Stuart Brereton

check the Kodak website for details of the ECN-2 process. Even if you do manage to process it yourself, you won't be able to project the neg properly because of differing sprocket pitches. Even if you could, filming 35mm off a screen with a mini dv camcorder seems would seem to negate the whole point of shooting 35mm in the first place. That's what dvd pirates do, and we all know how good their pictures are....

No-one is saying that the D20 is a bad camera. It was just pointed out that perhaps you should actually use a camera before you decide it's your 'favorite'.

Mine too, a couple of inches of elastic sewn at 45 degrees to the corner should do the job.

So did Quasimodo. I suppose his 'favourite' camera would have been a Bell & Howell...

I don't know about that.... I've just done a shoot with several scenes at a firing range. The actors were firing .38, .357 and 9mm rounds and it was deafening! Granted, we were in a confined space, but even with ear plugs it was uncomfortable.

I think the scam Cooke/Van Dieman auction is back again..... here... this time it's listed under sports memorabilia!!! he doesn't give up....

You've made it clear that you're highly skeptical of the RED camera, as you also did about the Genesis. I don't know whether you're right or wrong about this camera - only time will tell, but I do know that there is no point in your continued attacks on Jim Jannard. Gloating about how you've scared him off this board is just childish. That kind of behaviour is beneath us all.

I don't see any point in continued sniping at Jim Jannard. He has been given a hard time, here and elsewhere, sometimes with justification, sometimes not. How about we all lay off and wait until there is a camera to evaluate. When, or if, that day comes we can all have our say.

At Film school, we did a short (1 min) piece for the Kodak Commercial competition that was all shot at magic hour. We were on location at sunrise and shot until about 9am, then broke and came back around 5 and shot till sunset. It took us five days to shoot our one minute piece. Granted, we were film students and not shooting particularly fast, and it was a fast cut commercial that needed a lot of setups, but still, it illustrates how long it can take to shoot an entire piece at magic hour.

Take it up with Mr Kline - I'm just telling you what he said.....

Actually, Richard Kline, ASC talks about this issue in an interview in AC (Jan 06) . He describes a shot from King Kong, looking straight down from the top of the World Trade Center. He says that although the meter was reading 50fc down on the ground, the quarter mile distance to the camera rendered this reading useless, and he had to make an educated guess (and push the stock).

If you expose as per your meter in daylight, you'll get an image that looks correctly exposed for daylight. If you do the same at dusk, you'll get an image that is 'overexposed'. Dusk is underexposed by its nature. Your meter doesn't know what time of day it is, or how you want it to look, and just gives a reading for the correct exposure of 18% gray.

Well, it depends on what 'fairly tight budget' means, but assuming that it means low budget, for your day exteriors you should use available light in the wide shots as much as possible, then hire in some small HMIs (.575, 1.2k etc) to give yourself some control in the closeups. For night scenes, it's more difficult. You don't have natural light to help you out. Unless you can afford to rent some big lamps you are going to have to restrict your shot size, and try to control how much of the background is seen.

It's difficult to answer your question without knowing what kind of look you want, what sort of shots you are after - wide med close etc. Is it a sunny day in the forest, or a moonlit night? your lighting choices are dictated by script and budget. What do you want to do? What can you afford to do?

Whether they shot enough coverage really depends on how the Director is planning to cut the scenes. You just have to assume that he or she knows what they want better than you do as a day player. Lighting for two cameras can be tricky, particularly if you're trying to cross shoot, as it nearly always involves a compromise somewhere. You may have been able to get the angles you saw, but that doesn't mean that the DP was happy with the way they were lit. Sometimes shooting with two cameras can actually slow you down.

Just a warning about an Arri 2c that has appeared on ebay. It's quite a nice outfit, but the description is a bit vague, and some of it is in german, as if it's automatically translated via google. The camera is in Missouri USA, but the seller is in England, and it was listed under fireplace surrounds (!!) Everything this seller has starts at $399 regardless. I emailed a couple of questions last night. This morning the camera has been removed from sale. Draw your own conclusions..... I have the sellers' ebay ID, if anyone wants to know it, contact me off-list.

