Jean Dodge

The effect you are probably looking for is the reflection of the moving light across the audience's face, glowing and dimming alternately. The best way to do that realistically is to really do it. Don't use a dimmer. If you have full access to the facility, bring a few 12" or smaller mirrors taped to a baby nail-on plate so you can set some mirrors up to bounce the projector light where you want it when you are shooting away from the screen. That way you can set a 4x4 silk up close to the actors and project a bit of the image onto it at a closer distance to enhance the moving bounce light effect. Often the effect is too diffuse if your actors are far from the screen. Or you can bring a few still camera lenses to interject into the projector beam and sent the image where you want it to go. You can vary the angle a bit that way, and it's easier than trying to tilt a huge projector. You can also use some gels or filters or nets to cut down the intensity of the beam if you need to balance the lighting to that of faces of the actors. Just be ready for some tweaking. Also give some thought to making up a few 35mm film loops to set into the projector so you don't have to keep changing reels as you work. No one smokes in movie theaters in the USA now but audiences expect to see the CITIZEN KANE style haze outlining the projector beam so bring some fog. A certain amount of cheating usually allowed - for instance if the projector is working as a backlight them one has to assume the actors heads would throw big annoying shadows on the screen, but people cheat.... audiences buy it. Bring some black/white showcard in case you want to make a mask or snoot to make the projector beam more narrow as it passes over your principal actor's heads in low angle upshots. A sliver that crosses the frame is preferable to a too wide beam that cant be read as such. Remember you can move your actors around for each angle so long as you keep it believable - if you see their faces in profile don't be afraid to scoot them all the way to one side to make the theater look bigger behind them, etc. Put them in the front row for the upshot so you have room for the camera, then move them back to row 12 for the two shot with extras behind them, etc. Don't shoot a higher ISO than you have to. Use a 50mm lens that is fast instead and try to keep the ISO below 1250 or 1600 if possible with the 5D mk2. You risk gain and grain otherwise. As always, test before the day of your shoot and make your own determinations. House lights might help for some wide shots and remember it's easier to darken in post than it is to lighten a scene, but with HDSLRS the best bet is to shoot the way you want it to look on your best monitor. Another reason to test, test test. What you cannot control will be the wide shot where you see audience, projected image and the whole theater so that is is your baseline in some regards. If your closeups don't seem to match the wide shot then you have to adjust the close work. DOn't get caught having to shoot one without knowing what the other is like first. have fun

Looks like no one really read your problem, much less had a good answer. What firmware was the camera running? In standby mode you should have been able to see an HD image in the monitor. Yes, the resolution drops to SD when the camera records... but it should send a better picture in preview mode. If you ever figured it all out, please let us know. This sounds like a frustrating problem.

Thanks for the link to the informative technical article. I think anyone who ever picked up a motion picture camera is going to enjoy seeing this movie, if only for the historical elements. In the story of HUGO we find a character from real life, that weaves in a lot of true facts about Georges Milies, the inventor of much of what we enjoy about cinema today. He made over 500 film in less than twenty years and retired into near obscurity and destitution as the economics and aesthetics of the art solidified into an industry. He invented / discovered the substitution shot, the horror film and sci-fi genres, and was among the first to employ time lapse, dissolves, multiple exposures and other seemingly "magical" techniques, bending his knowledge of stage magic into the new medium. His most famous existing film is known in English a "A Trip to The Moon," and includes the shot of a capsule impacting with the face of "the man in the moon," which has become a staple of early cinema compilations. The majority of his life's work, his films, were melted down to make boot heels for the French Army during World War One. Like D.W. Griffith after him, the parade passed him by as studios emerged to make a newer, modern cinema on the backs of his early and un-replacable achievements, leaving him to a life of poverty until, in Milies' case, fellow film makers acted to intervene. Griffith simply died in a one room rental on Gower Street, a forgotten man in the city he put on the world's maps - Hollywood. No doubt Scorsese will weave these ironies and the importance for film preservation into the plot of the film. On top of all that, we have an award winning children's book as the source material, the work of cinematographer Robert Richardson and production designer Dante Ferretti, along with editor Thelma Schoonmaker and the assembled team they lead in bringing this material to the screen in 3D. Me? I'll be there on opening day with my entire family.

