Michael Nash

I'm at the tail end of a feature (15 hrs yesterday) and I am sooo ready for some time off. I get three days and then I'm on to another four-day shoot. For me though, the irregular schedule of the freelance world balances it out. Sometimes there is so much downtime you start to go stircrazy, exhausting your DVD backlog and chomping at the bit to get back behind the camera. After nearly 20 years of this though, I still learn stuff every day and love what I do.

By all means you should test and try out different scene settings with these cameras. There's really no such thing as "default" in this case, just settings that someone at Panasonic decided was "normal." Try things out before an important shoot so that you get an idea of what the camera can do, and how it affects the image. Barry Green's book and DVD are a good place to start for some info. With video you can only manipulate what you capture in camera. In other words, if the shadows are crushed too dark or the whites are clipped you can never get them back in post. If you're planning on tweaking the image in post it's safer to err on the side of lower contrast, slightly underexposed and slightly saturated color so that you have the most picture information to play with later. But it's usually better to get the look pretty close to what you want in-camera with MiniDV, since the compression throws away a lot of color information. There's no absolute right or wrong way to approach it.

Usually small ringlights like the KinoFlo Kamio are only good for fill-level light, close up. At 50 ASA and 7-10 feet you're going to need something much brighter.

I'm finishing up gaffing a feature with the HDX900. We're shooting 1080/24pA, and 720/60p for slomo shots.

I guess what I'm saying is that there's almost no such thing as "general purpose cinematography." Lots of 35mm productions like music videos and commercials wouldn't show up on set without a high speed-capable camera like the Arri 435. Horses for courses. In some regards the 720/1080 choice here is not unlike having the dedicated MOS camera for high-speed and the "mild" overcrank synch-sound A-camera like you do with film. You still can't have everything in one camera (with these Panasonic models).

Speak for yourself! ;) Every time I've used a Varicam or HVX it's been specifically for overcranking, and usually at 60fps. And rarely if ever for undercranking. 30 fps is "neither fish nor fowl" when it comes to slowmo.

Flag your key lights off the walls.

Any basic PA mixer setup should allow for stereo outputs to send the music to a camera and also the playback speakers. You can use any audio source you like, like a CD or ipod. Send the music to one camera, and the girls' mics to the other (as separate tracks). As a backup send a copy of the music on CD or audio file to the editor. You can jam-synch the timecode between cameras as outlined in the manual, and/or use an old-fashioned clapper slate at the head of each take for both cameras.

I think he's shooting 35mm and finishing on HD. Undercranking the camera creates the longer exposure time needed for increased motion blur. An ordinary 180 degree shutter at 6 or 12 fps works just fine.

Thanks for the notes David, and best of luck with the next project. Keep us updated. I've been offered B-camera/2nd unit DP on an eight-week feature in Vancouver using the RED, so I'm interested in hearing about the quirks and limitations you encounter. I worked with Conrad a few years ago on a feature I gaffed and he was 1st AC.

Personally I think it's more about lighting than camera gear. If you know how to light well you can do it with a HVX200 or the latest whiz-bang Pana-gear. Ultimately you do have to know all of it (camera and lighting), but since lighting is the most time consuming and labor intensive, it's best to know how to do that part efficiently and effectively. "If you know how to light well it doesn't matter what you shoot with; if you don't know how to light well, it doesn't matter what you shoot with."

There are 4K and 6K HMI's, but never I've never seen 5K. I've seen 5K tungsten, but never 4 or 6K... http://www.ltmlighting.com/en/range/hmi_projectors-1.html http://www.arri.de/prod/lighting/02_overvi...=AS&lpfam=D http://www.sunray-lighting.com/fixtures_05.html http://extranet.mole.com/public/index.cgi?...930&id=9969

http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...;hl=fog+machine http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...;hl=fog+machine http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...;hl=fog+machine http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...;hl=fog+machine

You mean like pegboard? Use a small point source for the narrowest beams. The farther away the light is from the wall, narrower and more parallel the shafts of light will be. If you can't get enough distance or brightness with a single unit, consider using multiple smaller units next to each other like Source 4's; taking care not to let their beams overlap.

