Miska Draskoczy

Hi, I'm researching how to pull off a shot of an actor drowning underwater. Its a low budget horror short so the effect needs to be as simple as possible while getting across the idea. My first thought is a head and shoulders shot of the actor, gasping for breath, screaming, bubbles coming out mouth, maybe sinking out of view, etc. Background is dark green (supposed to be a lake). The easiest way I can think of to shoot it would be to buy/rent an hv20 (to be cut with varicam), get an underwater housing and shoot it in the lake near where principal photography is taking place, natural lighting. The only problem with this is that the shoot is tentatively schedule for late sept/early oct and it may be too cold to have an actor in the water. Even so, if this were to happen (maybe wet/dry suit can be used), what are the rules for such things? Do we need safety person or diver on set? Even if its shooting in 4ft of water and just dunking our heads under for 30secs at a time, talent and operator? Otherwise, are there any other low budget options? I'm assuming anything involving a pool is going to cost a lot of money. I'd like to shoot with natural lighting if possible to avoid all the safety concerns and costs of having lights around water. But maybe there are underwater tank studios in the NYC area that are set up to do all this already such that we could strike a deal to rent for a half day or so? Or if anyone has a brilliant idea for achieving a similar effect on a small scale, like maybe there is a way to just dunk head and shoulders in an acrylic box and shoot from below with a dark background strung up above, with some way to light such that the surface waves on the water are not showing right above the head. Any advice would be greatly appreciated... thanks! -miska

Panasonic makes (or at least used to) a demo DVD disc that has sample varicam footage, final cut pro projects and all sorts of other goodies. Its all in dvcproHD. Look on the panasonic site or call them and see if you can still get the disc. I have it and its a pretty good test of whats possible in the format. But easier than that, you can take any clip in quicktime and export it to to dvcproHD. Just make sure your size is 1920x1280 or 1280x720, and that the codec is set to dvdcproHD. this will let you test the throughput of the file to make sure whatever drive setup you have can play it fast enough. If you are looking to test out color corrections methods and see how the codec looks on real footage, then yeah, you'll need some sample footage. -miska

thanks everyone for the help and great info. I think I will indeed be taking the film to the lab to get it all checked out... and then on to shooting...:) -miska

Hi, I just had about 5000 feet of 16mm and 5000ft of 35mm recans and short ends donated to me from a production company's old fridges. Here are most of the stock and years the cans are from, when known: 7298 EXR 500T 1994-1996 7293 EXR 200T 1996 7248 EXR 100T 1996 7245 EXR 50D 1994 7297 250D 7279 VISION 500T 1998 7277 VISION 320T 2004 7289 VISION 800T 2002 5298 EXR 500T 1996-1997 5279 VISION 500T 1998-2002 5246 VISION 250D 2002 The vision I'm not too worried about, I'm familiar with its look and most of it isn't too old. The majority of the stock is the old EXRs, particularly 7298/93/48 and 5298. My first question is, is the 7298 from 1994/96 and onwards double or single sprocketed? I looked on the cans, some of which don't have labels anyway, and coulnd't find any way to determine this. I'd like to shoot super16 if possible. Is there any way to find this out short of cutting off a test piece of film? Should I do that anyway to be on the safe side? I think most of the loader's labels have the emulsion batch numbers if its possible to look it up that way. Second, how different are the older EXR stocks in look? I'm assuming they are probably more contrasty and grainier than the newer vision stocks. Will I have a hard time matching them in telecine if I decide to mix stocks? Will the grain of the 7298 be really noticeable, even if I'm going for an SD finish? For any of the 16mm, I'd plan to shoot on a decent camera with modern glass (i.e. not a bolex) and transfer on a Spirit. Or use it for a project that is supposed to have an 'older' look... Last, is there a significant risk in shooting stock this old? As far as I know its been sitting undisturbed in a fridge this whole time and it all looks to be well labelled and handled. I don't think I'd shoot anything critical with it, more like b-roll, time lapse, experiments... Thanks for your help -miska

thanks guys for the links and info. now that I know to search for snori(y)cam, I found a whole bunch of useful stuff. -m

Hi, I'm trying to figure out what the name is for the type of camera mount that fixes a camera on an actors face, such that when they walk, their face stays locked in the middle of the frame and everything in the background moves behind them. One example of this is the poker/boxing ring scene in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, after the guy loses and the world starts spinning behind him. I've seen pictures of it a while ago, it looks like a steadicam vest with an arm that goes out in front and above the actor as well as a counterbalance on the back. And are there any 35mm cameras that can be mounted to such a system, or too heavy? Otherwise I was thinking of renting one of the ikonoscop super-16 cams which certainly should be light enough. Also if anyone knows where to rent one of these actor mount rigs in NYC that would be helpful too. Thanks! -miska

