Satsuki Murashige

So then are you reconciled to being an "assistant storyteller" of sorts (as Conrad Hall put it, I think), or do you think you might ever (re)turn to directing films if you don't find the right projects out there? (Of course, I understand the need to work just pay the bills). I for one would be interested to see what you'd do.

Great compositions! The CU of the eye reminds me of the opening sequence of "Seconds." My favorite one is the wristwatch/freeway insert -- I can imagine it just as you described, very cool. I like the red filter used in the last shot as well. It's clear to me that your visual sense was formed fairly early in your filmmaking career -- what do you make of the idea that the breadth of our filmmaking talent is established within a few short years after first picking up a camera, and that all the work that comes after is merely a refinement of that talent? Do you feel that applies to your career?

That'll be a first! There's the Panaflex Gold and the Panaflex Platinum -- they're two different models. The Platinum is newer. :) Congratulations on the gig, sounds awesome.

Beautiful work! I think you've showed a nice mix of styles and looks - I especially like the lighting in the wide shot of the girl sitting at the desk. The first two shots on the reel have an extreme flickering that looks rather unprofessional compared to the rest of your work (could just be my computer though). I also wouldn't mind seeing some kind of titles to differentiate footage from separate projects. I can tell that you're very good at handheld work, but I'd like to see more static, composed wide shots (like the girl at the desk). Overall though, I'm really impressed and I can only hope that my reel looks that good someday. :) Hope this helps.

I shot a low-budget short back in December on which we were supposed to have catering. A few days before the shoot, I heard from the producer that the caterer had discovered his wife in bed with another man and that there would be no catering after all, since the guy was too emotionally distraught to work. So that's my sole experience with catering. I guess I've been very lucky so far, but on most of the low-budget projects I've worked on, the food has been pretty good. On the one feature I've worked on, the director's wife cooked dinner for the crew every night (it was a small, mostly unpaid crew), with vegetarian dishes. And we only worked 10 hour days, so I guess it's all downhill from here.

Have you tried the Reel Directory? http://www.reeldirectory.com/listings/

Jeezly crow, you were up late David! Sorry, here's the proper link -- it's the same one that the production stills were from. http://new.photos.yahoo.com/satsmura@sbcglobal.net If you click on the "Power of One frame grabs" Album on the left side of the page, you can isolate the frame grabs from the production stills, since some of them are similar. On a side note, I was surprised at how noisy the images were since we were shooting at a gain level of -3dB. Perhaps it was the underexposure, though none of the images have been corrected or "printed up." Hi Jonathan, I'm with you on the taxi! I've been taking so many of those to school this past semester just so I can get to class on time that I've ridden with the same dude twice, totally at random. The problem with building the set the previous day is that A Crew has to shoot their scene from 1pm-4pm, while we shoot from 4pm-7pm, so unless the set is exactly the same it can't happen. But yeah, that'd be really nice. :)

Okay, here's a link to the frame grabs as promised. http://new.photos.yahoo.com/satsmura@sbcgl...460762395618992 There are a few more shots, but they're not different enough to put up. I apologize for the incorrect aspect ratio -- they should be 0.9 rectangular NTSC pixels and not square pixels, so they look a bit stretched. These are just straight frame grabs with no color correction, so a few of them could still be tweaked, but in general I was very happy with how they came out. As you may remember reading, I used a black net on the back of the lens, and in retrospect I think it was a bit too much. Let me know what you guys think! I've also put a pretty tight cut of the scene together, so I may put a YouTube link to that in the next several days. Alright, thanks for reading. B)

And also, you can sometimes see the pattern of a rear-mounted net in the out-of-focus circles of the image if you're using a long lens. David Mullen posted some stills from Bob Richardson's work on "Bringing Out the Dead" a while back that had this artifact. I just looked through all 27 pages of posts in the DVD and TV section of the forum and came up with nothing, so you're on your own there! Here's a thread I came across on how to net lenses. http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=13023 Hope this helps you out.

Hi Max, Just curious, but is it generally cheaper to record out several master negatives or to record out one IP and make your dupe negs from that? I understand the advantage in picture quality of the former method, but I'm wondering about the economics of it. Also, which is more common these days?

