J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR

I don't think any K-3's come with an 85. They usually come with a couple of ND's a yellow wratten and a diopter. So you will need to buy one to expose K-40 properly under daylight illumination.

I'll add a few more thoughts from the perspective of the DP. I agree with the other posts about listening, it's probably the most important thing you can do along with anticipating what the DP/Operator needs. Be quick and accurate about moving the camera when the DP tells you where to position it. I can't stand when I make it obvious where I want the camera, walk off set for a moment, return and find it a few feet from where I specified. The good AC will throw something, like a roll of tape, down on the spot while I'm still standing there. Also, try to look at things from the perspective of other crew members. If the DP or Operator are doing a lot of handheld with a heavy camera ask if they would like you to hold the camera between takes. The same goes if they have to operate from a strange position such as lying on their back. You should take the initiative and offer to hand them the camera in the proper position and take it away when the shot is done. Anyway just be there to take the burden off when asked. As mentioned before stay calm and relaxed. If you're focused on the job you won't have time to be tense anyway. If you're nervous or scared that does tend to spread through the crew. That's one of the first things I learned as DP of a good size crew, is your emotion seems to be THE emotion to everybody. Finally, my big personal pet peeve is don't make any remarks about the lighting. It can very easily seem like you are being negative about the DP's work even if you aren't. Something as simple as "I wonder if he/she'll add diffusion to that light?" could be seen as second guessing the DP. Don't do it.

IMO, teperature always works better being "sold" by the actors and wardrobe rather than the lighting. If they are in a hot room, they should be sweating and fanning themselves, wearing fewer clothes. A shot of a fan goes a long way. Depending on the scene I might place a rim-light that's fairly hot so it bounces off of the "sweat" on the actors and maybe keep the general tone of the scene a little overexposed looking (only in the highlights for a night scene). Personally, I find some attempts to convey heat by using lots of saturated warm colors in the wardrobe, set design, location and film timming to have the opposite effect. To me "heat" looks white, desaturated and overexposed.

Changing the playback speed is probably the standard way of doing a shot like this. I'ts done all the time, usually running the playback faster to get that dreamy look. It would be the way I would go, to me the greenscreen would be the harder more involved way to do it. You have to light and shoot twice, not to mention you'll have a limited range of movement. Changing playback speed would allow you to make virtually any move you wanted.

Gotta mention this guy, he's a constant influence on me. Here is the famous DP when he was an actor from an episode of "Combat!" playing the character Bialos. Can you name him? It's an easy one.

This is a tough one Leon. I just decided to post some from one of my favorite films of all time "Fiddler on the Roof", but I can think of many, many more. This is probably the icon shot of the movie: I love this shot in every way: This one is classic and reminds of a Van Gogh painting: They did a great job depicting autumn and winter. In this first shot in Autumn you can just see the weave stocking Morris had on the lens. A winter shot: The wedding scene is is flooded with a beautiful soft warm light, with delicate back lights:

Personally I could do it either way but I prefer a director that has a solid idea of what he wants. I don't like directors who just say, "Ok lets go in for some singles.." without any explanation, there are many, many kinds of singles and close-ups. I'm confident I could shoot the proper ones on my own but I don't like to hear later on that some of the angles were "missing." The best way is when you and the director can look at the blocking with a viewfinder and discuss the general angles and how that will lead into the medium and close shots. Then it's up to you (and good to consult the operator if you have one) to pick the precise framing in relation to the characters, architecture, lighting etc.

For me right now it's mostly Deschanel, Richardson and Deakins. But there are just too many really good guys past and present to even consider naming them all.

On the feature I just shot we smoked a party scene with a small fogger, I guess motivated by people smoking cigarettes. What I didn't expect was the fog to be yellow. It had a noticeable color, what gives with that?

I just used Microsoft Publisher and saved it as a jpeg. Then I imported into Photoshop to resize it.

Watch the end credits of "Being There" Peter Sellers is just cracking everybody up.

I thought I would post a frame grab of the guy on the other end of the phone conversation as it's a simple light setup. It's also one all cinematogarphers will have to do many times during their career, fake light from a practical lamp. This setup was also shot during the day but it is a night interior. I allowed some window light to spill in on the top of the back wall behind the flag for a bit of gradation. This time I used a 3200K ECA bulb in the china ball for warmer fill and there is a tube of 1/2 CTB wrapped around a 40 watt bulb in the practcal lamp to knock off the redness. Here is the frame grab: Here is a plot of the lighting:

The stills were grabbed from my NLE after dumping some of the footage to my hard drive. I like working with the DVX-100, it is what it is though. It definitely lacks the resolution and color depth of film.

Welcome to the forum Larry. I read the Super-16 thing on another forum but I don't remember which one. Only if they would show it in 1.78! That would be awesome. Great work anyway, though.

