J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR

Thanks for the replies so far. I'm definitely moving out there. My mind has been made up on that for a long time. Funny thing is now that I'm commited things are heating up here. I have two feature DP gigs in the works. :rolleyes: The deals aren't done so for now I'm still planning on moving the end of July. I have some contacts out there and a good friend of mine is moving out about the same time as me. I'm most concerned about finding a place to live in the right area that won't kill my budget.

Well David has hit the nail on the head with everything he said. I live in D/FW but I do work Austin as a local. You do hit a wall where they just go for the people they always hire and have been hiring for years. Out of town indies have always brought DP's from L.A. I've ran into several L.A. Dp's who had come from Texas. I was called back three times for a good sized indie feature here last year but the job went to some guy who's from Texas but lives in L.A. I think his L.A. cred won out. I'm not in the union so the bigger features that come here which hasn't been that many, they all went to Louisiana and New Mex because of tax incentives, they hire local union guys and certainly bring their DP who usually brings his AC's. So the locals wind up on B cam etc. There's just not the kind of opportunity I want here to be a cinematographer. Kevin shot a Super35 short recently and I almost can't believe that. Something like that never happens here. They shoot several small student shorts on 16mm in Austin but that's about it for shooting film on small projects. Plus stuff goes down in L.A. all the time that doesn't happen here. They get to see new cameras months before they get here. New filmstock tests etc. On and on. All the equipment companies are there, the ASC is there, the top guys are there. You know being around mentors is just as importantant to me as having an opportunity to improve my craft. I know it's going to be a struggle and I'm probably going to be doing a lot of AC'ing, Gaffing and gripping to pay the bills. Anyway, I remember we had a thread about this before that had some tips about good areas of town etc. I haven't been able to find it.

So the time has come when I feel the opportunities here in Texas have petered out and I've decided to move to L.A. Any advice would be appreciated and I would be interested in any rooms to rent, floors to crash on, good parks to sleep in :P etc. with other film people (message me). I'm planning to move around July 23rd.

I would add for people to learn how to attach gels to a frame so they don't rattle on exteriors. Stretch and tape that sucker good, forget about clothespins and clips.

Well after much back and forth about producing this script the producer seems to have decided to concentrate on a full feature length script so this short has been scrapped again. :rolleyes: I made a point about this early on in the process. Features and shorts are not the same thing. Sure they can have the same seed of an idea but they would turn out to be different things if you wrote them as they should be.

Saw an Akeelah and the Bee trailer on TV today. It was different from the one online. Looked good, can't wait to see the film.

It's not related to the Japanese film. It's just a similiar name. The name like everything is subject to change. The reason I started this thread early is I thought it would be interesting to see what happens to me in the pre-production decision making. So after getting quotes from labs and post houses it seems we might be shooting on HD. But I can't really say for sure yet. It's like the Post budget gets pitted against the production budget. A day-long conform in a Fire suite for $750 an hour at post house "A" is a lot different from a conform on Avid Nitris or even FCP HD at $550 for the whole day at post house "B." That is what we've been dealing with today. A post house usually gives a huge number then it starts to drop. That big number can bone your entire film stock and processing budget. I'm just the DP so I have to try to fight for what I want. I would hate not to be able to shoot on film just because someone decided to use an expensive post flow.

I'm hoping it's going to be ok to post this now as this short film has had several false starts. Mostly due to not haveing a script that was shootable. Looks like it is going to happen now as dates have been set. "Club Suicide" is a "teaser" short designed to hook financing for a full length feature. Rather than just pull various scenes from the feature script the Director felt we should shoot a short version that will stand on it's own merits and I agree with him. This will allow it to go to festivals etc. as well as show it to investors. The film is about attempted suicide patients. Right now we are in the early stages of prep. It has been decided to shoot on Super-16 as we have an equipment deal. We discussed 35mm but felt the extra cost of film stock and processing was cutting too deep in the budget and the need for 35mm festival prints is small. I don't want to shoot with HD as we would be forced into using a P+S Technic which the Director and I really don't like or rent DigiPrimes which are very expensive. So everyone agrees that we should just go Super-16 to Spirit to HD. I've decided to shoot on 7279 for the whole film shooting DAY EXT. by only half correcting with an 81EF and doing the same on DAY INT. with HMI lighting. I might shoot a grey card with an 85B then swap it for the 81. I'm looking for grain and a coldness to the image. Of course some will say just do it in the TK suite, but I believe in doing things in camera and due to our schedule of 3 consecutive weekends we are going to try to use a dailies system each week and I hope to do some tweeking along the way. There is one scene where we are considering shooting 7285 and cross-processing. I'm not sure how that is going to pan out with the local labs though. So I'm hoping for a test day. The Director, I think, also wants a look at what we can do with it. Since we are getting a deal from a camera house. I'm asking for everything I can get. Arri SR-3 with a full set of Cooke S4's. Fischer 10, and a 3-ton Grip truck with some HMI and Image 80's on-board.

Being that I learned my skills on film in the land before "digital" and "24p" I would say shoot chromes. They give good feedback on differences in exposure because of the narrow latitude compared to negative and you get back from the lab what you shot. With a negative/print process someone could print out all the variations in exposure. I guess a dSLR would work for the basics though. But be sure you can meter, shoot and then see a bonafide result with no manipulation. However, I think it would be difficult to learn what density looks like on film by using a dSLR. After you shoot enough film, you begin see in a range of densities. You can tell where your exposures are by eye even by looking at a print. You also can tell if something is wrong with a negative or print.

