Jayson Crothers

Considering how rare it seems that anything I shoot makes it out into the world, I thought I'd share some good news. "Leaving Barstow" won the Audience Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival about two weeks ago - I'm very proud of the film and had the best experience working on it.

Alexander~ Can you talk about how this was shot and posted? 4k, 3k, 2k, 2:1, 16x9, etc?

Thanks Josh - shooting my tests tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have something to report back here to everyone.

I'm about to start shooting a new feature film and we're shooting on the RED; the decision came very last minute to go from HD to the RED and I'm in a bit of a race to learn as much as I can about the system. One thing I can't seem to find a clear answer to is the difference between Redcode 28 and Redcode 36 - the only hard information I can find is that shooting with Redcode 36 limits some frame rate options for me, but what do I gain with 36 over the default 28? Thanks everyone!

Tom, if I recall correctly the flashback scenes in "The Usual Suspects" were shot at 4fps and transferred at 4fps - you might look there for an example. I did a feature a few years ago where we shot 12fps transferred at 12fps and 6fps at 6fps - I tested 4fps at 4fps and found it too extreme for my tastes at the time, but it depends on how much movement you'll have in the scene.

Stephen~ I timed a film a few months ago on color - it does have power windows and most everything else you'd expect/ask for. Like most things it really depends on your colorist (I fortunately had a great one). The one thing that bothered me was the rendering time - we weren't working in real-time, so the film would play back at something like 15fps - if we had a window that we had to track with a movement, we'd have to lay it down, render out the clip, watch it, then adjust as needed. Took a bit longer than usual, but beyond that I had no complaints. To be fair, though, I wasn't doing very much in the session other than some minor tweaks for matching - your results may vary if you're doing a lot of the look in post.

The last feature I shot with the Canon Cinestyle zooms was almost entirely handheld with an F900R - the lenses are very lightweight and I had no complaints at all.

I've never shot the Canon Primes, so I couldn't say. I love the Digi-Primes, but I think whether you go with those or the Canon Cinestyle zooms would depend on your end exhibition and your production. I shot a HD feature a few years ago (F900/3) and the production company was contractually bound to deliver a film-out of it. We tested both the Zeiss Digi-Primes, Canon Cinestyle Zooms, and the Pro-35. The Digi-Primes looked stellar, but the Zooms also looked very sharp and looked great - since the movie featured a lot of kids, we elected to go with the zooms to allow for faster changes that happened on set. If your destination is DVD or TV only, I might suggest the zooms only for the sake of speed on set. They're great wide open and the breathing is virtually non-existant.

Mike - the lenses were the part I wasn't thrilled with - one camera was on loan to us from Panasonic, and they provided an ENG lens. To avoid any mis-matching, the choice was made to also use an ENG lens on the package from Birns & Sawyer. You can imagine how excited I wasn't with the lenses, but the cameras still rendered some amazing images - we did a lot of night exterior/available light shooting with the shutter turned off and I was blown away by what we were getting - the 5 32G cards give you a running time of 200+ minutes - a huge bonus if you're moving really fast. I'm prepping another feature and I was looking at the HPX-3000 with a Canon Cinestyle zoom (although I was pleased with what we were seeing, the production is pushing to go with the Red); I've always been a fan of the Canon Cinestyle zooms and think they're quite sharp with minimal breathing (I've shot three HD features with them).

Hey Mike - try Birns & Sawyer; I just wrapped a 2 camera feature with the HPX3000 and it worked amazingly well. Birns was also very helpful in making it work within our budget.

I'm not sure if everyone is aware of this, but if not, enjoy: www.storarovittorio.com

I had a blast at the Camerimage Festival - Lodz has so much character that I avoided sleeping as much as possible so I could have as much time in town as I could! The are a number of inner workings that you don't really figure out until the end of the festival, so the 2nd year I go will likely be a much different experience. Few things in life will be as odd as watching a film in Italian, with English subtitles, and a Polish man with a cheap speaker and microphone simultaneously translating the film into Polish. The funniest part of the trip was the restaraunt on main street called Roosters, which was their knock-off version of an American Hooters - the concept alone had me laughing myself stupid. Rome was inspiring and I never wanted to leave. The best part of the entire trip was finding Caravaggio paintings spread out across the city in various unexpected places. I had a good time in London, but it felt strangely similar to Chicago for a number of reasons, so I constantly felt a little off-balance in the sense that it felt like I was back home. Great food everywhere and great people.

Thank you for the compliments. "Really looks great, it's nice to see real b&w emulsion halation effects, like when she is drinking and you get that big glint on the glass." I'm glad those weren't lost on everyone David! Truth be told, I never thought of them until almost a week into the show - I saw something on the dailies from Day 2 or 3 and we all thought it was it really interesting. As we moved away from exteriors and into more controlled sets, I started playing more and more with creating that effecton purpose. When we got to the bar we swapped out all of our prop glasses for the ones you see in the teaser because they gave off better glares. I love those happy accidents!

I just saw the website for the film (that'll teach me to get sick and fall behind on my email). There's a teaser scene of about 6 minutes - I spoke to Hally because it's such an odd edit and she mentioned that the editor only had a portion of the footage to use (I've no idea why though). There's a day exterior poor-man's process shot of the "car crash", the lead looking at signs at the edge of our fake city before she walks to the bar, and a number of other shots in the bar. Apparently there's a new editor who's going to start next week from scratch. One thing that I do find worth mentioning is the subject of lighting continuity. In the first bar scene we shot the wide shot looking at the bar in profile, then came in for other shots of everyone. Once we came in for coverage, Hally (she's playing the lead) decided she wanted to change her blocking from the wide shot; in the wide shot she was leaning back out of the light and only leans in at a few key moments, whereas in the close up she wanted to always lean forward. We debated about how it wouldn't match and in the end we shot it anyways - the trouble is that Hally's face doesn't look good in top-light; it would have been fine if she matched the wide shot because it only would have been 2 moments where she's under the direct light, but for the whole scene I had to change it up to make her look her best. The area behind and around the bar was small, so we had virtually no room to do any rigging and in the end I lit her brighter and flatter than I would have liked with the intention of later printing it down to match the wide shot as best I could. I should have fought harder about matching the action, but in the end, what are we to do? After the new editor puts together something, I'll post more.

