Phil Rhodes

A long-dead naval architect and Marlon Brando's makeup artist.

When exactly did this happen? Do you have a web link or any other info?

Print clear registration marks in the corners and use those to line everything up in something like After Effects. Run tests by repeatedly scanning a single page of a registration test pattern with deliberate registration inaccuracies and make sure you can get the results you want. Otherwise, sounds doable.

Sekonic L-398A. Very, very primitive, and not really usable in the very low light modern cameras can handle, but very informative about just how exposure works. Uses a mechanical calculator to work out exposure based on the meter reading. Not something you want as a daily driver in the modern world, but a great learning tool.

It's interesting that the overpowered lens motor issue comes up. It's a problem I've noticed even on the low-cost focus controllers people use. It's actually even more of a problem on the sort of lightly-built converted stills lenses that are often paired with these lower-cost controllers. I think they're probably trying to make a point of showing they can provide a lot of power to handle difficult lenses, but there's often no way to moderate the torque. P

There are types that use butane gas for heat, which are probably the most portable because they don't need lots of mains power. One such type is made by Artem here in the UK but there are presumably others. Otherwise, a good portable option is the diminutive Le Maitre Mini Mist, which uses aerosol canisters for the fluid so it doesn't need power to run a pump. As a result, once it's heated up, you can wander around with it, placing smoke where you want it, for quite a while until the heater block cools down again. P

I began redacting most contact info from call sheets even on the tiny one or two day things I do because of the privacy considerations, so that's not unreasonable. Not sending people a call sheet is unreasonable for all the reasons shown here, particularly working hours considerations. This is not OK.

I only get to do these things on Google Maps at the moment, but yesterday I found myself wandering around Brooklyn looking at fairly nondescript street corners used for The Interpreter. Nobody seems to like The Interpreter, but I have a big soft spot for it; a nice blend of realism and drama. I once shocked a New York native by walking down Hatton Garden in London and pointing out it had doubled Manhattan in Eyes Wide Shut. Other than being straight with regularly-spaced crossing streets it looks very little like Manhattan and the amount of stuff they had to truck in to make it work was massive.

Maybe I'm grabbing the wrong end of the stick here. Seems to me it'll do what is being suggested if they're fairly narrowband filters, given the usual controls in grading.

Yes, you can do that, and yes, that's the effect it will have. It's something that's worth testing because the various colour processing systems - the sensor, the camera electronics, the grading software - have various nonlinearities and mismatches which mean this sort of thing does not always work in a straightforward and predictable way. P

The Google search I need for this is "green LED floodlight," but whatever works in your part of the world. The flicker issue will be the same either way. If you don't mind getting a bit creative, you can just get lots of green LED sticky strip and stick it to something. Being driven by 12V DC power, flicker is absent. Or, get some fluorescent fittings and put green tubes in them. That's how I do it. If I had to design it now I'd use the sticky strip.

Something like this, about four feet in diameter:

What would stop you doing this is the flicker problem. They may not flicker, although shoot some whip pans and make sure they aren't flickering at some multiple of the frame rate as that may give you segmented motion blur that will mess up your keying. If they don't flicker, you're probably OK. When you say they're 6500K that may be true although the colour quality is likely to be poor. How much that matters for green screen is an open question. It may be fine. You can sometimes get green-emitting LED lights which are intended for architectural special effects, which would be even more efficient, though make sure the green they emit is sufficiently similar to the green of the screen. I find using green light on green screens really helps.

I have a ten-thousand-foot projector reel somewhere. I could make a big clock.

It really depends how they've worded it. I have no special objection to it in certain situations. If they've worded it too broadly, then it'll have two effects. The first effect is that it'll become ludicrously onerous since it's penalising people doing utterly innocuous things in a way that clearly doesn't represent the intent of the people who wrote the law. The second effect is that everyone will end up just automatically putting the this-was-altered icon on absolutely everything as a defence against the law, so the thing won't end up having the effect they were going for in the first place.