Tyler Purcell

How bout http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-Betacam-SP-Camcorder-DXC-637-with-PVV-3-Deck-with-Portabrace-Case-manuals/371802552442?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3D2a15b5d8520341f59dd80397b15a9381%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D6%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D272116868226&rt=nc http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-Betacam-SP-PVW-2600-Video-Cassette-Player-/182369559598?hash=item2a7612a42e:g:UhcAAOSwOyJX7TJY

I mean, I'm a railfan, so I've been shooting on trains for my entire life. Honestly, the A7S has one of the worst rolling shutters of any modern camera, it's atrocious. The FS7 is WAY better in every way, but it also sticks out in a crowd. I use the blackmagic pocket cameras for most of my personal shooting, mainly because they're small, 10 bit 4:2:2 or 12 bit RAW recording internally without any gadgets attached. This way, when I'm shooting in places I shouldn't be, I look like a still photographer, rather then a videographer. This is a problem when shooting on trains and I've been kicked off trains with ENG style cameras many times. So the smaller the camera, the more "still" camera it looks, the better. Here are two of the dozens of videos I've made on trains with my pocket. If you scroll ahead in both videos, you can see the onboard stuff. These were done hand-held, the steam train with a monopod.

I shoot quite a bit of on-motorcycle footage for a youtube series I produce, both off-road and on-road. I have tried many times to get my Blackmagic Pocket camera to produce an image anywhere near that of my GoPro's, but I haven't been able to. The amount of kit required to mount, even that little pocket camera with a lightweight lens, is actually pretty crazy. The GoPro has a unique advantage of being light, cheap and has already made mounts available. The moment you try to stick a bigger/heavier camera on there, you'll be forced to use a totally different mounting system. Also, because cameras like the GoPro have super wide angle lenses, things like engine vibration are not as noticed in the image. I have a kit which I acquired from a friend of mine who shot motorcycle and car stuff for decades. There are screw in brackets that squeeze the frame and/or simply screw into a pre-existing fitting. Motorcycles these days, don't have many places to put a system like this. The plates then have attachments for speed rail, which will allow you to attach anything you want to the bike. Suction cup mounts can also work great, but they only work on flat/fixed surfaces. After you've got all of that nailed and your rig is installed, the last thing you've gotta deal with is vibration from the engine. Depending on the bike, most motorcycle engines do vibrate at frequencies that can distort the cameras imaging. This is because you've directly attached a mount to the frame of the bike and real motorcycles, don't have any engine isolation to the frame. This is where you need some sort of isolation system to help with that, which can be home made using rubber bushings, or rented. The rental ones look like tripod heads, but there is an isolation mount in between the components that basically removes quite a bit of these vibrations. Cheap solution to solve this problem with a lightweight camera is to build your own mount out rubber bits that you can use to go between the camera and the tripod head on your mount. This is less of a problem with suction cup mounts because they automatically provide some vibration reduction. So yea, it's a bit more difficult then meets the eye. If you can acquire the right components from a grip house, you will still need to disassemble the bike enough to find places to put them, which in of itself can be challenging. Here is a sample of some "down low" shots I've done with the GoPro. Yes its a dirt bike, yes it's a 2 stroke, so it vibrates a lot, but you can get an idea of what the worst of the worst looks like. https://youtu.be/7mkhsRTQWiM?t=10s

Sorry for the confusion... Gel covered flag FRAMES. I missed the word "frame", sorry that confused you. I always thought bent light was "refracted" light. I gather that's not completely accurate. When you put mirrors together, in front of a beam of light, you are able to reflect that light into different parts of a given room. Thus, allowing for quicker setup's and one light generally covering more of a given space, with a distinctly creative look. I will post some examples of this in a bit.

