or 4 12 volt gel cells together. The one lesson I learned however is "use magnetic ballasts". Electronic ballasts will not hold up in this kind of situation. Whenever I know I'm doing car inverter shots I specially order magnetic ballasts. Andy

I shot a project in Romania and just over the Ukraine border near Tulcea. It's been several years now but I'm pretty sure we shot NTSC, and we definitely shot 25fps to deal with 50Hz electric frequency so things like HMI's, streetlights, fluorescents and monitors wouldn't flicker. We also knew this was going to be a straight to video release so I think that had a lot to do with our decision making, if it were to be for theatrical release I think we would have had to shoot 24fps with a 172.8 shutter. We shot 35mm and used Kodak labs in Bucharest and they were great. All of our cameras and lighting equipment was obtained locally so there were no issues with power compatibility there. The smartest move we made however was bringing over a focus puller from the States, and I don't mean that as a slight to the Romanian camera crews who were great, but besides his outstanding focus pulling he went through the camera packages (there were several) and sussed out a lot of things out that I would never have caught and that would have been disastrous if they had been discovered in the field. I think you are here in LA Francisco, if you want this 1'st AC's name and number let me know. Not only is he fantastic but he also is Hungarian and has worked all over Eastern Europe and can communicate very well with the local crews, and that in itself might have been the most important thing. Best of Luck Andy

It is my understanding that Kaminski resigned his membership in the ASC well over a year ago.

Lol, you guessed it Michael. I also agree with you on your dislike of the Kino2900's, I can't stand them. It drives me nuts that they don't have have the 3200's for the ParaBeam. Andy

I've seen a lot of discussion on here about putting kino tubes in standard fixtures and/or trying to balance to existing fixtures. The Philips TL950 is a fantastic daylight balanced T8 tube and of course with the high frequency ballasts you can shoot any speed you like. 5000K and no green spike. We swapped out a good portion of a hospital with them and have been shooting for the last 7 years with them. The other cool part is, to help offset the costs we were given a rebate from the State of California for switching to the more energy efficient fixtures :) Andy

I own a Blackjack 400 and it is extremely useful in tight spots and low light conditions. It can give you a nice hard pattern with no lens in it and the huge over sized doors on the unit save flags in tight spots, and you get a nice hard cut. The ability to change to tungsten is pretty cool too. I use it in a daylight situation mostly though and I find I don't use it that much because I can't quite eek enough light of it. I'm usually using 250D and it leaves me lacking a bit in stop so I end up throwing a 1200 Fresnel in instead to give me the nice hard cuts. Lol, if the writers strike continues much longer my Blackjack might be up for sale soon :)

We go in tomorrow and have 2 more days left of shooting for our 7'th season of "Scrubs". Then we're done until this gets resolved. Gonna be a lean Christmas....

Not a big fan of the "TV Gag". For me, never during a day scene and only if it's very motivated at night. That being said, my latest tool is either 2 Parabeams or 2 Divas.(Kinos with built in dimmers). And as the previous poster stated I usually use daylight tubes in one and 2900 tubes in the other and then gel accordingly. Then it's simply up to the operator as to how subtle (or not) to make it. I always put them both through a 4x or 3x diffusion frame as well. Andy

We always call this the "E.T" light when you put a source on the ground back aways and then add atmosphere. As far as the color it simply looks to me like tungsten stock with uncorrected HMI's, maybe an extra 1/2 blue added to uncorrected HMI's. A favorite color of mine is Lee's Medium Blue. It's a very rich blue. Andy

One more thing you might want to think about Chris is staying your first month in Los Angeles at the Oakwoods on Barham. The Oakwoods is short term corporate type housing (furnished, you can rent month to month etc..) and the one on Barham in Universal City is situated right in between Universal and Warner Bros. This way you're staying in a decent place and you can take a month to get to know LA and decide where you want to live. Good Luck Andy

Chris, I do hope you come here and hang out a bit before making any kind of long distance decision about where to live. It is a big city and there are all kinds of different feels to different neighborhoods so you can find a place that fits you. Your last post scared me a bit though. Panorama City has gone downhill for awhile now and it's not the safest place. Van Nuys has all kinds of great little "pocket neighborhoods" but it's also got some downright scary ones as well. Both Panorama City and Van Nuys are in the middle of the Valley. My personal suggestion is the Studio City area, it's very central right across from Universal and just over the hill from Hollywood. When I first moved to LA I spent my first 8 years in Studio City and loved it. It's a great neighborhood with a lot of great restaurants and bars which are chock full of studio people. When it came time to buy a house though I couldn't afford Studio City. I live in Van Nuys now :) Andy

Gus You actually can do this practically and using all tungsten units which are cheaper than HMI's. Shoot it at night and light the street to your liking and pull with her (Steadicam). When you get to the area where you want the daylight transition to start happening simply have her make a sharp right or left hand turn so your background then becomes a containable area of buildings and not looking down the whole street. Have tungsten units on dimmers and bring them up once she makes the turn. Example: 20K scraping the background buildings and Maxibrutes into overhead bounces ( at least 20'x20' but preferably larger 40'x40'). Toplight is what sells daylight. Then of course at the end you can transition back to night by dimming the daylight sources and bring up a night look. You still need a number of large units and a crew experienced enough to deal with flying 40' bys and a good dimmer board op. It's an ambitious shot but a very cool one and as long as you have an experienced crew not really all that difficult. Ramping the camera speed during the transition could also make this shot more dramatic and again because you're using tungsten you won't have a problem ramping camera speeds.

Tony is right. I fly RC helicopters as a hobby and battery management is a very important part of it. I've included a link below that has several chargers. The standard in the RC world is the Triton but I personally own the Hobbico and prefer it. The Hobbico allows you to charge 2 batts at the same time. It will discharge and it handles all battery types as well; Li-Ion, Li-Po, NiCd and NiMH. http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0093p?&C=PKL

I have a great story about Mr Wang. About 12 years ago we were doing a film in the Phillippines and were having nightmare problems with the grip/electric and camera house in Manila. Our producer was friends with Mr Wang so we flew to Hong Kong where Mr Wang's car picked us up. Before heading to Salon Films to start taking care of business though his driver took us to Mr Wang's house where Mr Wang met us and insisted we have tea before any talk of business. It was a great experience and needless to say Salon Films bailed us out and we had a succesful shoot. He was indeed a legend and will be missed.

All lights running on AC have the potential to flicker. In HMI's it is noticeable if using old magnetic ballasts because it is a discharge source, an arc that is literally turning on and off 120 times a second (60HZ, 100 times/second if 50HZ). It does not usually show up in tungsten sources because the filament retains the heat and never goes completely out it just dims a bit. Flicker free ballasts solve this by running square wave and high frequency, boosting the frequency to 250 times per second. The reason you are seeing the small tungsten units flicker is because the small filaments do not retain as much heat as the larger units, and this will become noticeable at high speeds.