Paul Salmons

Another option is to go with something like a Canon c-500. Crank that bad boy up to 2500iso with a pretty fast lens and you can still maintain a good image.

How does one go about doing this as a DP? Is it simply waiting for producers you have worked with to "come up" and they recommend you?

Be careful dropping colds scrims into hot fixtures (room temp is fine) but if your outside on a cold day and that cold scrim touches that hot lens it will instantly crack the lens.

I would mostly agree, in my eyes there is no harder job on set than pulling focus. With that said, finding an operator that can frame the way you like it can make or break a shoot for me. If my operator and I are not on the same page in terms of framing it slowly eats me up all day.

Usually it's the entire below the line crew. Director sometimes wears one (not usually) and the DP sometimes wears one.

Maybe consider getting a child's hand or a very small women's hand to move the pieces?

There's a great app you all may have heard of by Per Holmes called shot designer. It's a lot of extra work in preproduction but if I can get a director to jump on board with me to use it and we can plan all of our blocking and shots it usually leads to some of the best footage I have.

Red also has the option to overlay 2:40 frame lines and will carry the frame guides over in redcine x for preview or export. There is also an awesome plug in for premiere that will add different aspect ratio mattes across your timeline for when it comes time to edit.

I think these are all great suggestions but don't get to comfortable, it's easy to set your elbows down on something and forget that the idea of the camera on your shoulder is to not be completely steady.

If you do decide to pick up the strobes and just need some more basic soft light, maybe look into picking up a few china balls. Super cheap and look great at the cost of being hard to control the light. You can get them in all kinds of different wattages as well. I think the strobe modeling light is usually about the equivalent of a 75w bulb.

Doh, forgot the link, sorry about that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j76FNxsJlt8 It's called Berlin, a city symphony.

This might help you for some inspiration. It's Berlin, a film all about a city as the character.

This isn't across the board but a slight trend I have started noticing from first time or inexperienced directors is they hover around camera and get overly involved with camera. They tend to neglect their actors and want to spend a lot of time designing ground breaking camera movements. I love working on great moves and angles as much as the next guy but it drives me crazy when I get a short notice 30' curved dolly move that should really be on a stedi-cam and we are getting crap performance or no time for extra takes. The best directors for me are the ones that give me a very clear vision of what they want prior to the shoot day, the ones that send me still images and clips and have a very clear idea of what they want and listen to my feedback on how to make it happen. When I can collaborate is when I get the most of a production.

communicate.

There's a documentary on film vs digital you may enjoy called "side by side" which may help answer this question for you. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2014338/?ref_=sr_1 You can find it on netflix.