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Duncan Trevithick

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Posts posted by Duncan Trevithick

  1. I'm looking to buy some cheap fluorescent tubes which I can easily fix to the set as practicals, similar to Mr Deakins & Mr McDowells' use of them in In Time:

     

    Ideally I want them have small fixings on the end for the power cables with a separate ballast, like Kino Flo bulbs, so I can just tape them to the set and hide the cables. I've looked at these but they seem to need a rigid fixing at one end to power them, and I can't see any information about the ballast.

     

    I'd like them to be daylight balanced and not too green.

     

    Can anyone recommend a solution?

  2. I'm a student prepping for a short that we're going to be shooting in February in London. We've got a fairly good deal on the RED One MX and so I'd quite like to use that camera. However, the director is keen on a super smooth cinematic style of shooting and we don't have the budget for a professional Steadicam operator.

     

    I can't find a stabilization system to rent in London that will take the weight of the RED + lenses etc. as apparently all the Steadicam operators have their own ones so the rental houses don't bother.

     

    Any ideas?

  3. I'm a second year undergraduate student studying film production in England. This semester I've just started to specialise in cinematography. One of the exercises we were given was to shoot a short scene with the following brief:

     

    Warm low evening light dimly lights the room. A character pours a cup of tea, picks up a letter, opens it, puts on their glasses. They go over to a table lamp and switch it on to read the letter.

     

    Here's what I ended up doing: https://vimeo.com/40769245

     

    I'd be really grateful if you could give me some constructive criticism.

  4. I'm looking for a way to create a bright, realistic muzzle flash inside a house which will be seen from outside. I was considering using several wireless photo strobes firing at the same time but I'm not sure if the camera will capture that in one frame. I'll be shooting on an Arriflex 16 SRII.

     

    Can anyone recommend a better way to do this?

     

    Thanks.

  5. I'm going to be working on a short documentary over the summer and I'm doing some astro-timelapses. I would really like to introduce some camera movement such as a dolly move, and I've been looking at motion controlled camera sliders from Kesslercrane. However I can't find anywhere in the UK that rents them out. Any ideas?

  6. Does anyone know of anwhere in the UK that will process my Vision 3 and telecine it to 1080p? Also when I say telecine I mean propper frame scanning not a film loop with a video camera or anything like that (which I can do at home).

  7. As in, it came apart on one of the spools in the developing tank somewhere and can't be salvaged. The lab was Film and Photo Ltd. it's the only lab in the UK left that prints 16mm apparently - everyone else just gets their film telecined and edits them digitally.

  8. For the dark scenes with the telescope like this one:

     

    5519932720_39f8746275_z.jpg

     

    I used a 300w fresnel on the actor's left, about 1.5 metres away (because of the tiny space we were in); a 150w pepper with a 3 stop ND gel on it right by the end of the telescope to pick out the metal; and another 150w pepper on the opposite side of the actor with the barn doors closed to a slit and with a 6 stop ND gel on handheld really close to his face to get the catchlight in his right eye.

     

    For the other angles, the setup stayed roughly the same.

  9. Best way to do it (with the lights that you currently have access to) is to get some bounce boards and bounce. Bounce the 300 on a bounce board rigged above the beside lamp and shoot it to wherever you want to expose most. However if you can afford spending some extra bucks, my favorite way to motivate lamps is to place a 150 watt china ball directly above the lamp - I think it's the best way to motivate it because it doesn't cast a shadow of the lamp and also it is soft and omnidirectional thus simulating the spread of the lamp. Also, I would use a bounce to simulate moonlight as well - maybe a showcard above the window or something and hit it with a 650 (or 2 of them) gelled with CTB. I would maybe have ceiling bounce from the 300 gelled with CTB and possibly scrimmed down to give a slight ambient fill for the room.

     

    So the moonlight will be exposed at key (50 IRE), the ceiling bounce will be exposed 1 or two stops under (20-30 IRE). If you are not doing moonlight maybe you can substitute the ctb for some kind of reddish orangish sodium vapor gel that is sold by lee or rosco. One of my petpeeves is when I see direct sodium vapor light shining directly from outside and into the house. I imagine if I were the owner of that house I would complain all day to the city saying how annoying it is for that streetlight to be aimed directly into my bedroom! Whereas the sodium vapor bounce simulates the streetlight bouncing off the ground or on the walls and the light eventually making its way through the bedroom window. Also would be a good idea to rent some flags to contain the light to a small important areas and leave some nice dark areas around the important areas.

     

    Okay thanks. I'm lighting the first scene in a few hours, so we'll see how it goes. Luckily I don't have to worry about the colour of the window light because we're using black and white stock.

  10. Please explain what you mean by dark bedroom and lit bedroom.

     

    By dark do you mean that there are no lamps turned on inside the room and the room is lit mostly by moonlight or streetlight?

     

    And by lit do you mean there are lamps turned on or do you mean that there is sun coming through the room.

     

    I want the 'dark' room to look as if lit entirely by the night-time light from the street outside. I was going to go for a really high contrast hard look but I'm not sure how to do this when I can't get access to the other side of the window (the location is on the 1st floor).

     

    And by 'lit' room I mean that it should look like it's lit just by the practicals in the room - a ceiling paper lantern and bedside lamp.

     

    Also I forgot to mention that we're shooting on 200ASA black and white 16mm on a Bolex with f/2.8 lenses.

  11. I'm going to be lighting my first short film next week and I'm not quite sure what to use in terms of diffusion and light modifiers. One scene is a dark bedroom with a character spying out of the window and another is a lit bedroom. I want the dark room to look, well, dark. I've got some Arri fresnals - 4 650s and 2 300s but no diffusion or anything. What would you recommend I do / use bearing in mind I don't have a lot of space to work with. Thanks.

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