Alex de Campi

By the way, here's the first finished music video from the shoot I started this thread for - 6 camera super8 shoot, at 25p: http://www.vimeo.com/5735338 Went with Cinelicious, very happy.

NY-area DoP wanted for spec commercial shoot. Shoot is 2 days, first is background stills, second is HD greenscreen studio shoot with lighting to match background stills (interior of shops/stores). Ad is online only so we can argue about what HD/HDV camera we hate the least. Unfortunately it's another gin n' burgers number as it's spec; I can cover expenses and feed people but that's it. Want to shoot end June/early July; shoot dates are flexible and can be shifted to accomodate DoP schedule, within reason. And yes, before Adrian asks, we have enough to get folks from Philly or Boston, but not any further afield than that. On the very slim chance we win the award/contest for the commercial, winnings will be split equally among all cast and crew.

Hah, no way. I grew up outside Philly. Nice city, but not going back. Long list of dumb personal reasons I have to be specifically in NY, otherwise I'd still be in London.

Do you know, I haven't shot a darn thing in America yet. Keep flying back to London to shoot... oh well, may have a Canadian thing happening over the summer. Things are good but SLOW. Living in Brooklyn, which is a lot of fun but new York is VERY expensive. It makes London look cheap, and that's just silly. As for Cannes, yes, you just enter your film into something called the Short Film Corner. It is *not* competitive (you can enter your holiday films, pretty much) and also is not related to the Cannes official selection for short films. Here is the information. The pass you get is not a full market pass, more like a 'junior' pass but with it you can enter the market and you can queue for seats for the big Palais screenings. A full market pass costs something like Euros300 and with it you get free tickets to all the official screenings that you want to book plus you can get into all the market screenings (eg for films not selected/not in competition). But Cannes' business is mainly about producers selling finished or almost-finished films to distributors (and about crashing parties, drinking rose wine and marvelling at how short famous actors are). It is good for casual networking and for seeing a lot of great films, do not expect much more - and if you can go cheaply one year for about a week, it is definitely worth it. NB: French riviera sometimes not as hot as advertised. First year I went (2005?) it was FREEZING.

At late notice, I am shooting some extra scenes for two music videos this week - all on manual-exposure Super8 (Nizo 4080 / 500T ) Weds pm would be after-dark 'crime scene' shots - WeeGee style setups of a lady murdering a chap in various parts of a house. Just a single wide and single closeup for each mini-scene, and lit only with a front spot plus practicals - to give the idea of (but not the reality of) still-camera flash. Saturday is stop motion work - fun with a clay head, 'plastic surgery' and medical supplies. Locked down camera throughout due to compositing etc. They should be fairly fun, relaxed shoots. They better be, as I have no money left (not that I had any to begin with) and can only offer your expenses plus gin / beer / drink and burgers after the shoots. If you have experience on film/Super8, are available either/both days and are up for this sort of collaborative work, please email me at alexdecampi *at* gmail *dot* com or telephone me on 0790 998 5015. - Alex

Er... I've organised shoots via facebook, chatted with producers about projects on it, got offers of work through it... I hate myspace (there's only bands and whores left on it, and the user interface still redefines 'unfriendly') and twitter seems to be increasingly hijacked as a corporate/personal marketing tool - so I've not warmed to it. I think facebook is great, though.

Lightpress contact: Ah. Oops. I am clearly a spack and not intelligent enough to use the internet. Also, on my 10" screen travelling laptop, the "contact" button falls off the right hand edge of the screen into oblivion. I truly didn't notice it until you all mentioned it - and I navigated all around the stuff at the left and bottom edges of the screen looking for a contact button. ::blushes::

Freya: Hi! ::waves:: Flyingspot is now Lightpress, they changed their name at the beginning of this year. I'll let you know how it goes with Cinelicious. (And Phil, I take your point about colourists but I'm hoping to remotely collaborate with the colourist on a look for the project via the streaming colourcast live thing they do at the beginning of the session. We'll see. Oh, and Here's a link to Cinelicious' equipment.) I also just heard back from Rushes in London, they can do tapeless, but not for Super8.

