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Charles Haine

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Everything posted by Charles Haine

  1. Thank you so much! It was Pallada Designs, and that helped tremendously. I tracked down Paul Pallada in retirement in Holland and he's helping me find parts. GRATITUDE!
  2. Anybody know anything about the Key West Dolly? It fits in a "suitcase," appears to be carbon fiber, but I can't find much online. One got donated to my workplace, but we're missing some parts, assuming it'll just be a 5 year long wait on eBay for someone to post them, but maybe someone here knows who made the dolly, or has some manuals or something? A man can dream.
  3. So maybe a launch in January? I teach at a film school in Brooklyn, would love to have a lab nearby again.
  4. I'm a freelance colorist and I teach color grading and post at Brooklyn College here in New York. Anybody know of a Blackmagic Cintel Scanner for rent in the tri-state area? would love to find a way to not only scan a few old personal things, but also maybe get my students in front of a scanner for a few hours. Most likely not going to be a regular part of their career, but would be nice to introduce them to the technology, and the blackmagic seems the easiest way to do that. Charles
  5. Great post. I had a client I did a "low-rate" favor job for on the agreement that their next job was mine. I didn't hear from them for 2 years, and on a whim, I emailed, and they had just lost their freelancer, were desperate for someone, and had forgotten about me. I booked that job, and five figures worth of work through them in the next six months. Keeping in touch doesn't need to be awful. I use "contactually" to remind me to email 5 old clients every day. I just say hello, talk about what I'm working on, and ask about what they are working on. That's it. But it keeps us on each others radar, and sometimes it leads to work. Sometimes it doesn't, that's OK too. Rapportive is another great tool, as soon as you email someone it gives you all their social links (linedin, twitter, facebook, etc.) so you can connect and stay on the radar that way. The way the human brain works is you are always going to forget people, and reminding folks you exist isn't a bad thing at all. And, of course, the best way to keep clients is to be great at your job!
  6. Did anyone else notice how radically different the release print for IDES OF MARCH looks from the web trailers? I know it's not uncommon for the trailer to be cut from the dailies transfer, which might not exactly recreate the look dialed in in the final DI, and of course the trailer generally gets a dedicated grade that leads to a more "extreme" look which might be overwhelming or irritating in a feature. And of course it's a web view vs. a film print in a theater. That said, the look of the print on Ides of March is so deliberate (riffing on 70s Gordon Willis paranoid thrillers like PARALLAX VIEW and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN really beautifully; it's worth a watch for the cinematography alone, and it's also a fantastic movie) that I would guess it was built in at the dailies. So, I think maybe the trailers were deliberately graded in a more modern, saturated, grain free fashion. Interesting world we're getting into now, but I guess it makes sense; as beautiful as the print is, it might be a little off putting in a trailer. Anyway, cinematography fans, check it out, great movie, great camera work.
  7. Anybody know what unit would've been used to light up this desert night scene in THELMA AND LOUISE? It came out in 1991, that's too early for the SoftSun, right? Or do I have my timeline wrong about that? It's a beautifully shot movie, love Adrian Biddle's work, but saw this shot and just can't figure what unit they would've used for all that intensity and spread. If you can't tell, the lights at the bottom of frame are a car driving through a giant Utah style canyon. Went looking for an American Cinematographer article but nothing turned up.
  8. Grading a project shot on the Alexa, I noticed the footage looked a bit like the attached photo. This seemed kind of strange to me; motion blur makes sense if the rectangle is moving fast enough and the shutter is 1/48, but why does it appear pulsed? As if it's recording two frames and mixing them together? Shouldn't it be a continuous blur? It also seems like one of the two images (or pulses, or bursts, whatever you want to call it) is more exposed than the other. Is the alexa taking two images at different exposures and mixing them together for latitude, like a scanner? Or is there a much simpler explanation I'm missing. Anybody have any thoughts?
  9. As much as it is depressing to say it, they don't exist at least partially because they don't make a lot of sense. One of the driving elements behind the rebirth of stereoscopic is digital image capture. Not only does 35mm 3D involve shooting twice as much footage, it also means keeping two film cameras with their shutters perfectly in sync (not impossible, or even hard really, but a layer of complication). And it means having perfectly matched sets of cinema lens. Not impossible, hence the waves of stereo in the 50s and the 70s/80s, but complicated and pricey. 3D is already complicated and pricey enough without adding these elements into the mix. Thus, the growth of 3D as a digital-capture only phenomenon.
