Travis Cline

If this has been asked already on this forum I apologize, it was difficult to search for with every topic about lenses coming up. I am wondering what exactly the millimeters of each specific lense refers to. What are the measuring that makes a 16mm lense different from a 32mm lense? I've heard it is the distance from the middle of the rear element to the film plane, but the source wasn't sure. Any links or answers would be much appreciated. Thanks. Travis

Let me start by saying - very sexy photography. It looks really good. As far as the cut goes, I would advise not to repeat the same faces. You have shots from the same movie spread throughout the movie which is fine I suppose, but for me, I don't like to come back to the same face again and again. It makes me think you don't have that much to put on your reel and you're spreading it out to make it feel like more, which I don't think is the case. Some one with such good photography obiously has experience, I just think you should emphasize that better in your reel. For example, you have a long section of Nazi stuff and the discus thrower whcih I think worked really well. I'd love to see the stuff with the black kids all together. But that's just me and maybe that wouldn't work that well. Thanks for posting this, it helps everyone who is trying to cut a reel, myself included. Travis

I love when objects start out of focus and come into focus. Robert Richardson does this from time to time. I love the effect in Snow Falling on Cedars and The Horse Whisperer. On my last film I tried having actors walk into the focus rather than just rack to them and I was quite pleased with what I got. It didn't draw the attention to itself that I thought it might. Travis

Cole I've always had luck shooting TV's with a 150 degree shutter. I've never tried it with more than one screen before, but that could be a good place to start if you still want to do it in camera. You could get lucky. Has anyone else done this, could it work for more screens? Travis

I can't believe Lord won, what a ridiculous band. No offense to Finland, I love Finland. Travis

Absolutely, i'll never make that mistake again. the dailies were transfered to Beta SP and then dubbed onto MiniDV since we didn't have a Beta deck anyway. I'm not sure of the machine they used actually, but not good for sure. Sorry I don't have better information. Travis

I've posted about this before as I've been going through a semi-uncharted(at least for me) post workflow. The results were great so I figured I should share. I shot a feature last summer on 35mm negative. We, meaning the production, were always planning on going to print, so we did not pay for the more expensive dailies that would have allowed us to do a tape to tape final color correction. Besides being bad for a post workflow, getting cheap dailies will come back to bite you. There are probably 20 shots in the film that are out of focus and the director could not tell because the image was so soft overall on the dailies. I couldn't tell either, but what can we do at this point? Lesson learned I suppose. So, when I was put in charge of post production last month I was told the executive producers no longer wanted to pay for a print, but we needed to make a final video master. The solution we came up with was to cut the negative, take it to telecine, do a one light/best light, then do a tape to tape color correction. After having done it I have to say that I am quite pleased with the results. A company in Burbank named Negative People cut and spliced our negative. They did an amazing job and really worked hard to meet our deadline which was much appreciated. HTV in Universal City did the color correction and they were great. Our colorist was Michael Volland and he was terrific. I honestly have not had many experiences like that in telecine. He was great at getting a narrative look, if that makes sense. So often I have to fight with colorists to not give me so much contrast or calm down with the power windows, basically your typical commercial look. While that is great for spots, it drives me nuts when I am trying to tell a story and not selling something. Anyway, the cut negative held up well and there were no problems as some of you suggested before, so thank you all. Your advice gave me courage to go through with this workflow and it worked out wonderfully. Travis

I have a question about workflow. I posted about this befoer and I want to get confirmation about it at this point. We have a cut negative, but we are not making an answer print(at least not at this time). We are taking the cut negative to telecine and we are going to do a best light to HDCam and then tape to tape from that to get our final color correction. We are doing the best light and then the tape to tape to avoid moving back and forth on the original spliced negative. However, aren't we going to have to go back and forth on the negative anyway for our best light? The telecine house tells me it will be better this and such and such, but I don't want to drop to a tape format if I don't have to. I'm all for putting it to tape first since I am worried about my neg coming apart in the telecine, but if we are pulling the negative back and forth anyway, shouldn't we do our final color correction from that? Let me know. Am I wrong, am I paranoid? Thanks Travis

