J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR

See, if I were on this location and that had to be our shot. Those cars would have to go. That's the best way to deal with those reflections. If the black Bimmer had to be in shot I would have it turned to eliminate said reflection. I had a guy towed once to get rid of his car. :D I need to go to church...

These kind of clamps will go right around a c-stand+foamcore.

The filter you need is an 82A that converts 3200K light to 3400K film balance. Back in the day there were two kinds of tungsten stock Type A balanced to 3400K for amateur photoflood use and Type B balanced to 3200K. Most people wouldn't bother to correct the 200 degrees K difference.

Where are you located Felipe? I too would like to see more of that puppet thing, it was creepy. Maybe you should emphasize that. Even though I said nothing jumped out at me, I have to say your reel was better than a few working professional reels I've seen. But that doesn't seem to matter as Phil has pointed out many times before and I'm starting to believe.

If it's done carefully, you won't even notice it. Especially if it's hidden by doing it when midfield objects take up most of the frame during a track or pan shot. I question whether the risk of the shot looking bad is worth it if you have the ability to match light levels with other techniques like dimming, electronic shutters, variable denstity printing and adding/removing ND's during shot which has to be disguised somehow.

Lee has some good filters for that, The Plus Green works well but you might go a little deeper with Lee 243 tungsten-to-flo 3600K. It's sick looking. You could also try mixing 212 LCT Yellow with 213 White Flame Green, maybe also mix in 230 or 232 Carbon Arc correction filters for a really Fugly look. Use all of those over a flooded tungsten unit. I usually just stick a Kino with "cool white" tubes and gelled with Plus green into a nook of the room. It will be nasty.

What do you guys think about backlight continuity? Does it jar you when a day exterior dialog scene is shot with both actors in backlight? I mean that's impossible, but it seems to make sense to the eye. Sometimes the decision to do that seems to be driven more by wanting a 'pretty' look than by logic. The thing I hate about it is sometimes it seems like it's expected that you shoot everything like that. I would rather turn the camera around and fudge the non-backlight actor so the sun is hitting him/her 3/4 front. If it's a beauty shot (older actress) I might silk the direct sun and perhaps negative fill. I've seen scenes where they were obviously shooting at morning then an afternoon turnaround. It seems they were shooting like that because they wanted some medium shots to also be in backlight. It looks OK except the shifting shadows in the MS backgrounds, it just seems like it takes more time. I guess it also has to do with how long it took to do the first single. There is a scene like that in 'City Slickers' where they are talking in the pen area of the dude ranch.

I once saw polecats used in a verticle fashion with the fixtures at the tip top. They were easy to hide behind plants and in one case an actor stood in front of one in the center of the room. But we only saw him from the chest down.

This might be what you already have. 16bl lens blimp PDF

That is such a wide-ranging question. Can you narrow it down to a specific scene from a specific film? To answer the general question it can be both ways, if the location gives you what you want then you can just supplement what is there. Easy enough. But other times that natural look may have been created with numerous fixtures and a truck full of flags, scrims and diffusion. It's best to take the attitude that you will do anything to get what you want. I like to work from the concept of how I would do something if I had an unlimited budget and access to anything. It makes it clear to me how to do it with what I actually have.

If you didn't notice the sarcasm dripping from my previous post. I wan't point out that, although I would marry the '18 films. I would have to cheat on them because I absolutely would NOT use them for a whole film. Not even a short one if I could help it.

Exactly Phil, some do get a bit upset but I find it to be incredibly useful. I'm not foolish enough to ask what it "really' looks like, it helps me to see it because of my years of experience printing color stills negative. I only want to look at the overall densities and tonality of it and confirm they are what I was looking for. The "real" image is the one in my head. The base image is supposed to be the one coming from the telecine with no CC or just the CC used to correct the TK output. It does have a standard '0' point to work from. I can't say I've taken the exact same piece of negative around to a bunch of machines for comparison. Maybe they vary, I have seen the same footage on and URSA Y-front and then a Spirit (operated by the same company) and the 'base' looked the same to my eye.

