Ed Moore

Hi all, I made a fairly ridiculous gif site about the crazy job we do; you may like it. http://dopgifs.tumblr.com Cheers, Ed

Brilliant story, thanks for sharing!

I'll be at BSC Friday and Saturday, nominally helping out at Tiffen / Steadicam again but in reality attempting to nick a Briese light off the LCA stand... :)

I'll try and make it if I can... same place as before, in Soho?

Thanks guys for all your suggestions - really useful. I had been looking at the Chroma Q Color Block 2 range which look excellent but very expensive and I think out of the budget of my client. I've emailed the Colorblaze guys to see what their pricing is like. Cheers!

I'm putting together a new lighting rig for a very simple studio, and I'd like to light the cyc with some sort of LED colour changing unit. Presumably there is some sort of unit designed for downwashing walls etc? Need to cover a wall about 4m long with 2m either side on the return. Am thinking I'll probably need eight or so units. Need to have some sort of simple controller as well. Many thanks for any ideas!

I should be there, see you guys later.

Will try and make it if I can - will mean a roundtrip from Birmingham but see how I feel on the day! Where's the Endurance? E

If this is an event in which to bitch about clueless directors and crappy producers, count me in... Do we need to set up some sort of online thing to work out the best date? E

I'll be going - if any Cinematography.com users want to meet up for a coffee, I'm on 07980 524136! Cheers, Ed Moore DoP | Steadicam http://emoore.co.uk

I'll be going - if any Cinematography.com users want to meet up for a coffee, I'm on 07980 524136! Cheers, Ed Moore DoP | Steadicam http://emoore.co.uk

Try the guys at Optical Support (http://www.opticalsupport.co.uk).

Heh, wrote that last bit last night after several beers; paranoid side showing.

... not if you're in the UK, it seems ("this video is not available in your country").

58 views and no-one has anything to say?

Thought I'd briefly invite anyone who might be interested over to my cinematography / steadicam blog. I bought a Kodak Zi6 HD video camera a while back and when I remember I've been trying to take it on shoots (I'm primarily a DoP) with me to document and describe what I'm trying to achieve with the lighting, angles and so on. You might want to start at the oldest ones (at the bottom of the page, in fact you might have to click through to Older) first as the first 8 or so are probably the most detailed - recently I haven't had as much time. http://emoore.co.uk/blog/category/dopdiaries/ Trying to make much more of an effort with the blog this summer, so I'd be delighted if you take a look at the rest at http://emoore.co.uk/blog/ and let me know what you think. A really popular post recently was http://emoore.co.uk/blog/low-budget-filmma...ink-of-filling/, about the important film jobs that tend not to get filled on low budget work. Love as much feedback as possible as it all helps encourage me make more effort with the video blogs. Have a national TV ad shoot next week for which I'll try and do a really good episode. You can also see my own DoP reel at http://www.emoore.co.uk/portfolio/cinematography-showreel/ Thanks guys :) Ed

Don't quote me, but I have a feeling this has something to do with the Film Tools app that installs along with FCP. Something to do with changing a setting in the QuickTime file itself that tags it as being an offspeed clip.

Hi all, I need to pull off the aforementioned gag for an upcoming project. The scene will start essentially in complete black, then the idea is that the lighter flame suddenly appears, illuminating the face of a character. The face will probably be within a foot of the flame. I will be shooting at 320ASA, T/2.0. I could probably get away with pushing a stop for this shot. There must be a whole bunch of you that have attempted this shot - which seems to be a director's favourite - before, and I was hoping to hit you up for some tips on what worked and what didn't. The options appear to be: - Push as required until the lighter flame does the job by itself - Get some sort of stunt lighter with a larger / brighter flame than usual (this is WW2 period so can't go too crazy) - Supplement the illumination from the lighter with some sort of point source, and practise until the point source comes on exactly at the same time as the lighting. Unfortunately there's no budget for a flicker unit on this, so anything like that will probably have to be achieved with cunning use of flag waving... What are your thoughts? Ed Moore DP | Steadicam | Jib 07980 524136 | http://www.emoore.co.uk | http://www.thedopdiaries.com

PS If you haven't, I highly recommend talking to Phil Baxter at www.creativevideo.co.uk to see if you can get your kit listed there. It's absolutely the best production equipment website going, and Phil is a fantastic guy.

Hi Marc, I think to a certain extent freelancers in the UK tend not to own HMIs as they are seen as being expensive. I have a Dedolight D400 which I love but it was pretty pricey and I've not come across anyone else who owns something like that other than rental houses. I have always wanted to try one of your Joker Bug / Source 4 profile combinations. If you wanted to send me a UK pricelist, you can get my email at www.emoore.co.uk - will probably be in the market for more lighting early next year. Ed

So *that's* what a Briese light looks like! A DP I know who does lots of hip hop videos was going on about them in such a way that seemed to indicate he saw them as essential to the process as a roll of film :) Ed

Can't remember where I read it but someone (probably David Mullen) said the best first ACs are like racehorses... I like that analogy. Massively cantankerous for a lot of the time, but the good ones get away with it because noone has to worry about the f/2.8 pull at 300mm being sharp. A lot like how in office environments, the resident geek who has the skill to sort out other people's computer problems usually enacts a hefty social price upon those he or she helps. Ed

I was confused by this announcement. Is the Red Ray designed for long term lossless archiving of the footage? Or is it just supposed to be a viewing tool that has the benefit of outputting 4K (assuming you have a suitable display) albeit at some level of compression? I assume if there was any way of losslessly compressing the raw data further, they'd have done it already in the camera.

Hi Mihai, Before you get too caught up in comparisons of the latitude of your film stock vs the DSLR, you should consider as Michael is suggesting, exactly *how* you want to expose the scene. The latitude of the particular imaging system you use will have an effect on the end image, but it will be noticeable only at the extreme ends of the image - i.e. the brightest and darkest parts of the frame. You still need to decide where to 'place' the exposure in order to get the effect you want. When you stood at that location in person, did you imagine an image like your second photo, with the people in silhouette and more detail in the areas in sunshine? Or did you imagine a scene with a strong backlight? It's about having an image in your mind's eye which you then use your knowledge of exposure to commit to the film (or CCD as the case may be). Do you have a spot meter on your Sekonic? If so, it might be worth playing with using that to select an area of the frame to be exposed as middle gray, or 18% reflectance, or Zone V. Or, if you want to expose caucasian skin 'normally', point your spot meter at some, take the reading from the meter and open the lens one stop from the reading (reason being caucasian skin is generally accepted to be Zone VI). The zone system is fun. I recommend Blain Brown's Cinematography: Theory and Practice for a good introduction specific to cinematography.

On jobs with lots of Kinos I make sure they all have precut pieces of 216 and 1/8 CTO clipped to the back ready to go. Unfiltered I find them rather harsh. Years ago I worked at a big lighting warehouse and did a lot of deliveries of kit out to shoots. A lot of UK dramas at the time were doused in unfiltered Kinos - not in the totally defendable way David describes, in which they're the right tool for the job at hand - but because they've become a de facto standard way of boshing up a load of soft(ish) light for interiors without overheating the set or requiring the electricians to sort out a load of bounces. However, it's still a step forwards from the earlier UK trend in drama lighting, which usually involved pointing a 2.5K HMI into the ceiling and pressing record.