Tim J Durham

Call around to bookstores and see if you can get your hands on Paul Wheeler's book, "Digital Cinematography". It is a real-world guide to the DVW-700 and the DVW-790 and an easy, informative read. You can read the whole thing in one evening and he gives you his personal menu set-ups at the end (he's won many British Cinematography awards). http://tinyurl.com/9lths It is similar to "The Goodman Guide" which deals with the Pana SDX-900.

Well, I know how to do it in a darkroom. The idea is to use your diffusion at any point in the process where the blacks become the highlights. In B&W photographic printing, you would mount the diffusion filter (Pro-mist or whatever) between the enlarger lens and the paper your printing onto. I don't know if there is an opportunity to do this when you make a film print, but if not, I'd say you could print a negative and project that negative image onto a screen with the filter on the front of the projector lens, then shoot the projected image. There's got to be a better way, but I don't know what it would be. I'm not familiar enough with motion picture development. If you DO find a better way, I'd sure be interested in knowing how you did it.

Couple more, now that I think I've got this attachment business going... Can't forget props to the photographer:

Here's a Ray Carafano print done that way, although a little too overdone you can still get an idea of the effect: http://www.carofano.com/image.asp?id=9867&...id=3405&entry=y trying...to...attach...%*#* photo...not..work..ing

The first looks like a (non-parallel) grad sandwich and the second, you can see in the tires behind her head that this area was dodged in printing by someone (in both cases) who really knows what they're doing.

The dilemma is that for the daily rental rate of just the Mini35, you could rent a Panasonic SDX-900 w/tripod and batteries and reap the benefits of having a really brilliant SD camera. 'course there will be those pesky insurance requirements. It's a tough call. On the one hand, you want to use your own camera (miniDV) and on the other hand you want the best result for a given amount of money. Few seem to want to embrace the capabilities of the miniDV format. I would think it's the perfect format for webcasting, for instance. Especially the ones that will do 30p like the XL2 and DVX-100A. You could also take great advantage of shooting in front of a rear-projected image (ala Zentropa). Just put the projector out of focus and there's your shallow depth of field (and make sure you are far enough away that you can't see the screen imperfections). There are also a host of other cool effects you could do with rear-projection but few are into embracing/experimenting with the format or employing the local high school AV squad. They just want it to look like a Panavision camera which is futile, but I understand the power of the Sirens song. I just got an idea...

I'm not a film guy but I spent many years in the darkroom doing photographic printing and one of my favourite effects was to use a diffusion filter when printing to make the blacks bleed, as opposed to using the diffusion on the camera lens to make the highlights bleed. I've never seen anyone do this on a film so I don't know if it can be done, but it IS a very cool effect. I'd be very interested to know if/how it could be done with motion film. I might even consider learning S16mm just for that effect.

Since you've used it on 2/3" cameras and you know what it does (and presumably how it does it), You're the only one who can answer that. The mini35 rents for around $500 a day, I think which I think is ludicrous for something that costs only $9K. Supply and demand at work. There is a new option coming to the market soon called the Guerilla35: http://www.guerilla35.com/ It's about time. P+S Technic has had zero competition in this highly captive market (the depth-of-field slaves), and according to these guys at Guerilla35, theirs will SELL for around $1200, so less than the cost of 3 days rental of the Mini35. Still, it's the only way to get that shallow DoF.

There is a bunch of info here: http://www.swisseffects.ch/english/e_tape/pages/e_tape.htm And you can phone them and they will advise you on your particular situation. Check the tabs at left for particular cameras, prices for their service, etc. Tim

One more that deserves mention. It's an homage, really, to the shot from the graduate where Ben walks into Mr's Robinsons bedroom and she's is taking off her stocking and her leg frames Ben in the doorway. It's from, "Kingpins" right after Woody Harrelson finished servicing his landlady. He is seated on the floor next to the toilet and the shot is framed by the landlady's vericose-veiny leg as she hikes up her support hose. When that shot came on screen, I blew a mouth-ful of popcorn all over the guy in front of me.

Jan, Why don't you just send him one?

Hi Peter, I stay at the Days Inn Los Angeles (5th and Mariposa) when I'm out there and I work out in N. Hollywood. It's nothing special but it's clean and cheap. I thought the drive was gonna be rough but it actually was OK because in the morning I go over Laurel Canyon in the opposite direction of the traffic. You'd wanna could go up Barham to Olive and still be going against traffic. So 30 minutes or so. Anyway, it's $65 a day if you go through Priceline.com and the underground parking lot is locked at night. Tim

Last fall in Oregon, I arrived to do a shoot in a small cheese factory. It was 45-50 degrees outside and we'd been shooting outdoors all morning. When we walked into the cheese-making room which was about 95 degrees and 95% humidity, problem. It's not just the lens that gets condensation, it's the whole camera inside and out. Carry a hair dryer in your gear. You have to warm the whole camera up to room temp and it takes a while. Tim

The whole Disney/Miramax/Dimension split has chilled that pipeline for the time being.

