Satsuki Murashige

Damn, just saw your post Brad! That would have been a lot of fun... Next time, I guess. :)

Naturally, I prefer to work for calm, easy-going DP's as well. On the other hand, I worked for one DP who was so laid back that she could never seem to make a decision and slowed the whole production down to a standstill. The camera trainee and I (2nd AC) spent our down time making a matchstick diorama of the Nativity scene out of shish kabob sticks during one 6 hour (!) lighting setup, a relatively simple day interior which only ended up using two HMIs. The 1st AC ended up running the set after the 1st AD disappeared just so he could go home at a reasonable time, which never happened. Then the DP would leave the set early to do some personal errands, leaving the rest us to finish up and wrap. I never want to work for a DP like that again. What I appreciate in a DP: a basic respect for their crew as human beings, seriousness about their work, a sense of humor about less-than-ideal situations, leadership and discipline when needed, the willingness to share knowledge and experience, the wisdom to understand my shortcomings and to know when to work around them and when to just let me work, and the ability to let it all go at the end of the shoot. I've also noticed that many good DP's can attenuate their focus on the work at hand - they are deadly serious when shooting and then extremely relaxed while waiting around, bouncing back and forth in the blink of an eye.

Wow, super fast reply! Thanks a lot, Stephen. Can't wait to see the final product.

Really nice work Stephen, thanks for sharing the stills. As always, very bold choices with the color palette. Is the globe in the fluorescent practical in pic #3 just a daylight tube or gelled tungsten? Also, could you tell us a bit about pulling focus with the EX-1, specifically did you're ACs have any problems with the manual focus ring? Were you able to get the kind of DoF you wanted out the 1/2" chip? Also, it looks like you were trying to get the look completely in camera, but given that you shot in cine gamma mode, are you planning on doing specific color grading to the images beyond just matching shots? Thanks! * One more question: when you bounced that gelled parcan near the actress's feet, what effect did that have? I can't really see any uplight in her close-up so I guess it was just some slight fill light?

+1 for behind. Although I also prefer to sit next to the colorist. :)

Michael, I've noticed when I've used the 1030 head that even with the pan and tilt drag turned to "0", the head never seems to be fully loose. Makes me kinda nervous when I pack the sticks away for transport back to the rental house. Is this just the way the head is designed or do I have to loosen the counterbalance all the way as well?

Yes, but I'd underexpose by two stops if I was taking a reading this way. The reason is that a caucasian face will be a Zone 6 exposed at key. Take a look at the figure in the pic you posted, he's quite dark. If that figure's face was exposed at key, the road would be way over exposed. So I'd tend to err on the side of underexposure with reversal. You might go with 1 1/2 stops under, just to be safe. Or if you're really not sure, try bracketing your exposures (-1, -1.5, -2). Well, with only four stops of dynamic range don't assume that you can hold detail at N-2 and N+2. It might just as well be N-3 and N+1 or somewhere in between. You have to test it to be sure. Reversal does tend to lose detail in the highlights faster than in the shadows.

The Sachtler Video 18 head will be fine with the Aaton, as long as you're not putting on a huge 35mm zoom lens. 16mm zooms and primes should be fine. O'Connor 1030 would be good also, but expensive. Never used a Libec, so can't comment.

Well, all I can say is I was extremely surprised too especially since we didn't have a problem with the camera in prep. I would think it was a maintenance issue, but it could be an indication that the 416 is not the most robust camera out there. Still, I really enjoyed working with it. And you're right, the higher position of the 416 viewfinder allows the camera to accept most if not all PL mount lenses. It will certainly fit the Master Primes, which could not fit on the SR cameras.

In my experience, the 416 is very easy to load and great for handheld. The magazine threading pattern is very similar to the Aaton XTR Prod mags, relatively simple coaxial design. There's no threading necessary in the camera body just like the Aaton and Arri SR cameras - they just slap into the body and you're ready to go. The 416's viewfinder is the best part of the camera - it's very clear and bright. You can also remove the top handle with three screws which makes the camera extremely low-profile. There's no high speed model of the 416, it only goes to 75fps. It does have a manually adjustable shutter. Never had any problems with scratched film - of course we scratch tested the mags at prep. The one problem I had with the camera I got was that it was consistently noisy - we tried the pitch adjust, changing the loop size, cleaning the mags and body, nothing worked. This did not happen at the camera prep but only started when we got on location. Unfortunately, we were 300 miles from the rental house and couldn't get a replacement body. However, the footage turned out fine so I guess the camera could have just needed some time to "break in", dunno. We rented from Otto Nemenz.

