Tim J Durham

I don't know if it's in your budget, but have you considered fluorescents? Small units from Kino Flo (Divas) or Lowel's CaseLights would be good becasue you can put daylight tubes in them and not loose any output to CTB if you have to shoot in a room with daylight coming through the windows.

I just went up to B&H last week and bought a Lowel Caselite 2 kit and a Caselite 4 kit. I'm totally sold on these, the "kit" packaging makes them much handier than Kinos, I think, and I'll never have to scorch my fingertips again. But that's nearly $2K for two lights. I also bought a LitePanel kit which I'm pretty stoked about.

Light... but no heat. And very little wattage so you can use them (both the Caselites and the LitePanel) in the oldest, crappiest tenements in the Bronx.

I learned using Totas and Omnis so for the money, you can do a lot worse.

There are no legal issues as they let you do it with Pro.

 

Phil

But to get Pro, you've submitted credit info so they know you're registering as a real person. Anyone can download a free player without using their real identity info. No?

A few more examples...

This might be why I can't download movies to watch later. Quicktime wants me to download the 159Mb 1080p Aeon Flux trailer every time I want to watch it. That's not only time-consuming and unnecessary, it's going to chew up the internet and soak huge quantities of unnecessary bandwidth.

Ummmm.....

WHY you'd be wanting to view that trailer more than once is the question you should be asking yourself.

Also, I suspect there are legal issues involved with you saving those trailers so they limit that from happening.

Apple has been playing nice-nice with the movie and music industries so...

Hi,

 

Wouldn't that depend entirely on the production and the results you wanted?

 

Very light black promists are often used, as they're perceived to take the "video edge" off the image. I get the impression that this is actually a reaction to over-enhanced video images in both SD and HD, and with modern cameras having the option to turn off sharpening or detail enhancement, it's not something I'd automatically do unless I specifically wanted that look.

 

It's possible that low-con or ultracon filters can mitigate dynamic range issues slightly, although they all have a look of their own too.

 

Otherwise, I guess you do what video cameramen have been doing for years, which is to grad down areas of the frame that are overexposed and shoot for the results you want!

 

Phil

I regularly use black pro-mist filters in addition to dialing down the sharpening. Ultra-cons are less useful as they essentially do the same thing as the black stretch function although the filters add no noise. I have not experienced any significant noise problems using black stretch so that's $$ saved. I use grads regularly and every once in a while I'll use a coral, straw or tobacco. But not strong and not often.

It's somewhat comical that Sony (Panasonic too?) includes a star filter as one of the four choices on their internal filter wheels. How many times would you actually get to shoot the Emmy's (the only show I can think of that uses them) and if you DID, you'd be using studio cams, not field cams, so why not put something more useful? That's valuable real estate. I'd rather have another ND filter, for instance.

We're still using some of the Anton Bauers. We have some that are still pretty good.

Don't get me wrong, when they're good they're great.

Our's are just old and have seen a lot of abuse.

 

We're switching over to ID batteries (I think that's what they're called).

Much smaller and lighter, which is always a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

 

We can get 20+ minutes of continuous use out of them with the Sungun on.

Not bad. Plus there's a voltage read out in the vf with the new XD Cams.

Didn't have that in the old SP's.

Rent a couple of Dionics.

Thanks for the help...

 

It seems since the guy who writes the checks and who owns a post company that does lots of post work for Universal came in and had a talk with the dp... it seems that the problem has stopped...

 

I think it was an issue of not recueing when a batt was pulled.... a little of that they'll fix it in post type thing... like the boss told the dp... if the studio is paying for it that's find... but since he's paying for it... its not....

Again thanks for all the help...

It's hard to believe that cam ops would let the camera continue to roll right up to the point that the battery dies. There is a battery warning which engages near the end of the charge. Why would you keep going once this has started?

Stop rolling, change batteries, start rolling again. No timecode break.

When you say "beefed up", could you also apply that to the quality of the footage? Is it any better looking than the stuff you getting shooting 24p on a DVX? Or is it exactly the same? I nervously wonder because for whatever reason I can't import the footage I got off the p2 cards from a rental house's firewire drive into FCP 5.0.4. So I'm stuck with the tapes we recorded onto for backup. Could I have just captured the same quality with a friend's dvx? :(

The HVX has 16:9 chips and so if you want to shoot that aspect, you don't have to use an anamorphic adapter or use the DVX letterbox scheme which loses 1/4 of your vertical picture info (360 vertical lines vs. 480).