Check canonrumors.com. Looks like canon is set to release SOMETHING in order to try and keep their place in the universe after introducing the 5Dmk2. That was in november of 2008, and since that time the landscape has changed a lot. They are in need of a course correction, where they can keep stills and motion picture aka HD video production separate from one another. Professionals want the features and accessories to work in a production environment, and no one wants to go back to a small sensor now that we have seen how well skin tones and low light work can look. Canon wants to stay the sales leader in prosumer DSLRs. This next move/ announcement will be their response to these and other concerns.

Canon HDSLRs have a "picture style editor" to create custom picture styles that can be loaded - cinestyle from Technicolor being one of them - and various early adapters and experienced users have come up with settings to supposedly emulate the look of various film stocks, including T-Max B+W. One advantage to shooting with a monochrome picture style would be that you could use red filters to darken the sky and draw out the skin tones on Caucasions and Asians, for example. Of course, you could use a red filter with a color style too, and go monochrome in post... but it makes the monitor harder to judge. Again, the best answer is almost always the same; do extensive tests and judge for yourself.

The real "trick" to shooting retro-looking b+w is to light it like they used to back when b+w was the dominant medium. Kino flo and softbox looks were not around. Use fresnels and very little diffusion, and you will get a look that sells the material. Do your research and shoot tests of lighting styles. As for the menu setting and post work, as always, do careful tests and judge for yourself. My money is on finding a "flat" shooting style and doing extensive work in post. It all depends on what sort of b+w look you want. It's not like there is just one "b+w look," just as there is not one "color" look. PLEASANTVILLE and RUMBLEFISH used different methods but are interesting to see, as modern takes on B+W, as is SHADOWS AND FOG (woody allen) and ZENTROPA. Don't expect to get SIN CITY with a menu button on a HDSLR. RAGING BULL is a must-see exercise in B+W virtuosity. German Expressionist cinema is great - from Cabinet of Dr Calgari to M, by Fritz Lang, these films had a huge influence on Hollywood, culminating in films like SUNRISE and THE INFORMER, for example. CITIZEN KANE is of course a textbook of camera techniques. What are you trying to do?

Those remote helicopters are sweet. I recently attended a demo with a pilot who has a canon 7D with a small remote helicopter - a traditional looking one, and it was impressive. But not "easy" by any means. There are dozens of factors to consider and very important safety issues as well. Hire an experienced professional and work closely with a full crew to get it right. Don't try this at home, people.

You are missing a f/16 on the lens. Anamorphic lenses are not easy to build, and they don't just screw on to any old zoom and perform well. Google over to DVXuser to things like Iscorama and Kowa and Singer for long, long discussions. This forum is relatively new and not the best place to repeat what has already been written about extensively elsewhere. good luck.

Try to get something used. Miller, vinten, oconnor, sachtler are all good. A tripod is not the same thing as a fluid head.. by the way. You will get what you pay for. $250 isn't going to buy you much when it comes to trying to pan a 400mm lens smoothly. Go to your local camera store and try some equipment from Manfrotto and compare price ranges. Again, go name brand and expect to get what you pay for.

The Liliput and Ikans are popular over at cinema5D forum - look there for better advice. Many many issues arise about splitting an HDMI signal, so dont expect to have a director's monitor or client monitor for cheap.

