Walter Graff

I'd do it differently. Dress your talent in black body suits over white background. If you want the glow in the shirt etc, you can stitch white material where you want it on the black body suit. Buttons, the "V" of a v-neck, various glowing points, etc. Do an eye cut out to get the whites of the eyes and hit the face with light. Want teeth glow? Do what they used to do on the show MAX HEADROOM which was literally paint his teeth with whiteout. Now in post the high con will cut real well. Using hicon edge softeners and chokes you can make really nice edges. Much easier than color in a scenario where you don't want color. You can even downstream key the white to be any color or potions of the white to be any colors you want to choose from. And you can still hicon key the white background with whatever picture you want to insert. Really easier to do than color which in the end you end up cutting a hi con from anyway. And the bonus in this situation is that with a bit of edge light (more like 45 degree to camera kickers) on your talent, degrees of reflection off the material make for reflection glows that make nice senses of 3d when they turn.

Edge lights can help in limited situations. You really want to more light your person for the bakcplate they are going ot be placed into. Most all times edge lights don't help that senario. If you light a green scren for hue and luminence you need no more than 40-50 footcandles with video so spill is often not an issue. And even if it is, today's edit systems have all sorts of spill plug ins that make any spill non existant.

Small screen or not, I don't know a person who watches music videos anymore. So passe.

Here's something cool. Make glasses out of lenses that invert the picture. Wear them. In about a day or two your brain will flip it so it's right side up. Take the glasses off and you will see upside down for about a day or two at worst. For those who asked about cameras that flip the image in the viewfinder, that's one way to solve it.

You are correct Kyle, it all depends on so many conditions form how the TVs are set-up, what the scaler in your DVD is like, the scaler in your TV, the condition's you are viewing under, etc. In fact it is often impossible ot compare two movies as their is no gold standard for how those movies are made so it's really impossible ot make a valid comparison. Too many folks think HD is some sort of visual standard and also think numbers are a indicator of that standard. That is far from true. Remember the reason for the creation of HDTV viewing was so that bigger sets could be made that could be placed within the same viewing room as what you had, giving you a more movie-like, larger picture view without the retrace lines being seen. Some people expect some sort of nirvana but the reality is it's not much better of a picture than what you had. No one but the TV set manufacturers make that claim. Mark Shubin says it best: http://www.bluesky-web.com/high-and-why.html

Most people when looking forward are right eye dominant. It has nothing to do with handedness but about 85% of right handers are right eye dominant. But your eye dominance changes depending on the angle of the eyes. In other words if you look to the right, your left brain is 'out of range' of the site so you become right eye dominant. One of my mentors, a legend in sports shooting Barry Winik was left eye dominant and had his film cameras always set up so he shot off the right shoulder using his left eye. And he had custom viewfinder diopters as it was imposible to look though his viewfinder cause of his poor eyesight. Of course he loved to show me every day that his name was one after Gordon Willis in the IA roster book as if that meant anything.

According to this book Ansel Adams: a Biography by Mary Street Adler, 1996 Carter commissioned Adams to do the first official portrait photo. Of course everything out the window looked amazing but Carter was more like a silhouette. Technically he would have been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. Adam's had an agenda. As said by John Sexton, a photographer of the event: "In 1979, I assisted Ansel Adams while he took the official portrait of President Jimmy Carter. Ansel used the 55-minute session as an opportunity to present information directly to the president about the importance of preserving the Alaskan wilderness. It was no coincidence that at the conclusion of this portrait session, Ansel presented the president and first lady with a beautiful print of Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake, Alaska. Not long thereafter, President Carter signed legislation helping to protect the Alaskan wilderness. " -Sierra Club

That will get the moon landing conspirators going again.

I'd enjoy sharing the results of this test: Extend both hands forward of your body and place the hands together making a small triangle (approximately 1/2 to 3/4 inch per side) between your thumbs and the first knuckle. With both eyes open, look through the triangle and center something such as a doorknob or the bulls eye of a target in the triangle. Close your left eye.Does the object remain in view or do your hands your hands appear to move off the object and move to the left? Answers: 1 remains in view 2 shifts to the left and can't see object with other eye.

Yea but then it doesn't offer audio. He suggested HDMI but he started out saying S-video so HDMI would mean another device to make his video fit down HDMI. Nothing is going to be free here. The link I gave gives a audio and s-video solution for about $350.

The question is can you make a 500 ft run with cat 5 and an S-video signal. The answer is no. There are devices to help but it will cost you to do so. Here is a y/c balum set up for $350 about the cheapest set up. You'd need a S-video to Y/C splitter on both ends. http://www.avovercat5.com/products/avov2a2wp.htm

You'll need about 15 repeaters if you use HDMI at that length. And you'll need input and output breakouts on both ends. Very costly.