I've shot a lot of stuff on Plus-X, Tri-X and B&W negative. If your goal is to scan back to digital, you'll find the finer grain negative stock to work the best. It's less noisy, but it also has more latitude then the reversal stocks. I was never truly happy with the Tri-x and Plus-x stuff I've shot over the years, it was always too noisy and muddy for my taste. I like a more glass-like look with depth to the image, which is what you get with negative. From the Orwo stuff I've seen, it's WAY noisier then the Kodak 7222 double-x negative. I don't know the ISO of the Orwo, but I rated the 7222 at 70 ISO and it was really nice looking. I'm not a fan of over-exposure, so I like to protect my highlights a bit, especially with B&W. I made a few short films over the years where I used reversal mixed with 500T that I've turned B&W to match. Well... it doesn't look like B&W reversal or negative, which have very distinct looks. So I agree that shooting color may not be the right option. Plus Kodak 7222 is a lot cheaper to work with then color. I'm sure if you call them up, they'll give you a killer deal, they've probably got boat loads of it sitting around. In terms of scanning, especially super 16. It's wise to go a bit higher then 2k. You'll get less digital noise when you scan at like 2.5 - 3k because the silver granulates will be more complete vs half or quarter. This is what causes a lot of the digital noise with scanned material. Then you can add a softening mask in post, which gives yo more control over the grain, then scanning with less resolution. Obviously if the only machine at your disposal is the 2k one, you don't have a choice. But I've done quite a few tests and I'm a firm believer at scanning higher and softening, then scanning low and preying. :)

There are some great anamorphic look plugins to add distortion in programs like After Effects, which is what you'd probably use to do the compositing of the VFX elements before sending them off to finishing. The best way to deal with visual effects today in this modern high-res digital world, is to shoot the plates open gate, with a high resolution camera (Red Dragon 6k) which gives you a lot more information for reframing. Using spherical lenses, prevents any distortion from effecting the visual effect shot. This technique is common place with big movies that shoot on green screen. In the past, visual effects shots would be captured with VistaVision or even 65mm for a larger negative that holds up better through the optical effects workflow. I can't think of a good example of anyone using anamorphic lenses on green screen shots, maybe David remembers.

Yea, yea I forgot about the 400. The Ikegami HL55 was a great camera head, I had one with a portable deck for a while, worked great. Maybe hard to find with a dockable deck wouldn't ya think? THe UVW's were crap, but believe it or not, I've seen more BVW issues because people just destroy them and the heads are far more complicated, which means it's just hard to find a good working one for cheap. The dynamic tracking machines simply fall apart too quickly and weigh a metric tone. So I generally suggest people pickup UVW's for playback purposes because they don't weigh much and they're A LOT simpler.

I'd just grab an analog camera with betacam recorder and you can pick up a playback deck on ebay for peanuts. You'll want to record onto tape to help generate the analog look. A lot of these cameras look really good if you record the component output with a digital recorder, so the tape noise helps considerably. I think the BVW-300A was the last "all analog" camera. The UVW-1600's are also perfectly fine playback decks. They're kinda poorly made, but you can nab that and a camera head for a few hundred bux on ebay. I'd also nab a sony 12v power supply for the camera, don't bother trying to make the battery work because every facility had a different battery standard, some Anton Bauer mount, others V mount and some Sony. Batteries are expensive to buy and the older nicad cell's don't last long, so by the time your done screwing around with that stuff, you will have doubled your budget. If you need portability, then maybe try to make something work, otherwise plug it into a wall with the 12v adaptor. You'll also need a digitizing device, but I think you already have one from the VHS project right? Remember the betacam playback deck has XLR audio and BNC video, so you'll need a match box to get RCA audio for a lower-end capture card, if you're using the analog audio, which sounds great. The BVW-300A only records on the linear, dolby C encoded, analog audio tracks. So they have an "analog" sound to them. Some of the bigger models with dockable decks, record AFM audio as well. Lenses won't be expensive either, there are literally hundreds on ebay at any given time.

