Robert Edge

Remember, as you read this, that the American Society of Cinematographers proclaims that it is a non-profit organisation. Two days ago, I received a letter from the ASC offering me a "special Clubhouse offer" to renew my subscription. I discovered, when I went to the ASC website, that the "special Clubhouse offer" for renewal was exactly the same as what the ASC offers to anybody to take out a subscription. This is pretty cheesy, but not nearly as cheesy as what I was about to discover. It turns out that one of the options that the Auguste, honourable, non-profit American Society of Cinematographers is promoting is a digital subscription. In fact, on its website, this is described as a great way to archive issues of the magazine. Interestingly, instead of using Adobe, they are using something called Zinio Reader. While it is not revealed on the ASC website, it appears, if one takes the time to go to the Zinio site, that the principal difference between Adobe and Zinio has to do with access to material that one has paid for and archived. I have now sent e-mails to both the ASC and Zinio asking whether it is true, as appears to be the case, if one reads the material on the Zinio site, that I am going to be unable, if I do a digital renewal, to transfer the magazine that I have paid for from one computer to another, and that roughly three computers down the road I will be unable to access my magazines at all. Does anyone have any experience with the AC digital version or with the Zinio Reader? If so, comments?

Does anyone know if there are media, sport or goverment organisations that will be shooting 35mm or 16mm film at the Olympics, or will it all be video?

People both here and on cinematography.net have claimed that 16mm lenses perform better than 35mm lenses when one is shooting 16mm film. About three months ago, I raised this question with someone who designs cine lenses. He said that there is no truth to the claim. I suppose that one could argue, given that very few 16mm lenses are being produced, that a lens designer has a vested interest in that view. However, I feel confident that he was giving me his professional opinion. You will note that the people who express the contrary view never seem to offer evidence to back up what they are saying. The designer went on to say that if one is using a 35mm lens on a 16mm camera, one should use good mattebox practices precisely to avoid the flare issue that you mention.

If he has an internet connection, Elia kazan must be turnig over in his grave. One of the great things about this world is that dry British humour can survive both Zurich and cinematography.com.

Yesterday, I read an article about American journalist Bob Woodruff and Canadian cinematographer Doug Vogt that says that about as many journalists and photographers have died in iraq as during the whole of the Vietnam War. The death count is over 60. I don't know how many others, among them Woodruff and Vogt, have been injured. If you were offered a job as a motion or stills photographer in Iraq, would you take it? If so, which of the two jobs would you prefer? Why?

Does anyone happen to know what it cost to make Coffee and Cigarettes (the ensemble, not just the original short) or Swimming to Cambodia? By cost, I mean basic production and post-production cost, ex fees paid to the creative team, lawyers, accountants, caterers, marketing people, etc.

You're a master of understatement. Last summer, while walking in New York after dark, I stumbled on some people making a commercial in front of the National Arts Club. They were shooting a sequence in which attractive women in evening dress were exiting the club and getting into a waiting car, which I suspect was the product. The filmmakers were running light through a diffusion panel that must have been 30' high. I had a digital camera and took a couple of snapshots of the crane, lights and other gear that they were using. If I can find the photos, I'll post one of them.

J-Ro, We'll be shooting most of the film on the west coast at Gros Morne National Park and the surrounding area. The geography is very diverse: one of the few places in the world where the earth's oceanic crust and mantle are exposed, resulting in very sparse and highly specialized plant life; dense forests, moose, caribou; excellent salmon streams; freshwater fijords; and of course the Atlantic ocean, whales, etc. I want to shoot from the top of Gros Morne mountain, although it's a long hike (elevation 2844 ft) unless it turns out that we can get up there by helicopter. We may also go across the strait to shoot some footage in Labrador. L'Anse aux Meadows, the site of the Viking settlement, is about a three hour drive north, but I'd like to find time to get there. We'll also be filming in St. John's on the east coast, which as you know has one of the world's great natural harbours. There's a sequence I want to shoot near the site where Marconi received the first transatlantic radio transmission. We may also go into St. John's for a few days in the spring to do some interviews and maybe get some footage of icebergs. We haven't decided yet whether to get to Gros Morne via Cornerbrook airport or to take the ferry from Cape Breton island in Nova Scotia. If the latter, we'll arrive on the island at Port aux Basques and drive from there to Gros Morne, which will give us additional opportunities. One of the issues with this project is that the bleak Newfoundland portrayed in The Shipping News, however appropriate for Annie Proulx's story, is not my idea of Newfoundland, especially in August, but on the other hand I don't want this to look like a travelogue. In any event, the film is about people, so the landscape will ultimately play a supporting role. As you say, traditional Newfoundland food is not haute cuisine. My judgment is more favourable, but I've had some pretty good Newfoundland home cooking. In any event, one of the subjects of the film has trained with three of France's greatest chefs, among them Alain Ducasse, so I don't think that we're going to suffer. What outport did you spend time in?

