Miguel Angel

I would suggest to take a look at a Spanish movie called Canibal. It won several awards around the world and it is one of the most interesting movies coming from Spain, at least during last year. Kindest regards.

Thank you very much Daniel. I used Shot Designer to draw the diagrams, that's right. I have both, the OSX and the iPad Version, however I use the iPad version more often as I have an iPad with me almost all the times when I'm in pre - production, when shooting I put it in the video cart just in case. It's absolutely awesome! :) Kindest regards.

Thank you very much Friedemann! If I get to know a lab around the world which is up to doing this, I'll post it. Kindest regards!

This is what I am after. I shot this on Fuji Superia (C41 process) and processed it with E6 process. In fact I shot it as part of a short - film which had to be created with stills. Robert, you might be familiar with it as I asked David if he knew any lab in Europe able to cross process that way. Thanks for that tip Joerg! I already wrote a post on his web site. Waiting for a reply! :) Kindest regards.

Hi Robert. Color. I have done it before in still photography. C41 to E6 and then scan the slide. It produces lovely images at night :) Thanks!

Hello, I have navigated through the forum to see if this question was answered before and I have not found anything, if somebody thinks that the question was already answered, please, let me know as I was not able to find any thread. So, I am preparing a project which is going to be shot on 35mm and I would like to cross process negative as reversal stock as it is something I have done before when shooting stills. I know usually people go the other way around and I know that it would be much easier. However, I want to achieve certain tones in the city I am going to shoot at that can only be achieved with that kind of processing and I do not know if it is possible to go that way in cinema labs. I have talked with some labs in Europe and they do not know where I can process negative as reversal. If somebody has done this before, would you mind sharing the contact details of the lab where you processed it and some info you might consider interesting? Thank you very much. Kindest regards.

Fantastic answer Guy, as always. I didn't know that very few lights were able to work when putting them in a 90º angle, would you have by any chance a little list or something like that that you would like to share on the forum? :) Thanks again and I hope Sam C Roberts got the answer he was looking for! Kindest regards.

Cine Electric http://www.cine-electric.ie Ardmore Studios, Herbert Road, Bray, Co Wicklow, Ireland. Tel: +353 (0)1 2868724 Fax: +353 (0)1 2760092 e-mail: rental@cine-electric.ie Open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Great guys, they have everything you might need for a feature film and the owner is amazing.

I love his work too. He is very emotional and as Tim just said, his composition and camera movements are superb. Have you seen the different b - rolls? http://www.traileraddict.com/silver-linings-playbook/b-roll-ii Kindest regards.

Congratulations to all of them.

Hi! Have you thought about using a M18? It can be plugged into a house and it will give you a lot of power at night. http://www.arri.com/lighting/lighting_equipment/lampheads/daylight_hmi_lampheads/m_series/m18/ Kindest regards.

Fifth frame The sequence where we got the frame above was a very difficult sequence. 1) It had to be shot at night and we could only shoot on Ardgillan Castle from 8.45 am to 6pm so it was going to be impossible to get it shot at the right time. 2) The room where it takes place is a very big room, 20 by 30 feet and it has 3 super massive windows and a door with huge window panes. As we couldn't shoot at night we decided that we had to cover all the windows with black boxes, a very tough work as the electrical department had 1 gaffer and 2 sparks who did an amazing job through all the short - film. 3) There were some difficult camera movements. 4) As we could not do any kind of pre light, we were 3 people and we were not able to hang anything on the walls I had to spend 3 hours 1/2 to light it all and be able to shoot in any direction. 5) To shoot all this sequence I could have placed 3 jemballs or chinese lanterns, however, I reckon a cinematographer has to experience with light as much as he / she can and short - films are a very interesting way to try new things and open your mind in a lot of ways. If I had chosen to use chinese lanterns, all the room had been lit with a base light and it would have lost all the mood and darkness I wanted to get, under my point of view of course. 6) I discovered a very useful gel called "cyan", myself and my gaffer were absolutely amazed by the quality of it and how nights were much more interesting while using it rather than using the Green Steel that we used in all the different movies we have shot together. 7) The Alexa was rated at 400ASA also. And the diagram below is how we filmed the sequence.

