Chris Keth

This is probably the wrong place to ask that question, really. Since your city is NYC, you should be able to find a house in the same city. Ten or 15 million people, a few should be animators.

Wow, could be some work convincing a director of the makeup thing the first time out. :)

You could always hit a happy middle ground by finding a less expensive camera, still shoot film, but shoot silent shorts. They are actually a really good way to teach yourself to SHOW the story, not tell it. Something like a k3 or some bolexes can be found for a couple hundred dollars.

Yup, that's "Rain-Ex." It'll do the trick, makes water bead right up on glass. B)

I've never worked professionally (I'm in school still) but I was about to say something to, " I should hope that [David's post]." Everyone in any position that has any say in the final product should be familiar with the script. Otherwise, how would they suggest paths to what the director wants to achieve? Context is very important.

I found another bit of interesting information about the processing of Ronin. Vision 500T was rated at 250 ASA and used like throuhg the whole film. So I know that will reduce apparent grain, but won't it also reduce contrast in the image as well? So maybe the bleach bypass was used to reintroduce the contrast that was given up?

I know some of "Ronin" was processed with a bleach bypass, but was all of it? I don't quite have the eye for picking it out yet, most of the examples I've seen from books and whatnot are the extreme examples.

Wow, that's pretty cool. I never knew there was a correlation between polarization and the refractive index of the surface. I'm from a family of physics majors so I like that kind of stuff :)

Silver Retention is using one of several prcesses that keeps some of the silver on the prints. This will deepen blacks and desaturate colors (since adding grey to colors does that). Digital intermediate is telecine-ing the film into a computer so you can manipulate it in after effects, final cut, etc. and then printing it back to film. For video, it's very easy to desaturate and change the gamma of the footage or to color correct it in such a way that the color washes out.

Thank you, David and John! Very helpful stuff. I'm looking forward to this quarter at school, I get my first experience shooting and editing negative stock and working with sync sound and a real crew. :)

1. It's not anyone else's business to suggest shots, other than the director and DP for the most part. 2. It's part of the business. You have to reject some ideas and accept some others. Professionals aren't going to get sore about it. Whiny gits are and they probably will run out of work quickly.

I thought of another one: "The Natural." It uses light as an active part of the story. Really beautiful.

Hi, David. I was reading your reply to another question and I have question about it. You said: "Graininess is also improved by slight overexposure and printing down. It is not unusual, even though a stock normally prints in the high 20's, for example, for a DP to rate the stock slower so that it prints in the high 30's instead." The "high 20's" and "high 30's", what measurment is that you're talking about? I don't know a lot about making film prints so I'm curious. Thank you, by the way. Your replies and advice have been very helpful :)

There are all sorts of color shifting filters that can make it look slightly (or drastically, depending on the filter) warmer or cooler. Look around www.tiffen.com at their filter section. That will give you a good idea of what's available.

If the gun's synced to the shutter couldn't you also, depending on when you start firing, sync it to the space between exposed frames, too? :D Wouldn't that be a freakish accident, to have bursts of gunfire without a single flash. ;)

Citizen Kane and Apocalypse Now both use light in some very moody ways.

That was kinda cool, actuall. I wish our student productions could afford a setup like that and have the extra hands lazing about to man it :D That said, I'm sure the compositors for Star Wars were REALLY thrilled that C-3PO was going to be a mirror polished robot. That has to be a huge pain to work with. I never thought about it before this, seeing the big green reflections in him.

I think you would be subtracting it from everything, ending up right where you started. You'd be shooting with a green tint so to remove that and go to correct skintones you'd be removing green from everything. So I think using a slightly magenta filter then correcting for proper skintone would leave you with proper skintone and everything slightly green.

I wonder if you could light the int. brightly enough and if the day outside was relatively dim if you could get them relatively close in exposure. That way maybe the exposure change could be done in a way that it'd be less noticeable (or nonexistant)?

I've heard a few people talk about shooting film (I'll use Kodak Vision 2 500T for example, since it's the one I remember right now) and rating it at 320 or 800. Is that just the way of saying "consistantly over- or underexpose it by shooting as if it was ASA X"?

I'm a student and I agree. I'm doing my best to learn it but I wish they'd teacha class on professional set operations. You know, teach us the standard way a set is run so we can get used to doing it that way.

You could also plan the move so that there is a place to put a hidden cut in the transition to outside. That would give you a place to change film/filter(s)/aperture. Doing it this way worked well for me once. Carefully planned, it isn't noticeable unless you look for the cut.

While the subject's up, what is the difference between anamorphic lenses and regular?

Kodak's Vision 2 stocks might be right up your alley. Go to their website and check outthe specs. You can get 100T, 200T, 320T, 500T and some daylights I'm not exactly sure about. I know you could at least get 250D.

That depends on what the lights are and what style you want to achieve. For example, you could probably pull off something film noirish with the right three lights. On the other hand, there's very little chance you could get very high key, bright lighting if all you had was a couple little peppers and a 500 watt spot or something like that. If someone could tell you the right gel for the halogens, I don't see why they couldn't be used for a small student production like yours.