HDSLRs are a tool in the toolbox. For SOME low light shooting, they can currently perform in a zone where you couldn't get a usable image any other way. Last year at Venice there was a feature film lensed on canon 5dmk2 that was beautiful. It screened digitally, by the way. But I know the DoP and it wasn't easy. The window that was opened up by the 5Dmk2 is about to close, I predict with some more cinematographer-friendly tools. We all saw SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and while that wasn't a DSLR, the effect was similar - using it as a stealth camera in a crowded foreign market is a good trick... this is the zone these cameras occupy - a novelty and specialty niche for the professional. For amateurs they are tough - no auto focus and the files are large, etc. What's left is the semi-pro and the pro-sumer, by which I mean those with money to throw away on shiny objects. But your mileage may vary. I love them, and think there are creative ways to do near impossible things if you are willing to be creative and work HARD to get around all the flaws. But the moment there is something better, and that moment is coming soon - I will RUN away from them. THey are difficult to operate and easy to break, and have many many flaws.

Getting back to the topic of infrared, one thing that is interesting is to do stop-motion or time lapse with early generation digital cameras that were more sensitive to IR light, such as the Olympus and nikon Coolpix that shared the same sensor. Good IR response, but no motion picture, sorry. Maybe a time lapse without people in it could substitute for an establishing shot... But yeah, the major reason besides cost to ever fool with HDSLRs is that right now, the canon is king when it comes to low light shooting. There is a zone around 1600 iso with f/1.4 lenses that hasn't existed before. Other than that, they are annoying things that break and annoy. Another thing that is annoying is horror films - if people are going to all this trouble to make a film, please try to make a good one. The economics of the genre dont make sense anymore. The finished film will be lost in a sea of unoriginal dreck, languish on a shelf and all that effort will have been for nothing. The planet deserves better. My two cents, sorry.

The tests we did were with a well known lab in Los Angeles, and the film-out was around 400 feet, a short test but enough to make a lot of judgments from. It was done with an Arri film recorder, the same process as a film-out for CGI work, etc. There is a lot of discussion on this thread about "home solutions" and experimental syncing of monitors and 35 IIC cameras... I can't speak to those issues. In a professional lab, the color is manipulated in a Digital Intermediate so that the known color response of the film will reproduce faithfully a look you have chosen with your colorist, using "look up tables," ie, known shifts of color that the film has. What's added when you get to the film version is a bit of grain and a bit of contrast... the grain helps to enhance the "film look" and "sell" the illusion, but the contrast is usually unwanted - but only slight when done on an Arri Film recorder with a professional lab handling the processing, etc. Keep in mind our test benefitted from YEARS of experience the lab has had, whereas any "in house" experimentation will be starting at zero, and reqiure extensive trial and error. The advice we got from the techs and colorists at the lab were that the abaility to manipulate colors was limited compared to most digital compression signals, which we are all familiar with now. Shooting HDSLR is somewhat akin to shooting reversal - you don't have as much room for errors and corrections so shooting on set is very critical compared to shooting 35mm negative, where overexposure and underexposure can be corrected a little better. My advice to anyone here is, don't try to reinvent the wheel. THe trouble you will have to go to in order to complete this process is not worth the imagined savings for a single production. There are only a few things that an HDSLR can do that is different than what you can do with other camera systems, (stealth, low light, small size) and so a good DP and a good producer would work HARD to convince a director/ameteur film maker to take a different path. And you would be wise to heed their advice. Other camera systems are much more ergonomic, user friendly, and veritile, reliable, robust, proven, etc etc - aka PROFESSIONAL. Yes, HDSLRs have been used to shoot X, Y and Z that screened at festivals and on netework televison but to my knowledge none of these were a film-out. It's not that it can't be done, it is just that the economics make it unbalanced and foolish to take that path. In the parlance of our times, we say "there goes a dollar, chasing a dime."

