Bob Hayes

A 16mm 50mm lens will look the same as a 16mm 50mm lens if both are put on a 16mm camera. The quality will be better because you are looking through a sweater part of the 35mm when it is on a 16mm camera. You can't put a 16mm 50mm on a 35mm camera. It will lack the coverage.

If you are having troubles hooking up a dimmer I think you might not want do it. A dimmer is pretty simple and if you do it wrong you could get fried. And yes, that is a pretty simple drawing.

Let me explain myself with regards to the importance of ?watching the crew for fu**ing up?. Which isn?t the best of English to start with. Often times the director will ask for something to be done. Some times he is very clear and sometimes he is not but often, 50% of the time, the message isn?t clearly passed on. The director my have wanted all the red flowers left on the tables but the set dresser heard remove the red flowers. A director who stays on the set and watches for fu** ups will immediately see the red flowers disappearing and correct it. No harm no foal and no lost time. A director who assumes his request was understood will be more often then not surprised. I see this with myself all the time. Just today I asked for a full grid cloth to be put on a 6x6 frame. I was watching the guys open the bag and when a light grid came out a caught it and told them I wanted a full. Was it their fault? Who knows? I know I asked for a full grid but I was tired. I might have misspoke. But, I caught it and the delay was only about 3 minutes, as opposed to 15.

I find the best thing to do is wait a day or two and David Mullen will post the perfect explanation of why we do what we do.

If you are going to the trouble of doing everything you say than you should do your best to do it for real. That would mean a real script. Sometimes you can hook up with actors who want to do demo pieces. Often time?s short stories offer good ideas. An anthology of horror stories might have a simple story in one location that would be a good starter piece.

There is something amazingly seductive about truly mangled films like ?Creeping Unknown? or ?Spider Island?. For me they are grotesquely entertaining. It?s big budgeted films that are so uninspired and insipid that makes me crazy. In a funny way they are very similar. On one hand you have clueless, talent less, and moneyless film makers stumbling their way to sub par performance. Their own lack of vision and skill drives them to failure. On the other hand you have very talented filmmakers with all the money and all the resources on a project that is so huge and unwieldy that it turns into an out of control semi truck on ice. Once control is lost it slowly but inexorably slides to its own destruction.

Is it Day or night? I?d give up on any attempt to get depth of field. As long as you have enough light to get an exposure and create a mood I?d shoot. If it is a night shot I think china balls would work well but might be too flat. You might want to look into shop lights that would point down and be more directional. If it is day bring hard reflectors through the windows to create shafts and add some smoke.

I must say Michael Ballhaus? work was pretty inconsistent and often looked low budget. As a DP who spends a lot of time working with small budgets I fight constantly and to get my work up to the quality of the people I admire. I rarely win at this battle. And, I am doing this on 15% of the budget and support these DPs have. So it surprises me when there work looks like some of my weaker work on a rushed day. I guess much of the work of a DP is just the luck of the draw. Sometimes you end up with a location that is difficult to bring alive or a schedule that just hammers some of your scenes. Also I can?t knock DPs who are passionate about your work. It?s when you loose that passion that you have to worry.

Let?s say it takes 18 days to do your movie and you have a 20 person crew and cast and the salaries across the board are $200. And your film costs $200,000 and makes $200,000 so it is a complete wash. No profit. Now let?s say you get everyone to work for free on your film. That means the hard cost is $128,000 and if you sell it for $200,000 you just put $72,000 in your pocket. Sounds to me like you are a conman. But a lot of independent film makers don?t see it that way.

Loved ?Silent Hill? and most of Nicholas Roeg?s films. Hmm.

Michael Mann's "Miami Vice".

Absolutely the most important skill a director can develop!

Large metal cooking sheets 2"x3" with water in them. You need pans with low sideswork pretty well. Add small pieces of broken glass for more punch from the effect.

You really want to use a small dolly like a fisher 10. But, they are pretty expensive to rent and you need to carry 1 million in insurance to rent one. So you may want to think about hand held. Or a mini Steadicam system like Glide Cam.

When a DP is hired to do a one million dollar picture the first thing he hears from the director and producer is ?We want it to look like a five million dollar picture.? So we are really shooting a five million dollar film for one million dollars. That already puts a huge strain on all departments to live up to unrealistic expectations. Two police cars just aren?t enough for the shot. A five million dollar picture would have ten. As a DP your small crew is usually expected to try to achieve the work of a much larger unit. Extra man days help keep the salaries hirer for your regular crew and reduce the presure on the hard days.

