David Desio

Thanks alot, I'll check that out.

Recently I shot some B-roll with one of our HVX200's and when I was performing a pan I noticed that the image seemed to jump in the LCD screen for about 1 frame. I noticed that I had my hand near the zoom ring when I was doing the pan so just attributed the jump to me nudging the ring by accident and shot a second take. A few weeks later I shot this footage: and saw the same thing happening during some of the pans, noticable in the first part of the video with the girl surfer. I shot this footage at various frame rates from 29.97 to 48 fps and don't know if that has anything to do with it, though the B-roll I mentioned was shot at 29.97fps. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Dave

No worries and no aplogies needed. Good luck on your shoot!

Hey all, I have a shoot next week which has a scene that takes place backstage at a Sting concert. This will be done in studio and I will be using the back of a hard set as one of the walls, the studio walls will be the other two. What is hapeneing is an assistant to Sting is sitting at a computer talking into his webcam. I want it to be dark and atmospheric so here's what I plan to do so far: I have some spinning colored lights that will play in the BG from the direction of the "stage". I'll light the actor with a 2ft 4bank kino with daylight bulbs to simulate the light from the computer screen. Rake a 2k fresnel across the set wall Edge the actor with a 650 tungsten fresnel. Maybe hang a china ball over his head to light up the table that he's sitting at. Fill the stage with smoke. Any one have any other suggestions or additions?

I did a "one Light" just to bump up the contrast/saturation and adjust the exposure a bit. If you render from that program, yes what adjustments you've made will be on the footage, but WILL NOT effect the RAW. You can still color the footage how ever you want and if you decide that you don't like the one-light, you still have the R3d files.

Diagram Please...

bring your red raw files into RED ALERT and do your "one light" coloring there, then render them as whichever codec you want, ProRes, DVCPROHD, etc. This does each clip one at a time or you can batch them using RED RUSHES but you can't do any coloring in that program that I know of. Either way you'll need to color the clips. I DP'd my first RED shoot about a month ago and was very nervous when I saw the RAW footage. It looked very blah...not much contrast, washed out color, not much saturation. Then I tweaked the footage in COLOR and brought the life back into it. Kinda like a film negative that has not had anything done other than to develop it. As far as the editing workflow, I re-sized the footage and cut it in Final Cut but I know that there is a way to do an Offline edit with smaller versions of large files. Since My final output was going to be for the web I didn't bother looking into that. By the way, both of the programs I mentioned are downloadable from the RED website.

I see, that makes sense.

good advice. I'll attest to that. I've had issues with darks getting noisy after the key is applied. For my purposes I try to stay away from Blacks in the wardrobe area, at least for head to toe stuff. Now when you say "even" exposure, do you mean flat lighting?

ste up sounds fine. I would try the 2k(s) through UNBLEACHED MUSLIN for the "window" light. I don't know how contrasty you want the scene to be but you could try a ceiling bounce for lifting the over all ambience. I'd still use a smaller unit for the shapes on the wall. Remember that this room will heat up alot with these lights so I'd go as minimal as possible. I say Unbleached Muslin for the diffusion because of the hue it will cast, it comes off very warm and nice looking. The set up doesn't sound too crazy.

do you have a picture of the set? How much light comes through the window during the time of day you want to shoot? will the only source be the Window? I love using unbleached muslin as diffusion for scenes like that. Will you be seeing the window in your shot? If not then I would use a 2k through the muslin as your "window" light and use the other one through a cookie to make the pattern on the wall. Make sure to match the color temp and intensity. Actually maybe not a 2k for the pattern, something a little smaller. Hard to say without seeing the set and the angle you want to see.

So the set up was: key from the left (screen left) with an arri 2k and 1k bounced into a 4x8 piece of white foam core. I put a single net up to cut a little off the shirt. fill from screen right with an arri 650 fresnel bounced into a piece of white foam core and I think I had dropped a double scrim in the unit at well. 2 arri 650's edging him from either side. then the cyc is lit with what I said in a previous post.

I don't have any photos that I can think of, I probably should though. Anyway as for the top lights, I don't have the subject stand directly underneath them, I pull them forward so the spacelights may act as a hairlight at the most. My key then fills in the floor in front of them. I forgot to mention that I shoot at a f2.8-4 split most of the time. I let my green screen go about 1/2 stop under from my subject. It reads about 70 on a scope. Here's a screen grab of an unkeyed subject from a recent shoot. You can see some shadows around his feet but they keyed out pretty cleanly. You can also see that the screen is not completely evenly lit and this always makes the old timers cringe but it keys just fine.

