J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR

Well, Cremaster 3 is part of the Cremaster cycle is a series of 'art films' that I think last like 10 hours if you watch them all back to back. I tried it a couple years ago in Dallas and left after about four. I'm positive one of the cinema magazines did a story on it last year. Maybe, MovieMaker magazine. You should do some searching of their site. The website: http://www.cremaster.net is pretty cool. Did you look through it? It all seems seems a bit like a Francis Bacon painting come to life. Personally I can't stand his paintings.

I don't write breakdowns but in a good film I do like to watch with the sound off and repeat scenes until I've figured where all the lights were. Turning the sound off really helps me to see what is going on.

I agree we should keep the hard-core politics off the board. This is about cinematography, not where you stand in the current political climate. I've seen politics destroy the usefuelness of other community boards recently. No one's communicating just arguing. I've found it a unique thing in the professional artistic community sometimes when people start talking politics, many others will just tell them to stop it before it starts an argument. I've seen that on a set and in production meetings. It's better to just not start it. As Barney Fife would say "Knip it! Knip it in the bud..."

I would classify it as subtle. I think what happens is the emulsion gets soft then doesn't 'set up' right. So it changes the way the light is focused in the various layers. Film won't get that hot generally if you're shooting in the sun. It takes a quick very concentrated heat. As with all these crazy things, just do some tests.

That's the first thing I thought, too. If it is VP&T, they do great work on all their machines. It might be that it will be easier or cheaper for you to get on the Mellenium do to the schedule and I'm not sure if all their colorists even work on the Spirit. Peggy Clark-Holden is a great colorist there, she rules! I would personally opt for the Spirit first and Mellenium second.

You're right Matt some people don't want to wear that title because of the stigma that goes with it. Low quality,etc. I don't think it's deceptive. What if the "filmmaker" started years ago shooting on film and now he shoots video? Is he not a "filmmaker' anymore? It's just semantics, people who make narrative pieces (as opposed to pure news and commercials) are called filmmakers. They are also "Motion Picture" makers, whether video or film. I think it's the "videomakers" intention to align himself with the narrative group and not the video (i.e news) group.

I had a photography teacher in school who would bake those one time use cameras. I would agree with the statement "...which broke down the film's ability to form the sharpest picture. It gave it almost a period look because the stock looks more like it used to look, it looks older." That's exactly the effect. He would do that as well as we would run the C-41 machine with water instead of bleach. I've left film in a hot car for a week on purpose before shooting it and it has the same effect. Especially noticeable on cross-process reversal. Some of that gray market Kodak still film has obviously been heated up during shipping because it often exhibits these same qualities.

I wouldn't feel cheated. In fact I would love someone to invite me to play Atari! Do you have 'Pitfall'? (sorry Rob, I couldn't resist. I know what you are getting at.)

Yeah, I thought if I ever did it again I might try those. It would be more effective that way.

Just wanted to mention I LOVE the blue light in that video. I've ripped it off (ahem, paid homage to it) several times. But I used double CTB on a bunch of daylight Kino's with this luminous make-up powder stuff.

Some of what Alvin said about shooting wide, I've noticed is often countered with a closeup at the end of a long string of movements. Maybe you can plan it out to end that way. The classic way would be to snap zoom into the face of the character. You could also shoot a wide shot of a series of movement say, in profile, then switch to a 90 degree close-up only for the last punctuated move. Then you could go wide in that direction. Essentially the character is changing direction after each series of moves.

It's not difficult to load but almost impossible to do it in a darkroom or changing bag. The semi auto loading system refers to a series of pinch rollers and loop formers that force the film around the drive sprocket and through the gate. It really doesn't work that well and the loop formers will scratch your film. It's best to remove all those pieces from the camera. The screw mount takes Zeiss lenses that have the M42 (Pentax) screw-mount. Not all Zeiss lenses are available in that mount. Most of them are older, I believe Eastern Block manufactured lenses. Some of it is actually OK glass. I should point out that these are lenses made for still cameras. Some are not suitable for use with the K-3 because they have a 'plunger' arangement that activates the diaphram. If you do not have a way to lock it down or switch the lens into manual mode, you cannot shoot at any aperture other than wide open.