You can cross-process negative film. You shoot negative and develop it in E-6. This only really works with still photography because of the reasons John listed. I've shot negative and cross-processed, it has similarly unpredictable results as reversal film. When I was in school a friend of mine cross-processed every Kodak, Fuji, Ilford, and Agfa stock and each had its own characteristics. Each quite different from any other, but great stuff. Unfortunately not as easy or available for motion picture stocks. Travis

You can get a domain name for like $7.00 per year. It would help alot and when people see your work you want it to be as high quality as possible, right? Anyway, I like the composition. The shot of your lead walking down the tunnel in silohuette was nice. I like the angles on your man in the convinience store, but the lights on the ceiling were distracting since they were so blown out. I agree you have a good style, keep it up. Travis

What kind of problems can you get from splice bumps? Also, do you have a number for Encore? I'll probably be able to get it online, but just incase I can't. Thanks Travis

thank you for all the replies, but I have to say I'm getting conflicting opinions. Stephen is right about the amount of footage. We'd have to go through 90.000 feet of film and that does off-set the cost of cutting the neg. Telecine houses tell me not to bring in an assembled negative though for fear it will come apart in the machine. Is this silly or not? Is it a big problem or people just don't like to do it. Adam, I haven't heard of doing selects the way you are talking about, putting your EDL into the telecine and it finds the shots to be color corrected. Maybe I misunderstood you, but I must have talked to a dozen telecine places about this problem and no one has suggested that. Its completely possible I am talking to the wrong people or something. Does anyone know if transfering from a low-con print that has no color correction built in is a big deal? Will it take massive amounts of time in telecine? I mean massive amounts more than the normal telecine time needed? Travis Also, the BetaSP dailies we have are terrible and in no way, shape, or form able to be our final product. They are way off the mark and can't be turned around to get us the look we want. Travis

Let me preface by saying I am not sure this is correct, but it is the way I do it and as far as I know it is correct. I get paid both ways, as an employee(W2) and as an idependent contractor(1099), depending on what the production and I work out together. The taxes are already taken out of the W2's, but then I deduct my expenses from what I owe as a self employed tax payer. I write off mileage, cell phone, lunch with clients or potential clients, clothing for work, DVD's, movie tickets, TV bill, advertising(reels, business cards, resumes, etc.), even office space in my house. This one is new(a few years old) and I don't understand it fully, but you can write off whatever percentage of your house you use as an office including utility bills and mortgage. H&R Block says its cool and I have a gaffer friend who was audited and they said it was fine. It is not necessarily a red-flag to the IRS, but if you do qualify it is fine. Whatever you want to write-off, make sure you keep receipts. If it is reasonable and you can prove you paid for it and that it was for your business you should be ok, within reason. Something new I found this year is that you can write-off your Medical insurance premium. I can't remember where you write it off at the moment. I don't think it is on Schedule C, but maybe. Does anyone know where you write that off? A friend pointed it out to me and it was very explicit in the tax forms that you could write that off. Anyway, good topic and I'd love to hear more from others.

Hello all. I was the DP on a feature last summer and we shot 35mm neg. I just became post production supervisor because some of the producers that were doing post have moved on to a new project, which is great for them, but I have some questions about how to finish this film now. Originally, our plan was to shoot negative, get low-budget dailies(ie, rank to Beta SP), edit, take the EDL to a neg cutter, cut, conform, answer print, strike a low-con print, and telecine from that for our video master. Now, the production does not want to make a print. They have decided to skip the answer print stage and make a video master only. So, as it stands right now - we have an EDL from Final Cut Pro. We have Beta SP's that we could make an online from, but that would be an utterly terrible quality finish. I'd like to know the best way to telecine from the neg at a fairly low price. By low price I mean, not having to retransfer all the footage or go through the answer printing process. I spoke with Deluxe this morning and they said if I cut the negative they can strike a lo-con print from that, but it will not have color-correction built in and so the costs of telecine will be horrendous. Has anyone done this process? Is it as bad an idea as they say? Does anyone have any other solutions for this problem? I should have been more on top of this in pre-production, but its my fault. I've never done a direct to video feature before. Any suggestions would be great and thank you for your time. Also, we are doing our post in LA. Travis

