Phil Rhodes

Something that's worth looking out for is the widget that I think was called Sharp Max, which was designed to clamp on the front of DigiPrimes (or any other B4 lens) and present a target at optical infinity for back focus adjustment. When I saw DigiPrimes on set, the Sharp Max was routinely used at every lens change. I'm not sure how essential that really was, but it's a nice tool to have. With regard to JK's thoughts, I would take the position that for nearly $600 each, shipped, you could buy any of a wide variety of classic stills primes which would probably behave better than a converted DigiPrime on modern cameras, cover full frame, be much faster, etc. You'd be doing it for the build.

The problem isn't the cost. Doing it in post is cheaper in the real world, which is why all the best work with digital firearms effects is actually done on YouTube. The problem is that even the best simulated firearms isn't often completely convincing. It looks cheap. Obviously, big productions find ways to make everything expensive, but that's politics and corporate power plays more than anything else. The other issue here is that this is a ludicrous knee jerk reaction. There are lots of things on film sets that kill way more people than guns. This got a lot of attention because it involved a famous name and a conventionally attractive woman. It's no disrespect to either of them to point out that the reaction is disproportionate. Has anyone here heard of Mark Milsome, for instance? Nobody famous was involved, and he was a middle aged man. Nobody's calling for an end to vehicle stunts. I don't thing it's very fair to end the livelihoods of the world's armourers, who overwhelmingly do a brilliant job, for no better reason than that Alec Baldwin is famous.

I looked into this and I'm not sure it's a great idea if you don't already own the lenses, or unless you can get a fantastic deal. You'll lose two stops in the converter, so they'll end up being roughly T/4, which isn't spectacular. Furthermore, as you've noted, the converter will cost you something, particularly in terms of aberration. Some are better than others, but at least some of the poor reputation of B4 zoom lenses on Super-35 cameras is due to the converter, not the lens. B4 broadcast zooms generally don't have the same design goals as, say, DigiPrimes, and they tolerate different compromises, but the converter certainly adds a layer of... well... lack-of-ideality. Good converters are expensive. If I tripped over a set of Digiprimes in a box I'd use them happily, but I wouldn't pay a fortune for them now. Most of the sets I've seen go for more than I'd pay for this sort of solution. I think the world overvalues them at this point. DigiPrimes are good. DigiPrimes on a converter are going to be considerably less good. Personally I'm not convinced most people are really that concerned over sensor size; this bigger-is-better insanity is not often very considered. The advantages of smaller sensors are huge, in that you can use great-yet-inexpensive lenses. Obviously, if you've got a client that wants 4K, you're stuffed, but you could always get a Blackmagic 12K and get 4K out of an area I suspect converted DigiPrimes would cover. P

This can probably be handled by ignoring switch events until the relevant key strokes have been sent to the recorder; the project I found had a 10ms delay between the key down and key up events, which should be adequate for debouncing.

I'd agree about putting something in series to limit current, but bear in mind the ATMEGA328 has internal pullups (set it as an input and then set it high as if it were an output). So, yes, do that, maybe, and pull the pin down.

Happy to. Bear in mind that everything I'm saying here is based on my theoretical, not practical, understanding of the camera and the recorder, so I could be wrong. From my understanding this is how it works: - Detect when the contacts on the camera close. I would buy an off-the-shelf flash port connector cable and cut it in half. Connect one side of the connector to the +3.3V power [actually, no, connect it to ground], and the other to an interrupt-capable GPIO pin. Configure the GPIO pin as an input with interrupts enabled [and the pullup set]. Write an appropriate interrupt-servicing routine. When the interrupt fires, you need to take some action. - If the GPIO pin is currently set, start the camera, otherwise stop it. This will involve sending serial bytes to the recorder. The bytes you need to send are known from this open-source project. From what I can see there you need to send a "key down" code for the record button, then wait a few tens of milliseconds, then a "key up" code. Then, to stop, the key down code for the stop button, then wait, then the "key up" code. You may need to mess about with this a bit to make it behave as you want. - The Arduino has a serial port. This is used for debug communications back to your computer, but you don't necessarily need that for this. I'd buy an off the shelf 2.5mm 4-pole jack cable, and cut it in half. Connect the Arduino serial output pin to the appropriate pin on the 2.5mm remote control port jack. The other pins on that jack will supply power and ground (you are running the Arduino from the Zoom recorder's power supply). P

Any of them, but for this I'd just get an Arduino Nano, or any of the clones of them. They're trivially inexpensive. You need a 3.3-volt version, not a 5-volt version, to talk to the Zoom recorder. The thing is, just getting the board itself is only part of the story. You'd need to write some code to control the recorder, and if this is your first time it'll be a bit of a process. That might be OK if you didn't mind making a project out of it. There's enough information available that I could try to do it remotely, but without being able to test with the real recorder it's tricky.

Yes, he should have got this right, no question, and that's what I mean by pulling him up on it. I'm not really here to defend or to criticise anyone, though. What I fear is that all of the world's highly professional armourers, with a proud history of having kept firearms accidents on film sets down to what I interpret as exceptionally low levels, will end up suffering the consequences of one situation, regardless of how that situation arose. As ever, it only takes one idiotic mistake to spoil things for everyone. They don't deserve that. To address something else that's come up quite a lot in discussion of this, firearms simulation effects do not have a history of looking very good. I'd be the first to point out that they're often not done nearly as well as they could be done, and that is something that the industry should brush up on; it's a bit much when YouTube channels are making whole videos out of fixing the firearms effects in major action movies. P

Well, yes, as Andries says, just connected together. That's what I'd expect. Controlling the Zoom recorder is a little more complex. If I had one here I'd set up an Arduino to do it for you then it'd all be easy, but I don't. P

Something like that. I recently spoke with someone who'd shot a feature on Master Anamorphics, because they stay far sharper when opened up than older designs - to the point where they reckoned they could get another half hour out of a dusk setup. It was exactly the scenario you describe. Trying to do that on what we might call classic glass might start to reveal the rather abrupt border between "expressive" and "bad." The problem is that it was a period piece, so they were very keen not to have it look all modern and, well, Zeiss. So they used pearlescent, black pearlescent and black satin filters, in several grades, chosen to suit the scene. Pretty much exactly what you seem to be thinking.

