Kevin Zanit

Also, if you plan to keep the cameras in a heated room overnight (as opposed to a truck), try and give your camera department a bit of a pre-call to get the camera out in the weather as it will take an hour or so for any fogging to go away. If you can keep the gear in a garage or some other place that it will stay around the outside temperature you can avoid this.

A huge loss, a huge talent. He was a good man, who left a legacy of amazing work behind. I have yet to ever meet a person who did not speak fondly of him.

Good work, I saw the commercial a few nights ago and thought it was very funny.

You paint them. It is one of the cheapest ways to help the look of the project. Do everything you can to get the walls a darker color so you are not always fighting the white (unless the white plays into a story point or something like that).

And here is one in use:

A website called Skylighter.com may sell Zirconium in smaller amounts. The thing is, it?s not a very stable, it is set off by impact and moister can affect it as well. I would not recommend messing with it, as it burns hotter than a road flare. The Sweeny gun uses only air pressure to move the balls, whereas a paintball gun tends to whack the paintball. This is because the impact of a conventional paintball gun is enough to set off the zirc in the chamber. Zirconium is also the black stuff on the end of a road flare, just be careful if you scrape it off (i.e. use a pencil eraser or something similar, or better yet, just don't do it).

This is a version I used to do, everyone has their own way. A lot of people will make printed labels as well.

The paintballs for sparks are filled with Zirconium and bird seed. The gun they use is similar to a paintball gun, called a "Sweeney gun". To my knowledge, you can't buy paintball halves, it is not how they are made. I don't even know where to get the paintballs for FX use, you have to hire an FX guy, which is the smart thing to do anyways. Kevin Zanit

It is probably the best book on real world lighting I have read. Its technical information is great, but so is the set electrician?s etiquette section. It has lots of information that you would not have unless you spent the time on set learning it; an excellent book.

"Nice work! Can you please share what film stocks you used? processing techniques, filters?" Check the "In Production" forum, he has written extensively on the production of this movie. David - Looks fantastic, I love how ballsy you were with what you were sending in through the windows. Also, great composition and camera movement, good work! Kevin Zanit

It is a very good point. In the defense of some of the books I have read, they do discuss lighting in those terms (not the norm, but in the better books). I think a lot of the problems come from the professors not having a complete understanding of what a cinematographer does, after all most of the teachers are forced to be generalists, as they are also teaching some writing technique, producing, editing, sound, etc.

These are from a fairly current union rate card (I think they are close): DP 87.13 Cam. Op. 53.33 With an 8 hour minimum In the non-union world the rates can vary wildly. You would normally just get your DP rate.

Here is the manual, you can download it here. EDIT: Its not working for me either, I put it on my site: Arriflex_35IIC_manual.pdf

If you email it to me (fx12002 [at] socal.rr.com) I can post it here (I think). Kevin

I don't know about an entire camera body ending up on there, but I do know odd bits and pieces have over the years. I also seem to remember people at the company checking for their products online, and then getting the sellers in trouble. When I was at Panavision Woodland Hills a while ago, someone told me a story that could just be legend, but that either a camera body or body and set of Primos went missing. It was stolen, and when the thieves couldn't move the items they stole, they just left the box behind the bushes at Panavision, to be found several days latter. I don't know if this story is true, but you head tons of these over the years.

Not really because there are no anamorphic 16mm lenses, and if you use 35mm ones the stretch will be too extreme resulting in a non-standard aspect ratio when you go to project. I don't remember all the math, but there was a huge thread called "anamorphic 16" or something like that, do a search.