Unfortunately you all did a 25fps S16 -> SD PAL transfer for me a couple years ago when you were very tied up with your own film work, delivered it late (causing us to miss our broadcast deadline) and then for quality reasons we had to have the whole thing re-done by another lab. And getting communication/responses from you all when trying to book the telecine job was nearly impossible. So although I'm sure this was a one-off issue due to your own heavy filming commitments at the time and a lack of anyone else working in telecine, I fear that for me, it's a case of: Cinelab, never again!

I spoke to iLab (I'd done as much research as poss on other threads on this forum and saw them mentioned). Sadly due to their merger with another company, they've decided to indefinitely postpone adding S8 capabilities. Rushes used to have an S8 Spirit gate but I think they got rid of it. Soho Damages has one, but they can't do tapeless transfer - my bete noir with all UK post facilities. I live in the US so NZ probably a silly option due to distance even if the service is amazing which, knowing NZ, it probably is. Oh wait! HDCam deck. No thank you. TAPELESS. DON'T get me started on the extra charges asked by some of the companies above. The PAL HD charge, as noted upthread, makes no bloody sense. Workflow is telecine to at least 4:2:2 HD then edit in final cut. It's all a bit ghetto (as all my work is), because the vision is a lot more fabulous than the budget. Flying Spot / Lightpress have lost out simply by being impossible to contact / not providing an email address on their website. I only have a mobile with me, no landline, and I'm not waiting until like 8pm at night and then using up all my PAYG minutes to call Seattle. I think I'm going with Cinelicious as they are by far the best deal, don't add on silly costs like data layoff fees if you go 4:2:2, and I really like their colorists' work. Lastly, if we're sort of using this thread to make a big list of S8 -> HD facilities, two more US ones: Bonolabs: $715/hr TK and drive layoff fee of $3/minute Mymovietransfer / Debenham media: approx $16 per roll of S8 for SD, $25 for HD (I think, website a bit confusing). Don't seem to ding you for drive layoff.

Eh, not necessarily. Easyjet to Nice is about 30 euro and then the bus along the coast to Cannes. You can get a market pass by entering a short film in the short film corner - that costs about 35 Euro. Then you can get tickets to all the premieres by waiting in line, and sometimes you can go into market screenings if they're not too full/the distributor is nice. The difficulty is finding a place to sleep that is not expensive. If you can crash with friends (or, as some people do, drive out in a van and sleep in the van) it's fine. Or you can stay a distance away from Cannes and drive in every day. Lots of young filmmakers go to Cannes on this super-cheap basis every year. It's a lot of fun, although you may never want to see a bottle of rose wine again afterwards.

I'm shooting a S8mm music video and will have about 2,000 feet of 500T I want scanned to 25p (PAL) HD and laid off direct to drive. This seems impossible in the UK (where I'm shooting) so am planning to schlep the developed reels back to America and try one of the labs there. Does anyone have any experience with / recommendations between the following labs, which to the best of my google-fu are the only ones scanning S8mm -> HD? I'd be especially interested if anyone has experience putting PAL / 25p work through. (I'm being cheeky and mentioning all their published rates, as it's interesting to see the variation) * Cinelicious (do they do PAL?) HD @ $275/hr * Lightpress (ex FSFT) who, super-annoyingly, don't have a contact email address anywhere on their website. Anyway, they're $600/hr for HD scanning then another $250/hr for layoff to drive. 50% off for standby rate. * Pro8mm HD @ $450/hr + $20 extra per hour for PAL * Colorlab - $750/hr for transfer + $300/hr for uncompressed layoffs to drive Let me know any experience you all have with these folks, or any other labs that do HD that I might have missed out. On price alone, Cinelicious is the clear winner - and they seem to do a lot of music videos.

