Steve McBride

Looks amazing, can't wait to see some video. I'm really looking into purchasing a 7D for myself, what do you think about lenses for it though? I love you work, I was supposed to PA on your shoot for "Shake That Bubble" (I interned with Barry Sonders at the beginning of the year and am living in NYC for school right now) but couldn't make it.

Lighting looks really good. Let us know when you have some screengrabs or even some vids to show.

Light has four characteristics... Quality, intensity, color, AND placement. To me, true three point lighting is only used in interviews, but the same principals of three point lighting are used in every single lighting setup: key light, fill light, and back light. It's just how you use these lights and how you adjust each light that changes how a setup works.

I'm in a brand new program at the New York Film Academy that is just cinematography and I personally love it. The first semester is all 16mm (reversal and negative) as well as HD (HPX) then the second is S16mm, RED, and 35mm. When learning the cameras, you have three camera classes where the instructor goes over everything about the cameras from how to load to how to change lenses. But other than these camera classes the rest of the classes are all about the artistic side of cinematography. A camera is just a way to record images, but if you can't create those images it doesn't really matter how you record them. I personally think that composition and lighting is much more important than what camera you use. Sure, if I got offered to shoot a film on the RED or another on a GL2 at the same time I'd probably go for the RED, but you need to know how to create images to help a movie progress and create themes of lighting or composition that evolve throughout a storyline.

Check out your rental house for a suction-cup car mount. A 3-cup suction-cup mount shouldn't run you more than $50-100 and it will definitely make it easier. If you can, a hostess tray would be nice with sandbags if you can't afford the full mount. Just make sure you have enough safety straps on it to make it safe (kinda hard with the SR2).

As Adrian suggested, lots of hard light. You said "lots of shadows," this is not true all of the time. Even in situations where you have two shadows this can be very ugly. Especially with hard lights, you have to be careful where you're putting your shadows. To me noir isn't (entirely) about what you see, a lot (if not most) of the story is told in what you do not see. Try and keep that in mind.

Use lots of hard light. For the basement, I would have a hard light going through one of those basement window vent things casting some light on a back wall and then light the inside with uncorrected fluorescents so that you get a bit of green to add to the horror look. If anything you might want to add a bit of plus green on the fluorescents to amplify the effect. You could also have a work light suspended above the chair to give some really deep shadows under the person who is being tortured's eyes. Check out Jayson Crother's post for his film "The Brazen Bull" and you'll get a lot of good ideas (lots of visual aids with it), there's some really great inspiration in there. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=39945

Do you have the option of lighting from outside? If you can try and get a 1200w HMI to put outside of a window to have more daylight. You could always shoot it at night and use all tungsten units instead of during the daytime and with HMI units. You'll save money that way.

Looks great. Didn't expect to see a web series with such high production design. Cinematography looks great as well. Looks more like a feature film than an episodic series. Any info on the technical specs and production?

Wow, some really amazing work in there. The only thing that I didn't like was some of the graduated colors especially in the first shot. How much color correction was done to the images?

Thanks a lot for the response. And no, it's not a homework question. My school is more focused on actually shooting projects so I don't have (traditional) homework. Lectures, workshops, and shooting only. And I've been around here long enough that I would feel weird asking professionals to do my homework for me.

I'm currently a student and learning 16mm filming, and I was just wondering the full workflow for film. Right now, all we're doing is getting a 100ft 16mm daylight roll from the school and shoot on it and turn it into the lab guy who sends it out and gets it back and then the editing lab at the school does a (really bad) "telecine" transfer. I get that that is the basic workflow for film, but I was wondering if someone could just layout the entire workflow from getting the film to actually making the print to be projected on screen. Thanks!

What kind of camera are you going to be putting on it?

Ask around town for people who can donate a sub platter or a pizza for a credit in the project. You might get some crafty that way. A sheet pizza costs $20-30 and can feed probably 8-10 people. Sub platters come in different sizes and can feed different amounts of people. I wouldn't go for the pizza unless you have to as it just shows how low budget you really are. Sub platters might be a bit more expensive but since it kinda comes with veggies and it's a bit healthier it's the way to go. Also try to have a veggie platter, fruit platter, some cheese and crackers and a bag of candy on set. For low budget productions I usually do around $75-100 for crafty which really isn't a lot. This is what I usually do for around 10 people... Breakfast: a dozen assorted bagels, cream cheese, a kuchen, fruit basket Lunch: sub platter, chips, fruit basket, veggie platter Savory (mid-afternoon): cheese and crackers, candy, fruit basket, veggie platter Then have lots of water, coffee (caffeinated), Gatorade (if you can afford it), and soda in coolers throughout the day. All of the professional producers that I've worked for say if you're not paying your crew and/or talent or you're not paying a lot you NEED to have good food.