Of course I'll be going to festivals with the film and after that, well, making more films.... I'm focusing more on writing, working on a feature script, planning another short and then looking to add some more commercial projects to my reel, music videos and spec commercials. My background is as a graphic designer/animator/editor so I'm starting to transition my commercial work to the directing side. I don't pretend to think that anyone is going to give me money to direct a feature based on one (or even a few) shorts. To me the primary function of shorts is to practice. There's hardly a feature director out there who didn't make shorts first, or otherwise came from the commercial side making videos and spots. Even when I'm ready to do a feature, I don't imagine waiting years trying to convince someone to give me tons of money to do a first feature. I'd rather raise 50-100k privately and through savings and shoot something independently so I have full control. My basic philosophy is to keep moving, get things done any way I can, and try not to worry too much if I'm doing it the 'right' way. As to Hollywood, I can't say not having spent much time there, but in nyc watching artists, designers and filmmakers around me taking off in their careers the main ingredient I always see is perseverance. If you can consistently work hard over the long haul and are looking to move up then it will only be a matter of time. Connections come as a natural result of this. But really it boils down to being driven because you love what you do. Making films is what gets me out of bed in the morning so there isn't much else I want to do anyway. I could have gone to school this year (AFI) but in the end I decided against it. Its a heck of a lot of money, I would have had to delay or abandon finishing my current film, and I just wasn't convinced I'd be any better off than learning by continuing to work in the industry and make films on my own without the restrictions imposed by film school. -m

Funny that you noticed, actually that silk had a hole burned through it while we were shooting :) As to the function of it, thats a little beyond my area of knowledge, I'd have to ask the gaffer or DP. -m

We shot short ends of 5218 on a moviecam with zeiss primes for all the lab set and interview scenes, no filters. I shot some flashback scenes on 16mm color reversal on a beaulieu with an angenieux zoom which aren't in the trailer but are in the stills. I learned first hand in telecine just how incredible the vision2 stock is, we had a shot that was straight into 4 lights silhouetting the actresss. On default settings it came up completely white and then dialed down several stops on the spirit and brough out all detail in her face and even the filaments in the bulbs. Everything was telecined on the spirit to D5 and I did an offline edit on minDV downconverts. I thought I was going to do an HD online but then I was lucky to get my whole film digitized to frames as a favor and because of a new piece of gear (the sledgehammer, a framestore/fileserver/digitizer) Thus I was able to conform and do fx and prelim color manipluation at my own pace in my studio. I've done a basic color correct in after effects with the color finesse plugin, but otherwise no effects or filters except on the obvious cg shots. Soon I'll be dumping my file sequence back to D5 and doing a proper tape to tape color correct. Going the film/DI route seems like such a great way to work, albeit more expensive and complicated than say HD. I hope I can continue to shoot on film in the future, but to be honest it does bring up a lot of problems in doing heavy FX/animation in post and its still tempting to go video. I'm looking at the sdx900 for some of my upcoming broadcast projects which won't be on a big screen, but I think for narrative stuff I want to try and stick to film/DI at all costs. -miska

Hello, I asked quite a few questions here a year ago when I was getting started with my short film. You were all very helpful and I just wanted to say thanks and share with you some of my project which is now finally finished after much blood sweat and tears. I just had a preview screening with great response here in nyc at the tribeca grand and am moving forwards with festivals this year. http://www.perfectheatfilm.com I ended up shooting on 35mm, going to HD D5 and conformed everything manually in After Effects after having my tape selects digitized to files (long story). I am so happy I went with 35mm, even a projection of the dvd looked great and I'm going to be doing my output to HD and final color correct in Jan, and hopefully a film out eventually. Thanks again for all your help and I hope you enjoy the work, I wish I could show you all the whole film. Pierrot Colonna was my DP and he did a fantastic job. Happy holidays... -miska

Ok, thanks, thats what I was hoping would be the case. I know HD intermediaries aren't the best, but as far as I know 2k scanning would be prohibitively expensive. I think they charge more for 2k scanning over HD. Plus I assume I would have to do 1-lights first to do selects which is an added cost. It doesnt seem feasible to scan all 1.5hrs of raw material as it would take up an enormous amount of disk space and time to copy off the framestore. Then I'm not even sure how you would do an offline edit of the material, since there isnt the usual tape/burn-in edl situation. Next time....:) Right now I'll be happy to have an SD edit, thrilled if we get the money to conform to HD, and a film-out would be icing on the cake. Just trying to be smart and hedge my bets as best as possible while working on a limited budget. -miska

Hi, I am soon going into post on a short film that was shot on 35mm. My plan is to transfer to HD on the Spirit in a supervised session with a colorist, then do downconverts to miniDV and do effects and edit the project on my own system, finishing at SD resolution. If money and interest build in the future I plan to go back and do a conform edit of the HD masters and possibly even an output to film. I've been doing research on the process, and one thing I came across is that when transferring, one would use different settings on the telecine depending on if it was meant to be finished on film or broadcast. I am curious as to how true this is and if so what the best course of action is. I have to be honest and say that a film out is a hazy possibility at this point, whereas I know that I will end up with at least an SD broadcast version, possibly HD too, so if I have to make a choice I would go with transferring for broadcast specs. Is there anyway to insure that my transfer will work for both circumstances? Would it help to transfer to uncompressed frame files instead? (don't see how this could be feasible for 1.5hrs of footage) Also, any general advice on the film->HD workflow would be appreciated, its seems like everyone I talk to has some caveat. I know I've seen this in the archives but they don't seem to be accessible at the moment unforunately. Thanks... -miska