To my eye, the road looks like it's about 1 stop below middle gray. If you have a spot meter, take a reading of the dirt road and then stop down one stop. With an incident meter, I'd meter as if for a face, shading the top of the dome, and stop down two. Since you'll be working with reversal film, you'll want to nail your exposure right on - if you were shooting negative, I'd recommend overexposing by a stop to make sure the sky blows out, then printing down later. Luckily, reversal has very little latitude in the highlights, so you might have a blown out sky even with underexposing a stop overall. Ideally, you'd read the sky with a spot meter to make sure. Try to shoot the scene when the overcast sky is brightest obviously. The red filter will lighten objects in your frame that have some red color in them (like skin tones) and simultaneously darken objects that are predominantly blue or green (like the sky or foliage). So in this case, unless the dirt road has a lot of red in it, the red filter won't have any effect on it. It may darken the trees in the background, and if any blue sky peeks through the overcast it will turn dark gray (which is the opposite of what you say you want). You might instead try a blue filter to lighten the sky as much as possible while holding back the road and the trees. Generally, yellow, orange, and red filters are used to darken a blue sky. Don't forget that each filter loses a certain amount of light which you must compensate for. The Kodak website or the ASC manual should have specifics for each filter. Another filter which you might consider using is a hard edge ND grad filter. Normally these are used to darken a sky while keeping the foreground properly exposed, but you could mount it upside down in the mattebox to darken the ground and blow out the sky. A hard edge filter has a sharper dividing line between ND and clear portions of the filter, while a soft edge filter will have a more feathered edge. An attenuator will have a very gradual shift from ND to clear. Grads usually come in sets just like regular ND's - ND.3, .6, .9, etc.

There are video techs who like to throw up a Macbeth chart after white balancing the camera, just to check that the colors line up properly. They generally won't roll any tape on it though.

Jaime, I emailed you. Pete, what's your email? PM me if you'd rather not post it here. Jon, I'm not familiar with the Cinematheque but what I was envisioning was a small band of filmmakers who would get together two to four times a month to plan, make, and screen collaborative experimental film projects. We would also show our own personal work as well, but the main focus of the society would be to retrain ourselves as young filmmakers (in the complete sense) by following the history of cinema and the great masters of the art form. I'd like to begin with silent cinema and understand more about montage, pantomime, physical comedy, story construction, b&w cinematography, etc. I'd also like to look at early documentaries and their relation to narrative filmmaking in terms of form - often, documentaries were more adventurous than narratives in their methods and paved the way for new filming techniques. Basically, I feel that our creativity and joy that initially drew us to film in the first place is in danger of being corrupted by the nature of the industry that we work in. I've spoken to a lot of older guys on set recently and almost all of them seem jaded and not creatively fulfilled - I see worker bees and not artists for the most part, and that scares me because I also have felt my creative urge wane since I started working regularly in film. I still enjoy what I do, but I've come to realize that I want a greater creative outlet in my life. So the impetus for this project was partly thinking back to what I loved most about film school and what I would have changed - I loved a lot of my beginning production, editing, and cinematography classes where we shot Super8 or 16mm and watched our footage projected on a big screen in a dark room; I loved seeing 10-20 different interpretations of the same lighting assignment; I loved planning, blocking, directing, and shooting those assignments wherein I feel I've done some of my best work when I barely knew what I was doing; I loved watching classic films, especially the silents, and reading how and why they were done that way; I loved getting to work on the school's soundstage, learning new equipment, and getting to experiment with lighting everyone's directing projects. I loved the comraderie of being among a group of filmmaking peers and not being pigeonholed as the DP, gaffer, AC, grip, etc. I want to get back to that kind of innocence and create an environment where we can all grow as artists. The other impetus was a great book I picked up recently called "Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age", a collection of transcripted interviews done at the AFI by George Stevens, Jr. Hearing how movies were made by the likes of Harold Lloyd, King Vidor, Frank Capra, Rouben Mamoulian, and many, many others, I came to realize that Hollywood's 1st generation had an incredible amount of freedom to play with the medium of film, especially in the silent era. They also made hundreds of short films and dozens of features, meaning that much of their wisdom and knowledge came from practice rather than theory, and that the theories they did develop proved their worth through years of trial and error. I'd love to put together a list of some of their quotes and theories and devise some projects to test their theories out. Anyway, money is always an issue but I think if we get really serious about this we could apply for non-profit status and start writing grant proposals. We should have a quota of a certain number of projects to be completed in a year's time and all that. We should also make sure that the ultimate goal of the projects is to have them screened for a general audience. I know what I'm proposing is ambitious and will probably take several years to reach this stage, but I think it'd be a great program with lasting potential for change as well as an excellent platform for our own work as individual artists. Let me know what you think. :)

Hey Jaime, I haven't had any experience with the RED yet. There was a guy on the forum who was going to do a RED demo at the Academy a while back, but I never heard anything further from him. I know at least one RED owner/operator, don't think he's taken delivery yet though. How'd you manage to get to spend a week at RED and learn all that stuff? That's pretty sweet. Work-wise, I just finished a 3 day AC gig on an American Eagle commercial a few hours ago. Other than that, work has been pretty nonexistent for me this month, so I've been trying to get things going on the creative front. I want to get a film society started where we would make collaborative film experiments like city symphonies, poetry films, etc. We'll see how that goes, send me an email if you guys are interested in joining.

