Stuart Brereton

Ring lights seem to work best when the subject is a sufficient distance away to make the light reflection slightly larger than the iris of their eyes. For example: Too close and the reflection is in the whites of their eyes. Too far away and it's inside the iris, and not very flattering, I think.

The pixel aspect ratio control in Photoshop is for viewing only. It doesn't actually change the file. it's also pretty low quality.

Try mvdbase.com

Just got hold of a copy of an HD short that I shot a while back, so I thought I'd post some stills. F-900. Canon CineZooms. 15 minute film shot in one (!!!) night. CLICK HERE

I don't like the look of uncorrected HMIs - it's way too blue for me. Moonlight should look silvery-gray, I think. Some people use 1/2 CTO with 1/4 Plus Green. I like Chocolate Gel on an HMI for Moonlight, it seems to have the right 'silvery' quality.

Unless the cartridge cases you're using are different to most, this is sadly not true - believe me, I've tried :-(

I haven't seen the film yet, so I can't comment on it, but I have to say that I have always thought the book was highly overrated. If you strip away the admittedly interesting theological ideas, you are left with a very sub-standard thriller with dialogue that sounds like it was written by a 10 year old. It's no surprise that the film is apparently a clunker as well.

Let's not get into that.... congratulations, either way....!

Well done, Phil! I hope you enjoy your stint with the 'non-existent' British Film industry ;-) Let us know how it goes.

Well, Ward Russell was Kimballs' Gaffer for a while, so you can understand the influence. I know I shouldn't, but I love this film....

I'm sorry, but what does this actually MEAN?

I'd like to suggest that we all refrain from adding to this increasingly pointless thread until: A. There is an actual RED camera to talk about. B. Emanuel gives us some real info about himself, rather than vague references to comments he may have made on other forums. 10 pages is more than enough, don't you think?

Just wondering if anyone has any info or articles on Tim Maurice-Jones' work on 'Revolver' and to a lesser extent 'Snatch' & 'Lock, Stock...' I'm particularly interested in his camera filters. Thanks.

An optical viewfinder. I've just operated an HD feature. We were shooting at T2 almost all the time, sometimes with a lot of the frame 3 or 4 stops underexposed. Even with contrast and peaking right up in the F750 viewfinder, I couldn't see a thing. I ending up relying on the Transvideo monitor that the 1st AC was using. This did the job, but wasn't ideal. A real, optical viewfinder would be a great addition to your camera.

Was it today that you were told about "Black Bounce"? It is April 1st, after all.... ;-)

Having the right not to vote is an important part of democracy, too, though. In the UK it's very much a case of " 'I prefer the puppet on the left. Oh, I prefer the puppet on the right.' But there's just one guy operating them...." (to paraphrase Bill Hicks). Or, as Ken Livingstone once said - " If voting made any difference, they'd have banned it years ago."

If you're using big, soft sources in rooms with lots of white walls, I wouldn't have thought you'd need eyelights. There should be plenty of bright surfaces to reflect in your actors eyes. Daylight soft sources could be HMI's with softboxes or through frames of 216/250 etc, or daylight kinos, amongst others.

Matts' original query was that he needed to balance some tungsten units to some sodium vapor ones which were actually in his shot, hence the need to find a gel pack that matched. Although Sodium has a discontinuous spectrum, it is possible to achieve a very close visual match with some the the combinations that have been suggested.

PAL is a superior system to NTSC. It has greater resolution, better colour, and its'native 25fps is a much closer match to Films' 24fps if you are doing filmouts. That said, if you are in a predominantly NTSC country, you might find compatibility issues. Grey Market goods are items (like cameras) which were not meant to be sold in certain territories. They have been imported by someone other than the manufacturer, who will probably refuse to service it or honor the warranty.

Auto Tracking White and various other versions of the "Auto White Balance" have been around for a while. It's just not something that I would have expected to see on the D20...

Great info, Chris. One point about the white balancing. If the camera "averages out" the scene, then surely in order to maintain a WB setting from lens to lens you would have to line up exactly the same frame each time. Without a constant reference for each balance (a white card) surely it is impossible to get a consistent setting

You should have a look at Michael Nashs' suggestion too. It's a very good match.

Matt, There is a discussion of gel packs to match Sodium Vapor towards the end of this thread: click here

I recently shot a short drama this way. We had the ground glass marked with tape to a 2.35 AR. We transferred the whole s16 neg area, and it will be letterboxed in post. There were no particular problems that we had. In fact the only issue was with the framing chart that I shot at the head of the first roll. Despite taking time to set it up properly, in TK the chart appeared to be slightly dutched. However, all the footage after the chart was correctly oriented. I've no idea what caused it, so put it down to human error (mine). I considered shooting anamorphic 16mm, but the difficulty in obtaining matched sets of lenses at an affordable price makes the tiny gain in neg area over s16 matted to 2.35 pointless. In addition, anamorphic 16mm is not a familiar format for many people which can cause problems in post (Adam Frisch has some horror stories to tell about this....)

I'll second that. I never really felt comfortable with it until other people started to refer to me as a DP.