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Phil Rhodes

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Everything posted by Phil Rhodes

  1. I've always built my own. I won't deny there's typically some minor snagging, but there's a very large advantage: if it breaks, you know how to fix it faster than any warranty service. As Andy quite correctly puts it, components are in short supply, though there's perhaps some sign of that easing a little if the reports are to be believed. Some money can be saved. (By the way, @Andy Jarosz, I spent some time at Orbital in downtown LA today and met some people who recognised your name. Another AJ says hello. Isn't their big stage big?)
  2. I'm looking for someone to work as a general camera and lighting assistant on a very small demo shoot for one day on May 16, in a town just east of London. Reasonable rates paid depending on experience. Nothing objectionable in the tone or content of the piece; it's an adaptation of Shakespeare. Complete beginners very welcome; this is not a big deal shoot, but I need an extra pair of hands to help out and thought it'd be worth at least mentioning it here - it's worked in the past! Get in touch via the forum for more details. Phil
  3. I think Sirui has at least the intention to do complete sets. The APS-C coverage series includes a 24, 50 and 75. There's a 35 in the micro four-thirds version, but with coverage limited to micro four-thirds sensors, and I'm not sure how many of those they're going to sell. They've also done a 1.6:1 50mm full frame. Time will tell if they can get the others out but if they can make them all for $1500...
  4. If I mention Sirui do I get baleful stares from the high-end people? Seriously - thanks for that, it's super-comprehensive. Do things like the Panavision B get used much? I've heard of C and E a lot.
  5. It's better than that. 1536000 / (24000/1001) = 64064. It even works for 23.976!
  6. Hi folks I'll be upfront that I'm researching for an article here. I'm looking at anamorphic lenses with a particular interest in listing recent releases, but I was wondering what it'd take to list all of the anamorphic options that currently exist. I would imagine it's not more than a couple of dozen, at least in terms of things available commonly at rental. So, um, who wants to go first?
  7. Wow, that stuff dates itself. When were they made - looks like late 70s, and I see early 70s date codes on the chips. P
  8. Is it only there on alternate frames? Sometimes you see that on old movies, almost as if it's a reflection of a light that's barely out of the top or bottom of the frame and it seems like half the shutter is reflecting something back into frame, as if someone fitted a spare part (mirror?) which wasn't properly black painted around the edge. Speculating wildly there, but I have seen flares much like that before.
  9. Aapo, I'd be very happy to propose writing about the process of developing this, to some editors if that's of interest. Do you have a final finished version to show yet?
  10. You can get decent-quality LED strip from ebay if you look around a bit. Doesn't have to cost a fortune. Whatever you get, get enough to do the whole job in one hit, so it all matches.
  11. I think it has legitimately become less necessary with immediate monitor feedback of what you're doing. It's a matter of degree, of course, but we're not shooting 5 ASA orthochromatic monochrome anymore.
  12. I have made 8x8 frames up with ripstop nylon and it works fine. I would say it's not quite the same textile as what is often called gridcloth, which has a stiffer, more papery texture. Maybe that's just what one particular manufacturer uses and I'm not aware that either has any advantage over the other. Various kinds of semi-translucent fabric would work as a diffuser so long as they're neutral in colour (or you're aware of and happy with the fact that they aren't, as in unbleached muslin). The only issue is when people on a crew are used to particular types - someone asks for a quarter grid and you've got what you've got, and it does what it does. These days I think the LED textiles are a much better bet, anyway. Less setup, more compact, vastly more efficient. Most of them are outrageously expensive but if anything was ever worth it...
  13. If it's anything like the situation here in the UK, which I believe it is, music licensing of any kind is an absolute nightmare. Popular stuff invariably involves several different licenses covering different conceptual aspects of the right to copy, distribute and exhibit your production, and you are likely to end up negotiating it with several different entities, very possibly including the original composer or whoever inherited it. If you can't easily find a way to do that - welcome to the club. In the modern world of YouTube and everyone making short films, music rights holders would find themselves endlessly fielding inquires from people. As such you may find yourself emailing an enquiries@... address with very little chance of receiving any sort of meaningful response. This is why people make a profession out of organising music licensing. And if it's anything like a known artist or track they may have quite firm ideas about the sort of production they want to license the music to; if it's a famous name and you're not a nine-figure blockbuster, the answer may be a straightforward "no" because your budget may not be worth their while and they don't want to dilute their brand. And, as I say, even getting a "no" is something of an achievement. In short it's not a fun experience even if you can get anyone to engage with you, and I would strongly encourage people not to fall in love with recognisable pieces of music they probably can't ever have. Sorry, but that's the truth. Phil
  14. Looks like live haze to me, and a lot of space lights. (Also - minor point of protocol - Sir Roger. First names with that particular rank in the British honours system.)
