David Mun

This might have been asked in other posts, but I haven't seen anything in the DSLR forums. The question is: Is there a portable CF card reader/storage unit for location shooting that is reliable to store your footage onto? I've seen some on BHphoto but not sure of brands and experiences of workflow back into FCP. Thanks

Hi Everyone, I just finished shooting a feature with the Red camera last week and about to shoot another one next week. Let me give you a back-story about the last shoot. We shot the entire movie day exteriors in the woods, so lighting was never an issue and using the cameras native color temp was easy. The only thing I really worried about was highlights being blown out and the shadows being WAY underexposed and I didn’t want to have the image turn out bad from boosting it in post and getting weird noise. That being said, it didn’t look bad, from what I can tell, when I was in the blue to light blue (false color mode). I worried about the reds from hot sun hitting leaves or branches and eventually let them get close to clipping or just let it go. All in all it looked okay, from looking at a laptop and not a properly calibrated monitor. On occasion I had these really weird flare like or vertical halos around the actors, from either props or just themselves moving around in frame. I only noticed that when I was wide open on the lens and know it wasn’t a flare hitting the lens because I checked for them and it wasn’t sunny enough to make a hard kick. Is that an IR issue? I have the hot mirror filters but didn’t use it since it only happened twice. Unfortunately I didn’t check in the computer after it was offloaded to see if it was from the viewing system on the camera. The next movie I’m shooting, will involve lighting and I haven’t used the tungsten settings on the camera yet. I am also shooting night exteriors (scripted) but plan on doing day for night since we don’t have big enough lights to light the jungle. I did a day for night test too and wasn’t too shabby. So this is my curiosity and in need of advice from you all. Do you shoot with grey cards (like you would with film) or a sheet of white paper for white balancing the camera or not worry and fix it in post? What are my limitations and how far have you guys pushed the camera for looks? It seems to me that you can go real far with this thing and take advantage of allowing it to stretch to its maximum. I’m going to be in extreme humid and rainy conditions. The rain I know the camera can handle since on the last shoot it rained about a third of the production. I made a little rain cover for the camera and worked quite well. The humidity is a bigger concern. Has anyone experienced this? I plan on bringing a mini blow dryer just incase I need to dry out the insides if needed. Sorry if this was real long and thanks for the read. Dave

Don't forget to note if there is more than one camera on set, call out your camera and marker. Example A-camera Marker, B-camera Marker. or if one slate is doing both cameras then it's "A - B Common Mark"

I have a question regarding that program. I don't have a copy myself so I have no idea, but maybe someone that owns it can tell me if its possible. Lets say you are shooting something and you have a screen grab of the footage you just shot. With that picture, you make your color corrections using the program and then is it possible to give whom ever it is doing the post work your color corrected image for them to apply that to the video clip? or Is there a number value they can just plug in? or a file of some sort that can match the file name of the video clip and your still image so they both match? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just a quick question. I am using Compressor (v2.3) and was wondering if I were to create a video clip from FCP (v5.1.4) to make an Ipod video, is there a way it can be copy protected so that video clip can not be passed from computer to computer? Almost like if you were to buy a song on iTunes, you can only copy it like 5 times but you have to have your apple id and password in order to activate it. So does that exist and do I have to create some sort of script or what ever to make that work? Is there something like that in the newer version or can I do it with the current version that I have? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Nice job David. Its always great to hear whats going on with you and your production details.

In a slow hippie voice, "That's right man...gotta end the strike soon so we can make more shows man.." Very nice posts. Elvis.

How about the safty factor while traveling? I am debating on going to Nigeria and Sierra Leone to shoot a doc. I have been reading about safty issues on the state dept. websites as well as a few others and it doesn't seem like a good idea, but I haven't been there to know what to expect. What has your expierences been like? Dave

It is much harder to prove your worked days from a letter by the production company. I have heard from people that have tried to join that way get rejected by contract services. The other thing is, what makes that letter more authentic then the one you can just make yourself? I had an easy way to get in as well. I was permitted to work on a union show and only had to show proof of 30 consecutive Union days and that's how I was able to prove my worked days. I had the payroll comapny send the letter of those days to contract services. Contract services gave me a hard time saying that i needed more proof. It was a long time ago and I can't remember what happened but things worked out.

Its funny that you mention that, i'm cutting my reel now and I have footage from a shoot years ago where we did the same thing. I used a Jimmy Jib with a remote head. THe camera was pointed straight down and as the actor steps into frame, we spiral counter clockwise and jib up wards, revealing him slightly hanging over the rail of a 4 story parking structure. It looked good and infact it seemed that the lens was pretty centered (on axis) and worked out fine. 2 years ago i worked on a shoot where we tried the same thing but this time the shot didn't work because the lens was off axis and it didn't work out. I'm thinking that when i balanced the camera before, it was raised up higher and that's what made it work. Another thing you can do is use a fraizer lens and just have the lens point own while you rotate the image thgouh the lens and just jib upwards that way. then you'll know that the lens is going straight up that way. I used that in a shot when shooting the opening sequence of a movie called poolhall junkies and that looked great too. We first had the lens inside the pocket of a pool table close to the 9ball and boomed up on the dolly while i rotated the image. We also did tracking shots with the lens over the table and lined up a few racks on the table, making it look like floating racks spinning around and around. also theres a shot where the rack of balls (in a diamond shape) was broken by the cue ball and instead of the balls just shooting outward the spinning of the imagethrough the lens made the balls appear to curve all over the place. That was a trippy shot. Dave

I remember seeing a copy on DVD and signed at birns and sawyer months ago. Not sure if its still there but I'm sure you can ask. Dave

its funny that i found this post here because i'm going through the same problem. I just bought a g5, duel 1.8GHz, 1 gig of RAM and 400 gigs of HD space and final cut 4. and i'm trying to figure out this compression crap too. i've digitized fotage on DV NTSC 48KHz and then used iDVD to make my reel and i can see compression in certain areas. I looked at my friends reel and his blacks are solid as well as having no artifacts and he sued a sony vaio. so does that mean the G5 sucks? or is it me? haha. I then tried redigitizing everything at Uncompressed 10-bit setting and still got the same type of compression. Then i thought to myself, it must be in the burning process and what steps i'm doing in encoding the DVD. So after redigitizing and recutting my reel for the 5th time, i'll keep you all posted on wat the next dvd will look like. BTW, once i get this down, anyone interested in me cutting your reel for you? ;) need to make money on this thing. I'm getting an office in santa monica and might be starting a offline post house as an extra side of income. Who knows maybe get out of camera for good....nah i love camera work too. Dave