Just metering and shooting then comparing the results is the best practice. If the results are what you interpreted them to be then you're on the right track. Extreme conditions is where the interpretation comes in. The classic black subject against a white wall in the sun or the black dinner plate with silver fork or whatever. In cinematography you sometimes run up against situations where there is no real "Key" light, that is, none of your lights will actually be at your shooting stop. That could be a strong backlight and low fill light situation. That situation requires you to make a judgement call on whether to split the difference or give weight to the highlights or the shadows or add more light etc. Also, if you are able to shoot tests on current stock a good one to do is to see how a particular stock will handle underexposure as in a dim night scene.

Just a few not mentioned yet, "Jules et Jim" "The 400 Blows" "My Darling Clementine" "Sanjuro"

The 8:8:8 Renaisance can feel a bit limiting if you're trying to get some of the extreme looks in commercials these days.

I was looking at the D70 also or the new one called a D200 I think? Anybody used one of those yet? I'm not looking to spend a ton on a Digicam. I'm concerned that it be easy and fast to look at the images and sometimes manipulate them on a laptop or perhaps in Look Manager.

You're right, they will tell you what you want them too if you hunt long enough. I use the spot meter but my mind is the final judge. I spent many years shooting medium and large format stills so I've gotten used to that method. I think exposure really just comes down to being a conceptual method that differs among people. Hence why I asked the question in the first place. We should have a discussion on here about which Digi-cams and settings work best for preview. I've used one a few times, but I don't own a good one. I'm a bit skeptical of the cheap digital cameras.

Thanks Dave, in situations like that (I'm talking about the wide shot) I always go for the spot meter in an attempt to figure how far down I can take the shadows and not loose their nuance and set the exposure there. Obviously, if you had a white boat and pale grass on those hills you could take the shadows down more and hold even more highlight.

I'm curious how you came to your decision as to how to expose this scene. I know what I would do, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts. So did you decide to base your exposure on sending the shadows 5-stops under for a silhouette hoping to catch some detail in the shadows and some color in the not so hot parts of the water? What did you spot meter as your darkest shadow? It'll be interesting to see how much of this the '01 holds.

BTW, was anyone else a little confused by the article in A.C? I know you have to read between the lines sometimes with that mag but that article was a little strange. I take it that some of the NEGATIVE had bleach bypass applied and the PRINTS had ENR applied. Is that right? It wasn't exactly clear or I was reading too fast.

Seems like in the past that I've seen network promos a few days later that were shot on HS S-16mm.

I use DVD-R and have burned them with several different programs on a PC. I've noticed several times recently when someone tried to view my reel on a Mac that it took forever for the disc to be recognized and then maybe it would launch the DVD player. You have to launch the DVD player then look for the disc. I wonder what causes that? I bet a lot of my reels go unplayed because it seems like most people play them on a Mac and never a DVD player.

I always have the problem of people thinking two extremes about what I do. Either they just flat don't believe it or they think this kind of work is for jokers or something or they go the other way and assume I'm having martini's with Spielberg. Personaly I don't have time for people who would bag on me for what I do. I love it too much and that would be insulting because cinematography is what defines me.

Putting the bit about making the graveyard scary in the sunlight aside. I would like to point out that it's quite normal for longshots like the one you posted to be of higher contrast than ones where the focus is on the actors. You can control the light well enough on a group of actors but you'll never fill in the entire back-ground. Maybe get the contrast of shots that have a lot of BG in them where you like it with in-camera settings or filters then put most of your attention into making the actors look good with bouces, diffusion and fill. BTW, there was a horror film made last year in Texas that is the funniest looking thing because all of the day exteriors look like a Folgers commercial with golden light and saturation everywhere. It was shot on HD and I suspect that the DP's look scheme didn't make it all the way down the chain.

It's interesting to think back to a movie like "Seabiscuit" that did portray mostly accurate facts (maybe not totally) and how many people called it sappy Disney crap. I mean, that really did happen, there are actual films of it. I really dislike how some people seem to feel manipulated by the drama and that somehow offends them. Why do you engage in looking at any dramatic art if you won't allow it to affect (manipulate) you?

Joel, Supprised we haven't met yet. Or have we? Have you tried crewing on anything yet? You really should, it's a way to meet people who are inevitably shooting there own projects. DFW is a small market, the only chance you have is to shoot commercials but that work is locked down by a certain group of people so you have to wait for it. It will go much faster for you if you get out and meet people, a reel doesn't go that far with strangers, they usually hire the guy they know. Indieclub and indie scene should really be called amateurclub and amateur scene.

I would try to get a source overhead or bounce a light off a griff or something like that with side skirts placed overhead. Use that as a general ambience with a subtle flicker, keep it dim. then use a seperate soft key on your subject from the screen angle but cheat it a little for the best looking light depending on your camera angle. Add back light and smoke to taste.

Yup, that's why. Says me from the unemployment line. <_< Anyway, maybe you'll get a chance to push one of the newer 500 speed stocks to see how well they do.