timHealy

Although I never post photos of something I'm currently working on until after it is released, the whole Studio/Network/Agency paranoia drives me crazy. I work in NY mostly, and if you are shooting on the street, the production is fair game. Look on You Tube from the new Batman NY shoot recently as an example. You can't keep this stuff a secret. I also worked on War of the Worlds where they kept saying no crew photos, no crew photos, but after the first week of shooting (The Newark scene where the first pod comes out of the ground) there must have been 500 photos on a Tom Cruise fan website. Mixed among those photos taken by people on the street, were clearly shots taken by the company's set photographer and "leaked" out by the studio. pardon my rant. Tim

I recently bought a bunch of 1k dimmers from Film Tools for about 110 bucks each: http://www.filmtools.com/10watrotdial.html Having built them on my own before, it was easier and faster just to buy them than build them myself. When you factor the price of the parts and the amount of time to build a similiar one yourself, you would not really be saving anything. Best Tim

There is a lot you can do to keep a set safe. But you may want to be flexible depending on the conditions and severity of rain. Rubber mats: Great for covering stage boxes and ballasts in the rain. Make sure ballasts still have some air to move around them to keep them cool. You don't want them to overheat. But try and use your head. Maybe a location has a place where you can group stage boxes and HMI ballasts in a dry place and run header out to the light positions. You know a garage, a shed, and unused doorway to the location that will never be in the shot. Apple Boxes or wood: Great for keeping stage boxes off the ground and out of pooling water. Rain hats: Made of metal or Cellotex (fiberglass coated porch screening). Metal works great all the time. Cello should only be used when actually raining. The heat from the lamp will burn the fiberglass coating off if there is no water on it. When raining the water boils off as steam carrying the heat away keeping the screen intact. One the fiberglass burns off you have a screen without protection right where you want protection the most: On top of the lamp. Though many lamps are designed for a bit a water protection. Also the rain hat regardless of material should stretch out over the rear and front of lamp a bit to protect the lens. UV filter or heat shield: Great for protecting the lens of a light. It just takes a mist or few drops of water to crack a fresnel. Even a single scrim in front of a lamp is better than nothing. Blackwrap: Can keep a small light dry in a pinch, but it will make a lot of noise when rain hits it. So not advisable near the camera. HMI's when dry: Don't touch two HMI's at the same time. That means the ballasts, stands, heads or metal connections on header cable. HMI's leak voltage all the time. HMI's when raining and things are wet including people: REALLY DON'T PHUCKING TOUCH two HMI's at the same time. That means the ballasts, stands, heads or metal connections on header cable. HMI's leak voltage all the time. Use a grounded system from the genny. US fire codes states on truck mounted genny the system should be closed and stages boxes should be insulated and a truck with a mounted genny should should have rubber mat under the tail gate and hitch safety chains don't drag on the ground. Which means no external earth ground. Some argue that a closed system the electricity has no potential if the genny doesn't have an earth ground. I'm not an electrical engineer or anything but anyone who works is wet may think otherwise. GFCI's: They work great. Sometimes they work too good and they are too sensitive and the larger 400 amp three phase ones will cut all power to a set. I have been on jobs where they were pulled out of line and just used these: They have 100 amp GFCI so you can do a lunch pail near water. You can also easily buy the 20 amp type at home depot for individual 20 amps circuits. Breakers: Make sure you stage boxes and lunch pails and gang boxes all have breakered circuits. try and keep you equipment out of pooling water. You can do that for everything but your cable. I hope that is helpful

no. consider the green screen as a separate element. if you can light it with super green bulbs. if you used a blue screen you would use super blue bulbs. and light your subject in the manner asked for in your script. just try and keep you subject far enough away from the screen so that there is no green spill on your subject. some might try and use edge lights to overpower any green spill. best tim

I agree with Freddie: work with your Prod Designer and there are many options out there. You may start the work with all the fluoro's with the same ND on them and then as you shoot you'll want some brighter and some darker. Dimmable fluorescents may be helpful, but if this is a small budget you have to make due with ND. But you'll be fine. As Freddie says there are many options out there which includes turning some off if you need to. You may need help doing all the wiring and building the fixtures. There is a company or two in LA that specialize with that. You also can use companies like Grainger and McMaster Carr though there are not film specific. You'll learn a lot about fluoros along the way. You may want to build and test some fixture before committing to to an order for the whole set. Best Tim

Correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that if one truly wanted to go back to regular 16 on an Super 16 SR 1, 2 or 3, the lens mount had to be flipped 180 degrees, or turned is a better word, to recenter the lens for the proper 1.33 ground glass. I never got my SR upgraded to Super 16 but I thought that was one of the steps. Of course I may be splitting hairs. Re-centering the lens moves the lens a miniscule amount, but projected may lead to slight deformities in the image. Not that I would be able to tell. And of course shooting in Super 16 mode while using the 1.33 ground glass gives one a bit of reframing room left and right if need be in digital post. So maybe re-centering is a moot point. Best Tim

Simply brilliant.

