Bradley Stearn

The opening shot of Place Beyond the Pines is one of my personal favourites. Heres a fun video with Sean Bobbitt discussing that shot:

What a great thread! Thanks for sharing the great information.

Hi all. I have a couple of questions regarding super 8mm shooting. I've been shooting Super 8 for a few years now, haven't used it much, but have gone through a few rolls of film in my spare time. I've been reading about colour temperatures, and have slightly confused myself. I read somewhere that all Kodak film is tungsten balanced, and that by putting a cartridge of 50D into my super 8 camera for example, is engaging the 85A Warming filter. By putting 500T into my camera it disengages the filter, unless I chose to override it for shooting in daylight with tungsten stock. Is it the other way round? It makes more sense that the filter is only engaged automatically when placing a Tungsten stock in the camera. I'm sure its different for all camera manufacturers, but if anyone has an input for my specific Canon 318m camera that would be great. A separate question. I'm planning to shoot a short film on Kodak Tri-X B/W Reversal stock in the coming months. What coloured filters are recommended for shooting Tri-X in daylight, and interior fluorescent or tungsten environments? Mainly for maintaining contrast levels etc..

Just a quick question. I'm shooting a short film in a couple of weeks time, one of the scenes is a house party scene. It's a gritty drug party scene, I want to go for a old fluorescent look. At the moment I plan to light it with a few 4' daylight kino tubes rigged to the ceiling, with a layer of light diffusion and skirted to keep the light off the walls. I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for any lighting gels that would enhance the grittiness of the fluorescent lights? At the moment I'm thinking 1/4 or 1/2 +green.

I'm focus pulling on a short film this week. We are shooting on the Alexa Mini with 2x Kowa Anamorphic lenses. I've worked with anamorphic on a fair few jobs in the past, however I haven't always had the luxury of a prep day. On this short film I have an evening of prep before principle photography begins. I was wondering if I could get some advice on the kind of things I should prep/look out for when shooting on vintage anamorphics? I'll do the obvious and check the accuracy of focal distances to start with. As far as i'm aware each lens will cast a slightly different colour tint onto the image, how can I test this and compensate during shooting? We are also going to be using diopters for a few close-up shots in the short film. Any advice on pulling with diopters in front of the lens? Is there an algorithm that can be used to figure out focal distances for different diopter levels? Or is it recommended that I just rely on a monitor for these shots?

I'm looking to swap out an old Stanley run bag I've been using for a few years with an open top tool bag. I was wondering what suggestions people had? There are loads of brands that sell the open top bag style. Ideally looking for something with internal dividers, or would it be recommended that I just make them myself to fit my needs?

We had one 85mm improv take, the artist didn't know we where on a tight lens so kept moving into close-focus. We had been doing some close-focus shots with him on the 18mm the take before haha.

For about 2 hours on the first morning the shots where rehearsed, after that it was pretty much improv for two days. 80% on a 18mm lens at T4, getting no closer than 4ft. So wasn't too much of a challenge. Just eyeballed it most of the time. Had some 32mm shots that where slightly more challenging, but all in it went well. Cinetape would have come in handy, I'm definitely going to try and get one for the next job like this.

Haha 200mm stills lens! Luckily it's superspeeds on an amira, 18mm being our widest, 85mm being the tightest. Although I have visions of 85mm t1.3, 15ft to close focus into a dancer doing improv.

I've got a couple of focus pulling jobs this weekend, both of them new kinds of focus pulling for me. Not that my job will be much different than usual, just want to hear any stories from any similar shoots/experiences you guys may have. This weekends job involves a jimmy jib setup for a music promo. My guess is that there will be a lot of improv, no rehearsals, like majority of music promos I suppose. I'll be pulling wirelessly of course, so can stand by the side of the jib and attempt to judge distance as much as possible. I'll probably request a wireless system for my TV logic, although I do usually prefer going more off marks and measurements. I was wondering if anyone had any tips or tricks in regards to pulling focus with jib movements? I'm aware it's going to be similar to judging distance for steadicam, not drastically different in terms of technique, but anything that might make my life easier would be great. The DOP has told me he usually shoots T5.6 for studio music promo work, so that's a pretty good comfort blanket for me.

We struggled with exterior exposure quite a lot for our day shots. We tried placing ND gel on the rear window, which ended up being a more difficult task than expected. We had the cut the gel into strips, and then it just looked horrible in the back of the shot, so decided to lost it completely. Which meant when the rain or clouds went, and we actually had sunshine, background exposure was a problem. Or even when it was cloudy, we seemed to have more silver and white transit vans driving behind us than usual, I literally couldn't control the light reflecting off the background vehicles! Any tips for applying ND or rosco scrim to the windows?

x2 Miniburst LEDs either side of camera for fill light

Aladin 1x1 flexible light panel -

Guillaume we also made us of smaller LED units made by Aladin. The 1x1 flexi panel was used for almost every setup, daylight and tungsten. Had so much control being able to dim it as well. I also used the Aladin eye lite for the night scenes to emulate dashboard light on the driver. I enjoyed using smaller LED units inside the car, I felt like I had a lot of control over each setup. We also used a towing system that turned our picture car into a trailer of sorts, so our cast didnt have to worry about driving at all. It worked really well!

Great writeup Guy, appreciate that a lot! Guillaume, we shot the film before you posted your response, now looking back at the rushes there is a green tint a lot of the time. I never noticed this looking at my monitor during shooting. I've boosted the green saturation in lightroom and the highlights on our actors faces go crazy! I will address this issue when I meet up with my grader. It doesn't ruin my shots, but I'd still like to control whats going on with the green tinting.