Bob Hayes

Feline often shot his character actors with out sound. Sometimes he didn?t have dialog for them to speak so he would have them say random numbers in an emotion context and then add the words later. Much of the dialog in Friedkin?s ?The Exorcist? was done in post. Friedkin came from radio and liked directing in an audio booth. Timur Bekmambetov?s the director of ?Night Watch? remade a Roger Corman film called arena. Many of the actors were Russian speaking phonetic English and doing a rather poor job of it. Bekmambetov did a really cleaver job of moving the camera during dialog often missing the beginning or end of the lines. It was super effective way of disguising the lack of sync.

I worked on a show where the grips used a muscle cart with the breaks on filled with a mess of sand bags as a tie off point. It seems like a smart alternative to pounding an iron stake into the ground.

You want to back light the rain. If it is day shoot into shadowy areas. Be sure to wet down as far into the BG as you can.

Some folks are trying to get me to shoot Digi Beta on some projects instead of HD. What are the real differences?

Are you trying to get eye lights and modeling on the faces or are you trying to create the feeling of sunlight burning through the clouds? If it is the former I?d go with smaller HMI?s 1.2 or 2.5 Pars through heavy diffusion and bring in some negative fill. You can also use a small HMI to give you an gentle edge light. If you want the feeling of sunlight breaking through an 18k HMI ¾ back light would help a great deal.

Where are you shooting? What type of spot?

You can also shoot at a slower frame rate to give yourself a bit more light.

That push rig looks like the way to go.

What an odd looking light. It looks like a unit that takes three "aquarium" style bulbs right next to each other. Regualr bulbs would be too wide to fit.

I think ?Wind Talkers? had some of the most amazing pyro. It looked like huge amounts of earth were lifted into the air. I heard the used a lot of high explosive to achieve that effect. The explosive they used was so unstable they had to keep it refrigerated until they used it. I?m curious as to what they used.

Great American Market still makes a material called window grip. It works great I put it on a driver's side car window that needed to hide the driver and it worked great. I then rolled the window down on camera multiple times. You can also buy ND plexiglass that isn't that much more then rolls of ND. http://www.gamonline.com/

Keslow camera has at least one. I am an owner and they work great. http://www.keslowcamera.com/

A trick I have often used is to find a smooth section of high way next to the rough terrain you want to film. Then just shoot off of the road. It works great. If you must shoot of the road you might want to check out the heavy duty off road vehicles that compete in some of the competitive desert races. Some of these have 36? shock absorbers. I have hit 1 foot high ridges at 45 miles per and not felt any roughness.

Surround yourself with good people.

"Bloody Sunday" by Paul Greengrass redefined handheld for me.

Kantana delivered great dailies for me on the last feature I shot in Thailand. They post a lot of commercials so their quality is very high.

Jump on it. These are great lights if you know how to use them. They are super lightweight and super small. The umbrella makes a nice soft key. They bounce well off of the ceiling to give you over all ambience in a documentary environment. They suck however as back lights and it is impossible to create slash like lighting. You will also need to buy some gel frames if you want to change the color temperature or add diffusion.

I would think the cost of two motion control jibs would be cost prohibitive.

I have found boxes that are completely miss-wired. The box it's self being hot. So even if you do everything right, some one else might have made the mistake.

Put it on a dimmer and twist the dimmer up and down to simulate a flickering flame.

I use Movie Magic Screen Writer $175. I am very happy with it.

Absolutely hilarious. This behind the scenes footage is some of the best I?ve seen. It sure looks dangerous to cast and equipment but it seems to work.

People like John make being in this industry worth while. I will miss him.

I did exactly the same shot on a show with a highly professional stunt crew. The van spun around instead of rolling over and took out my camera crew. My operator was knocked out. After the accident we all went of course that would happen before we went no way. Please be careful. Also cars have lots of dangerous fluids in them. Gas, Oil, transmission fluid etc. When you turn them over the go everywhere. The fire department will shut you down and fine you if you don't prep the car properly.

Kevin what was the need for such a large light so close to the car?