so to get this straight, can you rig from the ceiling at all? I do head to toe green screen all the time and the most important thing is getting your screen lit properly. I've tried going from the floor for everything and unless you want to have a jungle of flags as well as lights it's better and easier to go from the ceiling for the screen. As for the subject, first try and keep them as far from the walls as possible to miniize spill, then figure out what your final output size will be so that you will know where you'll be able to crop in post. This allows you to have strategically placed card board/beadboard to further cut down on green spill. To light the subject I always try to bounce my keylight onto them to avoid hard shadows around their feet. You will still have some shadows but they will be more green than black (on the floor). For lights I use 1k space lights (4) hung over the subject to light the floor, then 1k lowell cyc lights to light the walls. For the subject I use at least the equivalent of 3k tungsten bounced into white for the key (I know it should ideally be an HMI but you work with what you have). If you need to get more blue, then go through an 1/8th blue but remember that bouncing will already be losing some light intensity. I've never had a problem going uncorrected and I do most of the keying myself. For a fill I'll use a 650 arri fresnel bounced from white again and scrimed down a half stop. Then I put on a double edge from 2 more 650's pulled as far back as I can. I'll flag them off as necessary and slow them down to taste. Oh, my key light (s) are Arri's as well. Hope this helps.

I was excited all they way down until Karl's post...man that guy's a bigger buzzkill than Buzz Killington. I say let us dream.

cool, thanks JD

Thanks alot Hal, very insightful stuff. I've bookmarked the site for future reference.

great info from all you guys, if anything this prompts me to be more thorough when inspecting lights, other than the usual, do they turn on, are they close to thr right color temp, are any of the wires exposed...

The arri unit is about 3 years old, the bulb was replaced about 6 months ago or so. I know because it's mine. The M/R is an older unit that lives on a grip truck and works mostly on location while the arri stays in the studio. The arri is not a studio light but a smaller location unit. Both were about half flood. I bet the M/R was knocked around a bit more than the arri and the lens looked like it had seen some better days now that I think about it. Interesting though that arri's are more efficient, I've always tended toward them anyway.

I'm a horror fan first and love reading what the critics say. It's almost like they forget that these are horror films and can't be measured the same way as a serious piee of cinema. We watch these films to see a cool monster/madman/ghost or creature destroy some really dumb teenagers...good old fashion slasher movies.

I appreciate the input. When I asked the gaffer about this, he said that Arri's are supposedly 20% brighter than other lights, or so they claim.

ahh, I see. Interesting. I guess I should have done some research first. Still didn't like the look it created though.

Yesterday I did a shoot and mixed and matched some lights, namely an Arri 2k tungsten fresnel and a mole richardson of the same type. I was using them both as the key, bouncing them into a 4x8 piece of white (I didn't have the power for anything bigger and had to really budget). Anyway I noticed that the Mole was very different in colortemp and intensity. The arri was bright and had a nice whitish almost neutral color while the mole was very tungsten-y and not as bright. I had to drop a double scrim in the arri to even it out. Anyone else ever noticed a difference or was there something wrong with the mole light?

At the risk of losing any credibility(not that I have ever claimed to be credible) I have to say that I grew up on the Nightmare series. Freddy Kruger was my super hero; hell I even had a Freddy Kruger birthday cake for my 8th birthday (the nice old cake lady at publix did a fine job decorating it). So when I heard that they were going to remake the story that I held so dear, I was very skeptical. Then I went to see it on opening night, filing in among the ranks of all the under age teens who snuck in from other theatres, giggling nervously as they scurried to the dark back row. I'll spare plot details because we all know what happens, some kids have the same nightmare, they all die except one (well in this case 2) and...sequel? So the acting was pretty weak by the kids, but its a horror flick so what should I expect, right? Freddy had a cool new and more realistic burn-victim look and I thought the cinematography was done well. All througout were traces of the colors red and green, you know like Freddy's sweater and darn it if they didn't really try to be creepy and atmospheric for the nightmare sequences. They even went so far as to put some kind of weird filter on SOME shots during the nightmare, a kinda halating vingette if that makes sense. It looked like a post effect thrown on at the last minute becuse the director thought "crap, what if the audience doesn't get that this is supposed to be a dream? Mr. Editor, sir, what kind of plug-ins do you have in your editing program?" Overall I had a good time, it's been a while since I saw a horror film in the theatre that I was excited about. They didn't break any new ground with this one but hey, I hear next time around it'll be in 3-D. Spent

Gregory, I shoot primarily with this camera and a Pro35 adapter set up. I know that the rentals get a little pricey but if you are getting a set of primes, you must also get and adapter for the camera, ie. a pro35 or equivalent. If you do come across a cheaper and easier solution please post some info and pics. If you get the pro35 and lenses, here are a few things to remember: 1.you lose a little in your exposure so make sure you light well. 2. set the speed of the GG(ground glass) to 6 or 7 on the dial. 3. open the iris all the way on the lens and adjust exposure using the adapter's iris ring. 4. MAKE SURE that the glass is spinning( I know it sounds rudimentary but I've shot half a scene only to notice that the little green light is not on) 5. make sure your back focus it set during prep. Good luck on the shoot! I just noticed the speed of the lenses that you are renting. Any chance of getting a faster set of primes? Remember that with any adapter you will lose a stop or 2 out the gate.