Did you do a search of the forum first? This thread may help you out: http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=29649

Hey guys, Thought this was pretty great: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2253654/7101180&cache=1

Were you looking at a workprint or a telecine from the negative? I've noticed in a lot of student projects that have shot Fuji that their timed workprints consistently tend to look overly green or magenta. I believe the problem might be that most US labs are only used to printing Kodak and that some extra care needs to be taken in printing Fuji stock onto Kodak print stock. Maybe the printer lights need to be retrimmed for Fuji, I don't know. But in my own tests with the Vivid stock in 16mm, I overexposed by 2/3 stop, processed and printed at Fotokem onto Kodak print stock, I was also very unhappy with the results. The gray card at the head of the roll was quite green, and overall found the stock to be very grainy compared to 7217. I've never had a timed gray card printed that far from neutral with Kodak neg at any lab, Fotokem or otherwise. I've been wary of shooting Fuji stock every since, though I realize there's nothing wrong with the stock itself. I guess if you were doing a telecine from the negative, then this wouldn't be an issue. Jaime, I'm glad to hear your footage turned out great - I'd love to see some eventually. How did the Vivid intercut with the Kodak low-con Expression? I realize they were never used in the same scene, but I'm still curious if there was a significant shift in look from scene to scene.

Why not? Is it simply because you have no budget or are there "rules" that say you can't use them for whatever reason? I would think that the easiest way to get the shot would be to have the operator pick up the objects and manipulate them himself, but that's going to be tough if he has to balance the full weight of a heavy camera on his shoulder at the same time. If he could use something like an easy rig that removes some or all of the weight of the camera from the shoulder, that would be ideal. A really cheap rig you can use is to attach a monopod to the camera and stick the end of it into an open fanny pack around your waist to take some of the camera's weight. One DP I work with does this with an F900 and it seems to work okay. If you can't afford to rent a wider lens, then how about using a wide angle adapter or converter on the lens that you do have? Depending on the diameter of the 50mm, you might be able to get away with a cheap one made for DV cameras. Just be aware that converters require the taking lens to macro focus in order to work.

Actually, there was nothing wrong with the footage. Client: "The sound is choppy." Me: "The sound is fine. The editor's system just doesn't have enough RAM. He also captured the footage with the wrong settings." Client: "The lighting is too dark." Me: "It hasn't been color corrected yet. And it's supposed to be night. But I'll color correct it for you for free." Client: "You didn't shoot enough close ups." Me: "I asked you specifically on set if you wanted me to shoot these, even going over the director's head once to do so. You said you didn't need them. But I'll shoot an insert for you for free." Meh.

Not mention, if you did as Max suggested, you'd probably just get a frantic phone call from the agency saying you'd screwed up their shoot - I know, it just happened to me for the first time a few days ago. :angry:

Or you could just stand at 90 degrees to the action with a remote FF... Though this makes some DPs nervous, sometimes they start shouting your name to find out where you are right before a take! :P

Hi David, Think I caught your commercial a couple of nights ago on late night tv. It's the one with the smoked day interior at the end and shafts of light coming from the window, right? I thought it looked great. I thought I noticed a slight yellow-green color cast to that scene - was that something you were going for or was that some more creative timing by the agency/client?

No, the term "depth of focus" refers to the image projected behind the lens (ie. at the focal plane), where the plane of focus becomes increasingly critical at wider focal lengths. As the depth of field increases in front of the lens, the depth of focus behind the lens decreases - they are inversely proportional. Therefore, wide angle lenses require stricter tolerances for collimation than do telephoto lenses. Now that I think about it, this is probably one reason why back focus on a video lens is adjusted mainly at the wide end of the zoom, it's the inverse of how you'd focus on a subject in front of the lens. Hmm, back to the books! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_focus

I haven't used a Bolex in a few years, but I was taught in film school that the light loss from the prism was approximately 1/2 stop. If your light meter could only assume a 180 degree shutter, then the Bolex's 130 degree shutter would be another 1/2 stop loss, for a total light loss of 1 stop. This made exposures fairly easy to calculate - meter at 24 fps assuming a 180 degree shutter (1/48 sec) and then open up one stop (or just meter at 1/96 sec and expose at that stop). My exposures with this method were always solid, generally printing around the high twenties-low thirties. So it probably is overcompensating a bit, but with negative stock it's better to err on the side of overexposure anyway. Just my 2 centavos.

Sure, happy to help. Do all the tests yourself before taking it to the tech and tell him or her your results. This will give the tech a good head start on what the camera's problems might be, so they generally appreciate this. You should also have the tech check the camera's registration (that the images are steady from frame to frame) and that the focusing screen with the frame lines is properly aligned. Bolexes that have been abused often have their frame lines out of whack so you can't really tell where the edges of your frame are when you look through the viewfinder. Anyway, good luck!