Check filmtools.com, they have a good amount of Chimera gear.

Everything that Dave said is definitely the way to go. If you're indoors and the floor is tiled, measure to see how long a tile is and use that as a reference. If a tile is 1ft wide and you have your mark you can use that to be able to judge how much you have to compensate for movement. Look for a topic talking about golf tees, there are a lot of good tips in there for pulling focus outside. But really, you need to know the location and know how far the camera is from stationary targets at different points in the move.

400 ft = 11 mins If you shoot at a 4:1 ratio as Satsuki mentioned you would need about 1600 ft of film, so 4 cans of 400 ft. It's always good to add a little more in case you need it, so I would say that you need 5 rolls and if the producers make you cut your budget you can bring it back to 4. Oh, and going with what Satsuki mentioned also, if you're shooting multiple cameras, just multiply your total times the amount of cameras you're going to shoot on. I'm not sure about the off-speed shooting though so hopefully someone else will be able to help if you need that.

Definitely watch Collateral, you'll get a lot of good ideas from there. The August 2004 issue of AC has an article "Hell on Wheels, Paul Cameron and Dion Beebe, ACS take hi-def video to extremes on Collateral." You can get the back issue from the ASC store for $25 here http://www.ascmag.com/store/product.php?pr...at=0&page=1 .

You're correct. Lighting the interior to match the exterior is the way to go. Often times as you had to deal with, it's very bright outside and hard to get that much light inside. If you can probably fly a 8'x frame or something above the actors to knock down the exposure on them so that when they move inside it won't be as bad, but your background is still going to be blown out. It's really just lighting the interior to match the exterior.

SP on tapes is the standard which means that you record to the length that the tape is meant to be (60 minutes for most tapes). With LP though, you're actually stretching the tape to get an additional 50% length (90 minutes total). Tape versus memory card all depends on the camera. If it's an HVX200, you're going to be getting better quality recording to the P2 memory card as well as a faster workflow than if you record to the tape. But if your doing it on a consumer level camera I would just stick to using tape.

I've been reading in posts (District 9 topic in the On Screen board) about people really hating the shaky cam. But what I want to know is if this is just like big movements or even just the smaller ones? I'm DPing a short in two weeks and most of it is going to be handheld (HD on an EX1 or HVX200) and minus a few dolly and jib shots the feel of the movie would definitely be added to with a little bit of a shaky cam. In the past most of my handheld work just looks flat out shaky because my hand does shake quite a bit after holding it for awhile. I don't think that for this movie that using completely locked off shots would work for the feel that I want to give to it, so I'm wondering if I should go handheld (possibly with a figrig) and add a very little bit of shake, almost like a breathing to it or if I should put it up on a tripod and turn the drag on the pan and tilt very low and give a little bit with that. It's a short thriller giving a very personal view of the action including a few point of view shots if that helps.

Someone got this month's AC. I was amazed when I read about the 150TB storage space used as well as the 72-hour renter time for a frame, completely ridiculous. Personally I liked the movie. I'm not the kind of person who follows politics and all of that kind of undertones in movies just go over my head, so I was watching really just for the story and the cinematography which I think besides the shaky cam was very good.

Shoot all different kinds of scenarios that you can think. High contrast, low contrast, outside, inside, dark, bright, etc. Also make sure that for each setup that you do you bracket it. So you shoot it how you would normally shoot it and then do one stop under, then two, then three, go as far as you want, and then make sure that you shoot it one stop over, then two, etc. Also make sure that you're shooting with the same camera and lenses that you plan on shooting the project on so you know how the glass will effect the image.

http://www.woodylight.com/Welcome.html

I posted awhile back asking if anyone had ever used the Barger lights before. I'm glad to hear that they work great as they definitely seemed like they would work really well, especially in confined areas. Also after Jayson posted about the Woodylights I've heard other DP's saying great things about them. It's good to know that you don't have to pay a lot of money to get top of the line lights when these two brands work just as good, if not better than the other names.