Just to update on this, I got the gig (nothing quite like beating out 21 other directors for the ego!), they needed the video like YESTERDAY which meant the shoot got moved to London (closer to the artist, and where I could use my favourite/usual DP and HODs) and then five days before the shoot the label decided to postpone the video indefinitely due, presumably, to wanting to hold back on marketing budget. And this is... well, it's the biggest record label out there. Sigh. Music videos, aren't they fun? Anyway, thanks to everyone who got in touch - I am very much looking to develop relationships with DPs in New York and Boston as I need to start shooting in America rather than only flying back to London for gigs, so it all comes in useful and I am starting to plan projects here.

See, driving up from NYC I'm totally OK with. Tim - got a link to a reel/website or can you drop me an email so I can get a better idea of your style, etc?

I grew up outside Philadelphia! (Chester Heights)... I know the city well. Sadly, but for Act of God, there isn't likely to be enough snow in late Nov around Philly/Chadds Ford for the look I want. Heck, school only got cancelled for snow days about 2 days a winter, which to my 10 year old self was WAY too few.

Just to clarify, I'm really NOT interested in flying anyone in for this gig - if it comes down to that, I'll fly in my regular DP from London who is a.mazing and with whom I have a great working relationship. So: sorry, West Coast folks. This is all about building up a local network in the New England area of people I can work with on a potentially ongoing basis on music videos and short films.

I'm normally a London (UK) based director but for reasons too complicated to explain I'm going to be based in New Hampshire (Portsmouth area), USA for the next 3 months or so. I'm writing on an indie music video, probably a 2 day shoot max in New Hampshire at end November (yes, outside in the snow) and PAID. I'm looking to shoot it on 35 - I've shot a lot on S16mm and want to play with even bigger cameras now. So I'm interested in hearing from / meeting DoPs with experience lighting 35mm in the Boston / NH / Maine area. If people have their own camera I'm interested in that, too (and day rate will be increased to reflect provision of camera, etc). I love old cameras so IICs, BLs, etc are most welcome, as is techniscope / Commiecams, as long as you've got a variable speed motor that'll go up to at least 48fps. I am not interested in digital or the Red Camera for this particular project, thanks. The gig isn't definite yet but I write on a lot so if not this one, then others. Email me on alexdecampi *at* gmail *dot* com or post below.

We've now put the camera on eBay with photos and details (including serial numbers): go here. Auction is a 30-day buy it now or best offer auction.

No, I agree too. Having experience of cutting your own work makes you a more honest director.

....Although I do know of a few DPs who have directed projects (extremely well, to prestigious award level) and then gone back to DP'ing.... and found directors didn't want to hire them because they (the directors) felt insecure.

I just want to say I've shot about eight music videos with Guy on this LTR and it's a really great camera. The lenses are gorgeous.

I have always seen the storyboard as the place to work out your shot flow in edit order, then the shot list takes the SB and turns it into a sensible working document for the crew - noting which shots in SB can be done in a continuous take or on the same setup and grouping them together (possibly tweaking shot ideas to allow them to be done in the same setup as another shot), and thinking through production issues. As I'm sure you know, the things that really slow a shoot down are re-lighting and moving grip. It is in your best interest to group your shots out of sequence into setups - in a one-day shoot, I generally try to order my shots in the following manner: 1. Anything with a large amount of extras, shoot first - this isn't a camera thing, this is an "omg, get all these people off my set" thing - and also extras (especially unpaid ones) have very limited patience. Keep the shoot short and exciting for them, wrap them early, and they'll come back on your next shoot. 2. Then light the wides (establishing your lighting "feel" for the entire scene/location) 3. When selecting which of the wide shots to do first, I suggest picking all the work with large pieces of grip: dolly work or jib work. It is worth, for example, grouping as much of your jib work together as possible so you can wrap the jib early on. Then move onto the big dolly moves, etc. Also, people get tired as the day goes on. The more resource intensive shots with jib / steadicam / dolly are always nice to do when folks are fresh. 4. Then work through the mediums, then the closeups (which will require lighting tweaks but! because you've already lit the wides, this shouldn't take too long) for each camera setup. Basically, move the camera as few times as possible. Light the wides first, then move in. Do the stuff with grip first, then the stuff on sticks / h/held. Why should you do all this rather than shooting in edit order? Simple: efficiency. You will get a lot more slates shot over the same time span. I generally organise my shot list into discrete groups of similar shots to give some flexibility on the day. If something isn't ready in time for what I had scheduled as the next group of shots, I can then skip ahead to another group without getting myself confused. Plus, crossing things off a list as you do them is a way I love to work as my brain has been known to completely shut down on the day due to OMG DETAIL OVERLOAD.

