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Steve Milligan

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Everything posted by Steve Milligan

  1. Replying to my own post, just in case the information is useful to someone else someday: Gaff tape: Hanent (http://www.hanent.com/) or SLRrent (http://www.slrrent.com/SLRLINK.php) had 1" and 2" in various colors. Bounce: We got a 3'x6'x1" (or thereabouts, the dimensions were metric I'm sure) sheets of white styrofoam insulation from a hardware store near Bukchon. It's a common item, but only the "bigger" stores will have it. The storefront was the size of a budget hotel room, but was connected through a narrow doorway in the back to a warehouse. I got 60w and 200w tungsten lamps there as well, and they let me wire up some medium base to 220v plug circuits using their tools. Duvetyne: We found a credible substitute at a random market stall. Might not be fire retardant, but it's black, matte on one side, completely opaque, and about $4/meter x 120cm. Black wrap: Couldn't find this anywhere, glad I brought some scraps with me. I was reliably informed that one could borrow a wheelchair from a department store, but only without their knowledge. For our shoot we got a small low-ride dolly with lightweight 4' track segments from SLRrent.
  2. Hi all! I'm shooting a doc/narrative/experimental in Korea next week (hoping to cultivate a Notes on Blindness vibe). I've been shooting in China for a few weeks and supplies are low, so I'm looking to source some expendables. I know about Jinrentals and SLRrent, but is there somewhere else one goes for black wrap, gaff tape, and etc.? I'm also teaching a workshop in documentary cinematography on Sunday, and would love to pass along any local wisdom you could share--e.g. where to buy reflective insulation to substitute for bounce boards, a good source for wheel chairs, black drape, and muslin, what will get you arrested if you shoot it, and so on. Lastly, if anyone wants to grab a soju or two, I've got the first round! I'll be staying near the Nambu Terminal station. Thanks, Steve Milligan Cinematographer Production Teaching Fellow, Duke University steve@ghostmap.com www.ghostmap.com
  3. Thanks for the math, everyone, that's exactly what I was looking for. It was the tungsten filter/tungsten rating that worried me...i.e. whether the 85N6 would cut the 200D ISO by 2-2/3 or 3. Looks like 3 is the consensus, which is logical. Satsuki, yes, this is for the extreme case, bright exterior, 12fps, opened up--should it come to that. I have red, yellow, ND .3 and ND.6, but not ND.9...I thought 85N6 might be useful if it got that far over. A further question: I derive 32 from consistent advice of more experienced shooters: expose reversal for the opacities, close it down as you might open up for a fat negative. I think for myself, I'd spot meter and expose dead on, but I'm handing this off to students. Is 7266 just too contrasty for this? Any other thoughts on exposure or metering technique? I'll be doing the scan myself on a JK.
  4. I need a sanity check please; I have my answer but I'd like to hear yours before I burn film. You have a Bolex Rex4 (with Rx lenses) a roll of 7266 (process as reversal), and an 85N6 in the gel holder. If your meter is set to 180 shutter and 24fps, what would you set your meter ISO to so that you could transfer the F-stop directly to your lens, including an underexposure strategy if that's your bag? I get 32, for what it's worth. And thanks!
  5. Just wanted to give this a bump before I give up...any Eclair veterans out there who can enlighten me?
  6. I'm having an intermittent rubbing problem in the S16 area of a converted NPR. You can see a frame demonstrating the issue here: http://www.ghostmap.com/images/Eclair_rub.jpg I've photoshopped the lower right corner for clarity. It happens with both mags (both of which have had the rollers modified). My suspicion is that the aperture plate, which still has both 16mm ridges intact, is the culprit. Does this seem likely? Can I/should I have it milled down on that side? Any other theories on what it might be? The camera was recently serviced, and otherwise works nicely. Thanks, Steve
  7. Pardon the delayed response, I've been at Full Frame, and apparently didn't set up my email notification properly.... We spent $1300 or so on the processing/transfer. The total file size is just over 400GB on a FW800 drive we provided. The editor is working in FCP with 1080p ProResHQ proxies (overkill, I think, but apparently he has the horsepower for it), which comes to about 68GB total. We'll reconform to uncompressed before we send it to Apple Color for finishing.
