Satsuki Murashige

Get the shelves for sure. The tripod holder with baby plate is very useful too. I often mount a monitor with a vesa mount onto the pin. For corporates you'll probably be using the cart as a download station, so it's nice to have a place to put a monitor off to the side and still have room for the laptop, hard drives, and power supplies. The tripod holder thingees make nice coat hangers too! I haven't tried the 4 c-stand holder yet, but the 2 stand holders that clip to the side of the top shelf work fine. You're right though, they're expensive for what they are. I have a senior cart and I usually just throw the stands on the top shelf with the legs hanging down and throw sand bags on top. I can put on about 4 this way, two on each side of the handles. Then add the 2 stand holder, and you could handle 6. Alternately, I work with a gaffer who puts a bunch of turtle stands all broken down into a heavy padded canvas duffel bag and then straps it vertically to the cart between the handles. I think you'll have to use a mix of approaches. Now you're biggest problem is keeping people from putting their coffee cups on your cart (right next to your laptop).

7219 has a huge dynamic range, so it's actually very hard to make the shadows go black - it just seems to see far deeper into the shadows than most other stocks except perhaps the low-con 7229. If you were able to use a different stock that had more inherent contrast, you would make your life easier. That said, if you're getting a deal on the '19, then what you can do to get more contrast out of it is to light to a high f/stop. So instead of lighting to a f/2.8, you would light to an f/8 or so. By lighting to a higher stop and stopping down the lens (or using ND filters), you will be reducing the amount of exposure on the negative from the ambient light bouncing around the set. The result is that there will be less ambient fill light "polluting" your shadows, and your shadows will be blacker. Also, try overexposing generally (overrating the stock) by about 2/3 stop - this will help expose the smaller, slower grains on the negative between the larger, faster grains and result in a slightly less grainy image. Crush the blacks and clip the whites in the telecine to finish. Beyond that, you have to light it well! Think about how to create contrast, separation, and depth with lighting and lenses. Don't be afraid to under-light or light from above or from the back. Create silhouettes by lighting backgrounds and leaving the foreground dark. Remember that the shadows in your frame will seem darker by comparison when you have something bright in the same frame. I would look into renting lots of small fresnels and dedos (if you can afford them) to accent small parts of the frame, rather than soft lights like kinos and chimeras which will create a broad soft illumination. Maybe look into getting polecats and cardellini clamps or some other method of rigging small lights from above. *Just saw your question about overexposing the grey card - what this does is tell the colorist or film timer to darken the rest of the roll by the amount you overexposed the grey card by. If you overexpose it by 1 stop, they will make the rest of the roll darker by about the same amount. This doesn't get you more contrast, but only a darker overall image.

Anyone want to get together tomorrow? Maybe have a lunch on the lot or something?

So, who's going?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18675976@N03/...6346088/detail/ Dedos are good for eyelights, hard spotty top lights, bouncing into foamcore from a distance, use in softboxes, pretty much everything. They're nice because they have such a wide focus range (very wide to narrow), they produce a very even beam, they put out a ton of light per watt, and they're tiny, lightweight, and dimmable with multiple ways to power them (batteries, car inverter, AC power). Plus the globes are super cheap and they last forever. They're my desert island light as well.

Nope, it just allows manual exposure control. The camera is still only 30P.

What do you mean, you took apart the casing? Did you actually take apart the viewfinder assembly or just take off the camera door to clean the two optical surfaces inside the body? Maybe if you took apart the viewfinder, then the diopter could have slipped out alignment, I dunno... Otherwise, it could be as simple as resetting your diopter. I've never seen this issue with my Scoopic M, sorry.

Did anyone catch this tonight on TCM? I've been trying to find this film for 8 years or so. It did not disappoint. I love the new interviews that Bogdanovich did with Spielberg, Scorsese, etc. Spielberg's anecdote was especially choice. He talks about how when he was in high school he snuck onto the studio lot and was directed to Ford's office. Ford: (dressed as a big game hunter) I'll give you one minute. So you want to be a picture maker, eh? Spielberg: Yes sir, I want to direct movies, yes. F: What do you know about movies? S: Well, I've been making my own 8mm movies for years now, and I want to go to film school. F: What do you know about art? S: I, uh, uh ... F: (pointing to a Remington on his wall) See that painting there? What do you see? S: I see a cowboy, and he's being chased by a bunch of Indians- F: NO, NO, NO! Find the horizon! You know what that is, don't you? Where is it? S: (points)... F: NO, DON'T POINT! Look at the whole frame! Where is the horizon?! S: It's at the bottom of the frame. F: Yes, exactly. Now look at the next painting. S: It's at the very top of the frame. F: Right. When you can figure out why it would be better to put the horizon at the very top or bottom of the frame instead of right smack dab in the middle, then maybe you'll be a picture maker. Now, get out. Mr. Ford, I think he figured it out. Great stuff. :)

Also, wide angle lenses in 1.33:1 (4:3) generally give the impression of a wider perspective than in 1:85 or 2:40, where you're essentially cropping the top and bottom of the frame (at least in 35mm; I know you're shooting 16mm, where Super 16 will be wider). This can lead to all sorts of interesting compositions.