If it's for an editing set-up just hookup the TV monitor after the firewire convertor box. My editing setup has two Dell 19inch computer monitors on a dual head card. They are a bitch to color correct, in fact they really won't correct but it doesn't matter because the video is fed out firewire to the ADVC-100 to a splitter to a 9" and a couple of 4" Sony monitors.

Haha Phil, that's the problem with asking for an opinion from people you don't know. Who knows what people will like. It's competent work for sure, but I didn't find anything that I thought looked 'special', whatever that is. Felipe you have the basics wired for sure and the only place to go is up. If Robert Richardson saw my reel and said it was good that would mean a lot more to me than if Richard Crudo said it was excellent.

When I go in the telecine suite, the colorist usually just jumps right in to the work. I like to spend a bit looking at the 'base' image and also frequently look at it for comparison during the session.

Can you explain what you mean? Why would you push 50 speed stock if you are "shooting daylight with lots of light?" As for the '18 stocks, I love them, I would take them to dinner and offer them marriage if I could... :P

I have to say honestly felipe your reel was a bit pedestrian. Nothing really jumped out at me. It looks like a student reel, which is what you were. But it's the only thing you got so you have to go with it. My thoughts would be to let some of those scenes play with the production sound. Can you do that? I think it might come off better that way in a less is more approach. As far as getting a job, you should list yourself on Mandy.com and look through the available postitions. Read them carefully, after a while you'll be able to spot the jokers and the people who want a slave. Send resume's to all the production companies. Send your reel out too. I don't send my reel to a bunch of commercial companies because I'm interested in doccumentaries and features, probably also why my phone doesn't ring much. If you have a preference, you could concentrate on a particular area or take the shotgun approach. After they get your resume or reel call them and introduce yourself and ask if they have anything going on and what they have coming up. Also, join every industry group you can and rub shoulders with directors and producers. That might actually be the best thing to do. That usually leads to the artistically fulfilling work. If you meet a director and make a connection on a friendship level.

Well, we're talking about theatrical PAR 64 cans also known as "Rock and Roll" PAR cans and they carry a 1000KW PAR lamp. PAR is an acronym for Parabolic Alumized Reflector, it's an all in one unit with reflector, lens and filament. Looks like old style car headlights if you seen those before. The fixtures look like this; You can cut the housing down to half length so it lets more light spread out. Actually you can buy short ones off the shelf but I find it just as easy to cut them down. The reason I like to cut them down is so they act more like a Molequartz PAR. When people on a film set refer to a PAR they usually mean one that looks like this one below (or one of the HMI types that look similar); You can fit the housing with a variety of lamps. WFL = Wide FLood, MFL= Medium FLood, SP= SPot, NSP=Narrow SPot etc. Using a Wide FLood lamp will give you a nice area of light, because you usually use these things to light buildings etc. The biggest problem I have with them is the filament hotspot in the center of the beam. You can kill it with a dot scrim though. Look at Mole's website to learn more.

Michael is right, super useful. They can light up huge spaces. One trick is to cut the snout of the can off and use a WFL lamp to gain a little extra spread.

Wow, David sorry to hear about all the troubles. I think you are the right guy for this kind of thing though. I haven't heard any rumors about you being a tyrant or anything...yet. :P I recall when I visited you on location you said something about using the Primo zooms on steadicam. Are you guys using a steadicam as B camera or just a two camera setup?

This was purely an example of the ratio between light output and t/stops. Not an actual stop for those lamps.

Cartoni Alfa II vs. Beta, looks like the Alfa II is a little cheaper than the Beta. I like the Beta how does the Alfa II compare? It will be used with a DVX-100 or XL-2 with full studio rig.

Theoretically, they would put out the same number of total footcandles as a 1K. In practice it depends on the actual lamps. What are you trying to do? If you're asking does the stop double, it would. The stop will increase by one everytime you double the light output. If 500 watts= t/2 then 1000 watts= t/2.8 2000 watts= t/4 4000 watts= t/5.6 etc.

I find they look better if you took them off the starlet the night before.... :D (sorry, I couldn't resist)

And I'm over here trying to wave fly's off of my last scrap of bologny... :D The highlight of this summer looks like it was meeting David. It's so bad that I'm going to be an extra in a music video on Monday and Tuesday. They'll probably keep excluding me from shots because they don't want an old fat guy plodding through the video. :P