Brent J. Craig

I am in Toronto and was preparing a reply until I saw how impatient you are.

Check out army surplus stores for signaling smoke, also naval/boating stores for smoke flares. You may need a license to buy them, and/or you may need a certified pyro guy to handle them.

Boom shadows are easy - just tell the boom guy to move! A good boom op will watch the lighting as it's happening and quietly warn you when he's stuck. You can then either adjust the lights or (like many I know) explain why they call it "moving pictures" and wonder out loud about radio mikes.

Looks like a lazy one-light to me. They probably just loaded up the normal setup for the stock number they saw on the edgecodes. Here is what 30 seconds in Photoshop did, I can only suspect a multi-million dollar telecine suite could do better :-)

Gee. It looks like they are selling a sheet of blurry plexi for $547 USD! From what I can tell from the website, this is a large 'diffuser' that you put behind your subject. You would be limited to shooting foreground subjects that fit within the 4'x3' softscreen. Reflections and dust would be a nightmare. I suspect you could get the same result by unrolling a sheet of Hampshire frost between your subject and background (for $100 USD).

One of the animators on Tim Burton's next flick sent me this link to a trailer:Corpse Bride Trailer. It's on the Apple site, so I guess it is open to the public.

A camerman I know actually had Kino give him a quote for his house. The problem is, if you read the labels on them, they are "Not for Residential Use". If you have them and your house burns down, this would be an easy way for your insurance co to say 'too bad'. You can however buy high-frequency, dimmable fluorescent ballasts from several residential lighting manufacturers, and bulb them with high CRI (color rendition index) 3200k or 5600k bulbs. These are the ones I like: Advance Electronic Ballasts I have also found some 120v halogen strips that look great under my kitchen counters, and can be dimmed with a normal dimmer/no special wiring.

Sounds like the takeup clutch is out of adjustment. That's a rental house repair - and something they should check before every mag goes out. In my experience, 1000' foot mags on Arri3's and on 435's are just bad news and are to be avoided at any cost. Rather than having your AC break down your 1000's, get your lab to do it (and remember that an Arri3 mag holds 500 feet, not 400!).

I would recommend any books by Freeman Patterson. http://www.freemanpatterson.com/ He is a photographic artist, similar to Ansel Adams, with a gift for instruction that he is willing to share.

Yeah, I don't know who you would call to order the "super 34mm" film it takes! :blink: (Maybe you could cut down some 35mm or something!) :D

Wow! Sounds like a pretty lazy lab. I would look elsewhere for your processing because they should know better than that.

The 24-290 is a beautiful lens. The out of focus highlights wide-open look really glamorous. They are perfectly round and look great. That extra 40mm that brings it to 290 seems to make a big difference. As a focus puller, of course I hate any lens that the DP can suddenly crash in to 290mm without notice :( but the Optimo has a special charm. Sure it weighs a ton, but once it's mounted, it can often stay there for several shots. Clairmont Camera has modified their Optimos to include a nice contoured handle right at the center of balance of the lens. Since it's Clairmont, they have also added a threaded hole to the handle so you can mount your onboard monitor right there within your field of view. If you're shooting at 290 mil at 2.8, you might as well see what the DP is aiming at! That extra handle came in very handy when Harris Savides and Dante decided to use the lens as a director's finder and lug it all around downtown Toronto last year. In my experience, the Optimo looks just as sharp as the Cooke S4's, but is slightly more prone to flares, just like any zoom lens. It cuts perfectly with the S4 look. The optical voodoo mentioned above about zooms having less depth of field than primes is completely true. Macro lenses take it even a step further.

Actually, as of January 4th 2005, Panavision has purchased the entire camera inventory of William F. White International Inc. That means that they now own a ton of PL-mount Arri cameras. Since they also acquired many complete sets of Cooke S4's and Ultraprimes in the deal, the general consensus is that it just doesn't make economic sense to "Panavize" all those cameras and render millions of dollars worth of lenses obsolete. I'm not sure they are promoting it that way just yet, but I would say Panavision is now a dual-mount shop! Who could have ever imagined that?!?

Hi Michael, We host the popular film crew photo website CrewPix.com and I would be happy to give you space on our server for an educational project. We are always looking to help people further their education and support the next generation of filmmakers. Please email me through this board, or use the contact form on CrewPix.com. Good luck with your site, Brent