Dave Green

Ah, I've just realised who you're talking about. I have to say I like Mr P. I can understand not everyone would enjoy the F1 pit-crew approach to running a camera department, but it keeps you on your toes and he does make sure you know you're doing a good job as much as a bad one. ;) He's also the only DoP I've worked with who has genuinely fought for his crew when the production office have started to push their luck or been incompetent. I'm not going to claim he doesn't sometimes have his moments, but he is at least honest enough to admit he's over-reacted and back down when he does ... and even takes the p*ss-taking when he does it, too. Not the easiest bloke to get to know, but not quite the ogre he can appear to be, either.

Why hate? That's precisely what countries like France do. In fact, so does the UK when it comes to broadcast content. It's only in the cinema where there isn't a quota. And, more importantly, they actively protect their film industry - for both financial and cultural reasons. We do not. Also, most of the profitable films that are made in the UK are not 'UK films', so those profits are not reinvested into the UK film industry. We are to foreign productions what child labour is to Nike. We may get a fair amount of work, but we don't benefit in any real way from it.

The problem is, the only thing anyone has to go on is the recording of Bale's hissy fit. And it that recording, unless my memory is wrong, he definitely says it was the second take - not rehearsal - that he'd walked around in the background of. He also says he's walking around behind Bryce, who happens to be the leading lady, which certainly suggests something a little more serious than tweaking a light during a rehearsal. I don't think anyone has suggested Bale didn't react like a petulant little child, but if his criticisms in that recording are accurate then he does have a legitimate cause for complaint. Not to rant like a spolit 12 year old who's had his Wii confiscated off him, true, but definitely cause to complain. If I had an actor complain about me walking around in their eyeline during a take (which is something that's never going to happen), I would expect to be fired if I did it again.

Crew really should make sure they're not in someone's eyeline unless there's absolutely no other option. And even then, they should make sure they can't make eye contact with any of the actors during a take. I find it amazing how many people don't seem to understand this when they walk onto a set. A hissy fit isn't assault - unprofessional, bloody funny when made into a dance remix, one would hope absolutely embarassing to the person who threw the fit once they've calmed down, utterly childish, but let's have a little perspective ... it's not assault.

If this is for broadcast in the UK, then remember you can't have quicker strobing than 3 flashes per second (if I remember the rules correctly). I would be confident in betting that it will be something similar for cinematic releases in the UK and around the world, too.

To be fair, that's not quite what the article said. It is, however, true that most no-low budget producers are lazy, or more accurately, absolutely unprofessional in the extreme. All you have to do is look at the ads on Mandy, Talent Circle, UK Screen, Shooting People etc. to know that's undeniable. Thankfully, there are those who approach the job properly, irrespective of experience or budget. It's no different to the music industry - for every musician who can actually play (rather than having real talent - just someone who can perform the basics competently), there are thousands who can't. Film is no different ... although the rehearsal room isn't normally anywhere near as dangerous as a film set. Nor do bands generally employ people and then get them to break the law without even realising it - such as runners using their own car without realising that their normal insurance doesn't cover them for this. They are driving without insurance, and the law takes a very dim view of that sort of thing.

Thanks everyone. Oh, Alfeo, I'm not sure where your reply came from, but those were just my words. Nothing to do with Red at all.

Ah, thanks for that.

I may be being overly paranoid here, but I'm wondering if anyone has experience of rigging a Red One to a car? How well did the camera cope with the vibration and abuse? Are there any things we'd have to be aware of that may not be obviously apparent? Thanks.

Perhaps 'boss' is the wrong word, but the 2nd AC does have to work very closely with this person and it's much better to keep them happy. I've just finished a drama with a script supervisor who was really struggling with the way that production was shooting, but rather than antagonise the person by telling them they were wrong all the time, it was much easier and more productive to conform to how they wanted the board to be set until I got them trained. ;) It made my life far more stressful than it should have been for the first two weeks (as you say I should be checking with the script supervisor if I'm not sure about a board rather than the other way round, which is what was happening), but it meant that shooting wasn't affected while the person got up to speed. It can be argued that the situation should never have arisen in the first place (especially as they weren't exactly inexperienced), but I much prefer to get the job done and try to sort out any problems quietly rather than make the situation worse by getting someone's back up by pointing out their failings (and, when someone's floundering the last thing they need is for their confidence to be further destroyed as that's never going to help sort out anything) or arguing on set. By the time we wrapped we were running pretty smoothly together, however I'd rather not be in that situation again. ;) Perhaps I should have said the 2nd AC has certain responsibilities to the script supervisor.