Mark, I think that it might be possible to buy an Aaton XTR privately for $15,000, with the features you describe, but I'd be nervous about one being sold for that price through a dealer that either owns and is re-selling the camera or has it on consignment. I would also assume, until established otherwise, that the camera might need 2-3k worth of work. Also, I would not buy an Aaton or Arriflex camera for that kind of money unless it has been evaluated by an agent of the manufacturer. How this gets paid for is between you and the vendor. As far as I know, Abel Cine is predominently in the business of renting gear and selling new gear. You will notice that there is not a used section, such as Visual Products or Cinematechnic has, on the Abel Cine website. Nathan can correct me, but I think that when it comes to used gear, they essentially play the role, occasional at that, of broker between clients. I think that there is actually quite a lot of information on this site and on the net generally about the LTR, XTR and XTR Prod, so maybe you should look a little more. On the later models, you should certainly look at www.aaton.com and websites run by Aaton agents, one of which is Abel Cine.

Annie, I have several friends who do the same thing that I do for a living, but I find that I much prefer to spend time with them when we are talking about something other than our mutual occupation. Most of my really close friends do something else for a living than what I do. There is no pattern here. Some of them even work at 9-5 jobs, and I haven't noticed that they are less interesting or intelligent than friends who work irregular hours.

Yes, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the suggestion that one would us ASA 50 film plus artificial lighting such as Tota Lights to get enough light because it will enable one to use an emulsion that one thinks will result in superior quality to ASA 250. I think that that is a questionable strategy, both practically and aesthetically. Sorry, but I was trying to talk about choice of emulsions for natural light, and the practical consequences of trying to mix artificial light and natural light, not neutral density filters. My point, which I thought was reasonably clear, was simply that if I wanted to use natural light, I would rather use ASA 250 stock than ASA 50 stock plus artificial light. That's all.

Speaking for myself, If I want natural light and it means that I need to shoot at ASA 250, that is what I will do. Natural light is highly transient/variable. You don't have forever and a day to muck around with supplemental sources beyond basic bounce or diffusion material. You must be willing to wait for the moment, seize the moment or make do with what you have. Using artificial light and the rigamarole that it entails to bring a 250 ASA moment of natural light down to a 50 ASA moment is not a way that I, personally, want to spend time. Last summer, I had an afternoon to take some large format and medium format photographs from an apartment overlooking Central Park. It is very difficult to get access to this kind of location. We had one shot at it. We spent a lot of time setting up the shots and then a lot of time waiting for the right light. We had film for both cameras at a couple of ASAs, some white card and a ladder. When the time came, we had, from a lighting point of view, about 30 minutes to do the photos. As a practical matter, supplemental artificial light was out of the question, and even if it were feasible, would have resulted in very different photographs. I am genuinely interested in knowing whether others disagree with this post, in whole or in part.

If you have access to the house, which it sounds like you may, here is what I would do. I'd go over there with two friends, a digital camera and a big piece of white foamcore. I'd put the camera on shutter priority at 1/50 of a second. I'd tell one friend that his or her job is to bounce light off the foamcore and I'd tell the other friend that his or her job is to play model. Then I'd take a bunch of photos, each of them bracketed, at various ASA settings. At the end of the shoot, I'd take both victims out for a beer. Then I'd go home, load the photos onto a cumputer, and have a look at the photos and their histograms. If the photos weren't taken at the time of day and lighting conditions under which I wanted to film, which of course would be ideal, I'd then do some extrapolating. Of course, this is the long way of arriving at the advice that David Mullen and others have already given.

Yes, I was thinking of the 150w lights that can be run at 100w off a car cigarette lighter or 12v battery. They are very compact and powerful for their wattage, but of course it depends on how much light you want and where you want it. For example, you could put a projection attachment on one of these lights and use it to increase light just on a character's eyes. In addition to the 400 HMI described in your link, they are also making a couple of 200 HMIs. I've seen the 400, and it is kinda big. Haven't seen the 200s, and I don't know what the power requirements are for these lights.

Dedolights, corrected to daylight if desired?

