Hemant Tavathia

maybe you could film at a desolated airstrip, they look the same worldwide and are free from buildings, powerlines.

I shot myself in afghanistan in may and it wasn't dry at all, it was raining like hell.

landskape near Kaboul is only grey medium mountains, no trees, it's already 6000ft high!!

 

we stayed at KAIA the KAboul International Airport.

 

if you find a military air strip you can cheat afghanistan.

 

saying that i don't know new jersey

Thanks for those descriptions. Airstrip might work. Wanted to check these posts sooner, but was bombarded with work.

Thanks again.

You need a desolate place with scrub-brush and few trees. An old abandoned industrial complex might work it ... but that depends on what type of Afghan terrain you need.

Look into Centralia PA :

 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_7_gMFng3OpY/RfWq..._926ed8280c.jpg

 

Might kinda work?

 

http://www.city-data.com/forum/attachments...centraliapa.jpg

 

http://geology.fullerton.edu/awoods/centralia.jpg

 

best i can think of 'round these parts.

 

Good luck.

Thanks.

The location pictures you sent me might work well with the right camera angles, lenses, and lighting.

Are you a local around that area?

I grew up in the pine barrens, im not totally sure of the look you are going for. But i have seen desolate sandy areas throughout this area.

Check out forked river mountain, which also has alot of old desolate clay quarry's in the same area.

 

If i had more time i would try to go out and get some pictures, but the next few weeks are very busy for me.

Thank you.

I guess this can only be fixed by shooting out of Jersey. Well, thank you all for the advice.

Hi All,

Wasn't sure where to post this topic but this seemed like a good place. I have a 12 page script set in Afghanistan. The 8 pages of nighttime can easily be cheated, but 4 pages are set during Daytime. Some daytime exterior scenes call for medium to wide shots. I'm based in New Jersey. In your expert opinion, what would be the best way to cheat the daytime exterior shots, so I can somehow get the feeling of being in Afghanistan.

Some suggestions and possible options available to me are:

1. Shoot in a Quarry (how do i get permission?).

2. Shoot out of state (expensive).

3. Shoot low angle, so you mostly see sky (I don't want to lose the feel of the terrain too much)

4. Shoot in a studio and build a set (expensive)

5. Shoot green screen (too much post required, possibly expensive)

5. Stick to close-up (easiest way to go)

I know the ultimate solution is to find a good location to double as Afghanistan. But, if you have any suggestions as far as camera/lighting/other tricks that might be useful, please reply.

Thank you.

It would help to know where you're located ;)

I am based in New Brunswick, NJ. I work all over the Tri-State area, mostly manhattan and north jersey. I have a car and can travel for out of state shoots.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

Dear All,

When the economy went south earlier this year, I took a long 3 month vacation to Europe (went to Poland, Czech Rep, and Ireland). Now, i'm back and I am looking for work but with little luck. I would like to team up with any up and coming DP's who wants to team up with a gaffer. I have some lighting packages available since I have good relationship with a rental house.

some of the stuff I have shot myself is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmJpV-jWAfc

thanks.

My approach would be threefold:

1. Creating overall Fill for the room: I'd probably put 2K Mighties through softboxes wrapped around them- then have them rake the ceiling- assuming that the ceiling would not be seen. This should create an overall fill in the room. The editor can take it down in post if too much is seen.

2. Production Design and Wardrobe: Work with my production designer and Wardrobe people- Light colored walls for background and light colored wardrobe on the actors that is darker than the wall in their background.

3. Eyelight/backlight: For Eyelight- A soft source that the actor's pupil would reflect. For Backlight- nothing fancy, just enough to give some separation.

The Director wants the audience to feel the tension in the story- all these characters have their lives threatened and could be killed at any moment of this scene. By using the "One Long Take" placing the audience inside the car, the Director was able to draw that feeling of helplessness from the audience. You cannot get away from that action. You are not driving the car to drive whichever way you want, you are stuck as the passenger.

If there were a lot of cuts in this scene, you wouldn't get the same feeling from the audience.

If the camera's "One Long Take" was outside the car, for example- in War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg's)- in the car scene on the highway, the camera is outside the car for the most part- The audience feels the "action" of the scene, but they don't feel the "tension" that the characters feel like they do in Children of Man.

I would recommend one of these two arri kits:

Arri Kit with 3* 1K Arri Fresnels

or Arri Kit with 2* 650 W fresnels and 2*300 watt fresnels.

Either of these kits would take care of a lot of shoots without problems.

They are more expensive than Lowell, but totally worth it.

if you only have a 2K Junior available, you are going to need some kind of snoot to cast a sharp circular shadow. I'd recommend using the light without its lens, so, open the fresnel lens door and turn on the light. This will give you a good punch. Then Cut a circle on foamcore and place it at a distance from the light using a C-stand to cast a sharp shadow on the canvas. This will also allow you to block light on the canvas.

For the canvas, you should go with a bleached Muslin.

I'm new to filmmaking and lighting, so please comment my work, if you could spare some time.

 

 

 

 

Thank you all.

One thing I've noticed in the three pictures are the backgrounds are not interesting. I think you need to breakup and separate your backgrounds more.

The actors in the foreground are ok lit. I think with time you can learn to finesse face lighting. My main advice while lighting actors faces is to never forget to backlight them, and also shape their face with a side light.

