Jess Haas

As far as tie-ins go there are safe tie-ins and unsafe tie-ins. If someone feels the need to have someone standing there with a board ready to hit them away it is probably an unsafe tie-in for a number of reasons. Doing a tie-in to an unenergized box isn't inherently dangerous if done properly by a qualified individual. I try not to give anyone a financial incentive to do a tie-in instead of renting a generator. Even if I am already working on a job I generally refuse to do a tie-in without being paid extra, and if I feel that it is dangerous I will refuse to do it. I do a lot fewer tie-ins these days, but there are some situations where one is actually called for. The last one I did needed power at the location 24/7 for over 3 weeks. A generator was not feasible so I did a tie-in. I shut the power off to the box, added a breaker, used UL listed adapters to add larger lugs for the neutral and ground, removed the knockouts so that I could properly route the cables out of the box and closed it all up when I was done. There is very rarely a need to do a tie-in hot. There is almost always a sub box somewhere that can be shut off with a little bit of planning. Also Trico clamps are no longer legal as they lost their UL listing. They also aren't all that safe, especially when used hot. I would much rather lose a job than a life and I do not hesitate to tell people when I believe something to be unsafe. I can happily say that I have never lost a job because I refused to do something that I felt was unsafe. We have always been able to come up with another solution and in the end I feel that people respect me more because of it. ~Jess

If you position lights and then power them after no one is in the water, and make sure that there is no possibility of someone coming in contact with the body of water, and use GFCIs then I don't really see a problem in clean fresh water. I would stay away from saline pools and saltwater. The cables may absorb some water which could lead to issues with them. If someone wants to pay for the bulb I will gladly find out. Even a burnt out bulb will do if someone wants to send it my way, it just needs to have the protective plastic that kino provides on it and the pins can't have been broken. On a side note fluorescent bulbs used underwater will most likely look slightly more magenta than usual since they will most likely be functioning at below normal operating temperature. This should make it possible to overdrive them a bit without getting the usual green spike so you may be able to get away with operating 2ft tubes in 4ft mode. ~Jess

I am not talking about the transformer keeping you safe, I am talking about the possibility for it to hide the ground fault from the GFCI. I don't know if this is occurring, but I have a suspicion that it could be possible. The very nature of a transformer seems to me like it would hide a ground fault in the same way that an isolation transformer does. Whether a reference to ground is isolated seems irrelevant. ~Jess

One question I want answered is whether the transformers in a kinoflo ballast isolate the fixture from some of the protection that a a GFCI provides. Something I read recently gave me the idea that it is possible for a transformer to do just that. When I use two redundancy is exactly what I am after. When I go to a location that has GFCIs installed I very rarely know the history of the units. While they may trip when I press the test button that doesn't mean that it certainly will the next time there is a current leak. I prefer to add my own unit that I know the history of and that I know to be in working order. Adding it on top of the other one just adds a little bit of redundancy in case one of them was to fail. Actually I believe the NEC says only a qualified individual can perform them, not a licensed electrician. Some municipalities have gone out of their way to define this as a licensed electrician, but I do not believe that to be the case everywhere. That being said I am no expert on the matter, if someone can point me to something that says otherwise I would gladly read it. I will say that many people who do tie-ins are not really qualified individuals. ~Jess

I like to use GFCIs as a redundant safety measure not as primary protection. I will also often use two GFCIs on a line since most outlets near pools tend to be GFCI protected already and I prefer to add my own devices. I of course test both devices before use. As primary protection lights should be secured to where they can not fall in the water and underwater lights should be properly sealed. Even if a GFCI functions properly there is still a chance for it to shock you before shutting off the circuit. I have tested them in the past and a short to ground is capable of creating quite a spark before the GFCI shuts the circuit off. Also hot to neutral shorts will not be detected by a GFCI and as such they provide no protection against them. Arc-fault breakers should never be relied on for people protection. ~Jess

Woops, your right about the GFCI numbers. I even knew that it was 5ma but I guess thats what I get for writing while I am tired. Thanks for the correction! There is also one more error that I noticed in one of my posts. The amperage numbers that I put were based on numbers from the kinoflo site which are based on 120vac. I believe that the bulbs area actually running at a higher voltage but I am not certain what it is. It is most likely something in the 230-320v range. That means that the amperage being sent to the lamp is roughly half what I previously stated, so about 1.5amps. Tesla coils are relatively low-current devices. As the voltage is increased the amperage is decreased. That is if power is a constant of course. I would not call kino heads low current. The voltage isn't nearly as high as with a Tesla coil and they have a decent amount of current running through them. When operating normally a 4x4' kino head will have about 1.5amps running through it(could be higher if the voltage they are operating at is lower than I think it is). The ballast functions to limit this current but if it were to fail this number could be significantly increased. Your experience with using kinos in the pool shows that it has been done and no one was hurt. This does not prove that it is safe, simply that in a particular instance no one was hurt. No one has proven that it is unsafe, but until proven otherwise I prefer to consider it unsafe. When I do underwater shoots my life and the life of many other people are in my hands and I prefer to err on the side of caution. ~Jess

