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Travis Gray

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Everything posted by Travis Gray

  1. Thread seems to have gotten off kilter a bit, but, just on that point... she also said stakes are higher. And also, the work is different. It's less grunt work maybe, but the pre-planning, experience, etc etc that goes into it.... c'mon. You know that. Just because someone carries more stuff than someone else doesn't mean they're necessarily working "harder". But, to the original post... Keep shooting. If the camera only does 16fps, find out how to make that work for you. Shoot stuff on a smart phone (I just learned you can lock exposure on the iPhone!). Do what you can with what you have. Meet people who want to write and direct or people who need video work. Shoot for a lesser amount just to build a portfolio. Build connections. When I first moved to Boston, I knew no one, but a few years later, I've kept pretty busy. And it really all stemmed from meeting a few key people, and not necessarily looking for work, but building good relationships. Oh, you're also in a band? Need any video work? Perfect. Oh, you also know other people in bands (which they usually do)? Do they need video work? Oh, your wife is doing non-profit work with someone else and they need a promotional video done? Oh, that other woman in that video is an actress and is part of a 48 Hour Film project team? Oh, the other team members want to do other film work? You can meet a lot of people, and maybe nothing will pan out, but if you get that ooonnnne right person, everything can fall into place. And funny thing is, that first person I met who I talked about doing a music video with...? We still haven't shot it. And I actually started out in the sound recording side of things, but in college fell in with the TV/film people, since I knew they needed audio people, and then started doing more camera work. Then a friend was starting a wedding video business and knew I knew what I was doing with cameras, asked if I could help. And then when I moved to Boston, I did some weddings because I knew the business and knew I could make at least some money doing that. And then made connections that way. It's a little of a long process, but you keep at it and things will come. Shoot stuff on your own in the mean time. Play with lighting. Learn the camera. Learn how to edit well. In the beginning it helps to be a jack of all trades.
  2. I kinda get what he's going for, like with a laser, since there's no spread, or very little spread (again, lasers, I don't know), but even with a focused light, say something like a Source 4, that light still spreads from the lens to the target. So it's still going to follow the inverse square law. It's just more intense closer to the light because of its focus, so, that means it'll be more intense than an unfocused light throughout the path. So if you have 100 lux with a focused light 10ft out, it'll be 25 lux 20ft out. If you have 50 llux with an unfocused light 10ft out, it'll be 12.5 lux 20ft out. At least that's how I always understood it. And calculations always back that up.
  3. Yeah. It's just with a focused light, you're concentrating it into one spot, so at the same distance as an unfocused light, it looks more intense because you're focusing more of the light into a spot. But it will still follow the same falloff rate as any other light. Which, that sounds super repetitive. I won't comment on lasers. I don't get that stuff. It's the devil's technology.
  4. I was trying to make a funny there. Only because all of these posts do seem to be somehow promoting your film. Or dropping that you worked on the film just to get into arguments with someone. It just doesn't seem all that helpful. But maybe that's just me.
  5. Sorry, what's Against the Wild? I haven't heard of that one before.
  6. Get a tub/bucket/etc to put the camera in and glass over the top of it, and then have the talent stand on something to get the height correct. May throw off the surrounding scene, but, you can avoid the whole hole thing.
  7. This is a good basic article too. Talks about the technical stuff and how it relates to story. http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2013/05/how-lenses-assist-in-storytelling/
  8. You use different lenses for the story based on how the lens works, more or less. It's part technical, part instinctual. Look at how a wide lens makes a scene look versus a longer lens covering the same space. It will change spatial relationships. Also it affects depth of field. Once you understand the technical aspects of lenses and lens-sensor/film relationship, then the "all about the story" answer will make more sense.
  9. Did I do this right? http://www.amazon.com/Against-Wild-Brodies-Kat-Martin-ebook/dp/B00GYLVSJQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1395851238&sr=8-2&keywords=against+the+wild
  10. I could never quite figure out what the issue was. I tried starting the sequence from scratch and sending it over and had the same issue. I just started getting frustrated, quit Color, opened it back up, and it was fine. Everything was back to normal. Normal rendering speed, clips weren't black. Weirdest friggin thing.
  11. Strange problem I'm having. Maybe someone has seen this before and/or has some insight. I'm working on a shoot and did all the editing in FCP, then did my usual routine and sent to Apple Color from FCP. Loads into Color no problem, I do my grade, everything looks good. The render took waaaaaayyyy longer than I thought it should have for a 5 minute clip. But, figured maybe system resources were low or something. Roundtripped to FCP, and everything was black. Dug into the render files in the Color folder in Finder and all the files were black as well. All codecs are the same, settings, etc, as the stuff in FCP and I double checked other projects I've done successfully and all settings match. So I tried popping over a previous project into Color, same method, and just did a quick 4 second clip to check. When I popped that over into Color, nothing even shows up on the viewer. Scopes show everything as black. The clip in the timeline has a thumbnail on it, but not getting anything. I didn't even try to render anything because I just figured it would come back black, but, I've also never seen this happen before, so figured I need to fix something anyway. Is this something I can fix easily in settings somewhere? Or, should I just uninstall/reinstall everything. One weird thing that I did do differently maybe, was I had some graphic slates that we were using for titles, and they were rendering pixelated, so I read up and saw the animation codec is supposed to work better. I duplicated that sequence and tried it and confirmed, but this was not the sequence I sent over to Color. I didn't want to mess with anything just yet. So the Animation codec was only applied to a separate sequence. Could this have changed something in a global FCP setting somewhere? The settings for the sequence in FCP all read ProRes 422, 1080, etc, as well as Color settings. Very confusing and frustrating.