Mostly on Corporate lighting jobs, we rig Kinos to the ceiling with scissor clamps. Another helpful light for wide shot office setups are Image 80's for a good punch to the foreground. Basically, Kinos work best in office spaces.

Since its a short 'film,' you can be a lot more flexible and creative with the look. I'd recommend breaking up the space by strategically positioning smaller units to highlight parts of the room. use a 1200 HMI with a breakup pattern on a open frame to further break it all up. Use practicals.

Good Luck

I've just finished shooting the short film "Calibre" on the Sony Ex-1 (two of them actualy). The script is a pastiche of 80's/90's action movies, with a few large (for a short) action sequnces. Because the budget was tight and i felt we needed two cameras to complete the shoot on schedule and to cover our larger action/stunt scenes i suggested we shoot with two EX-1's in its HQ 1080/25P setting. During the action stuff some footage was shot at 50Fps in the HQ720/25P setting. Both cameras recorded to 16Gb sxs cards which the loader treated as digital film, downloaded to a mac laptop and then backed up to two external hard drives.

We didnt use any 35mm adaptors, partly for budget reasons but mainly because i really wanted to see what the camera could do with the inbuilt Lens. I switched off the matrix and most of the internal processing settings on the camera and set the gamma to cine gamma 3.

We shot at 3200 K throughout the week long shoot, using Smoque 1 filters and ND's for filtration. Almost all the interior sets were smoked except one.

For my tastes the images the camera gave were on a par with the Sony 750, except that i felt the EX-1 didnt hold as much detail in the shadows and wasnt quite as fast as a 750 (I'd usually rate the 750 at 640asa for interiors/night exteriors but i was rating the Ex1 at 500asa). The camera itself is very small - too small - for someone like myself used to film and high end Hd gear, but by adding an astro monitor to each camera for the operators to operate from, and a small arri LFD follow focus we made them work for our purposes.

I've attached some reference stills and some behind the scenes stills. the ref stills were taken on my canon 40D, shot at the same stop/asa and shutter speed as the EX-1's. They images are almost identical to the EX-1 footage except to say the EX-1 footage is a little lower in contrast then these stills.

 

Because almost all of the script was night interior/exterior i used an entirely tungsten package. Most of the film was shot at T2.8 with skin tones usually being underexposed by 1 1/2 - 2 stops. The colours im using are a mixture of Lee Lagoon blue 172 and Lee Yellow 101. my key light was usually either a 5K bounced into a claycoat ultrabounce from the floor or a toplight from some 4x4 kinflos. Backgrounds were usually lit up with a 20K fresnel and a pair of 10K's.

 

When I have footage I'll post a link.

Hey Stephen,

thanks for the post. I also checked out your website which was pretty cool. I have one question and please explain to me in as much detail as possible, how do you calculate the ASA of a digital camera. For example, if I was renting an HVX from a rental shop, how would i go about calculating its ASA.

Thanks.

If its not too much of a hassle, can you explain the gripping on the condor. I see you have a 20 by griff? on a frame mounted, and then a 20 by double hanging secured with sandbags. I was hoping you could explain all the grippage involved with illustration if possible.

Thanks in advance.

I'll keep reading as you post more. Please give as detailed info as possible especially about lighting and cinematography so I can learn.

thanks.

http://www.hylensystem.com/

the Hylen system looks amazing and like most optical tricks, remarkably simple in principle. Thanks for this link.

You are right about the aspect ratio. I'll work on fixing that in my 2008 reel. I suck at the computer editing and outputting part. I'll also check out blip.tv to get some ideas.

I shoot a few short films a year when I'm not doing G&E work. I was hoping to get feedback on my 2007 reel and also on the overall quality of my Photography. Please view it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmJpV-jWAfc

Thanks.

If the location is supposed to have windows, the Actors could be silhouettes, with little light outside the windows in the background. Add a little bit of backlight on the actors to show separation to audience.

But if we have to see the actors faces, this advice is pointless.

I usually don't hang anything larger than a 750Watt Mickey or a 2'*4 kinoflo on the scissor clamps. Always safety the light with trickline.

For larger lights, remove the panels and find a solid beam in the ceiling. Use a Maffer or Cardellini on the solid beam to rig heavier lights.

Thanks for this Brad. I love in-camera tricks. Wish I were as smart as some of you guys.

After reading though this and looking at the pictures, my understanding is that the shot is:

A tear falling down and as the tear falls down, you see the face reflected, and then the tear goes off frame and all thats left is an extreme close up of the actors skin- no camera movement. Am I understanding the shot correctly?

Trailer is too long. The pacing in the first half of the trailer can be faster. Definitely agree with a lot of what Walter Graff has to say.

I don't think the question is which camera is better. The question is which camera should be rented for the music video. So, you gotta look at where the music video is finally going. What kind of look does the director want etc. etc. Between XL2 and HVX200, I prefer shooting on P2 cards on the HVX.

So, nchanji, if you have more info about the music video, i.e. where it is finally going, what you are editing on, budget, the look you are going for etc., the advice could be better.

You can file a case in court. One of my friends took a producer to court. It took more than 6 months. I never followed through.

Always have a written agreement prior to the first day of production. Tell everyone the names of people who screwed you. The word travels fast because the industry is small even if it appears big.