Renny McCauley

Hello all, I'm wanting to do something like this Norman McLaren film Pas de Deux. Here's the link: http://www.nfb.ca/film/pas_de_deux_en/ I feel pretty confident that I get the lighting. I'm picturing 2 hard lights to the side and back of the performers. What I don't get is how they keep the floor so black. Is it just that they have a dark matte black floor? If I film on some black fabric, will I get a similar look? Or is there some other trick to keeping the light off the floor? Thanks for any input. Renny

Hi all, I'm shooting a 16mm film in a few weeks on the SR3. We are using Double X B&W negative. We will be using a video tap and I will also have a Canon 7D on set. I'm wondering if there is a way to set up either the video tap or the DSLR to give us a fairly reasonable preview of the film's b&w. I plan to use some color filters to correct the film's sensitivity to blue, but it would be nice to have a visualization of the tones. I'm wondering if messing with the 7D's white balance might help me out, like setting it to daylight even when I'm shooting under tungsten lights. Or possibly I could put a blue filter on it? It has built in color filters but only for red, yellow, and orange. The video tap & monitor is getting rented from Panavision so I haven't actually seen what kind of controls I will have with it. Thoughts, tips? Thanks, Renny

The AC was able to fix the problem by leaving the film in the bag and pressing down on the film. I'm worried about scratching, but due to time constraints we really had no other option. Thanks for the advice. Renny

I wanted to chime back in about the time lapse after the fact because you all have been VERY helpful. The shoot was not a complete success but it was also not a complete failure. The major problem was that the intervalometer that we rented (Norris) had a minimum shutter length of 1/8. I had assumed that I would be able to at least shoot at 1/48. I shot without an ND filter. I did not rent one because I didn't think I would need it. By full sun I was a good 3-4 stops overexposed. It was also a very foggy day and the frame was a complete whiteout at times (we were shooting from up high on a hill overlooking San Francisco). As for strategy, I decided to ride the exposure to get both day and night exposures. We used 250D. I only had a cheap Sekonic meter and not until 6:45 or so was I getting a reading at all, so I had to guess up until that point. I started with a 1 second exposure at about 6:00am and as the sky became lighter I cut off 1/16 of a second at a time. By the time the sun came up, I had a 1/8 shutter and 1.25 f-stop which was accurate on my light meter. Then I closed up the f-stop in about 1/10 stop intervals (just manually) trying to keep up with my light meter readings. By the time I reached full closure at 16 f-stop, I let it stay until the sunset began, then I did the process in reverse. I feel like the strategy was good, though I won't know for sure until the telecine later this month. I'm nervous about the overexposure, but I think it will turn out okay. Again, thanks all for the suggestions and help. I can't wait to try again and refine my strategy. I think the time-lapse can be a pretty great experience. Renny

I'm the DP on a 16mm short being shot on the Arri SR. We are having major issues with film loading. The problem appears to be the film stock. It was purchased through Off Campus Productions at a heavily discounted price. However, it did come factory sealed. Our problem is that the film is "coned." In other words if you were to lay the film flat on a table, some of the film would be coned up from the table. So we are able to load the mag and place it on the camera but there is serious resistance and when we run the camera we get mis-hit sprocket holes. Any ideas for solutions on this? Merely pushing down on the film doesn't seem to be able to fix it. Thanks, Renny

Just an update. We got the intervalometer today. The FASTEST shutter speed the intervalometer can do is 1/8 second. So that changes things a bit. We don't have any ND filters so we are going with the 50D stock. What I've decided to do is start about an hour before the sun actually rises and start with a 1 second shutter and full open aperture. Over the course of the hour I will speed up the shutter to 1/8. Then over the next hour I will begin lowering the iris from wide open at 1.2 all the way down to f22. Ride out the day at f22, then do the operation in reverse. Hope it works. I feel like it will. Thanks for the help!

Thanks for all the help guys. The sun will actually be behind us the entire time as we are shooting north. This helps things a bit. I'm now considering moving over to 250D film so that we get the building lights properly. But then I might be entering ND land at full sun. Adding filters to the mix seems super tricky. Tom, you say to adjust the shutter speeds. It seems like this will have an undesirable effect in that the longer exposures will be streaky while the faster shutters will be stuttery. Right? Beautiful timelapse work on your site, by the way. Renny

To clarify, there will be an interval of 20-30 seconds between each exposure. I believe we'll use the default 180º shutter. It's a shot of San Francisco from on top of a hill. Renny

I'm doing a full day time lapse of a city scape starting just before sunrise and ending just after sunset. We're shooting this on a Arri SR2 with an intervalometer. The interval will be 20-30 seconds per frame. I'm a little unsure on setting exposure. My instinct was to meter every shot and adjust the exposure accordingly, but maybe this will look jittery? What would you folks do? Thanks, Renny

Thanks David. I'm gonna try it out. Renny

There's an interesting scene in Dogville where these white specks drop through the frame. I think they are supposed to be dandelions. What do you guys think they used in this scene? It kind of looks like down feathers to me, but it's hard to tell. Here's the scene. Thanks, Renny

How long do the batteries last with battery grip? I suppose if we could get several days out of it, that would be a start. For this project, we want to have a timelapse of people visiting a memorial site. Each day people filtering in and out, leaving flowers, etc. I'd think we would want to go from sunrise to sunset but I'm not sure how you'd get the camera to stop taking pictures at night. I don't think the interval has to be all that often. Once a minute or 30 seconds? Not totally sure yet. We might do a lifecycle of flowers sort of timelapse to - a bunch of flowers opening, closing, dying etc. Renny

We are looking to do a long term time lapse in Golden Gate Park. We'd like to shoot for weeks or even months. The limitations are that this is being done in a public place and there is no power tap available. The camera will be hidden in a tree, so I'm not so much worried about theft. The best route I've come up with so far is to have a Canon 20D connected to a timer remote controller. I will use as big of a card as possible (32GB?) and set the camera to one of the lower rez settings. But this still limits me to the life of the battery which is probably hardly a day. There's no way we can swap the batteries daily. This seems far-fetched but is there any kind of solar power adapter that a camera could plug into? Or does anybody have any other idea? And also, the camera will need to be protected in some kind of housing. Any ideas here? Am I even on the right track here? I wonder if anybody's pulled off something like this? Thanks, Renny

Thanks for all the helpful tips and information. I'm working with the jib rental guy right now to see if we can find a working solutions. Renny

Daniel, the 90 degree plate seems like a very affordable solution. Are the 90 degree plates safe to use on the triangle jib? I wasn't planning on hiring an operator. I was told that the triangle jib is pretty easy to teach yourself. I've used a smaller studio jib and found it fairly intuitive. Am I being insane to think that I will be able to operate the triangle jib safely without an operator? The rental place is renting me the triangle jib for $185/day. It only has a 6' reach. Renny