  12. That makes a lot of sense. I'm wondering if the hair person is saying she wasn't comfortable with the situation only after the situation. Like, the day of the shoot, it was a non-thought. If I'm a lower hierarchy person on a shoot, I'm probably going to assume the higher ups have cleared everything. It's not a small time student production, there's a reasonable expectation of organization. This is where the director, DP, etc should've been more aware of the situation and been looking out for the safety of the crew. Department heads have a duty to their crew as well. They should've verified and confirmed and double checked all of the train schedules, etc. Hopefully the entire industry actually learns from this.
  13. I hate to say it, but, so many people are at fault here. The director, producers, the crew even, let's say the industry? The director couldn't think "hey is this shot going to be safe?", the producer couldn't've cleared it? The crew, who is admitting they didn't think it felt safe in general couldn't've said "hey I don't feel safe doing this"? It doesn't help that there's so few work and limited budgets, etc that the crew probably felt that they needed to do anything just to keep their jobs. Sad story all around.
  14. There is the tip jar and rental payment things on Vimeo now... I haven't used them yet, but I feel like that's a step in the right direction. iTunes selling is obnoxious. You basically have to have a good distribution history already to be able to sell on there, and maybe with stuff like Crackle and the other companies that are out there putting out content, maybe someone can put together an indie channel that people can submit to. Give them content, give the producer a little %...
  15. This was all taking me forever to read so I skipped a lot, but, has anyone brought up paintings or photography? Photographers put their work up on sites for free. You can google image search most paintings. Is that piracy? People still go to pay to see things in a gallery, to have it hanging on their wall, just like I'll still pay for a DVD/BluRay because I like it in a collection that I don't have to wonder if it'll disappear from netflix, and maybe have some extra features that I'll never watch. Otherwise I have Netflix, which, hopefully that system can continue to be viable. And people get paid properly from it. I don't advocate piracy really, I maybe grabbed a couple movies years ago, but in all honesty, it's a pain to watch a movie at my computer. And I'm too lazy to convert it a hundred times from whatever nonsense form it is online just so I can pop it onto my Apple TV or put it on a USB drive or can my bluray player even do that? I can't be bothered. Basically, people will still pay for a theatre experience, at least the people the markets should be going after. And, maybe this will incentivize producers to actually think about what they're making instead of making 100 Spiderman reboots.
  16. Can you work up a colored slate (maybe with some trackers on it for help in post) that will cast the color you want?
  17. You're voice in this is coming off a little standoffish, but that aside... I hate the phrase "event cinematography". You really can't do a ton at events. I've shot events before, and you're pretty limited. You could bring in a ton of gear and light it, but is it worth it? I shot most things alone because if I was going for a real/documentary/unobstrusive style, more people would've been more hassle. So it was just me, following the action. My camera could handle low light stuff, but still had a lot of noise in some situations where the event planner thought it would be a good idea to light a room with two 60w bulbs. It is what it is. You'd be surprised to find too, that most clients don't actually notice. I had one even that I shot that was the graniest I've ever had, and my little DSLR B-cam was even worse. It looked terrible. Client never said anything. Either they get it or they don't notice. If someone does say they want a clean image, you have to tell them there are trade-offs. If it's something like a wedding, get in contact with the planners/decorators and advise on lighting setups. Because it's also not just about quantity if you're doing real cinematography, but shape it how will look best. You could always go with an on-board light, but that's a different style that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't for what/how you're shooting. There's no easy answer to this. Learn lighting, learn how you want to shoot, and work with clients. Rent, or if you know you're going to be using them a lot, buy. But rent first to figure stuff out. Find what works for you, for your clients, etc.
  18. Am I ridiculous in wanting to suggest Apple Color? If you can get a copy of the old one obviously. I've been using it for a while and I'd sooner roundtrip stuff there instead of doing any timeline work. Can take in XML/EDLs and export the same, so... maybe that'll work for you?
  19. Don't knock it. I bought a conversion kit for a maglite yeeeeaarrrsss ago. Brighter than the regular flavor and I don't remember ever swapping batteries or the lights themselves. Can't speak to Maglite's version of the LED stuff, but, for something like that, I'd go LED. Unless it's an onscreen prop/practical... then yeah... no LED.
  20. a) you're going to get dinged on not having your real name up there b ) keep working at it. Figure out what issues you were having (say, white balance) and read more about how to fix it. Learn what lights have certain color temperatures associated with them. Learn what those look like to the naked eye and you can start identifying the differences. I shoot mainly two white balances, 3200 and 5600. I know what lights are each and then if I have mixed lights, gel what I need to correct to the color I want. As far as shadows and lighting... learn what affects shadow quality. It was a hard shadow? Learn what makes hard shadows. Need it softer? Learn what makes for a softer shadow and adjust accordingly. It'll come. You just need to keep doing. Read up, and then practice, practice, practice, practice. How long before you become a pro though? Depends on how you define it. I've gotten paid for gigs before when I wouldn't consider myself a pro, but, I got paid for it, so, that's part of a definition of professional. Don't look at it as being a pro, look to be proud of your work. Mainly, identify what problems you had on set, and then work to correct those. Always learn from that last shoot. Because there will be many more.
  21. Practical question: In Final Cut 7, is there an option to desqueeze and actually get the right resolution? I think I tried looking one day to set up a sequence like that but couldn't find a setting for it, and I think manually putting in the resolution didn't work right. Maybe I did something wrong, it had been a while, but is this possible? Seems pointless to do anamorphic if you end up with 1920x1280 anyway (well, besides the lens resolution). But, right? Or am I wrong in this thinking. Is there another NLE that can handle that?
  22. Yeah, but it's for a GoPro. haha Wondering if I could change my shooting format for everything now....
  23. Demo footage if anyone is curious. Not much on YouTube, and "letus" turns up results with lettuce in it. Was wondering what it would look like with the already wide lens distortion. Not horrible.
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