Thanks for sharing. It would be helpful to know about the camera tweaks and color correction. The stuff looks pretty contrasty.

I think it's a no-brainer. If you want the aesthetic of 24fps film capture, then 24p video gives you the same motion characteristics. If you're a TV/video producer who's perfectly satisfied with the 60i video format, then 24p may seem dispensable. It sounds like your big production company head may not have any need or care for the film-motion aesthetic, while it can matter a whole lot to filmmakers who desperately want to avoid the 60i "video" look. Since this is the SDX900 forum afterall, keep in mind that 24p video can be laid to 60i tape with the same 3:2 pulldown that's used when transferring film to video. That right there should tell you that Panasonic recognized the value of the 24p-3:2 aesthetic, and that 24p is not only for transfer to film. Sony's 24PsF and Panasonic's 24pA allow for creation of 24p masters that can be transferred to film frames 1:1; while 24p with a 3:2 pulldown is really designed to stay in the 60i realm.

Exactly. This is much easier and more precise than home made snoots. For "rays" of light to show up you need the light to shine through some "atmosphere" (fog, smoke, etc.) and stage it against a dark background. The effect is most pronounced when you're backlighting the atmosphere rather than side-lighting or front-lighting.

Yes. Full CTB converts 3200K light to 5600K, and also absorbs about 1-2/3 stops. Full CTO converts 5600K light to 3200, and absorbs about 2/3 stop of light. And to avoid needless nitpicking, these are round numbers. There are always variances in the actual color temperature of light sources, and the precise correction of different gels. The main idea is that CTB converts tungsten to daylight, and CTO converts daylight to tungsten.

http://www.cinematography.net/%5Bcml%5D%20...;%20falloff.htm The softer (larger) the source is, the longer it takes for light to falloff because of the "combined" point sources that Chris described. However, as you increase distance the soft source becomes less "large" and incrementally more like a point source.

A fast shutter (narrow shutter angle) and step printing are two different things. I think John is asking about step printing. Many telecines will allow you transfer at slower frame rates to match your shooting fps. If you transfer your undercranked material at 24fps to a true 24p format, you can slow it doen in post and create the step-printed effect that way.

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/files/m...er-exposure.pdf http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/files/m...cture_Edges.pdf

I'm sure you'll get a million different replies, but I think food looks best when you light it like a car -- it's as much about the shiny reflections as it is the incident light. The "sheen" on food is part of what makes it look moist and appetizing. Without the sheen food looks like rubber props. To that end, soft back- and edge-lighting can give a nice wrap to the key light and give soft reflections. For the glassware you'll want to make sure those soft sources have sharp, clean edges and are evenly lit so that they show up as clean solid reflections. Also remember the rule of "specular transparency": Incident light falls off with distance, but the brightness of reflections does not (the reflections just get smaller). In other words, you can balance the brightness of the reflections with the incident exposure by moving the source closer and farther away (closer= less relfection; farther=brighter reflection relative to the incident exposure). For table top you'll also want a few small sources on hand like Peppers or Dedos, as well as finger & dots, and tape. Lighting tabletop is just like lighting a set, only smaller. You still need multiple lights and flags, but on a smaller scale.

You don't want to to overexpose your greenscreen! One stop under should be okay; at key is often better for video. What matters most is the saturation of the green not the luminance, and you get the best color saturation/least noise between about 40-55 IRE.

You can generally only pick one color balance at a time with film or a video camera; daylight, tungsten, or something in between. Light sources that match your color balance will appear white, and light sources of a different color temperature will appear different. If you balance in between, the daylight sources will appear slightly blue and the tungsten sources will appear slightly warm, but less so than if you had balanced completely for one or the other. You'll find that straight mix of daylight and tungsten will still appear a little too exaggerated on camera to appear naturalistic, so you usually try to "cool off" the the tungsten light with 1/2 or 3/4 CTB to make the temperature difference less extreme. But it's a matter of degree and taste.