Well, I check it before every shoot, and if it's off then I recalibrate with a Siemens star chart. But I'm usually inside with no ND, shooting green screen with EX1 and EX3. I've been using the same bunch of cameras from the same rental house (VMI in Sunnyvale, CA), and they were always way off no matter how often I calibrated them. The producer I work for recently bought an EX3 and that camera gets used exclusively for interiors, and it seems to be a bit better. I don't see how doing a backfocus for each filter helps unless you can save each setting independently though. Each setting will be a little different because of the FFD shift. I was just planning on doing a new backfocus whenever we change filter settings.

Watch a lot of old 4:3 movies? Hitchcock, Ford, Welles, Eisenstein, Kurosawa, Ozu, etc.

I AC'd a corporate video for Intel last year where we shot 4:1 - it was for their interactive website and they wanted specific places where the graphics and buttons would go. Of course, we shot HD with monitor overlays and used digiprimes, but it would have been sweet to shoot anamorphic! Not a lot of out of focus areas in the frame with a 7mm digiprime...

Good idea. I suggest that you get the beefiest head you can afford, since you will at some point want to mount all kinds of accessories and maybe a huge lens like an Optimo someday soon. Also, I recommend that you pick up a matte box, a follow focus, and a baseplate/rod system. A zoom control would be good to have as well. If your camera has a video tap, an onboard LCD monitor is a good investment.

Well, Ryan's a pretty tall lanky dude, so... ;)

Jaime, where can you rent the doggicam rig in the bay area?

Looks great Richard, congrats! I really want to see that flare shot in full motion now. How did you get the flare to be magenta? Looks gorgeous...

Wasn't "Jules et Jim" shot on a Camflex? That was anamorphic.

Thanks for the link Jim, it explains a lot of the back focus issues I've been having with the EX1 and EX3. I've been using the FB adjust on these cameras for every shoot though, didn't even realize it was "hidden" maintenance menu option! I had to laugh when I saw the pics in the article though - I have EX1 test footage showing the exact same problem with the exact same Videofax backyard background. Maybe there's just something about their bushes that makes the lens go out of focus. :lol:

Nice, congrats on the purchase! I guess the question it, what will you be shooting for these personal projects? Narrative, doc, experimental, etc.? How much crew do you expect to have on these shoots? What's more important, fast lenses, big focal length range, reliable marks for your 1st AC? For commercial and 2nd unit jobs, I would think you'd be renting the best glass available. You're right, there's plenty of available glass up here for those purposes. For super-low budget personal projects though, I would possibly look into getting adapted still lenses for their small size, weight, and moderate cost, especially if you're going to be shooting by yourself with maybe one AC/loader and pulling your own focus. Luckily, there are a lot of companies coming out with relatively cheap 35mm glass for the Red market right now. Maybe you can make a trip down to Cinegear next week in LA and check out what's available. The Digital Cinema Society is having a seminar on the 6th where the manufacturers will be presenting their latest 35mm glass, I'm probably going to be there. Anyway, good luck and let us know how it goes. :)

Awesome, that's what I was looking for! Thanks a lot Tim, I'll check it out!

Well, the producers apparently did an 8K DI restoration of "Baraka" and made the Blu-Ray version from that (according to the "making of" doc on the same disc), so I'm sure they retimed the film during the process to their original intentions, which explains the difference in look. BTW, I love my "Baraka" Blu-Ray disc! The "making of" doc is great, which is kinda unusual for BR. Usually the special features are lame EPK, which makes no sense to me. If you're the type of consumer that cares about high technical standards enough to actually invest in an HD display and Blu-Ray player (not to mention the more expensive discs), doesn't it also seem likely that you'd be more interested in detailed BTS and film tech docs than the average "I just wanna watch the movie" bloke? Just sayin'.

I've done this before almost exactly as David described: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18675976@N03/...3365912/detail/ I've added a still I took under real movie theater lighting as a comparison. You can see there's no backlight from the projector. However, I find if you have a lot of empty seats, then it works if you edge light the seats for separation. It's motivated by the projector light and is a bit of a cheat, but it looks great. For the wider shot, I had two edges in a back cross configuration and for the tighter shot I only needed one. My key was an Image 80 with daylight tubes, pushing thru a hanging curtain of bleached muslin. For the wider shots, we dropped the muslin as it was sucking up too much light. We had two grips slowly waving pillows in front of the light to create the flicker effect. The edge lights were Source 4 pars (tungsten) with 1/2 CTB. The camera was white balanced to 5000K. The "projector" gag light was a Ellipsoidal spot on a dimmer. We tried creating flicker with handmade shutters and flags but it was too strong of an effect. What helped sell the effect was to let the electrician riding the dimmer set the pace of the effect and have the grips try to match it, so when the 'soidal dimmed down or flickered faster, the grips would try to match it. The final touch was to have kino tubes on floor against the back wall for uplight and separation. It was supposed to be motivated by safety strip lights. I over lit those though, should have kept it darker.

Hey there, Baby Legs! I think it would depend on the light source and the angle it comes from. A large soft source at the right angle would reflect off the whole filament while a hard source at an acute angle may not. I guess if you wanted the reflection to taper off at a specific point you could darken part of the filament with colored markers or sharpies.

Do a search for forum member Tom Lowe - he does this kind of work and has posted a bunch on the subject.

Oh, hehe. Well I'm glad you're busy now. Just had my two busiest weeks of the year so far myself, hope it keeps up.