Much as I agree with a lot of what's been said here, this is a slip in terminology - I'd pull him up on it, but what he means is clearly that a lot of blank ammunition is fired on film sets and problems are extremely rare, which is correct. P

Litra Studio is similar to the Aputure MC - and waterproof!

It'll likely be connecting the pins of the socket together, as opposed to emitting a voltage.

Or, to put it another way, nobody ever gets any credit for accidents that didn't happen. They do very often end up being criticised for making a noise. This happened to me on at least three unpleasantly memorable occasions and is one of the reasons I don't work on sets much anymore. One of the less wonderful things about the film industry is that people assume a lot of managerial authority without recieving any training to do it well. Directors of photography, for instance, generally come to the role having been at best a focus puller, with opportunities to observe other people doing the job, but absolutely no formal training, no qualification process, not even any real guarantee of the mentor's own competence. People are free to promote themselves to new roles at any time. By any normal standard of managerial protocol, it's utter chaos. Cautious as I am about speculating, I'd be willing to bet this was a factor here as it is commonly a factor in many filmmaking mistakes. Senior people in the industry need to recognise this, and ensure their approach is not prohibitive to genuine concerns being raised, especially in a cross-departmental context. It would be viewed as very inappropriate, for instance, for a member of the camera department to comment loudly on the safety behaviour of, say, a member of the art department. There are circumstances where that has to be okay and people need to be able to raise things, even abruptly and loudly, even going around the chain of command, in emergency situations, without fear of retribution. Right now that is very often not the case, and one reason I conclude that the film and TV production sector is often abysmally poorly managed.

All this depends heavily on the size of the room, the layout, the furniture, what action you need to stage, what time of day you're shooting, and what look you're going for. My first thoughts include: Do you need to block external light somehow, for consistency as the daylight changes? 4x4 is not a very big green screen for a window. How big is the window? You may need to have the green very close to it. Two M18 and two Joker 800s is a fairly decent amount of light, although not enough to overwhelm large amounts of direct sunlight. What do you want it to look like? What time of day are you shooting?

The brief way to express this is that the rulebook is written in blood. The problem is that it doesn't always work. NASA infamously succumbed to go-fever, the normalisation of deviance and a detached and actively anti-technical management culture before Challenger, and they did something shockingly similar in Columbia. I'd bet we'll discover that the rulebook was not followed here for very similar reasons. P

We're all appalled by what appears to have happened here and if everything we're hearing is both true and complete then I find it hard to disagree with much of what has been said. If the information we have is true and complete. Personally I feel that everyone involved deserves the benefit of the doubt until the facts are in, given that the degree of ineptitude that appears to have taken place is so extreme that it calls into question whether we're really getting the whole story. I would advise caution on further speculation, much as, for instance, professional pilots tend to avoid commenting on the cause of air crashes until some sort of official report has been issued.

Confirmed by who, how?

Well, sure, but good grief, I have very rarely been involved in productions in the UK which used blank-firing weapons specifically because making it insurable requires rare, expensive people. Even in the USA, where more or less anyone can go and buy a wide variety of weapons at any time, one would expect the insurance requirements to be stern. Were they not invalidating their insurance? On top of which, even a student should be able to do better than the reports we're receiving. I could have done better, and I've had no formal training around firearms whatsoever. As ever I suspect we don't have the full story and I'm loath to speculate further.

I hate to sound a note of dissent, but I'm not sure what relevance the union connection has. If even half of what we've heard is true, a series of absolutely catastrophic oversights was made here. Many serious accidents are eventually shown to have been caused by a combination of several factors which, individually, might reasonably be interpreted as a mistake anyone could make. If - if - what we're being told is true and the whole story, which it may not be, then these were not small mistakes. These were very, very big mistakes that most people should not be capable of making without involving significant external factors (chronic fatigue and understaffing spring to mind). I have very little experience with handguns, but I've seen no comment on this so far, including the rules that should have been followed, that has made me go and look anything up. This was not hard stuff. As such the idea that this is an issue of insufficiently experienced people is, in my view, giving people excuses. This is a big, obvious danger. Anyone of average intelligence should have been able to control that danger, if only to the point of realising they were out of their depth and stopping. It shouldn't take a twenty year union veteran to make that decision. On that basis I suspect there might be some details of what happened to which we're not privy.

Sounds reasonable. Depends what sort of time of day you might end up shooting. If you have the resources to fully tent the windows, great.

Speaking as someone who has at least some small influence over "what's in the papers," it won't be "in the papers" until someone who was there goes on the record to talk about it. You know where to find me. P

That's beautifully explained. I'd never got my head fully around that.

I've even used then on anamorphic lenses - I wondered if it was going to be an issue, but it worked fine. P

The viewfinder Blackmagic made for the Ursa Mini is pretty reasonable, and it just takes 12V XLR power and SDI. It may be worth checking that whatever you get will accept all the signal formats you will want to use on the Alexa. Some are pickier than others. P