Rolfe Klement

Wow - was that staged or was it "documentry" Weird to get an insight into the fragility of Arab life thanks Rolfe

I am going more and more against soft light as I get older <_< I would hang autopoles for cheap rigging or something then downlight each art piece with a seperate small spot (leko 4 even) Then art direction place some nice lamps and backgrounds (canvas against wall) - to give perspective depth to the room Then if the talent require it - light them soft with less punchy lights (Kinos etc) Back and hard edge light the talent if need be with fresnels or snooted spots Cheaper and easier and more dramatic Unless you want to make it look like "heaven" in which case check out some my old posts about lighting white cycs thanks Rolfe

So I have to come up with a way to quickly light a dance studio on a regular basis The PROBLEMS Mirrors everywhere No roof support Green Flo lighting Daylight windows ballet barre running the length of every wall 90% wide shots needed low ceilings white walls Here is an example image The only time I have seen it look good was when Madonna and Johan Renck came down to shoot a music video and basically built a wooden wall inside the studio - then brought in a rig and flew lights all over the place. So the solution seems to be control the light - shoot at night and use my own lights Get rid of the background - by making it dark (reducing spill) and by punching up the front So my current solution is use a toplight (a large light eggboxed softbox - like a 5 ft or 7ft Dedo 1000 Octodome)- then hard back edge light - Lowel DP with barndoor on spot. Shoot really open and blur background. The problems are how to mount the softbox up and keep it up. How to stop spill - we can't put black on the floor My other option is to just lie down and hope the problem goes away... I am using this post to clear it in my mind - any ideas? thanks Rolfe

Dear Adam for a softlight do you prefer the Rifa 88 or the octodome by dedo - The breise is great but I would only ever rent from Mike at Sola - no point buying something that expensive thanks Rolfe

thanks - I will check. Cirrolite tend to be more expensive. I have flown to LA and bought stuff for cheaper then buying it at Cirrolite before :-) thanks Rolfe

Where is the best place to get Tota lights and Matthews 20 x20 grifs in UK? or is it maybe better to order over web from US - since the US$ is so weak at the moment Any ideas? I have looked at prolight and some others... thanks Rolfe

Not sure if this fits - it is a little large for your requirements but cost very little - the problem is the time. I made 2 of them and still use it since I am slowly going off Flo lighting... http://www.creativesunshine.com/archive/6b...ht/6bylight.htm thanks Rolfe

Thanks Rupe I am going through my "how dark can I get film in a white cyc world "phase :ph34r: Combined with a fairly complex problem of lighting a dancing pale Polish girl next to really dark African skin and using "background light to seperate foreground elements" phase The learning never stops... As you can see in the studio shot we used a fair amount of light - it was just balancing the ratios using my trusty sekonic light meter to create the look since most was shot at high frame rates thanks Rolfe

I will be interested to see how the realtime works when working in 4:4:4 1080p. My mac grinds to halt as soon as I move to 4:2:2 (but my mac is oldish) FCP + Color + Control Surface and 10 bit monitor (4:4:4) even a down conversion to SD CRT in realtime will be great! Oh - and never buy version ONE of anything thanks Rolfe

Some stuff from a shoot I just did - basically a dance project, lighting exercise to light black and white talent close up, keep it dark and not blow it all out... all shot on 5218, All tungsten - shot with old zeiss lenses - stills are from DV transfer (so bad quality) shot with 800ft of film - budget £1000 (including a make up artist!) For this above : We used a 2k overhead as top light , flagged with black wrap to stop spill and with diffusion to soften - dimmed to 50% A hard open face 2k as top back light - one sheet of diffusion - max power Loads of negative light (black flagging) from up and sides and behind camera to keep contrast Wide open dedo 650 provided the pinky | blue shaft of lighting on the cyc - I would have preferred a S4 but we couldn't get one - stripes created with black flagging For this above: A 4ft 4 bank kino with tungsten bulbs from the left - built a black tunnel around kino to stop spread Soft soft dedo, diffusion and flagging to create soft back light on cyc behind her A tiny light lying on the floor (pointing at cyc) behind him to give edging on him and under her arm For this above: Kino in same black tunnel (basically 4 6ft x 6ft black flags clamped into a rectangle shape Only had 6 hours to do 58 set ups so a bit rushed but studio was pre rigged - all lights on dimmers and fantastic grip and AC rough edit at http://www.creativesunshine.com/projects/movies/denous.mov Lots of flagging to stop spill - the studio shot does not show all the flagging that went on later thanks Rolfe

My question - is where do the eight dancers come from behind her - at about the 20 sec mark Any ideas thanks Rolfe

Beautiful film! Minor quibbles... An arrow bolt in the hero's leg on the final overhead shot moves from just above his right knee to just below his crotch in the final dolly out - I spend too much time working in SFX :-) The God character size was not consistent - he went from about 15ft to 12ft and back again but maybe this was intentional The "gladiator" references really bugged me- why put the girl in a field of wheat (when the messanger comes) - put her on the rock (infertility) or in an orchid (growth) - the same with the dodgy politicians. The bad guys could have been more dimensional but otherwise fantastic movie thanks Rolfe

