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Dustan Lewis McBain

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Everything posted by Dustan Lewis McBain

  1. Funny I pulled up on this convo, last night I had a nightmare that I opened up my mag by mistake lol... Sorry, next time ill post with context.
  2. I would agree. You need to think of how much power you can supply. I would say to rent one hmi 1.2 or something that suits your budget. A mix of natural light, and tungstens. You can't get the same look if you color correct your tungsten to match the hmi, however you could create a different kind of mood. What does the script call for? Natural, experimental, expressionistic... Use practical lights also. Do some tests, and work with what you got! Also, one way to make use with small budget could be to cut out your wides and shoot closer in. You mentioned various windows. If you were using only 1 hmi, you could move your light around to accommodate your shot. But if your lights seem to be missing from the general light in the scene i would say forget it, however testing should fix that. One thing I did once is i needed more light in a outside party scene. The project could only afford 1 hmi and several 1k tungtens. What we ending up doing was buying a whole lot of christmas lights and putting them everywhere. Little did we know that we got a beautiful fill light off this... all to say that experimenting leads to a really nice shot! Hope that helps, Dustan Lewis McBain
  3. In my experience, for the day, expose normally, make sure that you keep your characters and sky to a more normal perspective (depending on your vision) and let the fire go, keeping importance on your characters. However, depending on your day your fire shouldnt be blowing out in contrast to everything else. Night time, expose your fire, then light up your chrachter's to what you light with sources. Or if you going for a natural perspective, shoot at high stock and have your as as comfortably close to the fire as possible, lol. Your 10 store building might be hard to act as a key light for your actors, so be creative! Im curious, how are you going to explode a 10 floor building?
  4. I'm looking at some new lenses, any ideas?
  5. Also, to accentuate your background, you'll prob want to use (depending on your budget) an hmi, or any night time looking fixture. Personally i like to shoot with tungsten on the characters, and a backlight/kicker and BG light as daylight to add nice contrast. Best thing to do is do some tests before your shoot. Also, bring an assortment of gels, at least 3 lights and be creative.
  6. "The way Hitchcock tended to shoot his leading ladies... ... There are only so many times we can look at the directors vision of ideal beauty through a soft focus and not get annoyed." " Some of the film was deliberately filmed with either soft focus lenses (Hedren's close ups) or grainy rear projection" So using a soft focus lens makes women look more attractive? or does it give them a distinct look. Or rather a different perspective from other characters. (assuming that other characters were not shot in soft focus). What im looking for is a creative and original (or in this case unoriginal) way to distinguish characters, more specifically to make women look more attractive in relation to lenses.
  7. Does anybody shoot characters in soft focus anymore? I recently learned that cinematographers such as robert burks shot women in soft focus becuase it was supposed to make women more attractive.
  8. hi there, i had an email telling me that you sent me a message regarding the nyu cinematography class. however this site shows me nothing form you, did yo have any questions?

  9. I just recently read an article on how Adobe's newest software blows FCP/studio out of the water. But im assuming that it was adobe who wrote the article in the Magazine. I would say if you can. and its not hard to find, get both fcp and premiere. Because if you'd like to go through after affects, or photoshop you can do it that easily with adobe. Clients always like to work with people who have the most to offer. They want someone who is very savvy in different aspect and can offer different ways of completing the project. And also the fact that when you have both you'll have the freedom to mess around with both worlds. (never used avid so couldnt add that aspect to my reply) Hope that helps,
  10. I was just wondering if there would be an exact time to use daylight stock. In my classes so far we've only used tungsten for everything. Maybe its the schools budget?
  11. I recently viewed on a website that this was the number film school. Any one go there? any opinions?
  12. Are the Dslr's here to stay? Should I sell my HVX 200 and jump on board? You think a digital camera will come out witha sensor that big? any news if canon is releasing anything big soon?
  13. I understand that lenses made from different companies will be different. But how much different will they be? two lenses with the same focal length, speed, etc.. Would it be hard to tell the difference?
  14. Do all zooms breath? And is breathing a negative to all aspects of film, or do some people use it to their advantage and how? Great tip! thanks guys.
  15. in contrast to telephoto's and primes. I was to to shoot with a 50 mm prime. But had the option to stick on a 18-80 telephoto and set the distance to a 50 mm lens. Will both lenses look the exact same. Same depth of focus... what if I put on a 45-250 and set the mark to 50 mm. Will that look the same aswell? thank you,
  16. Im sure claudio had the color scheme in pre-prod. Shot-it. then changed the look in the DI. However to achieve the green he could have easily used green gels or florescent lights which would read green to the camera. Either way he used a 2k DI so you can virtually change any color to whatever you want.
  17. I just recently read an article on how nasa shot a project and they were concerned about going through the airport with all their footage. turns out that the X-ray would have ruined all their footage. So they had to get an ok from the government to not X-ray their film cans. But this is Nasa right? You'd think that they'd have it easy regarding the government. But they ended up waiting months for the ok, and even the day at the airport they had trouble. Bottom line is there was no way NASA was going to bring anything through the X-ray machine.
  18. Phil, if I understand you correctly, film has more allowance for ratios than digital does? However i understand what you mean about being too nervous about being adventurous in film, because of not being able to confirm exactly what you want as soon as you can with digital. Although film is able to calibrate better highlights, it seems that film is still able to catch blacks and whites together better than digital can. Would you agree?
  19. http://www.vimeo.com/user1146074/videos Let me know what you guys think! please dont feel shy to say exactly how you feel. Thanks!
  20. https://www.letusdirect.com/cart/zeiss-pro-bundle.html Is this set a good deal?
  21. So maybe the best time to use the ratio system is when trying to keep the same look through different shots in the scene. Thanks!
  22. I understand for the most part lighting is creative. However what i was wondering, and maybe this question is subjective. How often do you use the ratio system (key:fill) when lighting. When Im in a controlled situation I can play around with it, but when im using natural light sometimes its impossible. Often I'll set up my lighting for a 3:1, or anything else for that matter, and end up changing it for personal taste. Any opinions?
  23. Im in that cinematography course now. except im taking it as an intensive for the summer. Which i highly recommend. One, if your not from new york you get a reason to come here, and shoot. and B, you make connections here. The teacher I have is also great. However I dont think that this would be the only course you would need in terms of receiving work. However its a good start to building up your CV and Career.
  24. I was wondering how accurate the viewfinder was in regards to color, exposer and focal distance. I had just finished a shoot with the sr-2, and i did all the measurements, however when i looked into the view finder i found that i didn't like the image.(I have done other shoots where the measurements looked beautiful.) However this particular shoot, sometimes it looked underexposed. So i would change the settings to what I found decent. For film, would I be in trouble if I went into the viewfinder and messed around until i liked the image, or do i need to do the measurements and stick to that. Is what im seeing in the viewfinder going to look the same on the film. thank you, Dustan Lewis McBain
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