If I understand this thread correctly (and maybe I don't, although Mitch Gross appears to have understood it the same way I do), it is about a stills shoot. I don't understand how it is possible to answer the question without knowing how large an area the photographer wants to light and what quality of light he wants. Is this a studio kitchen? A real kitchen? A ranch kitchen or a galley kitchen? Do you have to light the whole kitchen or only part of it? Is there natural light coming through a window? How bright and reflective are the walls and surfaces? Is the light supposed to be hard or soft? I assume that if the photographer wants to shoot at 1/30 second or faster, either the subjects are people or he wants to shoot handheld with lenses of 35mm or wider. Otherwise, the requirement that shutter speeds be 1/30 second or shorter would seem to be arbitrary. As David Mullen points out, a faster film stock is also an option. For catalogue reproduction, it isn't obvious that there is going to be a noticeable difference between ISO 100 and film a stop or so faster. But as I said, maybe I don't understand the question.

American Cinematographer, Feb. 2006, p. 41 re Munich: "Kaminski and most of the camera crew watched rushes every day. "Steven doesn't watch footage from a scene until he's got the whole scene on his KEM in the editing room," says [camera operator Mitch] Dubin. "But his editing is never more than a few days behind what we're shooting. You can't do that unless you film with a strong concept of how you want to cut the film. We shot a 175-page script in 60-some days, as well as some additional material. And two weeks after we wrapped principal photography, Steven had a locked picture cut." Dubin has apparently made 9 films with Kaminski and Spielberg. In the same issue, American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman talks about his reasons for continuing to edit on a Steenbeck.

Lord knows what you would have thought of my friends and me when we were 17 - probably not much. Over Christmas, I gave a very intelligent young man in the UK, age 12, a copy of The Old Man and the Sea. He lives on an island in the English Channel and has never heard of the author. I re-read it a couple of years ago, and decided that the book was much thinner than I had recalled as a young adolescent, but it had a huge impact on me at his age. I'm waiting to hear what he thinks of it. I'll be delighted if he loves the book, but I won't be crushed if he decides that it is a bore. When he is 17, I won't be surprised if he says that Hemingway was not a great writer. If he forms that judgment, with which I happen to disagree, he will be in pretty good company. I'm writing this on a mobile device and I have to go because We're about to pipe in the haggis. Happy Robbie Burns Day. Have a good single malt tonight in his honour.

Landon, here's the deal. Recently, a "senior" participant in this website explained that he is disappointed in the films produced over the last year. Why? Because there weren't any "masterpieces", and he is used to seeing two per year. This same person has had some things to say about you in this thread. In some circles, the idea that an adult would say that the film industry normally produces two masterpieces per year is more difficult to understand than a statement by a young person that he or she is not keen on Hitchcock. I am putting that as mildly as I can. However, on this website it is apparently hunky dorry to say that the film industry churns out masterpieces like jelly beans, but a capital offence to say that Hitchcock is not to one's taste. It is very easy to be condescending. If I wanted to, I could talk about how, when I was 17 and 18, I was directing plays by Harold Pinter and WB Yeats. Talking like that is not only condescending, it is not constructive, although I'll admit that experiences like that do have something to do with why I have trouble with the the suggestion that the film industry produces masterpieces like rabbits. But that is just my opinion. On aesthetic questions, let alone technical questions, some of the things said by professionals on this site are not as self-evident as they are sometimes asserted to be. There's also an important question, when it comes to art, about being ready. I believe that War and Peace is the greatest novel ever written, but it is a novel that I was unable to read, despite several attempts, until I was 22. When I finally was ready, it took over my life until I was finished reading it. Maybe you'll take to Hitchcock at some point, maybe you won't, but in the meantime I'd take a lot of the aesthetic advice you receive on this site, especially when it is accompanied by a strong dose of condescension, with a grain of salt.

I am a lot more turned off by the behaviour of some of the adults on this website than I am by Landon. If he isn't real, his creator is a very talented writer. If he is real, one has got to wonder why adults would engage in a pack mentality to take apart a young man who, like most young men, has some things to learn. As far as I know, Landon has never gone after anyone in the way that I have seen experienced cinematographers on this site go after one-another or, on occasion, the way that they have gone after him. What am I supposed to think of professionals who make phone calls around North America to see if they can "out" someone who is doing no harm, or of professionals who start searching the internet for the same purpose so that they can post a link that says, in effect, "Got ya". Here's what I think. If Landon isn't real, he is a great creation. If he is real, which is my own view, he has a few issues to deal with, not unlike a lot of people, especially of his age, and I have a lot less trouble with him than I do with the so-called professionals who don't understand that. From my point of view, I'll take a civil Landon over some of the uncivil stuff that goes on on this site anytime. Being over 21, I'm smart enough to understand Landon - it is the incivillity of alleged adults that has really turned me off. Whatever you want to call it, this site is not professional - and Landon is definitely not responsible for that.