You may be new but you are asking the right questions. HMI's coming through the window will help keep you shooting through weather changes. Natural daylight, bounces, poly and the rest will be weather dependent. So based on your budget and your wide shots, will help point you which way to go. Unfortunately, the budget may dictate which way you go even if it is not preferable. But even if you have a budget to get bigger lights then you need more crew to work it and even maybe a bigger power source like a generator. And that's how some things grow and get more expensive. Some things to think about. Sometimes less is more if you cant get bigger units. If you know what I mean. Best Tim

Hey, it is not really practical to say you never can have any lights to be moved around. That will be inevitable especially for your close ups. But you could either light for you widest shots or just go natural if the class is facing south and you want the sun or facing north and get a nice soft light coming in. Moving your close up lights around. But you may want some outdoor lights to rake across your walls depending on which way you'll be seeing. If you want to light it and this depends on the shots your director has in mind, a worst case scenario would be to under hang lights on lifts or a truss to pump light in and keep them out of frame. Something like this could be needed if you have a lot of moving shots or panning across the window. If you are shooting mostly towards the teacher from the students perspective and then mostly towards the kids from the teachers position, then you could have lights on stands just outside the window and you wouldn't really need a lift or truss. If you are looking out the window and you have lights rigged and you wind up shooting on a grey overcast day your set might look light a set in a stage with a flat background. Then depending on the architecture of the window, it may be possible to hide lamps on stands between window frames. But you said that it is one large window so maybe that is not the case here. If you are on a shoestring budget, the going the way of Johns recommendation is probably preferable. Just keep one or two lights outside to rake the walls or backlight the characters if needed and something inside for close ups and fill that just get pushed around all day. Good luck and have fun Best Tim

I agree with the comments about not doing this unless you have done it and been trained by someone else. But while the recommendations to take the CSATF are well intended, that only works if you live in Los Angeles and are in the union. As far as i know, non union crew cannot take those classes. This forum has world wide members and contributors. There are plenty of people outside of LA and outside the US, who do have the experience to do such rigs safely everyday. best Tim

where does a student get over 500,000 grand to make a film? not trying to argumentative, just curious.

what brand are these bulbs and i would check voltage too. best Tim

image 80's may be too much. you could easily light a green screen with a row of 2 bulb kinos end to end on the ground and end to end in the grid. but 8.5 feet tall is not really that tall. you might be able to get away with single tube kinos and if you can pull them away from the screen a little you may only need a row on the ground or the grid. i would do a test and light a small section to see what works for their purposes. best Tim

Magic gadget has one like that: http://www.filmandvideolighting.com/maga2kfldi.html It doesn't use a sensor but it usually does the trick. they also have a three channel one. Best Tim

Food? They guys I know who do food spots utilize the dimmer pack method too. And a lot of heat shield. Makes it more comfortable for the humans too. Best Tim

hence my caveat best Tim

I haven't done a lot of high speed work, but what I have done and have been told by friends, light levels will be the huge issue. 2 -1200 watt pars will be insufficient. I have one friend who did a shot of a bottle of Disani water dropped into water at an extremely high frame rate and f stop. They used something like 18 tungsten 20k's and they used one of them full up on the dimmer as the background. Not the background light, the shot directly into the light. You may not need something so extreme, but I hope you get the point. Best Tim

If there is no safety mesh in your open face light you can easily just throw in a full single if you are concerned about safety. Though not terribly common, all bulb types explode once in a while. Best Tim

According to Harry Box, you can create a single flicker free light source (even with magnetic ballasts) with one light on each phase of electricity. As each will be on a different part of the sine wave the overall light will appear to be flicker free. One caveat: I have never tried this so if you do try it, test it first. I also don't have experience with extremely high frame rates and the problems inherent with those rates. I'm just reitorating what Harry Box mentions in his book. So test test test. Maybe tungsten is better than this method as others mentioned. So when in doubt. do a test. Did I say that enough? Best Tim

I have seen 24 volt battery powered 4 bulb ballast but it looked like a third party made it and not made by kino flo. best Tim

i wouldn't shoot a film like this without doing a test to make sure what you want to do will work and the results will be acceptable to shoot the whole film. i often would not like to use very fast 16mm film simply because i was shooting low light. i preferred to shoot 200 and slower stock to make sure the image looked good and not too grainy. unless grain was something i wanted and contributed to the story. sometimes some people think they need low or no light to make something look dark. something can look dark with 25 asa and the right lighting. one issue that one always has to look out for when shooting wide open (which i assume you will be working at) is shooting wide open on a wide angle lens. it can be very hard to judge focus. best Tim

the 6th light was not at fault. that particular light worked when other lights were off. the issue was harmonics or power factor problems or both. if doing a large square wave hmi load i would get a bigger genny or more generators. or if not shooting off speed, using a few magnetic ballasts would help too. tim

Hey Guy, I don't know why the low draw. Unless it was the weather. It was seriously cold for a few days. Down to 5 degrees f. The varying voltage did not dip from 130 to 110 when the light struck. The voltage was 121 or so with 5 18's on. When we tried to add the sixth, the voltage then went bizerk. Constantly fluctuating between 110 and 130. it was like 120, then 114, 130, 116, 127, 111. Varying very quickly. You know what I mean? It was doing that reading from the genny or the end of the run. Even when the 6th light went out. The effects on the voltage continued to vary. I can't remember if it stopped when we hit the breaker on the third ballast or not. I think we were just dealing with harmonics. Im going to start getting spare magnetic ballasts for my big HMI's from now on if I have anything to say about it. Best Tim

like everyone else here do not use 14/3. Unless you are using it for specific purpose like a lamp or fixture. for everything else use 12/3.

in the US: 12/3 but the insulation is really important too. I think most is SJO. But there are others too. I never built the stuff in a rental house. Maybe there is an chart on line somewhere. Or check out Grainger or McMaster Carr's website. You can use the other gauges if you use them for a specific purpose, but you wouldn't want people to start plugging 2k's into 18/3. You would be building 25 and 50 foot fuses. You know what I mean?