This topic is veering off course. I've done tests of HDSLR footage to 35mm and the results are.... intriguing. When projected, some of the obvious faults of the camera are magnified and others are mitigated somewhat. The obvious challenge is FOCUS. Sure, you think the focus looks "cinematic" when you see it on a laptop, but when it gets 30 feet tall even the best stuff can just look buzzy... unless you are spot-on all the time with an ace focus puller. Aliasing is unpleasant when it is magnified as well. Rolling shutter is pretty much as-is... which is not good if you like to wave the camera rapidly at picket fences, and semi-easy to hide if you are familiar with the problem. Color, contrast and exposure are rendered well enough, and if you had a good colorist and the time to experiment you would be pleased with the results, just like almost any HD to 35mm xfer work, such as Red One lensed films, which is to say that overall the tonal range is less but with the right treatment in lighting and art direction there is a lot of good work that can be done, considering the myriad variables. But let's not kid ourselves... the majority of indie feature work never goes to 35mm these days. And the films that do are made with more professional cameras. These are generalizations, and all things are possible but GET REAL. When you have the budget to try all this, do some tests and make your own judgments.

Zacuto is great, with incredible SUPPORT - Red Rock is good, too. ALL the others are a step down unless you are speaking about custom (overkill)rigs like the Binary mentioned above. But you know what works very well and costs a LOT less? A prime lens, a seven inch HDMI-ready monitor, screw-in filters and a good quick release plate on a QUALITY fluid head. DON'T hand hold these cameras - get a doorway dolly and/or a slider and make a simple pogo cam for stabilization on "steadycam" style moves. But if the overall purpose is to emulate cinema on a low budget, spend your time and money on glass and a serious fluid head. Do your research but don't waste your money on a fancy "rig" until you have a full set of manual primes and a SERIOUS tripod set, with baby legs and a high hat, etc. Then price out all the post production and sound gear, too. Then make sure you have the right cases and bags.... The advantage of HDSLR shooting is in the areas of budget and low light. Everything else is a total compromise, and adding all the crap in the world wont change that fact.

Short answer: use tape or grease pencil on external monitor screen after shooting tests of charts and real world conditions in conjunction with the editor.

I'd say this was a short arc of multiple cameras fixed on a curved rail. Bolexes are a good bet; you could put many of them very close together, closer say than with a lot of Arri III cameras for instance. Then they all run on a shot, each with a slightly progressive focal length employed on the taking lens. Morphing is then used in post to blend the shots together. No rotoscoping.... that's my theory.

Less is more. To view the LCD screen well, buy a pair of reading glasses and keep your eyes close to the screen. To get good images, use decent prime lenses and proper camera support. For accessories, I'd suggest a heavy fluid head and sturdy legs, some neutral density filters and two extra batteries. The rest is completely optional and will only marginally affect your ability to make great images. What matters is your skill, experience and knowledge base, and your imagination. There are now 20,000 more film makers out there than there were two years ago. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me are the "ASPIRING" ones.