I don't know who Landon is. I do know this: If he is not real, it has not prevented people in very large numbers from buying into the illusion - maybe because there are things about him that remind one of what might be an internet era Houlden Caulfield. If he is real, there are things that have gone on on this site in relation to him, regardless of whether everything is true or some of it is the product of teenage imagination, including the last few posts, that are nothing short of vicious. I don't hold a brief for Landon, whoever he is. I don't even respond to his posts. But I have been on the verge of walking away from this site for some time, and the last few posts in this thread have finally pushed me there.

Have you decided that you want to do this project on video or would you still prefer to shoot it on film depending on the answers to the above questions and cost? If you haven't decided: How long is the film going to be and how many minutes do you think that you have to shoot before editing? Do you feel comfortable using a still camera? Analog or digital or both? Does the film co-op run instructional classes and/or are there full-time staff who are there to help? What kind of super 8 and 16mm cameras does the co-op have? How do you want to show this film?

Charles Koppelman, in Behind the Seen, after saying that F.F. Coppola, in 1967, bought the first Steenbeck flatbed to be used on a feature film in the US (The Rain People), says this about the KEM (pp. 51-2): "So in 1972, another challenge for Murch on The Conversation ... was the new editing machine he was using - this one a huge, gray, ultrmodern KEM Universal "8-plate" flatbed, similar to the one that Thelma Schoonmaker had used to edit Woodstock in 1970. Until The Conversation, all of Murch's picture editing experience had been on the traditional upright American Moviola. The sleek German KEM had two rotating-prism screens, was push-button operated and capable of playing three tracks of sound at the same time. But it required film workprint to be strung together in large 1000-foot (11 minute) rolls of consecutive shots, rather than spooled into cupcake-sized individual takes a minute or two long, as used on a Moviola. The two machines require working in different modes, which Murch likens to a sculptor using different materials: instead of building up the "sculpture" of the film from the small bits of "clay," as would have been the case with a Moviola, editing with a KEM involves chiseling away chunks of "marble" from large blocks of film, ultimately revealing the movie hidden inside. "Although it is a mechanical device, the Moviola is in fact a non-linear system with more organizational similarities to random-access computerized editing than to the linear KEM system. Consequently Murch's change to the linear KEM from the non-linear Moviola actually required more of a wrenching conceptual shift than the shift he would eventually make from film-based editing to digital editing. After The Conversation, Murch would switch back and forth between KEM and Moviola over the following 20 years, depending on the director he was working for and the editorial syle of the film." Koppelman goes on to say that Murch first used an Avid in 1994, on a Linda Rondstadt music video, and that The English Patient was the first feature film that he edited entirely on Avid. Coppola, in a contribution to Ondaatje's "The Conversations" entitled "I'm NOT going to mix the picture upside down!", tells an amusing story about his and Murch's efforts to figure out the gear that he brought to the US from Germany in 1967.

Sorry, that should be Spottiswoode with an "e". He also wrote A Grammar of the Film: An Analysis of Film Technique. Just did a quick search, and there are lots of copies of both books available second-hand.

Some suggestions: Raymond Spottiswood, Film and its Techniques, University of California Press Spottiswood worked with John Grierson and the National Film Board of Canada. This is a classic work that went through many printings, worth reading not only for the technical information but also the history. Long out of print (my copy was printed in the mid-60's), but not hard to find through, eg, www.abebooks.com Ralph Rosenblum, When the Shooting Stops ... the Cutting Begins, Da Capo Press, 1979. Rosenblum edited The Pawnbroker, The Proucers, Goodbye Columbus and six of Woody Allen's films, among others. Recently reprinted. Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, Vintage, 2002. Ondaatje is a Canadian novelist and poet. He met Murch while Murch was editing the film version of Ondaatje's novel The English Patient, and they decided to write a book about Murch's career and approach to editing. It is a fascinating book. Charles Koppelman, Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What this Means for Cinema, New Riders, 2005. Murch's transition to digital... Both of the books about Murch contain a good deal of technical information. The February issue of American Cinematographer contains an article about Frederick Wiseman, who continues to edit the old fashioned way because he thinks that it helps him find his films. The photo of his editing room will tell you what you're in for :)