To continue on with David's simple lighting setups theme, I'll show you one from the digital feature I'm currently shooting called "Main Street." In this setup we see the character make a phone call. She walks into frame right picks up a phone, we pan left with her, then she hops on a couch. This is a night interior but we had to shoot it during the day. I stylized it a bit by just putting ND and double CTB over the window that is at the first of the shot. I used two tweenies as edge lights and their spill picks up pieces of the room. One in the doorway in the shot and the other in a bathroom that isn't seen to the left. I then added a 20" China ball with a BCA bulb dimmed way down as fill. The daylight bulb helps to compensate for the redness you get while dimming. This was shot on the 3200K pre-set on the DVX-100A. There is also a practical lamp seen in the shot and it has a compact flourescent bulb in it. It was already there and the shade was a dark color so I didn't do anything to it. Here is the first of the shot with the window: Here is the shot after the pan left: Here is a plot of the lighting:

While not a big fan of the DVX lens system either the follow focus setup is a tremendous help. Especially if you're doing some hand-held work where it is difficult for the assistant to get his hand on the lens. He can use the flex extension with no problem. Generally in DV you're not making obvious focus changes due to the depth of field. But focus changes ARE needed just the same as with a film camera. A lot of DV stuff only appears to be in focus when it really isn't.

I like to make frames out of aluminum angle stock. You can get some that is like a half inch on one side and 3/4th's on the other. Make it into a square by using those flat steel corner reinforcements made for picture frames. They have a place for two bolts on each leg. Bolt through the 1/2 inch side and that is the face of the frame where you put the material. The 3/4 side pinches easily into a grip head. The only drawback is the frame does suffer from twist but not much.

I've been working in a house all week with a very small kitchen, small entry hall with window in door and a tiny bathroom. We don't have enough crew or time to apply gell even to those windows. So I've been using open scrims to knock the light down outside of them. The bathroom and front door are OK because they have pebbled glass. I've been pulling down the mini blinds in the kitchen and cracking them open a bit and it hides the net pretty good but it does have a blurry look to it. The window is small and at the back and I only scrim it far enough to take out most of the blowout but not all.

Damn, I didn't get anything accept some gift cards for Best Buy. Guess I'll have to shop for my own DVD's. I did drop a bunch of hints about the new "Mary Poppin's" SE DVD, but it did no good.

I've got a Bell & Howell (Eiki) Sound 16 and a Kodak Pageant. The Pageant's are the best.

I use PPro 1.5 all the time on 24pa DVX footage and have no problems. However there is a bug if you try to export to tape and replace the pulldown. I have no problem authoring 24p DVD's or exporting 60i or 24p avi's. Personally I think it's a very cool program. I have an ATI graphics card BTW.

If you live in a place where a lot of shooting is going on it's often best to find out where the locations are and just go watch. It's easy on a lot of exterior locations. I've even been to several closed sets and I'll happen to see somebody I know on the crew and they let me in. The key is to be like a shadow and sometimes you can watch all day. Don't even bother talking to the DP unless he invited you, just watch, learn.

Like I said, I'm no lawyer but I'm pretty sure it actually is against the law. I was told by the editor of "Texas Highways" to never shoot post offices without special clearance for that reason. They aren't going to bust you for photographing the Statue of Liberty or a state park etc. However there were recently several cases where people have been detained for photographing government buildings, there were two instances here in Dallas. They were both being held for illegal photography of government property. As far as building logos, I would avoid it for commercial for-profit motion pictures.

Although, I'm not a lawyer but having shot stills photography for T & L magazines. I went by the rule of an identifiable person. People in the background of a longshot usually aren't identifiable. Even if the person says, "Look that's me with my red jacket and backpack." If you can't clearly see the face it was publishable. Same with people with their backs to the camera. Kids in a high school is a big No No. Television news in many of the big markets have policies to never show kids faces. Even though as pointed out they will often shoot in public areas and show adults faces. If you did shoot in a public space and the person who sued wasn't the focus of the shot, that person would still have to prove you harmed them somehow. As for building exteriors. There is nothing they can do unless you show their logo. I'm shooting an exterior location next month where we are shooting on the sidewalks and an alleyway in a business district. When we contacted the business to get releases they demanded insurance and letters promising to fix anything we damaged. Of course we told them forget it because we aren't shooting IN their buildings. They were pretty mad when told by the city we don't need any of that to shoot on public streets. (in this area, yours could be different) We were just looking for an extra layer of protection. BTW, it is illegal to photograph government property in the USA. That includes post offices.

Use a convertable or a car with a large enough moon roof to get a higher angle shot than normal from the back seat. You can see that in Godard's "Breathless."