Working on a lot won't help you. I was working on the CBS and Warner lot quite a bit over the years and even though I mingled with lots of higher-up's, it wasn't the right place to be. Here in California, there are plenty of on-set jobs. Good P.A. positions are everywhere on the job boards. As David points out, production offices do the staffing, but generally it's done through nepotism. They know someone from another shoot and call them first, to which they call their friends and all of a sudden the PA's are on set. They'll only put an add online if the pay is too shitty for their connections and/or if nobody they know can make it. You would also need to drop a resume off to the P.A. office, of other shows you've been a P.A. on. Can't mention your aspiration's for being a cinematographer. If you want hands on experiences with cameras, I'd honestly suggest working at a rental house first. They're always looking for young blood and willing to train from the ground up if you're willing to stick around. If you work up that ladder first, to gain experience with different cameras, I think it will pay dividends up the road for you as a cinematographer. The second choice would be P.A. work because even though you'll meet some great people and understand what it's like on a set, you won't be able to interface with the camera department much, the P.A.'s are kept separate on most shows and are not allowed to have interactions with the higher up's. Both experiences are valuable, but I think the rental house experience for someone wanting to work in the camera department is MORE valuable. Plus, it will give you steady income, which is nice when you're living in Los Angeles. I landed in CA with a decent demo reel, lots of references and starting shooting features right away. I only stopped because both of them screwed me over financially and one of them, the producers ran out of money so it was never finished. It destroyed me mentally and financially, so I had to get a full-time job and I spent 10 years outside of the creative profession because I was too scared to leave it and become a freelancer again. I've spent the last 3 years freelancing once more with no steady income and it's been VERY difficult to make ends meet. You've gotta constantly be hustling, looking for little gigs here and there, shooting anything you can shoot, even if it's for friends, just to constantly meet new people. It takes a long time and that's why working at a rental house will help. I honestly wish I could have afforded to do that years ago, but they didn't pay enough for me to survive. I did try P.A. work as well, but it wasn't for me. If you're a creative guy, you've gotta be working on your creative stuff all the time and spending 12-16hrs on a set every day, wipes you clean of any creativity. So those are my thoughts... it's hard at first, but if you work your ass off and have a good attitude, you'll move quickly through the ranks like I did. The big catch is to have plenty of money when you move here, don't come with $10k... come with $50k. If it takes you a year of working in NY to get that money, do it. You need money so you can work on smaller gigs that may not pay the rent. I also suggest before you get a job at a rental house, to try and start shooting stuff... anything. Just go on craigslist and take any shooting job you can get. Try to do the freelance thing first and hey, if it works, you will get more work out of it. It's also nice to invest in a decent camera package, something you can use for smaller personal stuff. I have the blackmagic pocket cameras and Rokinon cine primes. Whole kit cost me less then $5k and it's a worthwhile investment for yourself to have something like that in my opinion. Wish I had it 15 years ago when I moved, but back then digital was just getting started and film cameras were still very expensive. Alright, that's it for me!

Hey Bill, good diagnosis there. I don't recall (it's been years) but does the extension have a shutter on it like the normal viewfinder that opens and closes when you put your face against it?

I'd say it's an HMI source outside the window to the right of frame and down stage slightly. It's not close to camera because it's not very bright and the angle of his face is changing the brightness considerably. You can see it lighting the pillar to the left of him and another vertical object reflecting to the right of him. This is a very common trick when lighting fast and doing simple dialog scenes. Set up a big backlight source to fill in the negative space (windows behind leo) and then use a single key to light objects in frame with. The look is trying to mimmic a big bay window to the right of frame that you can see in the actual movie. I'm pretty sure they just fogged the window so when the camera moved around, you couldn't see out the window. That's what's making the light so soft and pretty.

Without timecode, how does the software determine where in the file it's pulling data from, when the codec itself has no logical frames? It has to extrapolate based on taking snap shots of previous frames used. Timecode helps, but doesn't SOLVE the problems with .h264. SSD's are quite amazing little kits, but they do have major issues with lots of small files. I've done some pretty interesting long-term tests between SSD's and the Velociraptors. The results have proven to me that SSDs, where faster in some cases, have major lag issues in others. With realtime playback?