Well that is a valid question. A lot of it has to do with what rental house you like to work with. I love going out of Panavision, and every time I don't go out of Panavision, I am reminded quickly why I like Panavision so much. Primos are very nice lenses, there are very few lenses in the world that compete (attn: those who will get pissed at that comment, remember, I said few lenses, not no lenses). All that said, I have never seen an Elaine with a PL or 35mm PV mount, though I think they exist. I also like that most Panavision accessories are compatible with the Elaine, and that it sort of follows the Panavision "system". I have worked with SRIIs and SRIIIs and those are great cameras. I think the viewing system in the Elaine is better, especially the long eyepiece as it is not an eyepiece extension (that cuts light), but an entirely different optic. I am once again not positive on this, but I seem to remember the camera will take behind the lens filters which is a nice feature, especially because of how dim the viewfinder can be. Also, the camera has a completely variable shutter that can be adjusted in shot. I am sure there are more pros and cons I am missing, I haven't shot with that camera in years, but I do like it. Kevin Zanit

You are correct that S16 does not do any sort of optical stretch, but that’s where it ends. S16 cameras have their gate widened to use the area of the film that was reserved for the soundtrack and perforations (thus S16 cameras can only use single perf film). This results in a 20% larger negative area when compared to regular 16 and a native aspect ratio of 1.66:1 (very close to 16x9's 1.77:1) Kodak put it best: ". . . the greater frame width of Super 16 and the need for less cropping on the top and bottom gives Super 16 a 46% increase in image area over standard 16 mm film when displayed in the wide-screen 1.85:1 ratio. This means better quality pictures from 16 mm film." As for re-framing ability in post, it is true that if you were to letterbox reg. 16's 1.33:1 to 1.77 (or 1.85) you would have more room to shift the frame, but you are also throwing away a ton of your negative. In S16 that is cropped to 1.77 you do have a bit of room to reframe, and to 1.85 a bit more. The main thing you gain from shooting S16 is a better picture due to larger negative area. EDIT-Beat me to it

You will have flicker if you use the magnetic ballasts. You may not have flicker with the electronic, it depends how much the camera speed varies, though I would say you would probably not have a problem.

It?s more or less the same thing as a GII, just make sure you have extra fuses (as was said before), as they tend to pop if the camera jams. Also, try not to let the mags roll out as that tends to pop the fuse, and supposedly the mags have light leaks if there is no film in the feed side of mag well.

I should have added the 5.8/ 8 at 24 fps, but you typically would be overcranking.

I assume it?s a fireball you are talking about exposing. If so, typically at 400 iso you should be at a 5.6/ 8 split and you should be fine.

Don't know anything about Entertainment Post, but as for the direct to drive option, I was talking to the people at Magic Film and Video (another low-budget SD telecine solution), and they were mentioning being in the testing phases of a direct to drive option. I may be testing this option for a project soon; I will post the results if I do in fact go with that workflow. Kevin Zanit

Just meter and shoot it as you would if the camera was facing the action directly. When really in doubt, hold a gray card in the area you want exposed properly. Make sure it doesn?t move, take a meter reading directly on the object, and then from the reflection. Compute the light loss between the two readings, then meter the scene like you normally would and add the stop compensation into it. For example, if I am loosing 1 stop from the reflection, and I then take an incident reading at my subject that comes up at a F8, then I know if I want the reflected image exposed correctly, I need to shoot at a F5.6. As was said though, a good clean mirror will have very minimal light loss. Kevin Zanit

No matter what department you come up in, you will be deficient in one aspect or another, that?s the nature of it. If you come up in camera, you could be lacking in lighting knowledge, an extremely critical part of cinematography. If you come up in electric side, you can be very deficient in camera knowledge. To become knowledgeable about both aspects requires a pursuit of the information you are not getting from your current position. You would be surprised how little many camera department people know about back end lab work, or anything that does not relate directly to their job - this is also true for any other department. I would say it is fairly rare for a key grip to move into shooting, can't say why exactly, but in my experience it is a rare thing. You may find that more camera department people make the transition to shooting because of this situation: If a show needs to break off into a smaller splinter 2nd unit or something like that, it is a lot easier to send off the camera operator or even 1st to shoot that material than the 1st unit gaffer. Changing a gaffer is a huge deal as far as the flow of production. Whereas having the DP operate for a bit has much less impact on the overall schedule, and thus you see the above happen a bit more. Kevin Zanit