I try to always say 'DV' or 'digital' feature in that case. But I have no problem with calling a project shot on video a film in general terms because, like David pointed out, it's common for people to say that instead of 'movie.' Maybe we should just call them 'joints'?

I don't know if over 200 days on the DVX-100 alone in the last year or so qualifies me as a serious shooter or not but I don't usually use auto anything either. The one time I remember using anything on documentary was once I used auto-exposure on a shot with the camera rigged to look straight down on a sidewalk as someone wrote on it with chalk. I had a 6x6 butterfly up to avoid harsh shadows but there were these little puffy annoying clouds that moved in and out of the sun really fast. I switched on auto-exposure and it worked a treat.

David, did you operate on 'Northfork.' I just watched it again after many months and I can't say enough about how truly beautiful and sweet that movie really is. One of the best movies nobody has seen. (don't mean that in a bad way)

A good movie for this sort of light is "Topsy Turvy." There are a few shots of some incredibly soft light coming through windows.

When I bought my K-3's I was so affraid I was going to be ripped off because the guy only wanted Western Union. But he had numerous positive feedback for selling K-3's and not plastic toys or something. It took about 3 months for them to show up but they did. At that time about a year and a half ago, people didn't want to take PayPal because someone could authorize payment then somehow cancel it by claiming the seller was the scammer. Has this changed?

The older bulb flash guns are better for this because the flash lasts "longer." Otherwise, a professional flash system can be set to slower speeds. Isn't that also the reason they have those prop guns that ignite a bit of gas for the flash? So it's brighter and longer.

It's probably the law everywhere (in the U.S.) that only a licensed electrician is allowed to tie in. If you need amps, you could tap the 240v socket that most houses have. They run around 30 or 40 amps. You still need to make sure you aren't going to fry something.

Like a lot of people have suggested it's probably your best bet to subtract some light from the back ground. Maybe this would be a good place for a hand held shot going from the cooler to the cashier? Go docco to heighten the dramatic action.

One way to make a grocery store or othe public space look moody if it is otherwise supposed to be functioning normally is with art direction and establishing shots. You could make the store seem like it's creepy and empty or something just with shots, art direction and sound. If some Zombies haven't cut the power off or anything it might not be good to light it any other way than what it looks like. You could use negative fill or a subtle light from the floor to build up a bit of contrast and modelling on the actors. You could also have the shots be on aisles where all the packaging is very dark (weed out all the white Ding Dong packages etc) and contrast that against light colored floors and ceiling if available. You could even bump up the contrast in camera or post to emphasize the effect. As always test before you do it for real.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you Phil, are you saying XP Home doesn't support multiple monitors with extended desktop? Mine does. You go to the monitor control panel and it allows you to pick which monitor is number 1 or 2 then you can check a box that says "extend my desktop" or something. That allows me to stretch the PPro timeline and move palettes across both monitors. In order to do it with that program though you have to minimize the screen then drag it out and save the workspace. I have XP Home and service pack 1. I'm deadly affraid to install service pack 2 yet.

I have the following setup, it has worked pretty much flawless. I've had maybe two frozen screens the entire time I've used it. Off the shelf emachine T3065 AMD Athalon 3000+ @ 2.17Ghz Pumped up with 1GB RAM 160GB 7200rpm system drive 250MB 7200rpm media drive with 8MB buffer Pioneer A07 DVD burner Radeon 9200se Dual head video card Very old but compliant ADS Pyro 1394 card EMU 1820m sound card with PCI and sync daughter card (completely awesome sound card by the way same ADC's as PROTools TDM) Two Dell CRT's M990/M991 I can edit with Premiere Pro 1.5 and run the sound through the EMU mix system at the same time with no problem. That being said I'm not stuck on one kind of system. If I could afford an Apple I would probably get one setup with FCP HD.

He has a book? What be it called?

Read American Cinematographer, they give the lowdown on that stuff or ask here.