On the Cardiff documentary in the DVD extras, it was interesting to hear how he chose a green fill light for the climactic scene in the chapel (green=danger). I wonder what Mrs. Kalmus had to say about that? Or was she out of the picture by then? Regarding Technicolor, has anyone seen a print of John Ford's "The Quiet Man"? I've only seen it on tv (not a very good transfer), but the shadows seem to have a purple-ish tint to them which is rather beautiful. I'm curious if this is also there on the print (ie. was it an intended effect?), and if so how was it done? The film was shot by Winton C. Hoch, ASC, who shot most (if not all) of Ford's Technicolor pictures.

Looks great, Cole! Looks like you smoked the set as well. Any trouble maintaining the smoke level in that big space? I don't know anything about those Canon primes -- can you elaborate on them (vintage, max. f-stop, minimum focus, sharpness, breathing, etc.)? Also, why did you use such a heavy camera for handheld work? (I'm guessing it was free). Now I feel like such a wuss for complaining about handholding an unbalanced Arri SR2 -- got to start hitting those weights! Very cute kid as well. Just wait 'til she hits the "terrible twos" -- then you'll be in for it. :lol:

Well, you're right about that -- I realized it was way too high and too strong after lighting the master and looked almost like sunlight coming through the window. By that point though, they were shooting already! I didn't get to see a rehearsal blocking with the actors since we shot the rehearsal. And once the master was shot, I pretty much had to match the tighter shots to it. The Magic Arm also did not go as low as I thought it would -- for some reason, I remembered it as having two joints instead of one, so perhaps I should have had two of them and linked them together to get the light lower. But yeah, I remember putting it up and thinking, "Oh crap, it's too high." But the main problem was that I put up the key light last instead of first and therefore didn't give myself enough time to get it right (I thought it would be the easiest light to set, silly me). I think what I should have done first was power up the desk lamp and see what it was doing, then mimic it with the Dedo. Somehow, it completely escaped everyone's attention to plug in that light, so it was never even in the frame. As it is, you're right -- it looks nothing like a desk lamp. Another issue was that the skylight was a stop or so dimmer than I wanted it to be, so that without the direct key from the Dedo, it would have been difficult to see the actor's faces. Initially, I wanted the Dedo to slash across PK's chest while he was sitting, leaving his face about 1 stop under and lit by the bounce off of his white shirt. When he was standing, he would be lit almost entirely by bounce light off the desk. So, I screwed up by putting the slash across the chest while he was standing, so that when he sat he was fully lit. Using Photoshop, I made a duplicate layer of the picture, applied a "lens blur" filter to the top layer (adjusting the controls to where the highlights bloomed the right amount), and then adjusted the opacity to taste (around 20%). Then I darkened the blurred layer and desaturated it slightly for the black net effect. Thanks for the info on "Bringing Out the Dead" -- I figured there must have been some silver retention technique used on the print because the blacks are pretty rich and overall contrast is high. But he was also using the scope lenses almost wide open on those night exteriors right? That would add some softness as well. BTW, I'm sorry to hear about your operation -- I have a friend who went through that and it took him a month to recover (he's in his late 50's though, so I'm sure you'll be on your feet in no time). All the best!

Okay folks, The production stills are online at: http://new.photos.yahoo.com/satsmura@sbcglobal.net While the camera setups are only approximate, I've tried to make them look as close to the footage as possible (from memory). I realize that the CU of Gideon Mandoma has crossed the 180 degree line, but this is not the case in the actual footage. These represent only some of the shots we got, since I wasn't able to get stills for all of them. In several of the shots you will see the director (the dude with the "fish" T-shirt), who is directing an actor -- in one case, the framing is way off, showing above the tops of the stage flats. Again, this is not in the actual footage. I've included the one picture of a lighting setup that I remembered to take -- it's kind of hard to tell, but this is the MCU of PK sitting in a chair. The key is a Dedo clamped to the top of the stage flat, and he is filled in with foamcore bounce. I've included an overhead diagram of camera positions (with only the setups that I have stills for). Most of the other setups we had were just variations on these shots anyway. Anyway, actual frame grabs coming next week. Thanks for reading!

Hmm, well since you seem to use Panavision cameras a lot, could you just make a little pre-netted frame that fit into the filter slot behind the lens? Or would that be too close to the focal plane and start coming into focus? Sounds to me like Janusz Kaminski was never an AC! Was the net that you used subtle enough to cut with the un-netted shots or did you have to diffuse the other shots with a filter? I wonder how Robert Richardson got such a crisp look on "Bringing Out the Dead" -- his trademark halation effect is all over that film, so I assume he used a net on the lens, but it wasn't obvious to me at all. Of course, I've only seen in on DVD, so maybe I'm assuming too much. Well, when you finally get to shoot that 65mm project, maybe that'll be the one that gets netted all the way through. B)

Seems to me that this happens in real life when you have sunlight diffusing through several layers of leaves waving back and forth against each other. Why not stack three tree branches with lots of leaves, each one about 3 feet above the last, and have grips move each branch back an forth individually, then point a 10K down through the whole thing?