As usual, I'm with Mr. Mullen on this issue. What good is a pile of gold in a swiss bank? Does a lumpy mattress serve anyone well? Do CEOs really work a million times harder per hour than the guy on the assembly line? The definition of a "healthy economy" is one that is stable enough to allow the PURSUIT of life, liberty and happiness for all the citizens. Unfortunately, Mr. Lowe, we do have a pretty good constitution here in the USA based on "rugged individualism" etc but it was used primarily as a cover for things like the slave trade, the genocide of the indigenous population and the ruin of the continent's national resources whenever people weren't fighting in the streets and courts to make it live up to what it should be. And the larder of easy profits has been raided to a point where it's a lot harder now to pick up a bird's nest off the ground, as the saying goes. So the beast that is Accumulation of Wealth for wealth's sake has turned to the middle class as the latest source of easy money. The trend towards greater social justice is what the founding fathers built into the constitution and what has served our nation and the world at large better than the parts about personal property. The popular election of a moderate progressive tends to prove that this is the trend that we're on now, and the Reagan era is dead, dead, dead. The passage of health care reform was the final nail in his coffin, like it or not. God bless Obama Death Panels. Industry desperately needs to no longer be responsible for sustaining a bloated health care network where half of every dollar goes to an administrator. That $75 an hour wrench turner was paying for the retirement and health care of the baby boom generation, at the tune of $50 dollars an hour, and trying to compete with a japanese worker making $25 dollars an hour, who happened to be making a better product in a modern nation with socialized medicine. Guess who won? It wasn't the CEO of GM, or Jimmy Hoffa either. It was the guy in the nation with a modern constitution, albeit one modeled on our own, with a more social democratic bent to it. Here's what I know about the future: we're all going to have to live a lot more like one another, and that means Thai grips will make a salary close to what grips in Kansas make. Korean movie stars will make something more like American movie stars, believe it or not. (Their cinema is already more artistically vibrant than US cinema in many ways, and ascending while ours is in decline.) Producers in India will continue to make more product, and that means a larger economy and a more educated and sophisticated audience demanding higher production values. That is already leading to higher salaries and bigger production costs. Etc etc. Teh cinema of the EU is a good middle ground to examine, and it comes from nations that fund the arts and artists, like it or not. Indie film makers in america are competing on an unfair playing field at present because a film made in Sweden, for example has already paid the cast and crew a living wage from a subsidy whereas the Yank is hoping to recoup costs and pay deferred salaries from the sale to a distributor. But they both are offered the same advance.... So again, the future is going to be a game about leveling the playing field. If you think that means passenger van drivers in Latvia are going to get bass boats in their driveways next year, think again. The future will also be more progressive, and green, or else it will cease to exist. If we keep acting selfishly, the planet wont survive. Period. It will also be more sustainable, or else it will devolve into an open war between the haves and the have nots, and trust me, the have nots outnumber the haves. And it won't be pretty when they figure that out. Niche marketing, mumblecore and DIY cinema, whatever survives of the ashes of so-called indie cinema, digital distribution, the breakdown of the broadcast networks, and a million other things like the rise of social media is going to do a lot more to the future of "the film industry" than runaway productions and the "shut the gate because the horse has already fled the barn" decisions of some outmoded but valiant labor unions, anyway. Am I the only one who noticed that all the stars at the academy awards were pushing fifty, and there didn't seem to be a viable younger generation stepping in to replace them? (Sorry Mylie Cyrus or whatever your name is) Or that every film that had some smidgen of indie productio to it did a lot better than AVATAR? We're in the process of creating a gulf in the middle where only two types of films are being made in America - Spiderman Five and "Johnny's Earnest Indie he made with his summer job money on his cell phone, now playing on YouTube" Someone is going to step into that gulf and entertain the masses on a weekly basis and deliver the content to them simply, cheaply and on a mass level. Right now that is called cable teevee, but that still leaves empty seats at the local cinemaplex. Me, I'm interested in what is going to fill THAT gap because it may not get made here in the USA unless we straighten some things out quickly. These are the jobs that will employ, sustain and INSPIRE my generation and the artists I am moved by. That, for me personally is the positive, sustainable and equitable solution I'm working towards.

always remember to turn your liabilities into your assets bad you have a loud, small 16mm camera with a marginally usable viewing system, and probably some okay lenses, dunno good variable frame rate single frame capability light easily mounted/ flown inconspicuous doesn't need batteries easily inverted etc. make your own list and work from there include your resources regarding sets, light, actors as well more suggestions: pogo cam chase scene from POINT BREAK shower scene from PSYCHO closet scene from BROKEN BLOSSOMS walking scene from POINT BLANK, Lee Marvin trio on the run in JULES AND JIM use the dorms and elevators for the overlook hotel in THE SHINING the DO Long Bridge sequence at night from APOCALYPSE NOW. (kidding) but you could do the poop, still in saigon opening.... let us know what you decide. The fights from RAGING BULL sounds best, even if you stage it outdoors w no extras, just copy the moves and focal lengths and frame rates and you will get an A no one expects you to marshall a cast of thousands