Small scissor lift on uneven ground is bad news. Talk to the place you are renting the scissor lift from and ask what they have that can be leveled and what they have to level them. For what you are doing it really sounds like you need the bigger scissor lift anyway. Either convince production to pay for it or figure out another way to light it. No point in renting something that isn't going to work. ~Jess

If there aren't curtains then some careful flagging and very clean windows can make lighting through windows that are in the shot work. Also bigger lights helps here because a bigger light farther away will not fall off as fast so the window will not be as hot. As you said you can always cheat it with an interior light, but it can be hard to get the correct angle. The right solution depends on the particular situation. ~Jess

Well Jim is going to get a lot of emails then because I also emailed him about it :-) I also emailed representatives from Hydroflex and Pace Technologies to get their take on the matter. I may even try to get a physics professor and an electrical engineer involved in the discussion shortly ;-) I am still of the opinion that while it may work there aren't sufficient safeguards in place to make it safe. If I can get a few of my questions as to how the kinoflo ballast functions and how how electricity behaves under certain conditions it might be possible to come up with a set of guidelines and procedures for how and when it can be safely done. ~Jess

Hey Mike, we are all over here: http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=27380 Hey Michael, I hope that was so glad and not so pissed :-) ~Jess

That isn't quite right. Check out "The skin effect myth" section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_Tesla_coil At 25khz electricity can penetrate the human body just fine since it is a relatively poor conductor. The high frequency has even less of an effect on electricities ability to penetrate water. At that high of a frequency the human nervous system isn't effected as much which is why you don't feel shocks from a tesla coil. That doesn't mean electricity can't cause damage. Tesla coils also tend to operate at very low current levels. The higher frequency does make it safer but I am not convinced that it is safe enough. I am also concerned about the fact that the failure of certain components within the ballast could cause electricity at lower frequencies to get into the water. This might not be readily apparent. Lower frequencies might already be provided by the ballast as a start up current. The fact that you felt any shock at all makes me think that bad things could happen. Another thing to be concerned with when using GFCIs is that the the nature of the ballast may actually mask ground faults causing it not to trip. This depends a lot on the design of the ballast. I can't say for sure that using stock kinos in the water is not safe, but until someone can prove to me without a doubt that it is and that there are failsafes for all reasonable failure modes I would not get in the water with them nor would I put anyone else in the water with them. Until then I will keep renting hydroflos. I would really like to get some engineers from kinoflo involved in this discussion, as well with the guys from hydroflex and pace. Another issue is the fact that pressure increases with depth and that fluorescent bulbs were not meant to hold up to that kind of pressure. I would say that when submerged they would instantly become more fragile, and at some point they will implode, but I don't know what depth that would be at. ~Jess