Marc We have a full late LTR package including lenses (Zeiss primes and a Cooke zoom) & support, 3 mags, full service history etc which is in London - we haven't gotten around to listing it for sale yet due to punishing shooting schedule over past few months. Email my DP, Guy Routledge, on amaspictures at hotmail dot com and tell him I (Alex de Campi) sent you. Camera et al is in great working order, most things on http://www.youtube.com/alexdecampi (or better res http://www.vimeo.com/user405634/videos ) were shot on it. We love that camera and are only selling it because I have had to relocate to America at short notice due to family emergency.

To put Flash on your website, first put: 1. The flash player (I use http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player - it's tiny, like 4k) 2. The flash movie (yourmovie.flv) formatted to 480x270 (I'm assuming it's 16:9) and a max bitrate of 1.5Mbps in the SAME FOLDER on your website as the page you want them displayed on (this will probably be just the "Public" folder) Then on the page you want to flv to play, put the following bit of code: <p align="center"><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height ="290" wmode="transparent" data= "flvplayer.swf?file=yourmovie.flv&autostart=false"> <param name="movie" value="flvplayer.swf?file=yourmovie.flv&autostart=false" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> </object></p> That's it! If your movie is 4:3 or you want it bigger/smaller, you just change the width and height restrictions - note that the vertical height should be 20 pixels larger than the actual vertical height of your file, to account for the play control bar) To embed a mov: (again, assuming 480x270, and don't go above 2.5Mbps - and for MOVs the play control bar is 16pixels) <object classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab" height="286" width="480"> <param name="src" value="http://www.yourdomain/yourmovie.mov"> <param name="autoplay" value="false"> <param name="type" value="video/quicktime" height="286" width="480"> <embed src="http://www.yourdomain/your.mov" height="286" width="480" autoplay="false" type="video/quicktime" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"> </object> set Autoplay to "true" if you want the movie to play automatically when people open your page. Personally I find this very annoying but ymmv. For more: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/embed2.html

OK, this is easy to do in camera. And cheap! First, go to your local plumber's supply store (or hardware store). Buy two things. A set of matches that smoke - they are like normal kitchen matches but with fat heads. They smoke for about 10 seconds. (These are also really good for using for muzzle smoke on replica guns - just drop em down the barrel, roll camera, and then the actor can blow the smoke from the muzzle of the gun like in every old western evar) The other are small pills, also used for detecting leaks in pipes. They smoke like a motherf*er for about 20 seconds and can totally fill a room with white smoke. You light them and step away. TEST THIS FIRST, as you may only want to use half a pill due to WOW SMOKY. Voila! Total cost, less than $10. Make sure you have several lighters on the day, especially those extended fireplace lighters as the pills are kind of a b*tch to light and some poor runner is going to burn their fingers a lot otherwise. Oh, and turn off any smoke detectors in your shooting location. Also, smoke/fog continuity? It's about as much fun as candle continuity, eg a total nightmare. Really, have someone standing around making sure that you have a consistent level of smoke / fog throughout takes of contiguous shots, otherwise you will be an unhappy bunny in the edit. Lastly, it is not good for camera team/actors to be standing around in this poop all day; you may want to warn your guys/gals and suggest they bring filter masks - be aware of anyone with asthma or allergies - and make sure everyone gets lots of breaks outdoors or in a clean, well-ventilated space (and have things to drink on hand, people get hella thirsty standing in a smoky room all day) We used the matches in my "Jilted" video and the pills in the "Stucklike" video (both actually smoke a LOT more than shown, the takes I used were 3rd or 4th takes from a single match/pill) so I am speaking from direct experience on these items.