Everything is 35mm except for the shots in the section with the man in the alley and the guys running. those were shot on 16mm and skip-bleached. My reel is edited properly as you say(editing to the music) because of my lovely wife. She is an editor, so having access to her and her talent really helps when it comes to cutting this. She has a great sense of where to put things and how to edit them to get the best feeling out of it. thanks for the comments and I just found out we're going to be color-correcting a feature I shot last summer in the next couple of weeks so that should be added to my reel soon and I'll repost. Thanks all. Travis

There is an advantage we have in this industry over people with more rigid jobs(at least in the US, since maternity leave is ridiculous here). We can leave and be with our families when we need to. Often we feel like we have to take jobs because we need the money or we want to get hired in the future, but when hard things come, whether to us or our families, we can leave. Last year my wife's father died and her mother was all alone, plus they llive in Russia. My wife needed to go help her mom for a couple of months and she needed me with her for support and such. Because I'm freelance I was able to pick up and leave within a few days. Also, my wife is an editor so she was able to do the same thing. Fortunately it occured around Christmas time, but I still missed alot of work I would have had if I'd stayed, but I would never regret missing work to help my family, especially my wife. They mean much more than any film. Travis

When I'm the DP I also often am paid in thirds like Mitch said. Other times and depending upon the length of course, I get paid weekly. Travis

Thanks Matt, I appreciate that. I know, I get what you are saying about the music, that's funny. I'm just figuring how to do it when each section is 10 seconds long, or thereabouts. You know what I mean? Seriously though, I have to cut somethings, I have better shots to insert for sure and somethings got to go. Travis

Sorry for the misinformation. I had thought that was true before, that you can rebleach a negative and I must have gotten misinformation from Deluxe or I did not understand what they said. My apologies. Travis

Sorry if this is the wrong section to ask this, but I hope it will be. I have a Mark V director's viewfinder that broke. Does anyone know where to go to fix these? Thank you Travis

Dear Mr. Filmisforever(if that is your real name) I suppose that if you do it yourself in the bathtub at home maybe you can try, but labs won't do it. Deluxe has told me they can't bleach negative once it has been skipped. So, maybe other places do it or I was misinformed, but barring you have a lab at your house, you should plan on it being fairly permanent. The shots of the guy falling on the grass and the poker are cross-processed(another irreversible process with some cool results) The skip-bleach shots are toward the end - the guy sitting in the alley and the guys with the guns and masks. The guy singing in the blood rain is film pushed one stop and then made to look like skip-bleach in telecine. The unfair comparison of these two shots though is that the stuff actually skip-bleached was shot on 16mm and the singer on 35mm. I am color correcting some 35mm stuff that I skip-bleached at Deluxe and will try and get that on here soon. Sorry if does not help. Travis

I always use snot tape. I've never had a problem, good and cheap. Travis

I like the movie too, but I have to say the shot of Denzel on the dolly was one of my favorite shots. Ballsy yes, but it fit the mood and the moment for me. Besides, would it be a Spike Lee movie if his actors didn't ride on the dolly? I also, like the shots of Clive Owen and Christopher Plummer on the dolly. The one with Plummer and his desk was stellar. The X-light was pretty great too. Travis

I really appreciate the comments and I do have too many head shots. I shot second unit on a film last year. All I did for three weeks was drive across the country shooting landscapes in anamorphic so hopefully once it is color corrected that will give me some nice footage to contrast with all of my headshots. I've been thinking about the use of different music you suggested Matthew. different music for different sections. Have you tried this or seen it in other reels? I would like to try it, but I'm not quite sure how go about it. I'll see if it works. Travis

I know Barcelona is not a very bright city at night, which is what you wanted, but how was shooting in Spain? Crew-wise? Equipment wise? I lived there as a kid and would love to shoot anything in Spain. Unfortunately I have not done anything proffessionally there. Just wondering how it was. Travis