Good advice. Two months in and about halfway through the BEFORE SUNRISE shoot in Vienna, we ran out of tortillas and mexican peppers, which we had packed into every available inch of the equipment cases back in tejas. We cried. All german-style food is brown. Great if you like sausage and chocolate, not so good if you like salad. And yes, this is exactly the type of advice I appreciate. Thanks

USA cinematographer seeking general info on shooting in rural Japan and major cities - anything is appreciated. I've been given a heads-up by a director friend to prepare to shoot an HD doc in rural Japan this summer. This will be my first trip to the East, but I have lived and worked / shot in USA, EU and South America. I speak English only, and will be working with a very small doc crew of fellow Americans for the most part I think besides an interpreter. This is a festival-bound doc with indie roots shooting mostly on canon vDSLRs with nikkors and DIY small package, natural lighting, cinema verite less-is-more aesthetic but many shoot days and medium amount of travel for Japanese standards. Bulk of shooting is with an artisan in his remote studio attempting to coax out his personal philosophies as he creates in his home workshop. Intimate interplay of his words and hands... discussions w his wife apprentices, visitors etc. At least three cities besides Tokyo, some stops in museums and libraries, universities, etc for archival and interview shoots. The usual travelogue of shrines, temples and monuments along the way. Longer rather than shorter schedule I am told. We have interviews, scenics, the usual but also are interested in at least two days of High Speed, possibly more. Currently interested in the Phantom and Weisscam but don't know what is available in Japan. Might be wise to hire a local camera crew for this portion but unsure of what is available locally. What's it like to rent a small lighting package in japan? What's the used gear market, what is car hire like, where should I post more networking info, etc? Some shooting will be based from public transport it seems. Seeking out a bilingual sound mixer who is semi-local seems wise, etc. Maybe a PA and a grip or two... students or ex pats, etc? Just getting started so anything helps. TIA FWIW I also have a possible shot at a DoP gig on an indie feature in Taiwan shot back-to-back with same general camera package - less-is-more approach to a road movie. 500k or less budget... Y Tu Mama meets Withnail and I on the beaches backroads of Tiawan. jd

Shortly after this film was released, the end of the new Hollywood era was upon the land... actor/musician Kris Kristofferson was the lead in HEAVEN'S GATE and witnessed the excess that bankrupted a studio. Upon learning that the collective authority figures of the corporations that gained control of the studios would never again fund such productions, never again trust the "creative types" with that sort of freedom and money ever again, he quipped, "Well, what are they going to do now, give it all to the UNcreative types?" Indeed.

Clearly one reason to mix footage of a vDSLR with another camera is to do things one can't with the vDSLRs, like over crank footage, or to shoot more run-and-gun stuff that the form factor of a conventional camcorder affords you. Powered zooms come to mind. If the goal is to seamlessly intercut footage then one has to find the right places to bring the look of the B camera into the world of what A camera is doing.... Where would you say these areas are? In other words, what are the most common situations where one might be tempted to attempt to blend a vDSLR's footage seamlessly with that of another camera? I'll give a couple of examples in order to further the discussion. Shooting an indie feature on the Red One but using the vDSLRs for some low light work seems like a common enough idea. But then you get into a lot of work involving the post workflow.... Mixing vDSLR footage with HVX cameras also seems likely since they are simply in a similar budget range... and here you have two categories - cams with a LETUS style adaptor and ones without. The look of the lens is going to go a long way in helping to hide the differences. Mixing vDSLR footage with 16mm or super 16mm footage seems less likely but on a long form documentary I can see it happening, or when you have a need to combine archival footage with new live action, say in a bio pic or some such where you are stealing shots from an earlier production and hoping to blend them into a sequence as establishing shots of background plates, etc. Mixing vDSLR footage and archival SD television footage Mixing vDSLR footage and 35mm film footage... vDSLR footage that is shot anamorphic and any other anamorphic motion picture process etc I don't have a lot of observations to offer here but I did want to stir up some opinions. This sort of question is beginning to come up more and more often as vDSLRs get into the hands of creative people.