Matthew Parnell

Bizzarely enough i attended a lecture with Mr Khondji for the ACS on friday night. Was quite entertaining and included a screening of Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. He was also honoured with a honoury membership to the ACS. He's over here in Australia to shoot The Ruins, at Warner Bros Studios on the Gold Coast.

I was recently out at a regional tv station, and they still had a direct to air filmchain system. Fully functional as well, one of the last left in australia. Never used except on the odd occasion when they might get some local archival footage from locals. The production manager seemed to like having it still arround for the sake of nostalga.

As far as cheap ones go, Rode make ok shotgun mics. If you have a bit of money go for either a Sennheiser ME66/416/816 or some of the AudioTechnica gear is great. As far as boompoles go, again, rode make a nice cheap one, a bit heavy compared to its competitors, but at less that half the cost you tend to expect that. Rode also make accessories like Softies and Shockmounts, but Rycote still do these best. Cheers, Matt

For two reasons: -A lot of people use a cheap camera as a deck in their editing suite to save on drum and head hours on their camera. -Say i hire a XL2 to shoot a short film, i can use my own cheaper camera to capture the footage rather than having to spend money on the camera for the days needed to capture. In both cases you just use the camera as a deck. A consumer camera is about 4 times cheaper than a deck, and if its just for capturing, the functions the deck uses are the same as the camera. This is all provided that you are capturing via firewire.

I would go for the HDX900 anyday. Whilst XDCAM is a great media solution, in my opinion far superior to P2, as you can treat the disks like tapes, no need for a complicated onset workflow etc. The disks are so cheap you can just grab a new one and start shooting again. Ive worked on set with P2 before, and the words which comes to my mind is media management nightmare. Having said all those positive things about XDCAM, Sony had done nothing but produce some pretty average cameras that record to the medium. And that is what the 350 is.... AVERAGE. The XDCAM HD codec really leaves a lot to the imagination, was very disappointed when using this camera. The HDX900 on the otherhand is a beast, its DVCPRO HD, so therefore 100mb compared to 35mb VBR on the 350. At the end of the day the 350 is a professional camera bordering on the broadcast eng market, whearas the HDX900 is a fully fledged broadcast camera. The owner of the camera house i predominately deal with was saying towards the end of this year, begining of next year there should be a XDCAM camera that will record using a much better codec and will actually compete against the Panasonic P2 Stuff, hopefully sony can deliver better product. Cheers, Matt.

Kyle If you have your heart set on this camera, then you can just buy a cheap Digital 8 camera and capture your Hi8 via firewire, or canopus and many others produce firewire-analogue AD converters. Cheers.

Is probably out of your price range, but Miller make some really nice legs named 'solo'. They are really light weight but can go really low to the ground and really high(about 6 foot high).

My best catering was when touring around the UK shooting a doco with Status Quo at the end of last year. Two months of Resturant quality food! We had an amazing chef and catering team on the tour, who pulled an average of working 18 hours straight.

Cutting Edge in Sydney has a Spirit 4k machine Cheers, Matt.

Any updates captain??

Ive seen zip ease used to dull off shiny stainless steel.

http://www.panavision.com.au/Information/CineTools.htm

Does a Woodworker get excited about a new tool that he hasnt seen yet, or does he get excited when he produces a great piece of furniture? All this focus on RED really does not achieve anything.

Perhaps you are dealing with the clients computer being the problem. Can it play other burnt disks. I know of DVD players that have had issues, but for me computers have not had an issue.

I completely agree with Hal, a cinematographer should use whatever tools suit the job best. I am sick of hearing the film vs digital debate. To me much of the art of cinematography is all about choosing and using the right tools for the job and using them to effectively make a positive contribution to the production. If we remain byased towards certain aquisition tools then our ability to do this is comprimised. Ultimately we do not want an audience to notice the cinematography until they look back on the film in retrospect. While watching the film our work should help ensure they are immersed in the world that has been created for them.

Using a backfocus chart(siemens star) will give the best results in adjusting it. Open your widest stop. With about 5+m between the camera and the chart zoom into the centre of the star. Focus until the blury circle in the centre of the star is at its smallest. Zoom out. Adjust your backfocus until blury circle of the star is at its smallest. Repeat to check. I was always taught to get into the habit of doing this before you start your shift.