  10. I'm in LA but don't mind working down in Orange County, you see see my work at www.charleshainedp.com. I have several RED and 5D packages, as well as a variety fo 35mm gear if the job calls for it.
  11. I've been meaning to post this for a few weeks but haven't had a chance to yet. I was lucky enough to work with a very talented directing team at dirty robber doing the title sequence for a new TNT show, Rizzzoli & Isles, which ran through the summer and I hear got a season 2 pickup. For the final title shot, the creative called for a split screen that felt like two worlds colliding; both sides of the split screen would be dressed in order to line up matching one world to the other, and then we would rack through both halves at the same speed so that it was a split screen but the simultaneous focus made it feel like the same shot. If that isn't making sense, take a peak here, it's the final shot: http://vimeo.com/15378140 I had wanted to do it using the old Preston speed aperture computer, the original from the 80s. I had had some success before programing in precise focus movies (focus hitting certain marks over a given period, like 1 second) but using the aperture motor from the SAC on the focus ring, and it worked great. This was vital since we had to make sure the racks were identical on both sides of the split screen. But that was 2004, and I couldn't find anybody who rented out the SAC anymore. So we went with a Cmotion system, hoping to be able to do the same thing. Unfortunately, because it's so much more sophisticated, you can't trick it into doing that; it needs camera feedback in order to do an aperture rack, and aperture racks are the only timed racks it can do. However, we noticed that if you turned the focus knob as fast as possible the focus rack feathering caused a delay to the focus move. So, no matter what, if I turned the focus ring between it's hard stops fast enough, the move still took precisely 1 second. This was a really lucky save for us; the actual speed of the rack didn't matter (with no human subject or any movement except the rack, speed could be manipulated wildly in post), we just need it to be precisely the same rack in both shots that were to be comped together, which the feather/lag on the cMotion provided. That, combined with the two customizable stops on the cMotion, made the focus rack part, which had been very stressful, a breeze. It took the art director a full day to dress both sets to match each other, and on set we used an AJA IO-HD to do a live split screen in order to do the final line-up on the half of the scene we shot second (the police station, on the left). In the end, the shot took a full day of dressing, a full day of shooting, and then several days of post production, but I think it comes off rather well. Nobody I show it to seems to get precisely how hard it was to pull off.
  12. I sent you an email but never heard back, where in LA are you located? We have an HDCAM vendor right now but would always like a new one. check us out at www.dirtyrobber.com.
  13. Since it's a cinematography forum, my bet is that this category is for on set stereoscopic work. Though of course that is merging more and more with post 3D modelling, so there will be some overlap. I teach a course in Stereoscopic Cinema at CCH in Los Angeles. Can you do your next movie in 3D? Of course, just depends on your budget and delivery format needs. It might not be entirely feasible quite yet for the truly indie (no budget) but if you have any budget at all 3D is becoming more and more realistic.
  14. http://www.3dfilmfactory.com/
  15. I'm a little confused; are you a director or cinematographer? Are there clips to evaluate, or simply stills? Where are you located?
  16. You can check out my reel at www.charleshainedp.com, I have a RED ONE package, several 35mm packages, and I also own a color grading company (www.dirtyrobber.com).
  17. Anyone know a good vendor in Los Angeles for renting a digital multicam rig, of the sort used to create the bullet time effect in the matrix? I know there are a few companies that rent prebuilt packages (http://www.reelefx.com/) and others, but I suspect there are some owner/operators with home built rigs out there. If anybody has any recommendations in the southern california area I'd love to hear about it. thanks, charles haine dirtyrobber.com
  18. I would check out www.picaholic.com I use them for my cinematography site www.charleshainedp.com and I'm very happy. Ch:H
  19. check out dirtyrobber.com. They might be able to do a pro-bono, and work entirely in Color.