I believe that atleast one of the kinoflo manuals used to say that they could be used underwater. I don't believe that it said anything about the safety of actors or crew in this situation. There no longer appears to be anything in the manuals about using them underwater. I have been told that a kino will function underwater and I believe it. There are a number of reasons for this. While live connectors are exposed to water, under normal circumstances water isn't that great of a conductor so most of the power will take the path of least resistance and flow back to the neutral. The electricity will create an electrical field around the connectors and if it comes into close enough proximity to anything grounded electricity will leak to ground. A person could become part of this path to ground which is where the safety hazard comes in. Some power may even leak between the hot and neutral conductors. Normally a short such as this would cause the circuit breaker to trip. This is not the case with fluorescent fixtures since the ballast functions to limit the current running through them. This means the breaker will not trip if a short occurs. Kinoflos do not use waterproof cables or connectors. This means that over time water will leak into the cables. Besides being bad for them this can greatly increase the chances of shorts and electrical leaks which could lead to serious problems. At 120v it normally takes about 60ma of current flowing through an adult human body and passing through the heart in order for their heart to stop. That is if current goes in one hand and out the other or in one hand and out the foot, etc.... When wet it will most likely take even less current in order to have the same effect. A kino flo ballast sends 800ma at 230 volts to each bulb. So for a 4 bank kino that would mean that there is 3.2amps of 230 volt power, obviously much more than the less than 60milli-amps necessary to stop the human heart. In order for someone to be killed like this while using a kino underwater a part of their body would have to come in close enough proximity to the power and another part of their body would have to be in close enough proximity to ground. This will not always be the case and as a result people have used them underwater without killing anybody. I do not believe that makes them safe. There are lots of possible sources of ground available in a pool and water greatly increases the likelihood that power from that light will find its way through you to it. There are way too many variables involved in using stock kinos underwater for them to really be safe to work with. When using any sort of power around water it should be connected through a Class A GFCI. This device will shut off power if over 60ma of power leaks to ground. They should be located close to the source of power where they themselves can not get wet and so that there is no unprotected power running where it could get wet. They should be tested before each and every use because they can fail. They should also not be used as a sole means of protection because there are many circumstances in which they are not enough. If one were to use stock kinos underwater they could try to add a measure of safety by adding GFCIs. There is a good chance that this would result in the GFCI tripping a lot which would ultimately make the combination either unusable or atleast a pain in the ass. There are also a number of reasons that it would not provide enough protection to keep someone from getting injured or killed. For one the GFCI could fail. They are rather inexpensive devices that can fail, and in my opinion should not be used a sole means of protection. GFCIs also were not designed to protect people underwater. It is possible that a wet person will be injured before the GFCI cuts off power and even if it does not stop their heart it could cause them to drown. People with heart problems, the children and the elderly are much more likely to be killed at lower currents. It is also possible for current to flow out of the fixture, through an individual and back into the neutral. This would most likely occur with a broken bulb or a break in the cable. The GFCI provides zero protection for this since no current needs to leak to ground for it to occur. Regular lights have been used underwater in many films. Even many tungsten fixtures will function underwater. This does not mean that they are safe and there is a reason that underwater lighting fixtures have been developed by companies such as Hydroflex and Pace Technologies. These underwater fixtures have become the industry standard way of doing things and if something goes wrong when using regular fixtures underwater you will probably have very little chance of winning the resulting court cases. Underwater lights are actually not very expensive. Hydroflex's Hydroflos start at $100/day, Tungsten lights start at $85/day and their HMIs start at $250/day. These are all rather comparable with their above water counterparts and even if you have to ship them they should not be a very hard sell. Another way that I have lit underwater scenes on many occasions is by pointing Pars down into the pool and then bouncing the light. The fixture stays dry at a safe distance and the light gets where it needs to go. When doing this make sure to secure the fixture well so that it can not fall in to the water, and make sure that all power is on class A GFCIs. ~Jess

I have used the Sekonic 358 extensively. I like having the ability to turn the dome away from me while taking readings and also find the retractable dome to be somewhat useful. I believe it also has some other advantages but I havn't compared them lately. ~Jess

Alkaline batteries such as AAs leak potassium hydroxide which is a strong base. Baking soda is for cleaning up acidic batteries such as car batteries because it itself is a base. For cleaning up Alkaline battery leaks you should use an acid such as white vinegar. It will also dissolve rust but if left too long can start to dissolve any remaining planing. ~Jess

Even if you have to have it skinnied up a bit I would think that it would work fine. The legs don't have to be out all of the way as long as you secure it well. If the lift is small enough to have trouble fitting a stand then I would be concerned about putting much of a load on the edge of the basket. You definitely don't want a load outside of the basket. ~Jess

The other direction is the least stable so this isn't the best idea. I would put a combo stand in the middle of the basket and ratchet strap it down, especially if you are planning on raising it any. Scissor lifts don't handle loads on the side as well as condors do so rigging much to the side might not be a great idea. ~Jess

Negative fill is also extremely useful in places such as supermarkets with lots of overhead lighting. If you don't need to bring the light level up you can often use a flag for a bit of negative fill and a bounce board to create better looking lighting without having to add any lights. Not always the right tool for the job but a great one to have in your bag of tricks. ~Jess

Elmo made a loop attachment for their super8 projectors. If you can find one it should do exactly what you want. I have seen them on ebay before but that was a number of years ago. ~Jess

One more thing. On commercials and similar things rates are often based on a 10 or 8 hour day instead of 12. The rate is usually about the same if not more but overtime kicks in quicker and the shoots are usually shorter. I even did one commercial where the rate was based on a 5 hour day. ~Jess