If you're shooting tape, try putting some 1/2 or full minus green on your white card when you white balance. If you're shooting film, add it to your gray card, and tell the colorist not to grade it out. If you want to do it in post there are many grading tools available. Magic Bullet actually has a preset based on the Matrix look.

In this case, you get horrible looking films.... ;)

Bazza's Bazaar (www.bblist.co.uk) currently have a set of Mk1 primes (9.5, 12, 16, 25) for sale for £2000 + vat. BBlist is worth a look before you buy

Here's a few stills that show the room more: As you can see in the last photo above, the practical above the bed is doing most of the work. He has a 4ft kino up above the shelving unit behind him, that backlights him and is a subtle edge on her. She also has a 2ft kino with full plus green & 1/2ctb on it as a kicker. I didn't really light the rest of the set, just let the practicals do the work, unless there was action being staged in a particular area. btw. i just got some screengrabs from another HD feature, Shadows HERE

WTF?

I've just wrapped on an HD feature, shot just outside of Bristol, UK. It was called 'The Perfect Woman', and was a 'teen horror' sort of thing. What made it unusual for me was the fact that it was shot in 1 week, by three different camera units. One unit handled exteriors, while the other two shot interiors, except for a big set piece mid week, where all three units were outdoors. My unit shot almost exclusively on a operating theatre set, supposedly deep in the bowels of an English castle. We had two main characters to film on this set, the surgeon and his nurse. One by one, all the other characters in the film arrive, or are brought to the theatre to be operated on.... I had no prep time whatsoever. I was hired friday evening to start shooting saturday morning. In fact, the first time I saw the set was when I arrived for work! The art department had placed a few practicals, mostly striplights. In addition to this there were some fluorescent tubes with peacock blue gel on them, and a 200w practical over the gurney where the operations took place. My lighting package consisted of some 4' & 2' kinos, 2 dedo kits, and a bunch of 650w & 300w fresnels. I decided on first day to make the practical over the bed the main source of light. We were shooting with Canon HD zooms, wide open at t2.1. The practical had a hotspot in its' centre which I let go to about t3.5, which meant that actors standing under the lamp, but outside the centre of its' beam would be exposed at stop or thereabouts. If they leant in, they were sometimes 2 or 3 stops over. I started off using some of the 300w mounted high up the walls to backlight the actors, but wasn't happy with the hardness of the light, so on day 2 managed to get hold of some gel to approximate the color of the practicals in the background, and used it on 2' kinos for back light, usually 2 stops underexposed. When the action took place away from the gurney, I tried to suggest that it was still the major bounce source in the room, and used 2' kinos or 300ws bounced off polyboards (foamcore) to provide a low angle key. It was difficult to decide sometimes how slavishly to follow the logic that I had created, as we had a number of female actors who needed to look good, and a low angle key is not always the most flattering.... there's more here I think I got the balance about right...I hope I have a few stills which show more of the room and the lighting setups. I'll post them as soon as I can get them off my camera. All in all, it was a fun week, despite the enormous scheduling issues, and the constant script revisions .

Shutter speeds depend on the subject and situation. As far as resolution goes, there is little point in shooting in RAW format unless you have a lot of manipulation to do on the images. Choose which ever JPEG resolution is closest to HD (1920x1080) and use that. There are a number of ways to resize your images and assemble them into a movie. I find it easiest to batch automate the resize in photoshop, then import them as a image sequence into Quicktime pro. you can then export a QT .mov with a range of different codecs.

I don't wish to be harsh, but if you really don't know how to light this, perhaps you shouldn't be shooting this promo.

I have just wrapped today on a feature where there are three DPs, myself and two others. We've been shooting simultaneously on 3 separate full units, not 1st 2nd etc. I'm not sure how we'll be credited.