Okay, I live just outside the M25 (for those of you not in the UK, that's just outside the boundry of Greater London), so let's see how many non-mainstream/Hollywood films there are within a 20 mile radius of me: Number of cinemas - 15 Number of screens - over 100 Number if small indie/foreign films - 5 Of those 5 films (Singh Is Kinng, Bachna Ae Haseeno, God Tussi Great Ho, Maan Gaye Mughal-E-Azam - all Bollywood films - and Shoot on Sight, a UK film), they're only showing at two cinemas, both of which are right on the edge of the 20 mile limit. Birmingham: Number of cinemas - 15 Number of screens - over 100 Number if small indie/foreign films - 5 Bachna Ae Haseeno, Singh Is Kinng, Lakh Pardesi Hoiye, Maan Gaye Mughall-E-Azam, Shoot on Sight, being shown at just three cinemas. Manchester: Number of cinemas - 15 Number of screens - over 100 Number if small indie/foreign films - 5 Bachna Ae Haseeno, Singh Is Kinng, God Tussi Great Ho, The Banishment (Izgnanie) & Mad Detective courtesy of Manchester's one and only arthouse cinema. So, we have a couple of Bollywood films, showing at a total of 8 cinemas, one British film film showing at 11 cinemas and two European films showing at 1 cinema. No, I can't think why the cinema going public don't know about films that come from anywhere other than Hollywood... And if people complaining about the quality of many films today do it because they're simply getting old and remembering the good ol' days, why is it so many of them say they now enjoy world cinema films instead? Is it because these films lack imagination and simply copy 'the good ol' days' or is it because they're actually superior films?

Probably both - I know that's certainly what's happened to me. The older we get, the more we've seen, the harder it is to see something new. However... In the English speaking world the US is absolutely king of films: they make the most, they make the biggest, they control the cinemas. Unfortunately, they also have to make the big profits and appeal predominantely to their biggest market, the US audience, which they seem to think is populated by people for whom thinking is an alien concept. Apart from Hard Candy, which I did like, I can't remember the last US film that was either any good or not massively biased to a US audience and their very passionate nationalism. As someone who isn't American the nationalism alone can be hard to sit through in the cinema <1>, never mind contantly being spoon fed the film's story because I, as an audience member, can't possibly be allowed to think for myself. Sadly, the UK's film industry offers very little alternative. Over the last few years I've discovered a whole new world of film thanks to the increasing ease of buying world cinema from people like Amazon. Watching films from countries like France and continents like Asia I've found that it's not really me becoming a film snob or anti-Hollywood, it's simply that as an English speaker I'm given little opportunity to go to the cinema and see anything that's not from the US, and US films simply don't have the imagination (or, probably more accurately, aren't allowed to explore techniques and themes that don't conform to the accepted norm due to box office paranoia) or the confidence in their audience to let them think. As for the topic of tension in films, I think this is a talent that has been all but lost and replaced with wobbly cameras and CGI eye-candy. <1> And before anyone starts thinking 'oh, he's anti-American', this is simply a cultural difference between the US and the UK. Generally speaking people in the UK don't have anywhere near the same level of nationalism that we see in the US and, indeed, many see it as being a negative attitude to have rather than a positive one. To give those of you in the US some idea on how big the difference is - having a British flag flying outside your house is considered at best offensive, more lilkely, however, a sign that the person in that house is a racist.

Unless I've misunderstood you, I have to say that's not true. Last year I worked on a 5 part drama series made for C4, and I've just finished a two part 'film' for C4, too. Both of these projects were produced by a small indie.

I've just spent the last month using a Stanley Fatmax bag on a shoot where the bag had everything imagineable thrown at it yet it still looks new. Even in absolutely torrential rain it never leaked. The top is semi-rigid, the base is solid plastic. It has enough pockets for mattes, a standard and small slate, all the usual bits and pieces you carry (French flag, camera tape, Kenair, BNC cables etc.). On this particular shoot, as well as all the normal kit I always have to hand it also happily carried 22 V-Lok batteries, too. Highly recommended.

I've just finished a four week shoot, that was 100% external locations, all of which were on the top of very big hills (not sure they were technically mountains, but they sure as hell felt like they were) in the UK, where it rained (proper rain, not drizzle) constantly (only four dry days out of the entire job). Even simple jobs like setting the board became a nightmare due to the extreme weather. One day we were caught in an electrical storm, literally a few hundred feet below the clouds themselves. Another day we were hit by a whole month's downfall in just three hours. That was the only time we actually stopped filming. If we were lucky we only had to push a Magliner, loaded up with around 200 lbs of kit, up and down massive inclines, but the locations for the last two weeks were so remote we had to revert to carrying everything by hand. I lost over 14lbs of weight in just three weeks. Good fun, but I don't think I want to do another job like that one again for quite some time... ;)