sam williams

im curious as to who decided films should be as long as they are ....as in how come every film is generally between 1 1/2 to 2 hours and how did this come to be. I would imagine that it after a long process of trial and error through the last century, people eventually found that this length of time just felt right, but i need to know for sure. thanks, sam

thanks for your help guys

hello friends, i am fairly new to lighting studios, but i need some help evening out the shadows on the face of my actors. Im actually participating in a compositing project and i need to be able to replicate the lighting of an overcast day, so really diffuse with hardly any shadows. However one of my actors in particular is very skinny and the shadows caused by his cheek bones are cast in strips down his face, making him look very skeletal and unnatractive. Is there a particular way of setting up the lights (with diffuse sheets on of course) so that you get a consistent diffuse lighting across the stage (where the actors are standing) so that there is always an even light across the face and creases in the clothing etc. thanks, sam

hi, i was curious as to how i can figure out how much motion blur will be picked up by a certain camera setting. Im quite new to cinematography and i will be filming a dance video soon and i want to make sure i dont set the camera incorrectly so there is loads of motion blur. Is there at all a way of fine tuning how much motion blur you will get when setting up the camera, i think its something to do with shutter speed and exposure??? but im not sure could someone please enlighten my poor old brain - by the way i am using the sdx 900. thanks, sam

hi, im not completely sure how depth of field is calibrated, but i would have thought that if the camera is zoomed in the objects visible in shot will inhabit a visually compressed space, so i would have thought then that area of focus would be quite large and it would all seem as though its in focus. But then i see zoomed in photos of people walking down the street and the people far behind are blurred, and then i see photos of close up stuff and there is a similar effect of shallow depth of field. how does focal length relate to depth of field in this way??? thanks, sam

hi, this may seem a little retarded, but i never understood why seperate types of lenses with fixed focal lengths are available, when surely having a zoom lens could cover any desired focal distance, and youd only have to buy one type of lens. by the way i realise this is obviously a silly thing to think, but i just dont know enough about cinematography to know why. and help would be nice. sam

thanks for your time guys, sam

hey, I dont get what anamorphic lenses are for, they squeeze the view horizontally onto the film, right, and then are projected back out with an anamorphic lense so it is unsqueezed. The only reason i can see for doing this is that you would save money, instead of buying wider film stock. Doesnt this mean though that each tiny section of the film recording the light has now got more horizontal detail to express in the same size space?? and therefore degrades the quality of the image qhen projected? thanks, sam

hello, im not sure im understanding this correctly. why are all three of these variables necessary - shutter speed, aperture and varieties of film sensitivities, surely they are all effecting the same aspect of recording an image, by reducing or increasing the amount of light that is recorded on the film or ccd. When you increase the size of the aperture, the shutter speed must increase. When you have a very long shutter speed, the aperture must be very small to avoid over exposure, and likewise, the sensitivity of the film stock or iso value must be considered depending on how much light is to be let into the camera. Surely if they are all compensating for each other, there is no need for variations in all three of these features. Cant just one of these things be adjustable depending on the kind of shot you want to take? i kind of know im wrong, but i just wanted a concise answer so i could finally understand the need for each of these attributes. thanks, sam

hello everyone, im in a bit of a fix, im going to be filming a music video in a week, well actually more of a dance video, and i dont really know much about setting up the camera for the shoot. I have brought a good tripod and am willing a to buy anything else i may need for calibrating the camera correctly for the conditions in the studio. I know that the lighting will remain the same throughout the video, all the lights have diffuse papers over them to simulate an overcast daylight. And during a test shoot with the xl1, i noticed that many of the dance moves are quite rapid so there was alot of motion blur, but maybe that was due to the aperture being set incorrectly. so basically once i have the sdx 900 on the tripod in the film studio and plugged in, what processes should i go through to ensure everything is ready for the shoot. thanks for helping me with my newbie question. sam

hi all, i was wondering who set the standards for the different aspect ratios in the first place and the sam with frames per second. These are surely aesthetic decisions. I would imagine that someone at some point analysed how many frames per second were ideal, fast enough to avoid flickering and slow enough to get the correct motion blur (is this how it was decided?) Aspect ratio always interested me because im about to start my film aesthetics masters at oxford and was going to look into this area for study. What criteria do people take into account to decide how much horizontal and vertical space is perfect for the best cinema experience?. I guess there are a number to choose from, but there must be the perfect aspect ratio (for the cinema) that is not too wide it makes you have to turn your head and not too small or narrow that it takes you out of the cinematic experience. Could someone please clarify what motivates your aspect ratio choices, when you are about to embark on a film project, does it envolve artistic considerations, lenses, cost etc. also an answer to my previous frame rate question would be cool too, thanks for your time

thanks for your swift replies guys, could you tell me then how anamorphic lenses are used, is it to emulate having a wider ccd sensor for those who cant afford, and when the footage is unsquished is it then like 1/2 the horizontal quality it once was? also can you use anamorphic lenses with film as well? thanks

hi, im a bit confused about ccd sensors. Looking on wikipedia i found that they all had aspect ratios 4/3. why is this?. I dont undersand how they work, but cant they be made wider, or is that where anamorphic lenses come in?, if so how do they work? thankyou

hello, i am confused about how distance relates to depth of field. if you were to zoom into an object a long way away, would the focus between the object and the next object behind be dramatically different. Because i thought it was only really true if your focused on an object really close to the camera, and then all the objects immediately behind get blurred. i know its a nooby question, but i cant figure it out.

thankyou for your help