Hey John So yea... h264 is a consumer playback codec, not designed for cutting what so ever. So the fact you're struggling with that codec is all to familiar. I do a lot of .h264 cutting from GoPro footage and I have yet to find a stable platform. Premiere works around 70% of the time, but it's very, very, very flakey. Work with a native codec like Pro Res or DNX, the software flies and has zero issues. Remember, .h264 is not a frame-based codec, most cameras that shoot it, also don't have timecode. So the software has to work very hard to extrapolate what a frame is and then put a logical location finder on that bit of data. It's far more tricky then using native codec's, especially one's with real timecode. The solution is to transcode everything from .h264 to DNX, which DaVinci can do as a batch. Edit your show and when you go back to DaVinci, simply conform to the original media. It's a check box when you import the sequence back into the same project you exported from. It will automatically re-link the original camera files (if they're in the same place), then you can do your color. I highly suggest doing your "finish" in DaVinci. So export your finished sound and import it into DaVinci. Do the same with graphics (text elements) and any effects. Throw it all into DaVinci and export it as a finished sequence. DaVinci really needs 8GB of ram by itself, so you probably need more memory to start with. Your i5 processor is acceptable, which is a good sign. The GTX660 is a pretty outdated card. I bought a 4GB GTX690 Classified last year for $300 bux brand new, thinking it would solve my issues, but it really hasn't. DaVinci really needs a 12GB video memory board to function at it's best potential. It's not so much the processor speed, as it is video memory. It buffers quite a bit into video memory and it doesn't do a good job at purging it. Because I'm getting more and more 4k projects, I'm personally going to invest in a Titan X 12gb board, because it's the best thing on the market for DaVinci and Premiere, which I'm using more and more. DaVinci and Premiere are both cache hogs. They both have huge cash directories located in secret spots within the boot drive. This means you need a super fast boot drive. I'm personally not a fan of SSD's for serious work, great for laptops, not so great for boot volumes. Long story... but needless to say I still use spinning disks as boot drives. The best drive on the market today is the Western Digital Velociraptor. I recommend the Gen 2 version, which is I believe 1TB today. They're expensive, but they are unbelievably fast. A new install of windows + that drive, will give you a marketable improvement in performance. I hope that answers some questions... I run Mac's, so my bay is Xenon based rather then the consumer Intel i series processors, so it's hard to compare. But I know my bay is slow for today's work and I just get by thanks to well-designed codec's like Pro Res and DNX.

Thanks for the correction Dom, I will remember this time around...

Originally 16mm film had perforation holes on both sides, like 35mm. As sound became more standard, the 16mm format turned into single perforation, one side now used for the soundtrack. Since the 60's, almost every 16mm camera has been single perforation, but before the 60's, many cameras were still had double sprockets. Why is this important? Well, modern film is single sprocket. Since double sprocket cameras are so old, Kodak doesn't feel it necessary to package their modern films for those cameras. You can still get double perf stock, but it's limited to black and white. I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure the H16 Rex 1's were double sprocket for double perf film originally. I see them all the time on ebay for around the price you're discussing. Generally owners who know their cameras, will mention double or single sprocket in the advert somewhere. Twas a great deal and I've shot quite a bit with it since purchase. I do see them go for $600 on ebay, but condition unseen. At least mine I could test because I bought it from a camera show vendor. Yes! However, as you're new to this whole thing, Giray's comment is very important. These cameras make quite a racket and are not capable of syncing to audio. So you would use this kind of camera for silent films, rather then sync sound productions.

There really isn't anything "wrong" with the REX 1 cameras. I use to shoot with one, it wasn't difficult to use or something. Obviously you've gotta be careful it doesn't have double sprockets, that's why people sell things cheap sometimes. The 17-85 I have no experience with particularly, but 17mm on the wide side, isn't very wide for 16mm. F2 is also fine, it's hard to find an in expensive zoom faster then that. My Zeiss 12-120 is F2.4 for instance. The viewfinder is upgradable, so if you really want more magnification, you can buy a different one. I wouldn't really take that into consideration when buying a camera, I don't think it's a "problem". Finally, Bolexes are like swiss watches, they're very complex inside, with dozens of little gears, which means there is more to go wrong. They're pretty reliable for their age, but the REX 1 is pretty old now. So you MAY wind up with "age" related issues with the camera like light leaks. Far better to invest in a final generation camera in my opinion. I bough my 1980's vintage EBM for $400 bux with a decent zoom lens (forgot the numbers off the top of my head) and I spent $100 bux buying a new battery. That's not a lot of money for a more modern, working camera. Remember, film and processing are the most expensive part. If you wind up having problems with a 50 year old camera, that's an expense you could have avoided by simply buying a newer one.

The mirror trick is one that I pull out when I've got a big room to light with only one or two sources. The way I use it, enables the room to seem well lit from multiple sources, without taking the time to do so. It does require some sort of high power light, a 2k tungsten would work for locations with no windows. If there are windows, I'll use bigger HMI's and simply color balance for outdoor light. Since I'm always working with little to no money, I go to a local 99 cent store and buy the cheapest flexible tall mirrors (they aren't made of glass). We then attach them to C stands or combo light stands by drilling holes in the top and bottom and using a ratcheting clamp bracket with a pin you buy from home depot. This way you can bend the mirror, lock it in place and get light refraction instead of simply reflection. We'll then use gel covered flags to tint the refracted light and it looks amazing. The great thing with the smallish mirrors is that all the light that passes by one mirror, can be reflected by another. So we'll literally have a bunch of these mirrors in one place in a given room, all reflecting to a different location, with gels, gobo's and sometimes other smaller mirror devices helping to spread out the beam. When you're dealing with actors key light, you've gotta bend the mirror so the middle is concave. This makes a stronger beam of light right in the center of the mirror. Then all you've gotta do is put a silk inline with the actors to diffuse the harshness of the light. This is the tricky part because you want the silk as close to the actors as you can get it and I've found throwing a tiny bit of very light orange gel (I buy the stuff in full rolls) over the silk, warms it up just enough to get good face tones with this setup. The only downside to mirrors is the time it takes to get it right. You really need a crew who has worked with them before to understand light refraction vs reflection. I've had gaffers scratch their heads and wasted time on set setting this rig up for them. In the long run, the look is fantastic, but it's VERY time consuming.