Bob Hayes? Director?s Cheat Sheet Don?t miss the Beats. Shoot to emphasize the beats. Why was the scene written? Prioritize. Some scenes must die so others may live. Don?t leave the set be in charge of your own clock Watch the crew for fu**ing up. Have your check list of what you need. especially wardrobe and props. Be nice about recommendations. Don?t do your most important stuff last Don?t do your most important stuff first shot first day or last shot last day. Plan to finish fast and sloppy, start fast and sloppy. Keeps crew on their toes Start fast like your life depends on it. Don?t count on the AD?s to keep your time, pace or quality. Don?t let the DP paint a scene at your expense Be careful of being talked out of what you need by the DP or AD. They do not know the story. Be aware of the group directing. The Actors, DP, Script, and AD should all have input but it quickly gets out of hand. You have to shut it down. Don?t forget transitions. How are you getting into and out of acts and scenes. Be aware of the first time you meet your characters. Where are the characters coming from the scene before. Get your rehearsals in. What are the fewest shots you can tell this story well. Try to aim for three. Hi Low Dancing fingers dosido. Can I combine two shots. Can I put actors back in to the same coverage spot. Can I block a scene so it ends where the next scene begins. Use the same lighting set up. Tie ins cost time. Single, two shots, overs, overs with action. When you tie things together it gets tougher. Do the larger shot first. Look for the shot that establishes the most geography and action. Try not to do large proscenium masters. Hard to light and get you no closer to other setups. Stage in perspective. Find the best background. Backlight, backlight, backlight No long important scenes at sunset. Never start interior. Don?t be mediocre. Push the edges. Don?t be safe. Make your film visually dynamic. Create Rules for your film. Whether it is dark or light. Just don?t be arbitrary. Use Examples to help communicate, pictures, paintings, books. It helps everyone. Shoot for the trailer of the film. Great dialog and visuals that reflect what your movie is. Get one good scene for your reel. Don?t rush or screw up the end of your film. Don?t rush or screw up the first 10 minutes of your film Get everyone on board with your thoughts. You have lived with this film they haven?t.

I am the kind of guy who really is excited by doing as much as I can with as little as I can. I am constantly trying to get my packages down to the minimum truck size. Trying to change my lighting and camera style so fewer guys can achieve what we need by working smart and fast. This year I shot two mini DV television pilots. I shot with two cameras, me and one or two operators, one soundman, one gaffer, one key grip, and one swing. We shot 14 pages in one sound stage location on multiple sets in 14 hours. I also shot a couple of one day short films. So I?m not saying it can?t be done. And the closer you can get by with available light and gritty realism the better. However, I would not have attempted this in 16mm, 35mm, or even HD. A lot of big film makers are really excited over the idea of the minimal crew and just shooting on the fly. But I must say when you work with these ?Big Fish? in a ?Small Pond? environment they bring their ?Big Pond? style and expectations. They want the long dolly movies and they expect to shoot up against bright windows and not see a silhouette. They want the actors to look great and they want the scenes to look moody. Maybe the new generation of film makers who are growing up looking at ?U Tube? instead of ?Lawrence of Arabia? will have a different standard of what excites them.

Bob?s longest rant yet. I must admit I was really offended by your initial posting. And there were several elements to it which showed a high level of arrogance and ignorance. When I hear someone say that they look at a film crew and see a bunch of people standing around it shows they don?t have a clue how films are made. It?s like watching a baseball game and seeing it as a bunch of people standing around doing nothing. They are waiting for when they are needed. And if they weren?t there when they were needed you would loose then game. On a picture, even ones with budgets as small as a quarter of a million dollars, you can?t afford to wait around for the key grip to run back to the truck to get an apple box. You mentioned ?bulging stomachs? as if it was some sort of symbol of lazy do nothing folks. Those ?bulging stomachs? are more probably a result of thousands of hours of working on film sets eating pizza as a second meal. And those thousands of hours translates into a crew who is fast and experienced and will insure you get the film you want. Anyway since I got that off my chest I?ll answer your question. Sure you can make some films with a small crew. If it is well thought out and is the type of project that fits contained film making. If it has a good cast dedicated to working in bohemian conditions with crews that aren?t performing at the highest level. Even if you have a great crew if they are understaffed they will often look clueless because it is easy to become overwhelmed. This results in a high level of stress on the set which isn?t conducive to good film making. Realize films like ?In the Bedroom? or ?Leaving Los Vegas? felt like small films they had a lot of resources available to them. ?In the Bedroom? had a 2 Million dollar budget and an 80 person crew. ?Leaving Los Vegas? had a 4 Million dollar budget and an 80 person crew and that was ten years ago. Even on small labors of love like these the cast is going to want trailers and motor homes which mean huge transportation costs. First of all you mentioned you?d exchange a large crew for a longer schedule like three weeks. Hmmmm. If you shoot six day weeks that?s 18 days. That?s five pages a day. So you are looking at a pretty challenging page count. You will have to move very fast to get the director and actors time to do the scenes they way you want. I?m pretty fast and I can pull that off but I need a minimal crew to do it. Your biggest weakness is in your grip electric crew. One Gaffer and one Key Grip are just enough guys in each department to tell the DP they can?t do it. That is enough crew to set up a couple of small lights and a couple of flags. If you don?t mind your film pretty much shot in available light and your actors looking like they are in a home movie this may work out for you. It is really difficult to do anything that looks like a professional film with out three grips and three electrics. Many of the tasks asked from G and E take three guys to perform. Cabling from a generator to set, flying a 12 x 12, and rigging lights, are very man power intensive. It is the rigging in and wrapping out where these guys earn their money. It usually takes from 1.5 to 2.5 hours for a three man crew to arrive at a set and get it ready for shooting. It usually takes 1 to 2 hours to wrap out a typical small movie set. Even if your guys bust their asses and get you going at the end of your 16 hour day two guys and a PA are going to be looking at a lot of long slow lonely wrap time. You also seem really light in the PA department. The art department Pas and art director will probably be off set picking up set dressing or returning set dressing. That leaves you with no one to do the myriad of things PAs do. There will be no one to get the cast and bring them to the set when you are ready. No one to pick up Starbuck?s when the star needs it. No one to talk to the guy with the lawn mower down the street. The tough thing about film making is that it takes a lot of extra money and a lot of extra people and equipment to make small gains in speed and quality. Like wise going in the other direction (cheaper) you have to cut a huge amount of quality to gain small savings.