  8. Blackmagic Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2, they offer RBG 4:4:4 for a little more, and 2K for a little more than that: http://colorlab.com/telecine/colorlab_HD_guide.pdf We got a best-light, and honestly it looks a touch on the dark side to me, nothing that can't be brought up, since it takes desktop color correction very well. It was my first time out with both the lab and the stock--I'll probably rate it 320 next time.
  9. We just had five rolls of 7219 transferred to hard drive, 1080p 10-bit uncompressed, at Colorlab, with no tape step.
  10. Very beautiful work, Jarin, a pleasure to watch. I love the way you use long lenses. Great color, lots of great movement, timing and framing, and a good eye to boot. I'll be looking for a chance to see these shorts projected, and for your future work. Many specific shot questions, but I'll limit myself to one: the woman pouring milk for the boy at the table has some strange focus effect, doesn't quite look like swing/tilt. Was this done in camera or post, or both?
  11. I'm surprised no-one has mention the Rifa. Very quick setup, packs small, nice soft quality, easy to gel. If you take off the diffuser, it has pretty good throw. Hardest Lowel to cook yourself on, too. The Rifa Pro kit, with maybe a 650 Fresnel for the third light, would be my minimal kit.
  12. Looks like I have the bandwidth to burn at the end of the month, so: http://www.ghostmap.com/clips/Tokyo3FPS.html All comments welcome. Thanks, Steve Milligan www.ghostmap.com
  13. Thought I'd chime in, as I was the shooter on this one. Humidity is definitely implicated. I tested with a 100' daylight load a couple of days before in cooler temperatures. It was clattery, but didn't jam. On the day, I loaded 400' at home in air-conditioned comfort. On the humid set, I was unhappy with the noise on the first take, and couldn't put it down to a daylight spool now, so I went back in the tent/sauna to check the loops, which were fine. Taped it up and put it on the camera, and from then on we had the behavior Drew described, ten seconds to jam. I did have some difficulty getting the film past the top of the pressure plate, and when it jammed it did so in the upper loop. We never found any gunk on the gate. Another puzzlement: I snapped 60' or so off the first roll and ran it through, testing for various loop sizes, in several mags--I had a preternaturally calm director. Eventually I got it to run four times in a row at the familiar whisper. Reloaded the mag, it inched perfectly, ran for twenty seconds perfectly. Set up the shot, instant jam. We shot with a Bolex until someone made the four hour round trip for the ACL, which ran like a champ. If there's a lesson in there, I don't like it much. Drew's NPR is indeed super-clean, a Les Bosher rebuild, fetishistically maintained. The ACL on the other hand has been tested to within an inch of destruction by Duke students, and sounds like a sewing machine--we had a calm sound man as well. I'll be biting my nails until it comes back, but despite this and many other curses, the shoot went quite well. We were back on schedule by the end of the second day, and the reduced lens and filter choices drove us toward more creative lighting and blocking than we might have chosen had everything gone smoothly. Next time, though, I'll be tempted to shoot Vision2 and go black and white further down the line. Steve Milligan DP Chapel Hill, NC
  14. Appreciate the correction, David. Would diffusion filters then magnify the effect more than they would on color negative? I'm trying to choose my filter set for a 7222/7231 project, wondering if I should knock the diffusion down a bit, or even do without.... Steve Milligan
  15. Lots of talk out there about the camera movement in this film, but I'm just as curious about the film stock and filtration. Anyone know or care to make an educated guess? I really like the halation on the light source. Again, any guesses on the filter? If the stock is double-X it has no anti-halation layer, would this contribute to the effect? Thanks, Steve Milligan
  16. Many thanks Stephen, precisely what I wanted to know. Except...if you will forgive my obtuseness, you mean aim the meter from the subject at the light to measure the 1.5 over highlight, and at the camera to measure the ambient, correct? I'm sure I can get 2-2.8, thanks for the tip. Steve
  17. I've got my first S16 shoot coming up, and am wondering how to translate my light-by-eye/expose off the viewfinder experience to film. Below is something I did on video, I wonder if someone could help me with how I would have used an incident meter to find the proper exposure for it. If I meter from the faces toward the camera, I will be overexposing...so how much under should I go? Is there a better metering technique for this kind of scene? Stock is Fuji 250T, destined for Telecine, shooting with Superspeeds wide open or nearly so. Thanks! Steve Milligan http://www.ghostmap.com
  18. For general illumination, a guerilla trick that worked for me was to find a stretch of woods next to a public tennis court. The lights were atop 50 foot poles, and of course were aimed at the court, but the ones from the opposite side spilled beautifully into the woods. They were on a timed switch, I think they stayed on for 45 minutes or so before resetting. At a guess I'd say they were 1500W metal halides, two to a pole. Soft moonlight is a bit of a contradiciton in terms, isn't it? Real moonlight on a clear night is very hard light. I thought these sources played pretty well. Might be able to post a frame if I dig. We did our utmost to get everything out of the little stretch of woods, shooting the reverse angle and flipping it, etc. A bonus was that since we were on the edge of the woods, we could dolly along the grass verge past foreground trees. The angle you can't get this way is back-lit. I don't know how likely this scenario is where you live, but it might be worth scouting around.