As Gaffer it is your responsibility to look out for your crew. On really low budget stuff they won't have much leverage to negotiate but you should. I always try to get overtime and turnaround clauses even on the ridiculosly low budget stuff. The reason I do this is not because I want to be paid more. You need to give the producers a financial incentive to not have ridiculous hours and ridiculously short turn arounds. Otherwise they think that it will save them money to make the days as long as possible. I am personally a much bigger stickler about turnarounds than hours. I try to get 12 hour turnarounds for myself and crew whenever possible but even union grips and electricians are only guaranteed a 10 hour turn around so that is what I usually end up with unless there is much travel time. If people are not getting enough sleep then things go slower, things get broken and people get hurt. Producers never seem to believe me on this but I have seen long hours and short turnarounds cost production a lot more money in the long run than it would have to simply add a few days and use a reasonable schedule. When negotiating deals I can't count the number of times when a producer would tell me that we would never go over 12 hours so they didn't want to put overtime in the deal memo. If they don't want to give you overtime than tell them you are fine with that but you and your crew will be leaving after working for 12 hours. Also don't forget the penalty for forced calls. Don't be afraid of telling them that your crew won't be showing up until a certain time even when they try to set call time really early. Of course sometimes long hours and short turnarounds are necessary for various reasons. That is fine, just make sure not to give the production an incentive to do it everyday. On the really low budget stuff I sometimes don't even bother pointing out that we went into overtime as long as things stay reasonable and it is not a regular event. As I said the point isn't really to make more money, it is to keep things reasonable and to keep people safe. A lot of people have died from falling asleep at the wheel because they weren't getting enough sleep. So for low budget stuff my rate is usually based on a 12 hour day, time and a half after 12, increases to either double or triple time at some point after that. 10 hour turn around with time and a half for forced calls when turnaround is less than 10 hours. That 10 does not include travel time when it is significant. If I can get it I make the turnaround 12 instead of 10. I personally prefer to word the contract as hourly with an hourly minimum. It makes overtime and everything simpler and just seems to make more sense. You need to make sure to make this deal not just for yourself but also for your crew. If one person gets overtime production will have no problem going into overtime, if your whole department gets it then they have a real incentive to keep things reasonable. Not all department heads look out for their crews like this but the good ones do and as a result they have a lot easier time finding good crew even when the pay isn't great. Whenever I am in gaffer, key, best boy or DP I make a point of making sure that my crew is taken care of. I have even been on productions where I was a third and I ended up negotiating a better deal for the department. Shouldn't have had to but they wanted to hire me so I told them what it would take and they did it. ~Jess

I wasn't totally serious ;-) I would be crazy enough to try it with a very light camera such as an HVX or something but that is about it. And when I say try I don't mean show up the day of the shoot and say I can do it, I mean go there before hand and see if I feel comfortable enough to do some controlled stuff. Have you seen the video of the guy on the unicycle with the glidecam? Don Juan, off road, in the dark on a unicycle. Now that is nuts :-) ~Jess

Might want to do it in the other order. After becoming a Scientologist you may no longer be able to afford "The Secret" so you are better off wasting your money on it first. Both really function on stating the obvious although only one involves space aliens. ~Jess

Why not do all three? Try to get work as both an Electrician and an AC. Chances are one will workout better than the other but in the process you will hopefully get at least some experience with the other. Then on the side you can DP short films and whatever other projects you can get your hands on. If you go the AC route you should pay as much attention to lighting as you can while working as an AC. I have seen far too many green DPs who went the AC route and have no clue when it comes to lighting and just let the gaffer make all the decisions. I personally chose juicing over ACing since I was already getting lots of hands on camera experience on the side and felt that lighting was a lot harder to master than the technical aspects of a camera. I have since added underwater camera op and most recently steadicam to my bag of tricks and have also been DPing smaller projects. ~Jess

If you want to try shooting anything sync sound there is a little trick I have used when shooting sync sound super8 with great success. Slate both the beginning and the end of a take. Then in post you can stretch the audio to fit the take. As long as you don't have extremely long takes and your motor is somewhat steady this should give great results. Of course you still have to deal with the lawnmower sound.... ~Jess

Places such as these often have some sort of existing lighting to work with. Many I have worked in have had various sorts of electronic and computer controlled robotic lights. Make sure that there is someone there who knows how to operate their dimmer board or whatever they have and it can save you a lot of time. These lights are often over gelled with crazy colors so you will probably want to sneak something close to white light in as well to get some decent skin tones. Par cans are great for shoots like this because if you see them they look like they should be there. Par 64s can take 1k or even 1200w bulbs which pack a mean punch. They will help you get a decent stop but may overpower practical lighting if left clean. They can also take lower wattage bulbs. Luckily 7218 is fast with crazy latitude. Unfortunately you are going to want to light to a decent stop if you want anything shot with that steadicam to be in focus. I actually find night club scenes somewhat easy to light because you can rig lights just about anywhere and if you use the right fixtures it is even okay to see them. Kinos are also nice to have, especially with the individual wiring harnesses. Throw some color on them and the bulbs can become practicals. Allow yourself lots of time for prelighting and it can save you a lot of time when you are shooting. Especially if you have a good idea of what the shots or atleast the blocking will be. If you can somehow get the director, DP and actors into the location for a rehearsal the day before then you can get a crew to the location early to rig lights, power, etc. and be mostly lit as soon as everyone else is ready to go. That is of course far too ideal to ever actually happen :-) Don't over light, leave some black or it won't look like a night club. If you use fog try to get a hazer as they are able to keep a consistent level of fog without a lot of hassle. If you want to see beams of light they are the way to go but I agree with Adrian that it could negatively impact your blacks. ~Jess