Maximum length on a dedicated S-video cable with optimum signal is about 150 feet. 500 on a cat 5 with audio? Cat five is nothing more than balanced twisted pair with not shield and you think you are going to send audio too? Ain't gonna be pretty. Nope, will not work.

Guess you never had a baby. :) The screen (older version) shows contrasts of white to black as it scans. The harder they press the more white appears on screen as the reflection of sound creates more image. There is considerable change in the luminance of the screen as a result. The newer 4D models are color but really like sepia tone for the most part with shadows to differentiate depth and seem to glow the same regardless. Here's an old style sonogram although contrast is not represented as well as in reall life. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1249203/baby...ogram_04_12_08/ Here is 4D http://www.layyous.com/Videoclips/4d2.htm I'd go with the kino as it will give you the options and feel you need for such a scene.

Here's worse. I have taken two identical Panasonic plasmas, fed one a blu ray version of the movie and the other a RGB progressive scaled 1080 SD version of the same film and depending on the movie, either saw little to no difference between both monitors or saw no difference. In one case the bluray looked worse, too sharp, almost video-like. I tried this with four films I rented one night three weeks ago.

It all sounds good... I shoot everything on various forms of HD from f950s to JVC HDV that I end up editing and outputting to SD medium. No advantage for the most part other than being able to zoom in more during edit in an SD timeline if I end up doing it that way. http://www.bluesky-web.com/sdhd.html

No I don't hate you. You simply show little knowledge of the scientific method. Great Ali took so long to "react"? Was it react as in his brain or was it the speed it took for his arm to hit the wood? And was that difference measurable with others? No one measured if it was his brain so no one knows if was his brains reaction time or it was that he has faster muscle reaction and speed which is what a boxer trains for. Little scientific validity in that 'test' but it sells magazines. And since there is no gold standard in the link you send, no one can say he was 'the fastest". No one put him against anyone else. Great for a Sports illustrated article, but does little for prove anything. If you knew anything about boxing (not saying you don't just that if you did), you'd know that boxers train to have their arm move as fast and as hard as it can. That does not mean their brain reacts faster, simply that they shock their opponents with a punch. Boxing is not about reacting as much as it is about surprise. You want a punch to catch someone off guard and do as much damage as possible. As I said, you are confusing it with the reaction time of the brain. Nowhere does it say anything about proof his brain could react faster. In fact the one named author of the article answers your question; "When someone has the ability to react quickly, we say they have "fast reflexes." What we really mean is that they have reflex-like reactions... There are three ways that a martial artist can improve response times. The first is by learning to anticipate an opponent's actions--using visual cues and repeating patterns to determine what attack is coming as quickly as possible. The second is by improving reaction time--shortening the amount of time it takes to respond to an attack, and the third is by developing speed--and thus shortening the movement time." The assumption from the above would be that if you are taking visual cues, you can react faster because you are aware of your surroundings, and using faster muscle speed with that reaction, react 'faster'. None of that involves anything more than anyone with the average reaction speed (eye to brain) could do. With athletes, the science shows that training does not necessarily make them faster at brain reaction, rather they train the mind to take the cues faster. And sometimes with such studies, the results aren't as great as expected. An example: Percept Mot Skills. 1998 Jun;86(3 Pt 1):899-912 Differences in several perceptual abilities between experts and novices in basketball, volleyball and water-polo. Kioumourtzoglou E, Kourtessis T, Michalopoulou M, Derri V. Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Physical Education and Sport Science, Komotini, Greece. The aim of this study was to examine differences between experts and novices in a number of perceptual abilities. Three groups of elite athletes, 44 members of Greek national teams in basketball (n = 12), volleyball (n = 13), and water-polo (n = 19) were selected. Two groups of physical education students (ns = 18 and 21) were novices. The measured abilities were selected as the most important for an elite athlete by expert coaches in the three sports. The four most frequently selected abilities for each sport, according to the coaches' opinions, were finally assessed. Analysis showed that differences were fewer than expected. In fact many of the studies on the body and the psychology of the mind show that differences are due not necessarily to innate brain ability, but rather to physiological and physical differences due mostly to training. Access the Journal of Perceptual and Motor Skills which is the journal related to the science of how we think and react and you’ll find tons of work showing what really makes boxers faster and what does not. That is why one cannot simply cut and paste a personal website and say "see, it's true". As for your sixteen searches, I only see one and it has no scientific validity. Show the other 15 and let's see what merit they have? As for your question, I use such public sites as pubmed to look up scientific research abstracts and have access to national databases with all scientific journals as I am still a member of the National Academy of Sciences and have affiliation with a research university. It offers a bit more validity to the scientific method when using research work that is peer review rather than looking at someone’s opinion on a website or an article in a Sports magazine.