  15. I'm looking at this trailer and I can't say it particularly looks desaturated. Is there an example online of what you're seeing?
  16. The problem with this stuff is that there are a thousand "reasonable" grades for any one image, which is why I've always objected slightly to the deification of colourists. So long as you can keep it consistent from shot to shot and everyone likes it, there are no rules. In that context, the shot with the cyan eyes doesn't look that wrong to me. It's cold in tone, but not to the point where I'd expect it to fail a quality control check. I think Daniel's grades do have a certain golden tone that's slightly at odds with the rain on the window, but again, it's not wrong, particularly. Maybe this is a scene just after a rain storm when the sun comes out, when the characters have realised everything's going to be OK after all. Maybe it isn't. It depends. One of the things you have to take into account is that light coming from different directions may be different colours. Assuming the actor is wearing a neutral grey coat, you can sample the collar either to the right or left of her face and get a different answer as to what's really correct. If you like the version with the cyan eyes, go with it. It's art. You can do what you like.
  17. I find most people are willing to accept at some level that HDR is a pretty good idea. Some DPs aren't particularly aware of the Vision grade, though; I've spoken to plenty of high end people who finished the conventional version and then let the colourist do the HDR. Approaches seem to differ.
  18. There are a lot of reasons for what I think you're seeing, and the reason I put it like that is that it isn't necessarily clear that what I'm seeing may not entirely match what you're seeing. Mostly I don't think you're seeing any artefact of the camera or the codec. Most cameras in 2022 use a rolling shutter which can cause some motion artefacting, but I don't think that's what you're seeing here; it causes a distortion of the image as opposed to the stutter you're describing. Likewise, codecs don't really affect motion rendering unless you have the bitrate cranked down to such a disgustingly low level that the whole thing starts to fall apart into a cloud of rippling blocks. Very few modern cameras, even quite budget ones, will have any setting that goes so low. That's the sort of problem you'll get on streaming internet video under particularly trying conditions, not from a reasonably expensive video-capable stills camera. What I think you may be seeing is simply frame rate mismatch. Your device, whether that's a laptop, desktop workstation or phone, runs its display at a fixed rate. For a lot of devices, that rate is 60 frames per second, although you may anything from 50 to 120 is possible. You may have shot material at 24. That mismatch has to be made up somehow and effectively all devices will (through various mechanisms) do that by simply doubling and tripling frames. In the case of a 60 frame display with 24 frame material, you'll see, mainly, three frames duplicated, followed by two frames duplicated, in an approximately repeating pattern. That's visible and it isn't very nice. In situations where 24-frame material has been dropped onto a 60-frame timeline in edit software you may see the same thing baked into the material, and it may then be messed with further on playback on any given device, so this can get complicated. There isn't really a solution to it. P
  19. A brief point of order; VistaVision, at least the 1954 original, wasn't quite the same size and shape as a 135 stills frame. Stills frames are supposed to be 36 by 24mm (though digital cameras vary slightly, just as "super-35mm" digital cinema cameras do) which yields a 1.5:1 image; VistaVision was specified for ratios between 1.66 and 2, so it would have had to have been a different active frame area. In practice much of this was probably eaten up in screen and projector masking, but theoretically it's not precisely the same format.
  20. My instinct is that it's pretty likely to flicker. One trick you can use, if you're able to get near it even without your actual camera, is to stick your cellphone into it, up really close, an inch away, so that the phone just sees a wash of bright light. That will make the phone close down its shutter timing to a very short exposure. You may see dark bands on the display if the LEDs are being pulse-width modulated, which they probably are in an application like that if it can fade them. If it doesn't show dark bands, it's not certain that it won't flicker, but if you do see dark bands it's a pretty strong indication that it might.
  21. As Frank says, a million things to consider, but generally things like back and edge lighting will be crucial to create depth when you don't have colour to separate things (think about how the standard teal and orange action movie thing works when you only have grey and grey...) If you're going to shoot colour and desaturate it, consider what happens if you use just the red channel, just the green channel, just the blue channel... look at what was done for The Lighthouse. The director of photography posted on this forum discussing it. P
  22. As an inverterate tinkerer, I have often pondered this one, but it's tricky. It's an awful lot of 90-degree intersections and even the far-eastern imports are alarmingly expensive. Really it's a bunch of wide black ribbon stitched together at intervals but I'm not sure how you'd do it without spending hours on a sewing machine. I can imagine ways to build a machine to do it, but that's basically what the commercial manufacturers have done, so... It's actually easier to build some LED lighting using arrays of emitters with individual collimating optics, then there's less need for a grid in the first place.
  23. "Enables Hollywood Dolly Effects." Oh, of course it does!
  24. Ah, we're talking about test targets for scanners, my mistake. Yes, buy those.
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