The opening shot of "Gladiator" where the camera is following Russell Crowe's hand as it skims the tops of the wheat in a vast wheatfield, then later when they first go to battle, all shot blue, as the camera follows the German Shephard into the battle. That blew me away the first time I saw it. There's a shot from "In Cold Blood" where the detective is interrogating Robert Blake in the kitchen of the people he's murdered and the light coming through the window and the rain on the glass makes it look like tears coming down his cheeks. I think they talked about that in "Visions of Light". In "The Third Man" when Harry Limes cat gets out of Anna Schmidt's apartment right after hissing at Joseph Cotten and Anna says, "oh, that cat only likes Harry", We see the cat down on the street and it walks up to a pair of shoes in a darkened doorway, there is a noise and someone in an apartment up above opens a drape and the light reveals-for the first time- that it's Harry in the darkened doorway. One of the great entrances in cinema history. The paper lantern shot in "Days of Heaven". Nearly all of the film, "Amelie"! Dare to go green! The way they shot the vegetable market on the Parisian street corner and matted it so the stand really pops out of the screen against the grey of the surrounding neighborhood. The same team also did beautiful work in "A very Long Engagement" but particularly the crane shot where Manech is hanging Matilde off the light house. Awesome. From "Empire of the Sun", near the end when Christian Bale is searching through the crowd for his parents and they are searching for him, when their eyes finally meet, that was a real spine-tingler. In a similar vein, near the end of "Reds", Diane Keaton is expecting Warren Beatty to be getting off the train but nearly everyone is already off and she thinks he's not there, then she turns around and sees him. Tingly. From "Dr. Zhivago", when we first learn that Pasha has become Strelnikov, there's a fabulous helicopter shot that sweeps up to the back of the speeding train to show Pasha, standing out the back of the train looking back over his past as the train speeds into his future, which ends Part I of the film. F***ing brilliant. The interior scenes of the Huron battle lodge in "Black Robe". What a setting! The sense of dread was so thich you could've cut it with a knife. And they did. Tim

I certainly wasn't making that point.

I would have said, "Jaws" but you excluded it, for me that is one powerful use of the zoom 'course you can't do it anymore now that it's been done. Everybody in the "I'm tired of seeing this shot" thread will call you on it. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" used a few but the zooms served the comedy. The problem with zooming as opposed to dollying is that your eyes can't do it so it's almost always noticeable (subconsciously for non-pros) and takes you out of the state of involvement with the story. Tim

Yes, I saw a "restored" print at the AFI. They were doing a Wong Kar Wai mini-fest. It was very disappointing. Tim PS: You can't have a discussion about bad cinematography without mentioning "Sleeping with the Enemy". Shot by John Lindley who also shot "The Serpent and the Rainbow" which was great. This is another example of the DP having to serve the bad choices of the director, but the result was embarrasing. It looked like an instructional for film students. "Here's how you can set the mood with angles and lighting, students". It was chock-a-block with visual cliches. http://imdb.com/title/tt0102945/fullcredits

You could use the FireStore. It captures in Quicktime 24p. http://www.focusinfo.com/products/firestore/fsdte.htm Since your not printing to tape which requires 60i. Then you just hook up your firewire cable and you're ready to edit. No need to digitize. There's no info on pulldown so I'm assuming it does not do it. Tim

"Ashes of Time" shot by Christopher Doyle. What a mess. Halfway through the filming, Wong Kar Wai had a breakdown of some sort and he and Doyle went off and made "Chungking Express" which I really liked, then returned to "Ashes of Time" some time later. Doyle also shot "Hero" for Zhang Yimou so he's obviously got great talent. Alot of the continuity problems in "Ashes of Time" are not the DP's fault but he sure wasn't helping. The exposure and color in the scenics were all over the place almost to the point that I started thinking that the lab had screwed the pooch on them. Maybe that's why they had to quit halfway through? A couple of random interior shots clearly had something (like a shirt or drape) blowing in front of the camera but there were no establishing shots to tell you what, so it looked like a f***up. I really think the lab had to have screwed them because there are scenes (and single shots) that are just missing. See for yourself. Critics have hailed it as some sort of masterpiece. It isn't. Tim