Shaun Joye

I took the test last year and did well. Basically if you go to all they're review sessions, and put some energy into memorizing what framerates cameras are capable of and filter compensations and alike you'll do fine. There's a written section, which is a whole lot of math, and camera reports, and then there's the practical section which for me was loading and threading a 435 a Gold and a varicam (substitute loading and threading for whitebalancing and setting timecode). Others were tested on the millenium and F900.

I tried google... like I really tried google and no luck. One issue with the commercial is I actually had to find out through trial and error on google which credit card it was for. With the great cinematography, the performance and the music its really easy to miss the name of the card. I'm alright with that though, I'm not a big fan of capitalism.

Anyone know a good resource for finding who's responsible for commercials? For movies we have IMDB but I've seen a couple of great commercials recently and I'm really curious to find out what production company is responsible. The one that comes to mind right away is the Visa Go card commercial with the song "mambo italiano"... absolutely beautifully shot.

as for reliability compared to the red the short answer is YES. I was involved in shooting a green screen comparison with the red and the d21 and we ran into a problem with the red not playing back due to a codec error. The D21 outputs single link, or dual link HDSDI. Most people record to the SRW1 sony HDCAM SR deck and follow a standard tape based workflow. The camera can also output raw to the StwoDFR2k hard drive unit. It can also record to a grass valley flashmag.

curiously, the Ghostbusters music video doesn't hold up nearly as well as the film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdO3adPm5N0

I just saw Wanted. Even though a lot of people were entertained by this movie, the endless cliches really make me angry. Thematically its very much like The Matrix, or Fight Club and its got some elements of Office Space, or American Beauty. The main difference is all those movies were much better than Wanted. I think the pinnacle of the conventional hollywood movie is Ghostbusters. Brilliantly written, brilliantly acted, and quite possibly the best conventional hollywood movie ever. If they can't top Ghostbusters why aim for conventional? If I were dictator of the world I'd write a law that if you can't top Ghostbusters you have to do SOMETHING original or get sent to Siberia or something. Maybe its just a product of me growing up in the eighties. I'd like to hear other peoples' picks of the consummate hollywood blockbuster. ***Spoiler Alert*** I heard an interview with the writer of Wanted (Jesus, I hope his script for the A-team is better) in which he says about the quite predictable plot twist, "of course I had him say 'You're my son' instead of 'I'm your father' because that's what Darth Vader says to Luke in Star Wars."

So I was looking around the ASC web store and I saw the kodak cinematography master series dvds. I was wondering if anyone has seen them and if they are any good... they definitely are expensive. Also did anyone shell out (I mean I know someone did they sold out) the $500 for the Writing with Light series by Storaro?

This may seem like a silly question, but what does CV stand for?

I'm just saying its the writing and performances that make or break a movie. Lots of really bad movies have good cinematography, or good CG, or good art direction. However stylistically good a movie is its never going to make up for a weak script or for bad direction.

Okay, so not everyone gets my sense of humor. I understand that. But "I found the fact that the movie was in 2D distracting" C'mon guys. I guess irony doesn't play well on message boards. Juno is a great movie. What's interesting about it to me is that it really has a quite a few flaws that you could point out, but the writing and the performances are so strong that they really don't matter. Debates like digital vs. film, or CG vs. cinematography, are kind of rediculous, because people don't enjoy movies because they were shot digitally or because they had good CG (or even good cinematography for that matter) They enjoy movies that have good performances that all start with a good script, and all that other stuff matters, but not as much.

I saw Juno recently and I don?t know why everyone seems to love this movie. I found the fact that the movie was in 2D distracting. How am I supposed to relate to people who are flat? People in real life aren?t flat. There were also other distracting things like the fact that it was clearly shot on film and had film grain. I think the movie would have been much better if they had used a motion capture technique similar to beowulf. Then they could have had some amazing camera moves an integrated CG elements of Juno?s baby being conceived and developing. The focus on the writing and acting was irritating. I don?t pay ten dollars to see a movie just to see people act. I mean come on its 2008 already we might not have flying cars but when I go see a movie I expect to see some high tech stuff.

The electronic 5600k is used when you either don't have the light to use the filter or you have the color correction filter wheel set to ND. The ND on the wheel lets you go in smaller increments by combining it with the regular ND wheel. As for s23.98 and so on. S does refer to selectable framerates. For slow motion your're going to want to shoot s59.94. Which will allow you to go from 1-60fps. It will be laid down with 23.98 timecode regardless of what framerate you're shooting so the deck will actually play it back at whatever framerate the deck is set to. This is true variable framerate so in that respect its more like film. There won't be any problem in having slow motion and regular speed on the same tape. This is all with the deck actually mounted on the camera. With the srw1 detached the functionality is much less straight forward. If you're not doing effects 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4 is not going to make any visible difference.

Saw this in RealD 3D last weekend. I saw it mainly for all the technology but it seems the technology sapped the humanity out of the movie with the people looking like strange plastic puppets. I'm not a fan of the motion capture method, I think it would have been better either fully animated or live action. As Colbert says "Pick a side. We're at war!" The 3D was great but it seemed like some of the shots weren't well suited to 3D, like over the shoulder shots. I was most impressed by the wideshots and long takes. They seemed to look the most natural in 3D. Also I noticed some strobing especially in the beginning not sure what caused that.

Speaking of hyper gamma curves, I remember from talking to Jeff Cree that they're designed for different white levels and different gain settings, does anyone know where I could get this specific information? Unfortunately I wasn't taking notes. -

I'm paraphrasing Jeff Cree's explanation. Hypergamma follows the regular itu 709 curve for the toe, but then gives you more latitude for the highlights. So it gives you more dynamic range than the standard curve but doesn't give you that washed out contrast look of uncorrected log. As for the differences between the 4 I really have no idea.