David Woodworth

Fantastic visuals! I really like the feel of the lighting, and am intrigued by the concept of shooting with tungsten with the color temperature set like that. I'm going to have to experiment with that. Out of curiosity, I was was browsing your blog and noticed some light plots from "Absolute" (another very nice piece of cinematography, btw)... what software do you use to make your lighting plots? Thanks, David Woodworth

Our production company uses Gorilla by Jungle Software. It has a lot of features we needed. There is also Movie Magic's line of software, but I am not as familiar with them, so I don't know if they do shot lists. But both pieces of software will do the call sheets and reports you mentioned. A free option is Celtx. We have also used that, and while it doesn't have everything, it can do the call sheets and storyboarding. It's an open source project, and they are constantly adding new and better features.

I've used the following many times in Kansas City, and have had great experiences with each one: Lights On The Gilbert Group Outpost Worldwide All three have up to 5 ton trucks. Also, depending on what you're doing, Harvest Productions is a very large theatrical/live show rental house here in KC, they may be able to help if you need a lot of PARs or similar lighting. David Woodworth Attaboy Media Productions

If you have any sort of access to a video projector, you could simply shoot some travel footage out a window, and then project that in a loop onto a white muslin or similar material. Maybe adjust the brightness and contrast on the projector to get the blown out look you mentioned.

RE: Lanternlock I bought a Lanternlock a few months ago and now I couldn't live without it. I stick it on a 40" C-stand riser and have a grip hoist it above the camera for key/fill. Works like a charm! Sure I could have rigged something together, but the convenience of being able to just pop it all together in about 20 seconds is well worth the price for me. Just my two cents :) I am currently using a large 300W equivalent Compact Fluorescent bulb in it.

I use the EX1/EX3 almost every day for this kind of shoot. As you said, lighting will be very important, and try as hard as you can to shoot at a -3 gain setting on the camera. A lot of times I will choose a CINE gamma in the picture profile (I think CINE1 or 2). This help preserve the highs of the image for color correction in post. Only other thing I would be careful about is wispy hair; the compression of the XDCAM codec can sometimes cause things like that to not key as well. Just make sure that the hair is clearly defined against the greenscreen, and not looking similar in brightness. You may want to use bluescreen for any blonds you have. The camera records gorgeous images, you just have to be aware of its slight limitations (noise at higher gain settings, compression, etc) and make sure your lighting is almost perfect on the greenscreen :) Also, I would assume that any reflections in that video are generated in post. Trying to capture those on-set are a major pain. LOL Hope that helps! David W.