Hi Adam, Err, like I said, they're not very good since I spent about 15 seconds on each of them, enough to take a test shot, correct the exposure, and get a second one. Plus, towards the end, I kinda forgot about taking them. The frame grabs should be much more edifying. Hi Hunter, Battens are basically long poles that run across the length of the stage and can be lowered and raised on a pulley system. They need to be weighted down with the same weight as the lights that you put on 'em. The sequence is: lights on, weights on, weights off, lights off. Some of them are electrified, meaning they have plugs for lights, with multiple 20 amp circuits. Sort of a poor man's lighting grid (apparently the school ran out of funds back when they were building the stage, so they couldn't build a catwalk like everyone wanted). Here a link to the i-ring: http://www.filmtools.com/iring.html It's for putting nets on the back of B4 mount lenses. After trying it, I believe it's a total rip-off. It's just a flimsy plastic ring that snaps together -- if you put a net in it, the ring comes apart on its own after a while (or if you hold it wrong), and you have to redo the net. There's no way this thing should cost almost $30! Don't get one. I don't mean to be hard on the crew -- I think they did a great job overall. It's just that some of their behavior annoys me: when I ask them to put up a light, some of them stand around chatting with the light on the frickin' ground. You would think that if they were seriously invested in the work, they'd finish the job, then come ask me what needed to be done next instead of making me go find them. But I can't really be more forceful because we're classmates on a crew with rotating positions (ie. I'll be a PA on their shoot next week), so I end up doing a lot of the grip/electric work myself or delegating to one or two people that I trust. BTW, I'll put up the overhead diagram with camera positions if you want -- I'll need to take the other stuff down though. This 100k attachment upload minimum doesn't help. I guess I'll have to upgrade my membership or something. Hi David, I see your point about building the set beforehand -- of course, this is a directing class, so we're not supposed to spend too much time creating a realistic set or a lighting it (you'll see what I mean when you see the stills -- it's not really an acceptable set for a real production). The bulk of the three hours is meant to be for the director and actors to work. I just couldn't resist getting more ambitious because this is my only chance in two years at this school to DP a shoot on the soundstage -- Lord knows when I'll ever get to shoot on one of these again! I expect it'll be back to practical locations on low/no budget shoots for the next several years. "I wouldn't accept that on one of my shoots ..." :lol: Sure, when I'm in the ASC and shooting features that'll be seen in hundreds of theaters across the world, I'll put my foot down too. Until then though... (Just kidding David, I know your low-budget indie film roots :P ). I'm surprised you've never tried netting the back of a lens, especially with your interest in halation effects. Do you feel netting the lens softens it too much? Hell, if there's a format to do it in, it's 35mm scope. Hope I get to shoot that format someday... I know I said a silhouette, but the director objected, saying he wanted to see the eyes. To which I replied, you'll see the eyes later when he sits down, but I was overruled. In fact, he kept telling the camera op. to open the aperture, so that shot ended up being overlit. Like I said, now I'd probably light 3/4 front with a bounce card and place Gideon's face on Zone 2&1/2 to 3. Maybe I'll get a chance to color correct it -- I'll do it for my reel footage anyway. The Kino as backlight is a good idea (not that we had Kinos!). I remember seeing a set still from the latest AC magazine featuring Sven Nykvist shooting "Cries and Whispers" with a similar setup, bounce board above a window with a nook light punching into it. I'll have to watch that film again. Alright, I'll try and get some stills up after work tonight. Thanks for the discussion guys!