Beta SX is actually an ENG format, specifically designed for news gathering in mind. Used in tandem with the NLEs developed for it, it allowed 4xSpeed Capture and Output, a real advantage in a news enviroment. It also allowed for much easier backward capabilities with Beta SP, meaning broadcasters didnt neccesarily have to completely replace their infrastucture. In australia up until this year it was used by all but one of the major broadcasters(the seven network, who use a mixture of DVCPro and DVCPro 50) for their news production.

I would have got the XL2 over the DVX to be honest with you. 99% of the work that i do is in widescreen, so the XL2 was the best answer there, plus you can put a ENG style lens on it. To me, HDV is a really average and limiting format, the audio quality is really quite average, the compression has issues. I personally dislike the limitations of the DV25 codec, but HDV has those same limitations(same colour space, etc) and even more. I have to admit that ive never like the Sony Pro Handheld camera like the PD150 and PDX10, the Sony HDV cameras continue that trend, and to be frank, compared to the XLh1 and the JVC HD100, they dont stand up at all. In post you get the best results out of native HDV, if your system can handle it. But native HDV because of the codec, doesnt hold up once you start putting multiple layers on it(titles, effects, colour correction) this is a generational effect of the codec, so therefore you have to transcode into a intermediate format, that chews through hours and hours in the editing suite before you can start cutting. If you decide for a top end post solution transfering the HDCAM, the cost of the transfers alone will chew through much of the advantages of shooting HDV. Anyway, Thats just my two cents.

The HDV format itself is not the best format around in the first place but Sonys HDV cameras are pretty average. There lenses are cheap and they arent the easiest cameras to use. Personally i would go for the XL2 or i would save up and get an XLH1. It has the best quality lens out of all of the current HDV cameras. A lot of guys tend to buy the new HDV cameras to shoot standard def because of the greater lens and CCD quality. This is especially the case with the JVC HDV camera, as it comes with a professional lens and operates much like a pro camera. Im about to take a XLH1 out on a two month doco shoot very shortly. My only complaint about it is its audio schematics. It would be nice to have one channel run the on camera mic and the other for a wireless lapel, but i guess its forcing me to put a decent mic on the camera. Cheers, Matt.

Syncing the Nagra in post after digitising is your answer there... simple use of a slate. There is a hell of a lot more analogue audio work done than what you think, but it is predominantly just in the sound capture stage. Analogue is a bit like film, but it has just phased out much quicker because digital gear has become so advanced and more cost effective, much quicker than what video/digital cinema has. You nearly will always get better quality recording onto a sperate recorder than your camera. Most camera mic preamps, headphone amps and most of the audio electronics are much cheaper than what you would get in a decent mixer and recorder. The XL2 records in a similar format to DAT and most new solid state recorders. For both parties while filming, being tethered together is a bit of a pain. Also arround sound recordist circles the XL series of camera (particularly the XL1) has a pretty average reputation as a tool to work with. However, recording straight onto the XL2 make life in post much easier. So its a matter of weighing the two up and deciding on what works best for you.

Always use an RCD and i would also suggest checking the fuse box in the house. If it uses wire fuse, replace the wire with the proper rated wire, you just never know what might be on the breaker, and it can end in disaster.

I bought myself a sankyo super 8 camera some time ago for about $20 Australian (about US$12). A MOS camera, very average viewfinder and a pretty poor lens(rather contrasty), but it works well, can operate completely manual or with auto exposure. Solid camera to practice on. You dont need to sell an arm or leg to get a fully manual super 8 camera to practice on.

Check your pins on your SVideo cable for a missing or bent pin. Also could be the cable itself. Try a different SVideo and your straight composite cable.

Also try to shoot using as flat a light as possible.

This effect is done both optically using a zoom lens and physically. Basically you keep the subject at the same size by zooming and tracking at the same time keeping their change rates the same soas to maintain the one sized shot. For example you start with a mid shot that starts on a tele lens and ends with a mid shot on a wide lens. The way i would try is to just change the rate of the zoom or dolly in relation to one another to achieve a subtle dolly in.