Tom Jensen

I didn't say only Kodak does this.

Somebody just asked the question last week but I couldn't find the thread. Then I went on to to say something Dominic already said so I came back and edited my post. What Dominic said will do. See, wasn't that useful?

It's very front heavy. Tom Richmond showed me a trick that works great. First, use a thousand foot mag, then take a bungee chord and put one end around the top handle and run the bungee chord along the back of the mag, then hook the other end to your belt or a climbing harness. It takes a little experimenting to get the right length bungee but it works great. The bungee slips occasionly so be careful. You just need a small shoulder pad and you can use the standard issue Arri grips. Most hand held BL set ups don't deal with the front heavy issues.

Just be sure not to exceed the maxiumum C-Stand to Light Ratio or the grips go crazy.

Monitors are a good and bad thing. I've worked with directors who camped out in Video Village and directors who stand just right of the camera and watched the performance live. Video gives the entire crew and opportunity to see the shot. Each department has a responsibility and many times the departments work shows up on film. The monitor helps the other departments see what is going on and what is going to be seen in the shot. That is the plus side. On the negative side, it takes time to set up which takes crew resources away from what is really important. In reality, setting up video village always seems to be the number one priority. It creates a bottleneck. With all the people that gather around, it's hard to get by sometime. Then there is all the unnecessary yacking that goes on. This is why BNC cable and barrel connectors are so handy. Then you have the issue of video playback where you get to wait while the scene is replayed. Where people congregate, people talk. Also a good boom guy with get right down the frame line but someone will always comment, "I think the boom dipped in." Then we do another take for no reason. It does have it's good points. When I was on Tombstone we were doing a Steadicam shot on Sam Elliot in the rain at night and I kept seeing the stand holding the Lightning Strikes. Everyone was gathered around the monitor and nobody except me noticed the stand in the shot. I spoke up and they did another take. Again the stand was in the shot and I spoke up again. It started to get ugly after 3-4 takes and readjusting the stand, people started looking at me like I was crazy. The last take, I didn't say a word. The director said, "That was perfect, moving on." I pulled Bill Fraker aside and I said, "Bill, the stand was in the shot again." He said "No way, are you sure? Nobody else saw it." I said, "Nobody else saw it the first 5 times. Go look at the playback." He stopped the AD, looked at the monitor and sure enough the stand was in the shot." This time they reconfigured the Lightning Strikes and we got the shot. The problem was that the stand didn't show up until the Lightning Strikes struck. The Steadicam operator couldn't see it because her monitor would just blow out when the lightning hit. Once I saw it, I looked for it and nothing else. Everybody else was just standing around watching and really didn't know what to look for. It was late and people were tired. But, we have a duty to speak up. If I hadn't, they would have had to do it all over again on an already behind schedule. The down side was that everyone looked at me like it was my fault we had to do it over, except on the final take when everyone turned and looked at me and I said I didn't see it and we moved on. The important lesson is that the monitor is a tool and you have to use it to your advantage and not your disadvantage and when you see a mistake, you have to point it out. Just point it out to your department head and let him or her be the messenger. Another monitor story, this time a funny one, was when I was on a commercial and the ad agency people all congregated around the monitor watching the lady with the tampon box. For those of you who have never done a commercial, any agency person with a pencil is a producer. If they have a director's chair, they are a director. If they have a video camera, they are a DP. I think you get the picture. We rolled the camera and an agency lady yelled "CUT!" Everyone turned in astonishment and she asked, "Aren't those little lines going to be in the picture?" The director said, "No, that's the ground glass. It's in the camera." Everyone cracked up and she sat down all embarrassed. Then the director said, "Let me call cut. After all, this is why I'm here."

The photo on the left was probably shot on reversal.

Eating backwards is always entertaining.

I heard a story about a Japanese DP who shot for Kurasawa or somebody big like that. He was speaking at a panel seminar and someone asked him his secret how he created such beautiful images. He didn't speak English and had a translator. After conversing with his translator, the translator said, "He said he looked at the film can and put the ASA number in his meter."

Didn't have time to watch it all but what I saw looked great.

And where was Niépce from? France. And the French are all about what? Food.

I liked it a lot. Whether the mental illness caused his hand problem or the hand problem created his downfall, I don't know, but the story was very compelling to watch. I loved that the director gave us some great visual cues. The shots of the chimps, the baby, the toy, the picture in the restaurant, and the actor wipe onto the piano. The sound was great. I hope it does well. It shows you can tell a story with pictures. I absolutely hated the shot of the beer being wasted. Especially if it was cold and frosty. :P Other than that minor detail it was very, very good.

Dave went on to be the Austrian thumb wrestling champion later that day. That was an ambitious effort. Did you change exposure at all or was it pretty even?

I think most projection is set about 2/3 the way back in the center.

It depends. It doesn't really matter. I like them on the outside. If you are seeing the window, you want to see the window frame. If it's windy outside, you may not want to hear any flapping or have you gel fly off in the middle of the shot. You may have not choice shooting in a high rise so you have to put it on the inside. It just depends on the situation.

I equate it to eating out. If you want good food, go to a good restaurant. You don't always have to go Morton's because you can eat food just as good somewhere else for less money. You don't want to go to McDonald's because it's cheap. Something bad always seems to happen when you do.