Oh! Thank you very much for the responses and the feedback! I agree with you both on everything and the taste and stylistic interpretation is something that I would like to discuss further in topics like this. A very useful way to grow in that "artistic" way is by listening comments from everybody, even if they disagree with what you did, it is always a personal perception that you might interiorise or not and come back to it in a later project :) I updated the article with one more frame :)

Panavision Ireland http://www.panavision.ie Panavision Ireland Ardmore Studios Herbert Road Bray County Wicklow Ireland Phone number: + 353-1286-0811 Open from Monday to Friday - 10am to 5pm They are absolutely amazing. Obviously they are Panavision so they have all the lenses and cameras available from Panavision.

Well, If you cannot put any kind of generator at all, why don't you try using the real fire to light the actors? You can use the real one in the wide takes and then use the fire from your FX person to light the close ups (and maybe a polyboard to bring some fill if wanted) If you want to use lights, then you can buy some construction lights and use them gelled and bounced, or direct or.. there are some of these which can be plugged into batteries. http://www.china-led-flood-lights.com/products/battery-operated-led-flood-light.html Kindest regards.

They are beautiful. Lovely colours and a very interesting document of that era. Thanks for sharing them.

I would recommend that you go to Crossfit classes too. I've been cross fitting for 2 years and a half and hand - held shots are absolutely easy now :) Stretch every single day before starting a take, stretch after the take if you can too and when the day finishes do around 20 minutes of very light running to liberate all the stress and loose the muscles and then go back to stretching for another 30 minutes with a foam roll. Easy - rigs are great but I agree with Stuart, it gives the camera a strange sense of floating around. When shooting hand - held I am used to putting a foam roll (or a couple of pillows if I cannot get the foam roll) tied around my belly so I can put the elbows on it while using the camera, and it makes shooting hand - held even easier. Kindest regards.

You are more than welcome Josh, I would recommend that you get some different silks beforehand to test them if you are going to hang it: - Ultrabounce / Cinebounce - White - Bleach Muslin They all have different characteristics and you might find that you like one of them more than the other ones. Kinoflos work super great for close - ups, and as you know, if you want to get softer light from them, bounce them off a polyboard or put a frame or even depron in front of them so you will have a beautiful light for your close - ups too! Kindest regards.

You're welcome Josh, The silk would depend on what you are trying to get. Although almost all silks make light softer, there are some silks which are more directional than others. For example Grid Cloth would be more directional than a thicker one without the little squares and etc. If you want to have a nice toplight, you could place a 16x16 (that's 6 meters by 6 meters right?) white frame over the set (the highest you can place it) and bounce 1 or 2 M18 from the ground or from a stand, that way you will have a base light. If you are looking for a softer toplight, do that and then diffuse it with another silk to create something like a soft box. Take a look at the article "The Wolfman" in the ASC magazine http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/February2010/TheWolfman/page1.php# Kindest regards.

It's such an interesting topic as there is no right answer since you can use the light as you wish, you don't have to be realistic at all so you can play with it. I would recommend that you see this video, part of it shot in a forest with practicals, fluorescent lights and etc. There is one thing I love doing in big exteriors, place your HMI's with 12x12 frames in the background, far away but where you can still see them, put a lot of smoke and use them as a soft back light. Hope it helped a bit!