And you had a cheat sheet telling you if you were correct? LOL

Yea, once again sounds great myth. But then again he is the most famous man in the world. "Ali apparently had the fastest reaction time ever recorded". And where are these people testing large groups of humans? They must have a large data base if he was the 'fastest". Never heard of them and can't find any reference to them on any of my research networks. :) Ali was a good boxer. And that makes lots of mythology, usually created by the person or his entourage. You'd probably be better off saying that Ali's reaction time was not much different than the average guys reaction time. His gift were muscle speed and his smarts as a boxer. As a box affctionado I can say that most boxers don't react faster as much as the speed of their punch is often faster. Folks confuse that with reaction time. Here's the test they gave him http://www.bullettimereaction.com/

I'd love to see some sort of citation for the Joe Lewis "story". Greats in time often have mythology surrounding them. Let's see. Joe Lewis was a fighter. One of the top 100 punchers ever. What better a story than to say, Joe was so fast he could read the label of a record spinning. Sort of like saying a basketball great could take the penny off the top of a backboard. :) While there are slight variables to some of the elements in how humans see (women see more colors, etc), it is not enough that someone is a superhuman and can freeze time to see frames. There is physiological condition called dichoptic motion transparency where one eye sends signals to the brain at a slightly different speed than the other and the brain can inerpoate images diferently than normal same-speed binolcular vision, but outside of that, I don't know any science studied that shows anyone can freeze individual images, let alone see them. If that was the case, it owuld be hard ot watch TV as you'd see retrace. There is a form of photographic memory where the brain can create multiple still images of a moment in time (sort of the prinicple of how photogrophic memory works). Perhaps that is more what is being referred to here.

Fun fact: While in college at the University of Arizona, I was supposed to be one of the trooper like characters in the beginning scene of Star Wars 3 (just realized it was VI I think, in my day the first Star wars was 1) which was shot in the dessert in Page. I had been fitted and all but the night before the shoot I got to drunk and never made it.

Here is a tip! First remove a tile and carefully inspect the hanging system of the grid. Normally only aluminum wire is used to hang the grid and the wire is only twisted once around a eye hole so it can only support the weight of the grid and lightweight tile. If it looks secure, then the next step is to pull on a crossbeam and see if their is give. If it feels flimsy, you will need extra support. I can not tell you how many times I have seen small scissor clipped lights take down an entire grid of floating ceiling. That becomes a problem. And the strange thing is it always takes down every least tile. You don't want that. So I would suggest you only hang the lights near parts of the grid that are supported directly to the ceiling and then check to see how the grid is attached making sure there is more than a simple hook in the aluminum cable that supports the ceiling. Many times I will require my guys to run our own safety cable to the floor slab above and then to the grid offering additional support guaranteeing me that I will not pull down a ceiling. Remember that a light alone may not weigh much, but connect it to a cable and snake that cable along the ceiling and do it with two or three lights and you are adding 50 pounds to a drop ceiling and as I said (I've installed quite a few so know the procedure) they are normally not hung to support much more than the tiles they hold. Also only hang a clip to the long crossbeams and not the short cut frame. In other words we hang a drop ceiling by cutting long channels that go fomr one wall to another. Then we use small crossbeams to make the square grid. You'd be better to make sure you are attaching to the long uninterrupted channel than to the short crossbeam channels which are only held in with a stub and can break free far easier. Also all fixtures must be safetied not to the ceiling grid but something either attached to the ceiling slab or pipes, etc that have far more independent support than the drop ceiling. In a number of cases where I saw drop ceilings get pulled down it was because a fixture came off a stud and the safety pulled on the drop ceiling grid that cascaded with the fixture and the fixtures cable causing the collapse.

Oh and BTW, over the years I have seen many of these music video directors like to put their stuff up, finished or not thinking it's going to get them some Hollywood contract. Looks like it was the case here. In other words, the youtube link is not the finished version. Here is the finished version: http://music.aol.com/video/miss-independen...larkson/1102025

I get hundreds of head shots a month. Most have a line like the one I got yesterday "featured next to Angelina Jolie in ..." . That means I was an extra in a film. So if you think what you did was deserving of mentioning it, do. But those of us that read through the lines will either see that you were involved with a project that had more recognition, or you are a bit player trying to make it sound like you are something you are not. I don't know the actual circumstance so can only offer you that.

It's a new interactive music video where you put what you want in teh screen. So put your own face in the screen and you can show everyone that you where in a clarkston music video.