I agree with you Brian. What I feel is the manufacturers setting is a variable as well. What you are doing is setting the ASA to compensate for all the variables. The meter the DP uses is the one the gaffer sets his to. The tests that you shoot for a feature get printed. It's always the best print that establishes the ASA and it's usually from the negative where the shadows fall on the toe. That's the negative that that was usually overexposed by 2/3 stop. Whenever I shot tests, I always picked the print that looked the best. That's the one you want. It's pretty easy to read it on a densitometer as well. I don't think that when you overexpose a stock that you are really overexposing. I think you are establishing the true or more accurately, the effective ASA of the stock combined with any other vaiables. After you test, set your ASA in accordance to your results, your shadows should fall on the toe of the characteristic curve and the highlights should fall on the shoulder. Come to think of it, Chris Probst also did a series of exposure tests that was in American Cinematographer. I can't remember what his results were so I might have to dig that out of the garage. Does anybody else have that article?

I've only used the Tobin without a capping shutter on interiors and I have used the Norris Intervalometer on exteriors with a capping shutter and have not had a problem with either. The capping shutter may well be added protection. But, it's better safe than sorry.

Maybe. It's up to you.

Film testing is extremely important in my opinion. Especially on features. If you are shooting a day here or a day there, no big deal. Most stuff goes to telecine anyway. If you are shooting second unit, you just get notes from the DP. Exposure tests let you decide what your effective or base ASA is going to be. On a big feature, I think lens testing is a must, especially if the feature is on location out of the state and especially out of the country. You don't want to be in the middle of nowhere and find out a lens doesn't match, it's soft or if it has an aberration, or if the zooms breathe too much. And if you are shooting a period piece or something make-up intensive, you'll want to shoot those tests as well. It's not always safe to assume but if you rate your film 2/3 of a stop over, you'll be OK. Testing can get expensive. Saul were you saying that Shane was shooting 2nd unit on a test day. I know that trick too. ;) Unless it's a day exterior, you are not likely to recreate the conditions on shoot days unless you have a big budget. Exposure tests are pretty common on features. Once you know your ASA, and that your camera runs, you pretty much know where to set your lights and where the image will fall. I've worked on big budget commercials where we would light and entire day, shoot tests and then shoot the next day or two. That's not always the norm.

True, it's a very good point that I failed to mention. It's a good idea to put a face in the test. Shooting test charts is a good idea if you've never shot tests before. Students particularly can learn a lot from shooting a color chart and a gray scale. It serves as a logical progression from light to dark that remains consistent throughout the tests. I wouldn't dismiss it entirely. By now, you know what you want and like but shooting charts gave me an understanding of the characteristic curve that had eluded me somewhat before I had shot any tests. Once you've done it, you understand what it you were trying to do and why it is important. How do you shoot your tests now and what do you look for?

Any guy with 50 years experience has to be somewhat popular. In the 80's Steven Burum wrote an article for American Cinematographer about shooting film tests, called something like, "Making Film Stocks Your Own." He explained the importance of shooting tests to see exactly where you could overexpose and underexpose your film stock and still get a good print. Film might have more latitude now but the tests showed that film had a one stop latitude. The brightness range is something different than latitude. If you expose your negative in the middle of the characteristic curve, you have about an 8 stop range, meaning you can have areas on the negative that are 4 stops under and not turn to mush and you can have areas of brightness of about 4 stops over before the highlights blow out. I think Kodak uses the one stop of latitude as a marketing ploy. If you have a one stop latitude of underexposure, you can safely call your film 100 ASA when it really is 64. Why 64? When I first started shooting tests, I used Steve Burum's article religiously. This article was what taught me about exposing negative. That and the Ansel Adams book on the negative. What I learned was that overexposing the negative by 2/3 stop gave me the best reproduction on the print and negative of a gray scale and color chart. You can expose the negative at the manufacturers recommended ASA and get a perfectly acceptable image and reproduction. What I have found and what the article found was that a negative overexposed by 2/3 stop gives you the highest quality exposure on your negative thus giving you the highest quality of print. A lot of what I said was geared towards the student and I'm sure most of what I said, you already knew. In no way did I mean to sound condescending. I'm just giving you my experience as I know it.

Tom, I mean to do a lot of things throughout the day. :blink: But, yes, yes I did. Chris did it for me so now I don't have to. Thanks Chris. Tom, nice work, by the way. I checked out your site.

Gordon Willis had somewhat of a temper. I was talking to a guy that assisted for him on a few films. He said he was down in a ditch when Willis came over with a set of baby legs and screamed, "I SAID BABY LEGS!" Then he threw the baby legs at the assistant point first. He jumped out of the way and it barely missed him.

I've always had good results getting finer grain overexposing by 2/3 of a stop on negative. 100 ASA has or should have a finer grain structure.

I just realized there was another thread on this same topic. The film starts to unwind a little and can come off the spool and as it takes ups it can get caught on the outside edge of the spool and the camera can jam. Trust me I've done it. Kodak doesn't go to the edge for a reason and it probably has more to do with light leak if anything but hey don't do it and neither should you.