Hi,

 

I have been playing with an XLH1 for the past few days and this occurred to me as well. The hi-def XL lens is pretty good optically, but you're right, ergonomically it's a nightmare and you would want to immediately go to something better. It's also very easy to break the HDV codec - perform a whip pan and find an I-frame - so the power of this otherwise okay camera is rather wasted.

 

Phil

Hey Phil,

How big a problem ARE those "missing" frames in a swish pan? I've heard that they only need to be rendered before you begin to edit. Is this right? Or do they show up as dropped frames or what? I may have to do some shooting/editing with a Z1u for the next couple months.

Thanks

I am making a TV Commercial - extremely low budget - that is to be filmed with HVR-Z1 + Mini 35. The film will then be transferred to 35mm for release in theatres.

I need all the help i can as we have no money for tests and absolutely no chance for error.

The film will comprise 3 layers all shot against a white background. The foreground will have a male model and there will be two layers of females in the background. The background layers will be converted to black and white while the foreground will be heavily desaturated.

Appreciate all possible help.

A TV commercial for release in theaters?

I'd love to assemble a full length feature film with Steve Vai and Zakk Wylde based on thier music, philosophies on music and life, a ton of gratuitous shredding and crazy (but not neccessarily abstract or absurd) special effects. No unnecassary violence or sex. And in 3D anamorphic of course. The leading lady would be Nicole Kidman.. and she'd have to work extra to hard to get the part ;) .

What sort of philosophy does Steve Vai adhere to beyond the spandex pants-wearing and big hair?

My wife is from Russia and I've spent a bit of time in that part of the world. Be careful. That is not a part of the world where you can go to the police and file a report. Also, coming into the country with equipment like that can be tricky. Even if the govt. lets you in, don't trust anyone and don't take that camera out at night. Also, don't expect that anyone will speak english and be able to help you if you are lost. Good luck though, its beautiful and the food is great, so enjoy. Plus, bring voltage adapters specific to europe.

 

Travis

Agree. And as I said in your last thread, Ukraine does not recognise carnets. Who hired you for this job? Was it someone you know? Make sure you know who you're dealing with. By now you should have called the Ukranian consulate and asked what is to be done in lieu of a carnet to register your gear AND you should definitely register your presence (and the presence of your gear) with the American embassy (or whatever country's embassy of the passport you hold).

I'd like to shoot 5 minutes of film with the same visual impact as any 5 minutes of film taken from "Lawrence of Arabia".

 

Wouldn't "Tropic of Cancer" end up looking like a "Henry and June" remake? :)

 

Edmond, OK

I would hope not. There was very little of the spirit (or dialogue) of "Tropic of Cancer" in "Henry and June".

As much as I admire Philip Kaufman, that film really sort of layed there. It was not based on the book but was meant to tell his story during the time that book was written. Big mistake as far as I'm concerned.

I used the GIMP way back in the day, and I couldn't get used to the GUI.

 

Just me.

I'm glad I read the thread before responding. I thought you were asking about the guy in the box from "Pulp Fiction".

A non-language-specific film that would be shown the world over, its goal being to bring the people of the earth together in the understanding that we are more the same than we are different. It would be filmed all over the world, in all different cultures, and would make people stop killing each other as a result of our petty human squabbles.

You'd like to teach the world to sing?

If you find my tidbits bias, I would suggest you pick up a newspaper (maybe the New York Times) every once in a while or maybe a history book. South America is filled with censorship of the press, assasination of reporters who tell the truth and bombing of newspapers as well as governmental agencies of those countries simple taking over the airwaves. I thinking specifically of Columbia, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela, all of whom have documented histories of repression, censorship and violence towards their own peoples and suppestion of the press. But I quess we southern boys don't know nuth'n next to ya sofisticated New Yorkers, cus all we be ta stuipid ta read.

And you can read all about it:

http://www.cpj.org/killed/killed_archives/stats.html

The archives only go back to 1992 but that's enough to get a sense of the trend. Since 1996, there have been more photogs and cameramen killed than any other journalistic endeavor. More at:

http://www.cpj.org/

Dune.

 

Only without all the obvious mistakes made by the two existing screen adaptations.

I thought- up until Paul Atreides (Muad'dib) lead the attack atop the worms- that Lynch's "Dune" was the greatest thing I'd ever seen.

