Bob Hayes

The saying ?You can?t make a silk purse out of a sows ear? really applies to the film industry. You can?t turn a low budget producer into something they are not. Producers have a budget with salaries pretty locked. They are going to find the best person they can for that money.

Make sure the camera is safetied to you so you don?t drop it. Make sure accessories like the matte box are securely taped to the camera. Stay away from the tail rotor when walking around the helicopter.

I use my 7 mega pixle still camera.

My wife and I transformed ourselves into Bratz dolls so we are able to ski in some of the most extreme enviroments.

I am cutting a DP reel and I am looking for any and all music recommendations. I have been scouring my soundtrack libraries and I?m just not finding anything appropriate.

I find portable coolers like you would store cold beer in are fine. I?d get space blankets and make small covers for the camera silver side out. I often just keep a white towel draped over the camera. The tough part will probably be acclimating your cold weather self to the African environment. Where are you going I West Africa?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. From Bob and Grazia

What you have done is the opposite of what I am recommending. HOW TO REALLY ADJUST BACK FOCUS 1. Set camera to wide open. You need a proper exposure so do it with lighting and or camera adjustment. 2. Put camera in manual focus. Zoom all the way in and focus manually. 3. Zoom all the way out and see if it is sharp. On a wide lens this isn?t very easy. At this point you adjust the back focus until the image is sharp. I don?t think your camera has back focus so if it is off you need to take it in. WHAT I AM RECOMMENDING YOU TRY. 1. Although the above is the correct and recommended way to check back focus and I religiously do it. I find it is tough to see whether the wide shot is as sharp as it can be so I have developed two other easy field tests. 2. I zoom out halfway and try to ?eyeball? focus. Then I zoom into what I have tried to focus on. If the camera is back focused OK you should be close but not perfectly in focus. If the Back Focus is off when you zoom in you may be very out of focus. I do this check occasionally while I am shooting with the camera on my shoulder as a quick back focus check. 3. Another technique I use is to zoom in on a feature on a horizontal plane. The most accurate method is to use a metal tape measure pointing away from you on a table top. I focus on part of the tape measure like 7?. Then I slowly zoom out. If the back focus is on you will see the depth of field get wider but the original number will still be sharp. If the focus is off you will see the depth of field expand but in extreme situations it will move away from the original focus. So 7? might be soft but 4? to 6? is sharp.

I?m an Easy Rig owner. I love it and I use it all the time. It takes most of the weight of the camera and distributes it evenly across your back. It also helps stabilize the camera so I can do rock solid long lens work. There are several arms and vests I have the heaviest Cine style and have used many 35mm and HD cameras with it. It?s great for low angles and I sometimes use VR glasses with it. Although you must have a spotter if you do. Although the system is very steady it doesn?t work like a Steadicam so walking with it imparts a very hand held feel.

I really rely on the waveform and monitor to determine the exposure. In my experience meters don?t work well determining lighting ratios or ASA because the contrast ratio, sensitivity, and Gamma on these cameras are so adjustable.

"Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks" is a must see. It is a fascinating film on every level. Documenting what happened. Documenting these amazing scientists who knew they were killing themselves but willingly did it for science and the Motherland. It is just crazy seeing the steps necessary to contain this disaster. For example the nuclear core was filled with sand. When the meltdown occurred the sand became highly radioactive molten glass. After weeks of risking their lives they finally make it to the core and open it up only to find it is empty. The radioactive molten glass acting like water had left the core through a crack. They spent days and lives tracking it down and finally find it in a huge deadly blob in the basement. Amazing stuff.

It might be a back focus problem. Put the focus in Manual. Zoom out about half way. Focus on something with good crisp edges. Zoom in, if the image is way out of focus you may have a back focus problem.

First 15? to 20? is the area for SCUBA diver or very experience free divers. It takes time to get down and set up your shot and unless you can hold your breath for two minutes forget it. SCUBA diving with out proper instruction is suicidal. So take a class if you plan to dive. But with regards to your fogging problem. It is very important that the camera and the inside of the housing are completely dry. That means no wet hands or water dripping inside. Story the camera with some rechargeable silica gel will help. There is a kind that recharges by putting it in an oven. But in the tropics you must use it immediately.

You may like it but it will depend on how you time your shots. If you time the orange out of the Sodium vapors lights you will fins the tungsten with ½ ctb to be very blue. At least as blue as a full ctb. If you time the green out you may find that the ?moonlight? goes magenta because the 1/4 + green hasn't completely matched the green of the Sodium Vapor. Different film stocks and video cameras respond differently. With video at least you can see the result immediately.