  20. In this job market, hide out in graduate school! Actually, that's a joke, though work has been slow for some because of the credit crunch, and graduate school is a great thing to do during a recession. Seriously, graduate school is a fantastic way to absorb a tremendous amount of knowledge in a short amount of time. It can help you build professional contacts and also introduce you to a whole gang of directors who will then hire you in the future. If you're hungry (and it sounds like you are) graduate school is great. All the info is available elsewhere, but it is a time where you are surrounded by a ton of people who are all hungry for the knowledge together and that fosters a friendly competitiveness that works for a lot of people. That said, I know a ton of very, very successful people who didn't go to grad school, and working your way up the crew ranks can be just a good. And when you get out of grad school there is still going to be a learning curve getting used to the way real sets operate. If you do go to graduate school, work on as many professional shoots as you can. Also, an MFA is sort of useless unless you want to teach. I enjoy teaching (I teach at LACC), so I recommend it for that, but if you don't think teaching is part of your path, then the MFA is less important than the opportunity to focus all of your energy getting better at one specific thing. There isn't really a "regular" path to any job in the film industry. Yes, there is the camera department ladder, and that is one path, but some DPs come straight out of grad school to be DPs. Tom Stern came out of SC grad school and was a gaffer for 10 years before DPing (gaffing for Conrad Hall, among others, which must've been really amazing). Most of the folks I know who AC or Gaff also shoot on the side (though not all, some just want to AC, which is also great); I like hiring ambitious crew people, who pay bills ACing but shoot little things between big gigs, and I like showing them stuff, so shooting stuff and crewing aren't incompatible. Most DPs I know are happy to pass along knowledge to an AC where there is a slow moment on set, and most are proud when their former ACs go on to become DPs. Crewing helps build the network of people that might hire you on your way to the top, and it's also a great way to learn. And it's fun. James Muro still occaisionally operates steadicam, I believe, even after his fantastic cinematography work on OPEN RANGE and other films, and I have to believe it's at least partially because he enjoys it. Graduate school is at least partially about building a network; wherever you go to graduate school is probably where you are going to work, at least for a few years after school, I would say if you want to be a hollywood DP, LA or New York are probably your best bets (or even just LA). That said, the fun thing about being a DP is you get to travel a bunch. Working in movies, I never feel stuck. Sometimes I'm worried about booking the next job, but it's rare I feel stuck. Maybe sometimes on a job out of the country that goes south I feel a little stranded (knowing that I'm on the hook for my own flight home if I quit, even though the work conditions are miserable), but stuck? Naw, this is too much fun. All the time. A low level of panic/fear is what makes this job/lifestyle so great. It's always fresh and new, and that is bound to be a little bit scary sometimes, because you're frequently being challenged to do things you haven't done before. You'll get used to the fear, with time, and start to love it. Now I get nervous when I don't have the fear; have I started to phone it in, I wonder? Am I playing it too safe with my choices? Hope some of this helps.
  21. Some solid advice, especially about digitizing it all Uncompressed 10-bit. If you've got a post house that owes you a favor, get it all digitized to Uncompressed 10-bit files so you have all the quality if there is a shot you want to play with in post. But very few home systems are tricked out enough to deal with that, so I agree, transcode it all to ProRes (HQ) files for editing. My whole reel was editing in ProRes and it looks fantastic. My other career (from cinematography) is color correction, I work in ProRes all the time and I love it. If you don't have room on whatever drive you buy (and again, I concur, go large, either LaCie or G-tech, avoid lesser known brands, and for now Western Digital also seems buggy), then digitize it all straight to ProRes. You'll have much, much smaller files, you won't need to transcode them, and if you aren't planning to heavily re-correct your footage, you ought to be totally happy with ProRes. Here is where I differ; hire an editor. It's really hard to judge our own work, I think. I cut my own reel for years, but finally hired an editor, sat down and went through everything I shot, and he found all these clips that I had ignored for one reason or another that he thought were great and put into the reel, and I've gotten quite a few comments on those shots. He also talked me into taking a few shots out of my reel that were very difficult to pull off and I knew would impress other DPs but other DPs aren't the target for your reel, producer's and directors are, and he rightly pointed out they just weren't as interesting. Anyway, moral of the story is, I started booking a ton more work after re-doing the reel. So, I would highly encourage you to work with an editor. That said, definitely learn FCP, so that you can do slight little re-jiggers of the reel when time allows. From your ProRes edited master, you should make H.264 quicktimes and flash .flv files for the web. Ch:H
  22. And without a lens, which is why the price. Answers found. Ch:H
  23. Further research indicates that it's the Japanese HPX500. Still, that's a great price. Wonder how different it is since it's the japaense (domestic) version. Ch:H
  24. Having trouble tracking down info on this camera: http://www.broadwayphoto.com/viewproduct.aspx?id=3716257 The price seems to go to be true, even without a lens. Anybody know what the HPX555 is? It's not on the panny website. thanks, Ch:H
  25. Thanks to Joyce Gannon, the reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I tracked down Jack Napor. 412-722-9011 jackn@warslabs.com For anybody who might need that info in the future. thanks, Charles Haine
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