Slightly off topic- I have met many people recently who refuse to do business with the US until things change. I met an animation company that pulled a 12M USD US deal and went into Canada (even though it was more expensive) I also know 2 companies that pulled out of Kidscreen festival And I have met many individuals who refuse to travel there as individuals. Are the americans on this forum feeling any of this or is it just background noise? For all the lefties here you can sign up to http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ :ph34r: thanks Rolfe

even more off Off topic - a friend of mine was on a train by Staines last saturday and 60 or so chavs jump on the train and start being chavs. Anyway everyone is moving up the train to get away from them but they take over the guards box and start playing some jungle from one of their mobile speaker phones into the train intercom system - everyone is terrified but my friend just starts giggling and the chavs begin to think it was funny too Then my friend gets off - all is cool but at the next stop there were about 60 British Transport Police - but he missed it - now where is my camera when I need it? thanks Rolfe

always shoot a steadiness / registration test Lock the camera down shoot a chart for 100 ft at 24 or 25 fps - rewind then shoot 20 ft at 24fps 20ft at 25fps, 20ft at 10fps , 20 ft at 50fps and 20ft at 80fps Project the neg and check pin registration- Otto Nemenz etc will do this for you Shoot a light leak test Put the lens cap on and run the camera at 10fps - shine a 400W light at the camera, at the join where the magazine connects to the body, the eyepiece - basically all over the camera - shine the light into any crooks and crannies you can find Run 10ft with each lens - shine the light at the PL mount (or whatever mount you have) Check the speed with a strobe (Otto Nemenz again) http://www.cinematographyelectronics.com/index_gallery.html (check the strobe) Check the shutter edges for damage - cause getting shutters is always an issue So basically if the camera registration is steady, there are no light leaks, the camera runs at the right speed and the shutter is solid then the camera is ready to go The rest of the stuff... Check the front and rear glass elements to the lenses for scratches (usually the wider lenses get damaged first - cause the rear element is closer to the shutter and the larger front element is more exposed) Otherwise try and see if there is a mains power supply - they come in handy I have a similar package and it is fantatsic - built like a tank - I dropped a 2C camera (not mine) from a moving car and it was fine - can't say that about a F900 HD cam :) that is all I can think of now thanks Rolfe

Why not make a cheap film scanner that contains a CMOS chip Something like a Nikoin coolscan but for longer runs of footage (1000ft) It doesn't need to run at anywhere near realtime- but you could load it and let it run over night - it would write to the huge cheap firewire drives available now The big difference would be the fact that once the film was transferred to harddrive or RAID then modern PC's or MAcs could crunch and edit - as opposed to Da Vinci etc doing it all realtime You would have an option to scan at variable resolutions (up to 10Mb - since there are cheap 10mb chips out there) - write to various formats (DPX etc) Firewire 800 or USB 2 connecter on the back I am sure someone could even mutilate a Nikon cool scan to do it now - basically the drive mechanism and auto file writing need a bit of work It would mean anyone could originate on Film Stock but go digital easy what do you think? Has anyone done this before? thanks Rolfe

pretty much everything on my site that says Film is shot with my 2C (which is 50 years old) thanks Rolfe

Been busy - belated reply For a six minute piece - depends how much original negative you have I would say for anything less than 3000ft of film most TK guys do not want to use the EDL- they just run the whole roll - if you have made a rough cut before you know which shots work and which do not - so you can skip over them Another very important part of final output to SD from 35mm is that you can zoom 500% with no loss of resolution - this means a medium shot can become a close up (HD is different) You can also frame different shots (if you are taking 1:85 from a full 35mm neg ) It gives you room to play :) Timecode - always sync your NLE to the punch hole as Mike says Costs - depends - I try to build relationships with compnaies and try send commercial work there way - this means pet projects get good deals (but not free) thanks Rolfe

Dear All I am looking for a mains power supply unit for my 3C motor - the motor does crystal 25fps and 24fps, forward and reverse. Varaible speed from 5 > 60fps. I have a Cinepower 12V 6AH battery belt that works fine and am looking for a mains power supply. The battery belt can run the camera and Video Assist for 2 hours no problem. The Video Assist unit is 12V and 3.5W What would be the specs of the unit I need thanks Rolfe

I would do Super 16 > One light DVCAM with timecode EDIT > EDL Super 16 + 2K Spirit + Da Vinci with EDL > Conform > DVC PRO HD + D5 (and SD and web etc) Make sense? means you only touch the expensive colorist once anf gives best possible quailty thanks Rolfe

Something I am doing for a gig now (if the talent are ok with this) We shoot rehearsals days or weeks before I rough edit then put on my ipod Means on the set I get a very very quick idea of what is needed and it is very easy to show others what is required thanks Rolfe

managed to get some time in the studio - I am going to try it on white lets see what happens <_< thanks Rolfe

the more seperate hard light the better- you can even use cheap theatre lights. I am sure you can rent about 10 of them for almost nothing Lighting with 2 HMI's... You could hard edge light everyone from the side and use the other HMI as a frontal book light - for nice softness thanks Rolfe

thanks for the replies- this is weird but I now have permission to go either white cyc or black cyc the girl is white which is fine but the male lead is African American - is it going to be hard to seperate him from black background. I might have to edge light him all the time... Any advice thanks Rolfe

Thanks the talent has to use the wall Hal - by the S4's are you talking about something like the 5' ETC light - a stage light? thanks Rolfe