I believe there are several light modeling programs that do a great job simulating the effects of bouncing light.

I miss posted on the Super 8 forum. Although I reposted under general this one seems to have a life of its own. Superman was shot on the Panavision Genesis camera. Despite having huge budgets and everything at the disposal of the director these giant films become like out of control semi trucks on ice.

They only complaint I have with shooting a B Camera which is lower quality is that I end up dumbing down the A camera footage so it doesn?t make the b camera look bad.

I really wanted to see this picture in the theaters as it was one of the first major films shot on the Genesis. Unfortunately I missed it so I have been looking forward to seeing it on DVD. Warning Spoiler. IT SUCKS! I thought any problems with the projected image would be fixed in the DVD. I was wrong. The worst part of the look was the flesh tones. The actors just looked like cadavers. Newton Thomas Sigel is an excellent DP so I really don?t think it was his fault. Also they gave Superman the phoniest blue contact lenses that made his eyes look like doll eyes. Ouch. The script was non existent. And apparently the dislike for America has grown so great on the world market that the film makers omitted ?and the American Way? at the end of ?Truth, Justice, and the American Way?. Did I mention they made Superman?s cape Burgundy instead of red? What wre they thinking?

I really wanted to see this picture in the theaters as it was one of the first major films shot on the Genesis. Unfortunately I missed it so I have been looking forward to seeing it on DVD. Warning Spoiler. IT SUCKS! I thought any problems with the projected image would be fixed in the DVD. I was wrong. The worst part of the look was the flesh tones. The actors just looked like cadavers. Newton Thomas Sigel is an excellent DP so I really don?t think it was his fault. Also they gave Superman the phoniest blue contact lenses that made his eyes look like doll eyes. Ouch. The script was non existent. And apparently the dislike for America has grown so great on the world market that the film makers omitted ?and the American Way? at the end of ?Truth, Justice, and the American Way?. Did I mention they made Superman?s cape Burgundy instead of red? What wre they thinking?

I find 2/3 ctb seems to balance daylight in most interior situations. Full is too blue and cuts down the lights too much.

Rain towers make it sound like you are planning on driving. Rain in a driving car is about the easiest poorman?s process you can do. Shoot against black back drop. Use a hose to rain on the window. Use a fan to blow the rain drops on the glass as if the car is moving. I like to add a little smoke, also blown by the fan, to look like spray from the road. Light the window so you get highlights on the rain. Protect all electric from water.

That?s a very exciting story and I wish you and your daughter the best. I also recommend contacting a lawyer and having a contract drawn up. Perhaps you could contact a local law school and at least get yourself some free advice regarding how to proceed. You have already invested a lot in your project and you need to protect yourself.

A lot of the success in working with a small crew is knowing your limitations. If you as a producer can find locations that are easy to light, load in, and work in. If you can schedule your days so they are achievable. If you as a director can design shots that are easy to achieve and once lit you take advantage of the lighting set ups to shoot more footage. If you as a dp can light simply and effectively taking advantage of available light or using fewer units. Then a small crew is a realistic option. Unfortunately this isn?t at all what happens. Producers usually want their films to look ten times the budgets. They often schedule unrealistic days, go for cheap locations that hammer the crew, and expect long hours to compensate. Directors devise complicated set-ups that they see on films with huge budgets and expect small crews to effortlessly achieve them or they construct coverage that is painfully inefficient to shoot. DP?s do the same thing by choosing the most complex solutions for simple problems. No one seems to understand how hard it is for a crew to make films. Most folks, even really experienced people, see film making as no more complex then taking a mini DV camera on a tripod and bouncing a light off the ceiling. Anything that is more complex and more time consuming then that is almost interpreted as incompetence. I blame myself for this type of unrealistic thinking. It seems like film making should be that easy and painless. It just isn?t. And you need man power to achieve it.

Has anyone had any luck doing rear projection with video projectors onto rear projection screens? I?m thinking of trying the Roscoe black rear projection material. I?ll probably be shooting HD so I think I?ll be able to crush the blacks a bit. I?d love to make it an easy way to do poor man?s.

What is your budget? I'm leaning more and more to tungsten for my nights. They are cheaper and easier to move around. If you shoot video it is really easy to color balance the warm out. A 5,500 generator and 2 blonds, 2 red heads, and a couple of pars would get you a lot.