David pretty much summed it up. =) I should have clarified that underexposure helped minimize or hide grain in terms of relativity - as David pointed out, if the entire scene is underexposed then you're going to print it up and exaggerate the grain. It's more about contrast; I found that having less fill than I might normally use helped minimize grain by hiding it in the darkness, but I also had a number of overexposed highlights and some elements exposing at key. Having a thin negative is going to leave you with a muddy/grainy print (provided you're printing up to get the image back) - B&W isn't about a thin negative, but higher contrast lighting certainly helps it look its best.

Having just returned from seeing the film, I can say that I think the film is a great technical achievement - very complex blocking that feels largely seamless and an excellent creation of "amateur" home video. As with anything, there are a few liberties taken (for example, I suspect nobody runs in a screaming panic but keeps the camera upright and forward the whole time). My complaint is that the film feels, to me anyways, like a text-book example of style over substance. I couldn't tell you the name of any of the characters (except, ironically, the one behind the camera because he seemed to be the only character with some kind of personality) and frankly I couldn't have cared less what happened to any of them (when one of your lead characters dies, I believe you should have SOME kind of reaction and I didn't at all). The technique and process of the the filmmaking was so overwhelming that it put me at a distance from the story and characters. It seemed to me that the movie was a case of the style being conceived of first and then a story was built around that, rather than the other way around. I had a similar reaction to the Mike Figgis film "Timecode", in which the method of making the film was more important that what the story was. Interesting to me from a technical stance, but hollow as a whole experience.

You should also take a look at "L'Avventura" by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Mike beat me to it, but take a look at some of my past postings for my thoughts on shooting B&W. You can find info about "Memento" in both AC (April 2001) and ICG (March 2001); in summary: 5222 with a 1/2 stop push (a few years ago he also mentioned that he did a 1/2 stop push on "Batman Begins"), E-Series Anamorphics, T4, no filtration, all Tungsten Units, printed to color stock (printing B&W to color stock introduces a VERY subtle red tint - you really don't see it unless you're looking for it or unless you compare the print to one that's actually done on B&W).

Just watched it last night David - really beautiful work as we've all come to expect from you. I noticed in the credits that Nancy Shreiber, ASC was credited for shooting some LA stuff - what was shot here and how did it come about that she was shooting that material instead of you? I had a good laugh at the abandoned factory in the swamp - I was prepping a film in South Carolina last year that had an almost identical abandoned factory in the middle of a swamp; I did a few double takes while watching the film. I read that the Polish Brothers are up to a new film - will you be working with them again soon (we hope)?

The joys of a little free time to wander the internet..... I found this audio-only interview with Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC; you have to turn up the volume and it's a little rough to listen to because the interview is very informal and it's in the middle of a restaurant (it's unedited, so you're also listening to Lubezki and the interviewer order dinner and such). It's also long. =) http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/images/colu...07/lubezki3.mp3

Hey Bobby - take a listen to the audio commentary on "Blade" by the Cinematographer (Theo Van De Sande, ASC). I don't recall the specifics (it's been a while since I listened to it), but he talks about the opening club scene (which is full of this very type of strobing light) and talks about how he achieved the strobing effect with lights spinning into mirrors and not with actual strobes. Perhaps it'll give you another alternative. Is this for film or digital? I'd be leery about using radio shack strobes for film - depending on how rapid they strobed, you could run into the same issue you find with firearms and you miss the flash because it goes off when the shutter is closed.

I just shot a B&W feature and I'd agree that you should seriously consider Plus-X for the exteriors - B&W is all about contrast and especially in an exterior with snow, you'll be fighting for any and every bit of contrast you can get. The 5222 is tough to get good contrast out of in day exteriors; the only time I was really happy with it was in a day exterior forest scene I shot (which was so dark that it was virtually an interior!) and an early morning scene I shot using the sun as a backlight and then under-exposing faces towards camera - that was very high contrast because it was shortly after sunrise; everything else I did as a day exterior got a bit muddy and required a lot of filtration to get it to a place where I was happy with it. Also keep in mind that 5222 is a grainy stock (so 7222 will be much grainier) - though perhaps your story calls for the grain. The feature I shot was called "The Naked Eye"; take a look in the archives for more of my opinions on B&W - maybe some of it will be helpful.

Where is the box the addresses "Resorts to childish name-calling"?

I purchased a Lacie 250G external hard drive about 2 years ago to store all of my footage for my demo reel. It began having some problems about 6 months ago so I purchased another Lacie drive (320G) to back up my footage to; now that one won't even turn on and I'm in a scramble to save the data off of it. My question is this - what brand of hard drive does everyone suggest I purchase next? I'm looking for something very reliable with a low failure rate. Any suggestions are appreciated. If it makes any difference, I'm operating with a an iBook G4, OS X 10.4.10.

"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" has a duo track with Newton Thomas Sigel and George Clooney - it rapidly becomes clear how vital (and conducive to better work) a solid relationship and collaboration is to a DP doing his or her best work. Also very insightful into how they pull off some of the insane shots in that film.