Hello all, I just finished shooting a period drama set in the XIX century (it's my second short - film ever!) and I wanted to share some frames as well as the technical side of them. To be frank I don't know if the "lighting" forum is the place to do so, if it's not, please, would a moderator move it where it belongs please? :) I've to say that I don't like any of the frames that I got as I'm very very critical with my work and I know I have a lot to learn.. and looking at them right now makes me think: "Oh my God! Why did I do that, I should have done something else".. I suppose that that is something every single cinematographer has to cope with tho. Staccato's script is dark and very oppresive and it tells the story of two people, one of them is the son of a rich woman, owner of a manor estate, the other one, a less rich character, in fact, poor. As there were two stories my first thought was shooting them in three different aspect ratios: - Rich people: Anamorphic 2.40:1 - Poor people: Spherical 1.85:1 - When they are together: Anamorphic 1.85:1 At the end of the day the budget of the short - film was not that big, in fact it was very very little so I could not get anamorphic lenses. Anyhow, I decided to go ahead with my initial thoughts and shoot the piece as follow: - Rich people: Spherical 2.40:1 - Poor people: Spherical 1.85:1 - When they are together: Spherical 1.85:1 In terms of photography each story has its own kind of treatment but at the end when both stories collide and so does the photography. The story of the rich people is more glamorous, delicate, bright, almost high - key and showing the beautiful scenarios that we got. Camera work is also more concise and when the camera moves it does with little dolly movements. The story of the poor people is less subtle, more direct and even rougher. I wanted to differentiate this part with camera work too so the director and myself decide to go hand - held, reacting to the different feelings and actions that the actors might have. To get the most out of the lenses that I wanted to use (a very old Panavision Primo Prime set from Panavision Ireland) all the short - film was shot at T4 / T5.6 but two sequences One of them, shot at T1.9 is just explained below and I used that stop because I couldn’t get the background out of focus in any other way with the tools and the location (there was very little space between the terms) I had. And as I needed to get the background more out of focus I thought, well, let’s shoot at T1.9. The other one was shot at T16 and it was a night. For your information, all the frames are without grading, just the normal LUT applied on DaVinci after getting them from the Alexa. Let’s go! First frame This sequence was shot in a very discreet and easy way (the normal way of shooting it I think ha) First of all we had to find a room with dark walls to use it at “night time”. Once we found the room (in Ardgillan Castle in Dublin) we had two issues: 1) Our first thoughts were to use “moonlight” from the outside, I mean placing a light out of the window. We could not do so as the room was in a very high place and we did not have either cherry pickers or scaffoldings to place the light outside 2) There is another part of the sequence where we see the girl opening a door. When the actress was opening the door we were seeing the castle’s hall and we had to create a 4x4 dark room in the hall (we were shooting at daytime), put some furniture there and create a little bit of ambience. As we knew that those were going to be our problems when shooting, we decided to go with an easier approach, and here is how we lit the sequence. Second frame We don’t have a lot of sun in Ireland, but when it is there, it is beautiful so we tried to get the most out of it in the only day (out of 7) that we could get it. Above is what we got. Third frame This sequence is a very interesting part of the short - film where two of the characters fight verbally. I love cinema because of a lot of reasons, one of them is that it is something very organic and a super creative process made by a team. This part of the story was shot under a very cloudy sky in the last part of the day. To be honest I wasn’t very sure if I had to shoot or not as I was seeing the actors in front of me while rehearsing and I couldn’t make anything out it. The location was pretty but the light was absolutely dull and boring. After two minutes trying to decide what to do I said: Eh, let’s place a 6 meters by 6 meters frame with a black silk on top of the actors so I can add more contrast and a bit of mood. The place was so narrow and tight that there were no space for the tripods so we had to place the frame on top of the bushes :D Fourth frame There is one thing that I do every single time that I shoot something, I spend one day in each location taking photos and writing notes so I can see how light interacts in the place. Probably because I’m a newbie and I need to see and prepare everything in advance. Hence, after visiting this location and seeing the pics I took, I saw one which was the kind of light I wanted for the sequence, a liitle bit claustrophobic with a sense of concern / worry (is this the right word?) And I said: Let’s recreate it with artificial light! I love finding the right spot to place a light at the very beginning of the sequence, that means that I don’t have to move it ever and I can shoot 360ª if needed. I know that some jobs might need different lighting set - ups for the same sequence or even more lights to shoot properly but at this stage of my life I like lighting places rather than actors or actresses, is it right or wrong, I don’t know, as I said, I’m still learning a lot and my approach might vary in a near future if I keep shooting things, who knows! This place was full of challenges: 1) It is a basement and the windows that you can see in the frame had a very very very narrow aisle (1 meter) between the windows and the wall. I couldn’t put any light there. 2) Not only the aisle was very tight but also it was covered by bars on top of it, and I couldn’t hang anything inside the room as we didn’t have the permission to do so. So my light had to be placed outside and at least 1 meter above the windows (Yeah!) And it was lit as you can see below. Just some corrections to the diagram: - I placed 2 x 2.5KW HMI as I knew the M18s weren’t going to give me the T - stop I needed. In fact, I couldn’t use the 2.5KW as 4KW because we didn’t have any generator. - I couldn’t put any silk in the windows (it made sense just for the shoot number 3 but I didn’t have time to do it) - There is no 2.5KW on the left side because I only had 2.. I wanted to use a 575KW HMI but it was broken at that stage of the shooting and I ended up using a Kinoflo (I didn’t like the look of it but..) And that’s all! :) I might put two or three more some day soon! :) Hope you enjoyed the explanations! :)