Interesting teaser... having just wrapped my 3rd feature in 5 years, this is what I've learned. I think you should spend as little money as you can. My suggestion is to shoot digitally in 2k or 4k (not 1080p), this gives potential buyers no technical excuse to avoid your product. Also, without some known star power and a subject with mass audience appeal, it's difficult to recoup investment. So you've gotta think about it never being bought and simply recouping through your own marketing and distribution methods. There are literally thousands of sub $50k features made a year, all vying for the same audience. Unfortunately the DVD/BluRay market is officially dead in this country. So sadly, the ways to recoup investment are dwindling fast. If you're just going out and having fun with friends (which is totally awesome and well worth it) then do anything you want. But if you really wish to make an impact in this industry and get recognized for your work, there is a very strict formula to follow and lots of hoops to jump through.

Exactly. My straight 16 wide angle when focused close, would vignette in the ground glass, but not on the frame line. You'd see a tiny bit of edge distortion, but only at the corners, never on the flat sides of the frame. The Angenieux straight 16 zooms were notorious for vignetting when at their widest, even when not focused close.

Just put the lenses you have on now and see where they vignette. If you don't see any edge of vignetting on the ground glass, then you're probably OK. But... that leaves the question, how are you going to match the ground glass to the ultra 16 gate?

Hey Mike, thanks for the insight! Looking forward to seeing it on the big screen! :)

Just a small addition, I feel your pain about the Bolex focus. I shot a lot with them during my youth, but just recently bought one for my school. I wholeheartedly agree with the viewfinder issues, it's a real problem. My procedure like mentioned above, is to simply do everything with the lens all the way open until I run the camera and then stop it down for the shot. Spinning mirror reflex cameras aren't really that much better with focus racks during shooting, the viewfinders get a lot dimmer thanks to half the amount of light getting in, so it's still hard to focus. This is why practicing the moves and marking them on a follow focus, is kind of important with film. So either or, focus pulling with a film camera is tough. Easier to get focus on a mirror reflex camera, but still challenging on any film camera compared to digital.

Sorry Peter, I missed "reg" in your first sentence. Usually people who talk about ultra 16, anamorphic and cropping the top and bottom, are looking for 2.40:1. I apologize for my assumption. Super 16 cameras are very inexpensive today. I bought my Aaton LTR/XTR hybrid for $1500 bux, one just sold for $750 on ebay, so pissed I missed it. I'm not a fan of the CP16R, I've shot quite a few things with one, including a music documentary with lots of interview material. I lost quite a bit of material due to a backplate issue that came up on our "B" camera as well. The non-orientable viewfinder also killed us in tight spots. It's a good straight 16 camera for $500, but if you're going to shoot a serious project, it's far better to invest in something more worthy of it. Obviously the other solution is to simply modify the gate like you suggested, but you'd really need to use S16 glass if you did that since a lot of the wider lenses barley cover the straight 16 gate at minimal focus. I had a nice set of straight 16 glass that I tried to use on my S16 Aaton and was actually pretty shocked how far off it was, wound up selling it all on ebay in exchange for S16 glass. So it's kind of a catch 22... I have very successfully shot and delivered 1.33:1 shot straight 16 material in a 1.75:1 aspect ratio before. It's actually pretty common with older movies to simply crop the top and bottom to meet the "HD" standards of today. It doesn't look THAT bad honestly, you're only scraping off a tiny bit of the top and bottom... unlike the 1.67:1 to 2.40:1 that I thought you were trying to do earlier - whoops. :) Ohh... I just remembered, my college thesis film was made this same way... we had double perf B&W stock, so we had to shoot straight 16. So this is a 1080p telecine of early 7279 Vision 500T stock and Tri-x B&W stock. I cropped the top and bottom (zoomed up the image in post) to create this 1080p video. Someday I'll go back to the original source material and scan it, but this is about how bad it will get...