The worm-riding was just about the worst. shaaaaaaaaCHAAAAAA!

ridiculous.

If I had unlimited funds to make whatever I wanted, it might be Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" or Peter Matthiesson's "The Snow Leopard", neither of which would require HUGE budgets. What I'd want to spend the money on was maintaining total control.

Then what you mean to say is "the first 45 minutes are terrible."

So were the last 45 minutes. Unfortunately, my 7 y.o. son was loving it. I told him I'd rent him the real Pink Panther movies so he could see those, too.

I understand Steve Martins (he actually WROTE this dreck) next project is a remake of Citizen Kane. Whoopeeeee

We don't have to spell Engsish correctly! Not as long as we have most of the Nukes!!!! (manical laugh) HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Sadly, this argument seems to be prevalent at the top.

My English isn't so good either. I was setting th exposure using auto iris and it doesn't agree at all with Zebra settings.

Were you checking it with a waveform monitor where the zebras were telling you 70 IRE and the waveform was telling you it was something else?

I was shooting with the Z1u over the weekend. Day exterior. Moving fast I put the expure on auto. The lighting was standard front lit. Auto expsure said on thing but the 70% iris said I should stop down a couple of stops. Why the discrepency.

There may be a compensator which can adjust the auto-exposure up or down up to 2 stops (so if the AE thinks the scene should expose to f5.6, you can adjust it so if will expose that scene at f2.8 or f16 or somewhere in between). I have an XL-2 and it has that feature. The zebras don't have anything to do with the auto-exposure. They just tell you what in the frame is 70 IRE or above if you set them to 70.

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Youngins who post here should be jumping at this job

Hi,

 

Yes, bit sick isn't it. You'd have hoped the MPEG-2 algorithm would be scalable to fill the tape space at any frame rate.

 

I'm writing a picture-quality article for Showreel magazine which will cover and compare the current JVC, Sony and Canon cameras; if there's anything in particular you'd like to read about, please say.

 

Phil

I'd like it if you could sort out all the potential data rates available on the Sony XDCams and their new HD cameras. There are several different selectable data rates, apparently, IMX in 3 or 4 flavors as well as DVCam and I'll be shooting with one in about two weeks and for several months thereafter.

At this point it looks like it will fall to me to figure out which data rate to use for broadcast. Shooting in NTSC (rental cams) and uprezzing to HD AND converting all to PAL for broadcast. Edit will happen in Avid Xpress XP and I need to figure out how I can convince them to let me edit on a Powerbook in the field.

How's that sound, Phil? I'm not exactly a master technologist.

The boom is visible is so many shots it distracts the hell out of you. I saw a thread on this at IMDB and they blamed the projectionist. That means that my theater has a terrible projectionist, too. Strange because I normally go to this theater and have never seen them project the wrong aspect ratio before. This is the first time I've seen so many booms dip into frame in any movie. Luckily the movie was so terrible it was refreshing to see the boom make its appearance every few minutes.

I saw the film "Red Rock West" by John Dahl in the theatre. It was originally produced for Showtime (TV) so 4:3 and there were 12 boom sightings or thereabouts. This is puzzling because the blow up was 1.66:1:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0105226/technical

so that would mean that the sides would be trimmed for 4:3 and the top/bottom would stay the same, right? Nearly all the boom sightings were top of the frame.

The question is, where does it come from and who is using it?

 

When Edward Burns uses it, as he does ad nauseum, it sounds fake. That means, if it comes out of New York, it ain't from his neighbourhood.

 

Is it an LA term, or something that filmmakers think is cool?

First time I remember hearing it was in Aretha Franklin's "R.E.S.P.E.C.T.":

I'm about to give you all of my money

And all I'm askin' in return, honey

Is to give me my PROPerS

When you get home (just a, just a, just a, just a)

Yeah baby (just a, just a, just a, just a)

When you get home (just a little bit)

Yeah (just a little bit)

So using 1960's Detroit as your starting point and working backward, you can see it's been around for a while.

Most terms that are thought to be "fresh" (the term "fresh" by the way, is now out) now have origins that are much older than most people realise. "Bling", for instance, has been around for decades. If you grew up around Detroit (as I did) or L.A., have been around long enough, and pay even minimal attention to what goes on around you, you know these things come and go in waves.

Kinda like the baggy-pants-hanging-low look that was common with surfers in the early 60's.