Thanks! :)

Hello James, I usually do 2nd Unit stuff in American action movies in Spain. I've found that 2nd unit shoots are way more difficult than 1st unit shoots in terms of pressure and speed. You've to be very very knowledge of the different materials, cameras, aks and as a key 2nd Ac you've to organise the whole department every single day and know where every single camera is and what is doing. Definitely good memory and attention to detail are key but also the ability to know how to plan in advance with 2 or 3 backup plans, just in case the first one fails. Obviously, if you haven't worked with a cable cam, a russian arm and such tools before, you don't have to know how they work so what I do before shooting (in pre - production) is talk to the guys and let them know that I'd like to check the connections and the different things so I make sure that we have everything when placing the camera there. Backup cables, aks, etc are a must. I guess you know all of this already as you have done Guardians of the galaxy, haven't you? :) Anyway, I hope it helps a bit! Kindest regards.

Oh Adam, thanks for the answer! Actually, I've been 2nd AC since 2007, my first movie was Che: Guerrilla and my last one Vikings, a lot of big movies and commercials in between (with Chivo and Rodrigo also :D), so I cannot tell anything from a cinematographer perspective as I'm none and probably it's quite different from one of a 2nd AC who just dreams about film and is like a kid when he sees a cable cam or even a Russian arm in the call sheet! I can tell something from a person who gets less money than a cinematographer in a job tho! I could do 2 or 3 commercials in a month and still save money, however, why would I work less if I absolutely love what I do and it's such great fun! and I'm learning things every single day! I started out in this business twice, once when I was 25, in Spain, and another one (the super hard one) when I decided to move to Ireland to study English in 2011 with my own savings and you know what, it was absolutely hard to start again, I even considered to give up because I couldn't understand anything (in fairness.. when a Dubliner is talking on the walkie.. OMG! if a Spaniard is difficult to understand, try a Dubliner ha!) Oh, and my family is thousand miles away, I came on my own and I didn't speak any English at all, and you know how hard is that! and I started, again, as camera intern! So, my point is: if anybody wants to break into features, put a bit of money of the things that you shoot in a couple of short - films, find a director (there are loads trying to get a chance too) and shoot them :), send them to some festivals and shoot more things meanwhile. Or start a website like the one owned by Mr. Hurlbut, or find new connections in Linkedin, ask a couple of friends to shoot a new spec commercial to try new things, go for 3 or 4 months to a new country and try to find local filmmakers.. One of the things that I would do is connect with directors on here and see if they're up to have some film fun, in fact, I thing that I'll do that when I get my masters some day haha. I know that freelancing is basically poop because you don't know who is gonna call you but hey, it's part of the challenge too :) If you come to either Ireland or Spain, I'll be super happy to 2nd assist you and give you a ride over here ;)

Thanks! Kindest regards.