Big thing to think about is the 1.33X anamorphic lenses designed to give you 2.40:1 aspect ratio on S16, are cost prohibitive expensive. These aren't the 2x lenses designed for 35mm cameras, which you can get crazy good deals on if you look hard. If you're worried about budget, anamorphic should be thrown out. Cropping the top and bottom changes the field of view and honestly, it just doesn't look good. I've done quite a few 2.40:1 aspect ratio productions shot with my blackmagic pocket camera which has the same frame size as S16 and identical field of view. It just doesn't look right, it looks nothing like the 1.66:1 frame. So cropping in my opinion isn't worth it either. Even if you shoot NEW stock, you're looking A LOT of your image. Unfortunately, with super 16, the standard 1.67:1 aspect ratio is kinda what ya gotta run. There have been a few anamorphic S16 films as of recent and they are so bloody noisy, it's not even funny. If you cropped the frame top and bottom, you'd be blowing up the frame quite a bit and it would be MUCH more noisy. Plus you loose quite a bit of resolution in doing that. To keep the resolution high of the source material, I try to deliver stuff shot on S16 in the original 1.67:1 aspect ratio. I'd rather have bars on the sides -which shows the entire negative- then top and bottom because achieving that wider field of view is critical to the "cinematic" look. Some distributors refuse to accept anything but 1.85:1 or 2.40:1 which kinda sucks. I had one show bounce back because I delivered in 1.67:1, but they eventually caved in realizing that was the format. In terms of Ultra 16, it's no different then cropping the top and bottom in post, you're loosing quite a bit of your frame. You could cut the gate on both sides, to use the physical limit and get maybe 1.70:1 out of it, but I don't expect anymore. Ultra 16 doesn't solve any problems. So what are the solutions to this formatting issue? - Change your mind... yea it's nice to have a wide screen look, but that look comes with high cost and if you're trying to save money shooting S16, you've gotta play the narrow gauge format game, rather then try to force the format to do something it really doesn't like to do. - Shoot with 2 perf 35mm. You can get short ends for around the same price foot by foot of 16mm. Since you're in CA, getting a camera isn't too difficult either and the image quality will be much better. It's more like a Super 16 field of view, but 2.40:1 aspect ratio, which is pretty cool.

Lets face it, the majority of people who read this forum, do so to be educated, are we in agreement on that? As a consequence, they are most likely people like myself, trying to find our way in the industry. Another thing to understand is there is a VERY MYOPIC group of people who work consistently on decent pay shows. Lets say it's 5% of all cinematographers in the world, that's probably a high number. Why would any of them care to come on here or even engage in a conversation? I mean there are some great DP's who frequent this place, but compared to the population of beginners and newbies, the pro's are in a single digit percentile. So this is why I don't really feel it's necessary to segregate at the budget level MOST people can afford, everything is done in a similar fashion. So it's like, why would anyone want to know or discuss what it's like to have a 5 person crew in your camera department, when the VAST majority of people have to operate the camera themselves with little to no help. In the real world, the world where thousands of productions are made a year for peanuts, it's a privilege to have an AC, let alone anyone else in the "camera" department. For every one of the productions with $250/day PA's, there are 1000 other shoots going on without a single PA. Point being, I'm glad you guys get to work on bigger stuff and I'm personally very thankful to have a place where more experienced guys are here to answer questions. At the same time, you've gotta understand THE VAST MAJORITY of people in this creative world, will never, ever work on productions like some of you high end guys get the opportunity to work on. They want to learn about what they CAN do with limited resources, not what they can do with hundreds of thousands or more. Honestly, money solves a lot of problems, more crew, more resources, more "specialized" people. Bigger shows are a dream to work on because if you gel with the crew, as a DP you don't have to do anything but sit back and watch the magic unfold in front of your eyes... I've witnessed this first hand on bigger shows and it's pretty cool. So we can get back to talking about the OP's project, understanding he's got a $3000 budget, which is kinda decent in the grass-roots short film movement where you're doing everything yourself. That is reality guys... not some pie in the sky gig that pays enough for a penthouse in Manhattan.