Yes, but you wouldn't have to manually dial it every time, now would you? Well, that's something no American likes to hear! :lol:

Well, we shot the scene today. It was a rather hectic schedule, but we managed to get all of our shots, plus an extra insert of the curtains blowing in the "morning breeze." We ended up cutting the "first rays of the rising sun" idea for want of time. We got our first shot off at about an hour and ten minutes into the schedule, which left less than two hours to finish the scene, break down the set, wrap all the equipment, sweep the stage, and lock up. It seems like it took way too long to get rolling, and I'm beginning to realize that giving a film crew (or at least a student film crew) an extra hour to setup just means that they'll waste that extra hour doing the same amount of work -- it's like a giving a chronic procrastinator an extra week to write his paper; he'll still finish it an hour before class (I should know). One of the factors which slowed us down right from the start was that the set from the morning group's shoot had to be completely dismantled and the flats rearranged. While most of A and B crew were doing this, I had a few grips and electrics set up the "skylight" -- two 2K fresnels bounced into a 4x4 silk which was placed outside the set window. One 2K was gelled Full CTB and the other Peacock Blue (thanks Adam Frisch!) to produce a cyan light. Just looking at the Peacock Blue gel, I really liked it (it's fairly cyanish by itself) but figured I'd err on the bluish side as opposed to the green and add the CTB. Boy, am I glad I did. The mixed light was a lot greener than I thought it would be, and now I think I would have gone for just CTB and 1/4 Plus Green on both lights to get the color I wanted. I also realized that bouncing off silk is extremely inefficient -- I didn't bother to meter the light coming through the window, but it was clearly waaay to dim. I had to turn the 2Ks around and put them through the silk, and even then I would have liked a few more stops. The next time I try to bounce light off a silk, I'll use a 5K or a 10K at least. While the grip/electrics were doing this, I was also trying to net the back of the Fujinon lens (our 1st and 2nd ACs were doubling as set design and props and so were unavailable). Amazingly, no one here had heard of netting the back of a lens, so I spent way too much time explaining to everyone what I was doing. I got the net from Nordstrom's hosiery department -- I told the lady behind the counter what I was up to, and she just happened to be throwing out her old hosiery swatches. Score! I ended up using a "6 Denier Black Shimmer," very light and created those cool four-pointed rainbow flares around specular sources. To get the net on, I first tried an I-Ring but that was too long and small; the lens had almost no rear clearance with the 1/2" JVC GY-5000 camera. Next, I tried snot taping the net to outer ring of the exit pupil, where the mount meets (what I guess is) the CCD. This ring is adjacent to the steel flanges of the mount. Turns out that the lens wouldn't mount; the thickness of the snot tape and net was enough to keep the lens from seating properly! So I finally had to snot tape the net on the inner ring of the exit pupil a few millimeters away from the glass itself, which worked great. All this was between running back and forth to the electrics setting lights, grips setting the silk, more grips lowering the battens and clamping a soft light to it, answering everybody's questions about nets, etc. I'm also realizing the value of simplifying lighting setups. David Mullen, ASC and Hal Smith offered me several solutions on how to create the look of the sun's first rays striking the curtained window, but they were probably much too complex and time-consuming to create for a student crew on a time crunch, so I elected to simplify with a Mickey (1K open face) on a 1K dimmer shining directly on the window from about 5 feet away. I was mainly worried that the light wouldn't cover the window so I set up in front of it a 21"x24" gel frame of half grid and full minus green (for the pink color) to get a wider spread. The main problem was the dimmer (which I rented) and which I assumed would be a rotary dimmer with a continuously variable voltage. It was not; instead it was the kind with up and down buttons which produced an unsubtle stair-step effect. We could have massaged it with a flag passing in front of it, but then the Mickey began making a buzzing noise, and we decided to drop it. The smartest thing I did was to rent the Dedo and Magic Arm, which became our key light (motivated by the desk lamp, which we forgot to plug in and which consequently became an "imagined source"!), and which saved a butt-load of time by being almost infinitely tweakable. I might just have to buy a kit of these -- I'm addicted. Annoyingly, while I was still setting the Dedo, the director began calling for the first take of the master shot -- I hadn't even had a chance to set the frame with the operator yet! I was still tweaking the key between takes, but unfortunately I had to live with the overall lighting I had in the master, in which PK was over-lit. He steps into the dark room (about 2 to 2&1/2 stops under) and sees Gideon sitting in the foreground. As PK steps forward and stops, the desk light slashes across his chest. As he sits down into a MS, he is fully lit. The halation from the net was a bit much, but I liked it. Unfortunately, it looked an awful lot like sunlight. We tweaked the frame so that PK was in MS, with Gideon frame left OS, and Morrie was between them in the far background - it looked great. The next setup was an MCU of Morrie, and I decided to cheat the light quite a bit. While in the master Morrie was 2&1/2 stops under and lit soley with the soft cyan skylight, I decided to spot up the Dedo and bounce it off the bed to Morrie's right, which created a nice soft key. I'm not sure how this will cut -- I'm guessing that as long as the director doesn't cut straight from the master to Morrie, it'll be fine. I'd like to leave him the option of doing so though. Anyway, that was a wrap on Morrie. The next few setups were MCUs of PK getting up and sitting down, with dialogue. When we did his standing shot, I forgot at which point in his movement the light was supposed to hit his face and when it was supposed to be dark! There was no question of rewinding the tape -- I just had to make a decision fast. Luckily, I had been taking still frames of each setup (not well at all, as you will see), so it was just a matter of reviewing the stills. In the tighter shots, the net diffusion really enhanced the look, as the depth of field seemed to fall off much faster than without it (it was also a light subject against a dark background, which helped). Overall, I think the look was much more cinematic than the previous few weeks' work. We then turned around, shooting towards the window for all of Gideon's shots. In the first setup, Gideon was supposed to be silhouetted by the window, then briefly front-lit by the warm hallway light as the boys entered the room. We had put up a 1K soft light gelled 1/2 CTO on the batten behind the door, and and it was simply a matter of lowering the batten to about 3 feet off the ground to shoot directly though the door and into the room. The door was our flag. I had greater problems with the key, since I couldn't get the Dedo frontal enough. The best I could do was a sidelight, which left Gideon pitch black on the left side of his face (his dark skin didn't help at all). I also rode the aperture about 1&1/2 stops, going from f1.9 to 2/2.8 split and filled the shadow side with foamcore. After thinking about it, I now would have bounced the Dedo off the foamcore and keyed Gideon with that from below and 3/4 front, still respecting the direction of the light but motivating it as the bounce off the desk, nice and soft. I tried to get an eyelight by shining my flashlight onto showcard just beneath the the lens, but it didn't do anything. A small piece of foamcore in his lap gave him a bit of uplight and (hopefully) an eyelight. Finally, as the AD called for room tone, I requested that since we were recording single system sound and the room tone would be on the MiniDV tape, we might as well shoot the insert of the curtains moving at the same time. We just zoomed in on the windowsill and the bottom of the curtains, catching a bit of the lit wooden chair in the foreground and got our room tone and insert at the same time! I'll post some digital stills soon (not tonight though, midterm tomorrow!), and the frame grabs next week when I get my MiniDV dub. Possibly even a cut scene at some point. Anyway, thanks for reading. P.S. SAD STUDENT TIP #2: Don't ever rent equipment without a car or at least a ride -- I had to take my camera bag, gelly roll, 1K dimmer, Dedo in a box, Lowel gel frame, and a cardboard box of miscellaneous crap home on the bus by myself. (dumb) And a cute girl asked me if I needed help and I said no. (dumber) And I lost my cell phone when the belt clip broke. (dumbest) So don't be dumb like me -- get a car! (And don't turn down cute girls). That is all. Peace. :ph34r:

Well, I just bought the Samcine Mk.3 that was on sale in the classifieds section of this forum, so I'll let you know how it goes over the next few weeks. B) Delorme (or should I call you Jean-Marie?), Man, that's a lot of numbers to dial! Thank god for cell phones.

It's kinda embarrassing, but I have no idea how to dial those crazy European phone numbers! :blink: I guess I'll give Panavision UK a try (by email). Thanks guys!

Hi, try these links for some downloadable Dof tables. You should be able to set them in feet or meters. http://www.cookeoptics.com/cooke.nsf/product/dfc http://www.arri.com/infodown/cam/ti/stt_e_m.pdf http://www.panavision.com/tools.php http://www.dofmaster.com/ http://johnhendry.com/gadget/dof.php http://jkor.com/peter/dof.html

Hi Alexander, Here's a link to a thread on a music video shot by forum member Stuart Brereton on the Canon HJ21 cine zoom. http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=19794 You might try sending him a PM.

Cool, congratulations David! Enjoy the time off. Guess you'll be hanging out here more often now as well? Hey Matthew, are you kidding? That's the best way to learn, making mistakes on someone else's film and not your own! Just be honest and up front about your screw-ups and don't make the same mistake twice, that's all. The trouble is, there are always tons of new mistakes to be made. Hint: don't set up a heavy tripod with a janky leg lock next to a huge plate glass window -- I learned that one the hard way. :(

Hi, thanks for posting this. I have a few questions about the test: What was the shutter set at, 180? What lenses were used and at what stop? Did they happen to mention what the gain settings were? Were there any motion blur artifacts if the shutter was not set at 180? Thanks!