I?ve done quite a lot of shooting in South Africa and the sun is spectacular. When I hear DOPs complain about the sun they are usually DOPs that come from northern climates where the weather is usually overcast. You can often shoot day exterior with available light and it looks like Barry Lyndon. They rarely have to deal with harsh direct sunlight. Especially that mid day down light sun. That would be my guess. The funny thing for me shooting in South Africa is that the sun looks like it moves backwards in the sky. The sun rises and then moves off to the left tracing a huge arc and setting far left as opposed to California where the sun rises and arcs to the right.

There are three ways to approach it. One you get insurance on a per film basis. This figure is based n the size of the film and what you plan on doing. Most feature companies do this. If you plan on doing lots of smaller productions all year long then it makes sense to get insurance which would cover your company rather then the specific project. You could also team up with a production company who works enough to have insurance coverage all year. You would then bring them in as a partner on your film. I?ve done this when doing smaller corporate one and two day projects. If the project costs $50,000 the production company would get extra money for taking on the risk. It?s tough to work in the US with out insurance. You can?t rent gear and the potential risk of a liability is very real with regards to property damage and injury. Also many locations require the company to carry insurance just to film there.

I?d say commercials budgets for what you are talking about fall between $2,000 and $1.5 Million. But, your question is misleading in that most commercials aren?t created by the production company. Usually there is an ad agency with a strong creative team of writers and art directors who have created the spot in conjunction with the client. The ads are probably part of a sophistical marketing plan involving print, radio, promotional, and commercial spots. Even smaller commercials in the $50,000 range may fit into a multimillion dollar campaign. So production companies that see themselves as fitting into creating and producing spots are sort of a small niche. I would say those commercials would fall into the $2,000 to $100,000 range. But the company would have to find a client with out an ad agency. Or pair up with an ad agency that doesn?t feel comfortable writing commercials.

Just a work of warning when doing these independent projects it is very easy to become the producer by default. You may find yourself scrambling to put crew and equipment together. A rental house my help you out with equipment insurance. But, if someone gets hurt on your set and you are the producer you may be liable. I?d be very selective of the projects you put yourself in that position on if you don?t have full insurance.

You have the right idea. But you want to add + green to your card or filter. This forces the camera to over correct and add more magenta. I find the regular white balance under fluorescent light doesn?t get enough of the green out. I will sometimes white balance through a light + green gel in front of the lens to correct this out.

There are many techniques to lighting fast. Usually it means using fewer lights on the set. If you find yourself adding little detail lights and specials you are probably adding time to your lighting setups. Avoid placing lights that require complex rigging. Building a menace arm, for example, is usually a time consuming adventure. A lighting style that needs a lot of support grip work with nets and flags and cutters will slow also you down. See if you can light your scene so you don?t have to relight the coverage.

I thought it was a great book and a terrific film. The look of the film was perfect. They really were able to seamlessly blend digital effects with real world to create Iwo as it probably was on that February in 1945. I was especially moved by the way time and feelings were combined and connected. When you go home Tell them for us and say For your tomorrow We gave our today The motto of the Marines who died on Iwo Jima