  19. Wong Kar Wai/Chris Doyle/William Chang have spent a lot of time inside my DVD player. I wouldn't want to stand in comparison, but your comment does not displease me. Everything here is from short narrative films. Music video will have to be another reel. The shot you mention was fortuitous. I did little but notice it was there to be shot. The script called for a follow focus of a man sleeping on an ascending escalator, but on the morning we were to shoot, after months of negotiation we lost the escalator, which was in a train station, to homeland security concerns. We called around and were offered a nightclub, where we shot the next night without scouting. On arriving we discovered they had a wheelchair lift, like a small freight lift with no enclosure, and we made the sleeping escalator shot a sleeping elevator shot. All I did was replace the bulb at the top of the shaft with a brighter one. The faux dof is caused by placement of the camera closer to the actor's knee than the lens's minimum focus distance, which could hardly be helped anyway. The light gets gradually brighter as he ascends, though you can't see it in these 2-second cuts. I also have an angle where I perched on the motor at the top of the shaft, but of course the lighting is flat. It intriques me that a wheelchair lift would open directly onto a night club dance floor. I don't think we could have made that up. The silhouette with the blue background is from the same location. A couple of days later we stole the escalator shot in a hotel, but I don't have that tape. Note that the dv35 short "Marla" by The Black Sheep contains a wonderful long freight elevator shot, no doubt I had it in mind when we improvised this one, and for all I know they might have been referencing an earlier precedent.
  20. Sorry for the delayed response(s), busy all of a sudden. Andres: I didn't use an anamorphic on the DVX for any of these shots, and though I've used it plenty in the past, I've pretty much retired it at this point. Oliver: The woman in slippers going from the stairs down the hallway was done on a DVX100, just before sunset in January. It's hand-held, found light. The couple in the convertible was shot with something from the the PD-170 family, can't remember which I'm afraid. It was on a porta-jib, at magic hour, in early summer, and on that one I did have the Century Optics anamorphic adapter. It's the only Sony, only interlaced, only jib, only anamorphic adapter shot, and by far the oldest, so it's interesting that you picked it out. I can't remember if we silked anything, probably not. Bill T: On blocking...far from nit-picking, I think this is quite astute, and something I had overlooked. Probably a genuine weakness of mine, though I've attempted my share of three-minute moving shots. I used to want to be Urusevsky, now I'm studying a lot of Mark Lee Ping-Bin and Yutaka Yamasaki. But the point is valid, I'll go back and see if I can wedge in some longer shots which might show something different. Certainly the reel which encouraged me to post here--Jody Lee Lipes', which has at this point been watched by anyone who wants to be considered my friend--includes some great blocking. Anyway, thanks for the input, this is exactly what one wants when posting something for critique, fresh eyes offering an insight one had missed (especially when it is tactfully cushioned with praise). So please, all opinions are welcome.
  21. I've found these settings useful for contrasty scenes: Cinelike HD24 (going against the crowd here, it seems) Black stretch 3 (gets back a bit of the shadows) Knee 80% (very early, but it works for me) Then I'm rather aggressive on the highlights...try it yourself, they retain color and roll off better then you might expect. You'll probably want to stretch the contrast back out a touch in post. For really low light, add 6dB gain, turn the shutter off, and avoid fast motion and hand-held. There will be noise and motion smearing, but maybe you can live with it. Steve Milligan
  22. Thank you. Interesting! Wouldn't argue with you myself, but I've had those shots singled out for praise by others. Good eye, there's some DVX toward the end. Steve
  23. http://www.ghostmap.com/reel/reel.html Steve Milligan
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