Mitch Gross

I was just looking at the Century Precision Optics website and discovered how nice a deal they're offering on their Shade F/X mattebox system. For a complete mattebox system (holds 2 4x4 filters and includes the frontrod assembly for the appropriate camera) the list price is under $1200. That's a lot of well-made gear for a pretty nice price, and I'll bet that a place like B&H Photo discounts from there. A quality system that can take grow with accessroies in the future.

There is so much misconception about the unions and what they do. I'm a non-union DP just as David was until a short time ago. I work all the time and have never felt any real pressure from the union to join. I will occassionally get a call asking me if I was interested since I've been working here in town for so long and a lot of people know me, but it's never been a threat, more like "if you sign up you could be elligible for benefits and get a chance at the bigger jobs." A pretty friendly situation. I work on low budget features, music videos, corporate videos, and anything else that pays the bills or is of interest to me. I regularly hire Local 600 ACs and other union-affiliated crew. They are always calling into the hall to get a waiver for the job. With the exception of Local 52 (grip/electric) this is never a problem. Our productions are generally too small to be able to pay out union wages and benefits, but since the membership still wants to do the job the union says okay and allows the waiver. There's nothing sneaky or underhanded--it's just an organization looking out for its membership to make sure they are not exploited. The union generally wants to get the membership proper wages and benefits, and also insure that they will have decent working conditions. I can tell you that we very much insist on the working conditions anyway, and the terms of this are in no small way defined by the precedents of the union contracts, even though we are not bound by them. Most of the details of my Deal Memo are taken straight from the Local 600 employment agreement, and this becomes the basis for all the crew for the production. Do you really think there would be a meal every six hours if an organized group such as a union had not fought for it? Unions are not the enemy. For me membership does not make sense at the moment, but perhaps it soon will. But I still benefit from the union's existence on a daily basis. No offense, but if you wish to make movies but are unable to based on your finances and what the union is demanding, perhaps it is because you are simply asking too much. I often get people saying to me "I want to make a feature film in 35mm with explosions and crane shots and Steadicam moves but I only have $50,000 for the whole thing!" Well buddy, you just don't have enough money. And I shouldn't have to suffer through 18-hour days with no food and no sleep for pennies just so you can achieve your grand vision. That's exploitation and that is what a union is designed to stop.

They are only reliable after you send it to Reel Trading/Kiev USA in NY or Connecticut (I forget where he lives now) and have the edges repolished and the guide rollers realigned or removed. These cameras were good in design but poor in construction, so this fellow cleans them up and markedly improves them. Still, the speed governoe is not very accurate so even set to 24fps it doesn't hold speed too well, which leads to jerky movement. This is going to be different on each individual camera. It is easy to load and use (after modification) and there is someone on eBay selling an adapter to use common button batteries for the internal lightmeter (the original battery style is no longer made). The lens is surprisingly okay considering it costs next to nothing. I believe a spring wind will last about 25 seconds but again this varies by camera. The big problem will be parts and accessories for such a camera--they don't exist. Clive Tobin used to make a crystal motor for it but it is no longer available. I don't even know if Reel Trading is in business anymore. You'd probably be a lot better off with a Bolex or even a Bealieu. Pro-8 is refurbishing Bealieu cameras and selling them as the Classic-16, like they were some sort of retro-chic.

The a-minima is a great camera with tons of functions and neat little things about it. I used it once bolted to a board of wood to get a dolly shot underneath a parked car--impossible with any other camera (except the A-cam). But it's not a good general-use camera. Too finicky, a little loud and it can only take 200' loads which can be a pain. But it's terrific for those specialty times and it makes a great B-camera for bigger shoots. The A-cam is very limited in its uses in my mind. It does not have reflex viewing, runs very loud like a Bolex and can only take 100' loads. Besides the cute factor, I just don't know how much use I'd ever get out of it. A parallax finder in the 21st century? Hard to believe.

Again, you're wasting your money. Having a workprint made will cost a considerable amount of money. Just call the lab and ask them if you have a useable image on the negative. They'll be happy to take a quick look and give you an honest answer--for free. Just be honest with them about your concerns and be sure to explain this to them when you mail in or drop off your film. They're people too and will treat you fine. They'll tell you if there's an image and if it's seriously under- or over-exposed. Then you can decide whether or not to have a regular transfer to video made. Don't waste your money on any of these oddball workarounds. Just talk to your lab.

Often firsttime directors will ask me to do this wild shot and that crazy camera move. Sometimes it's justified and I'm all for it. But often I warn them that it'll take away from the overall production and siphon away their limited resources of time and money. The one shot may look nice but the sequence will suffer. "They'll love me and hate you," is my warning.

No, for $75/day they are trying to get a large, qualified professional crew to work four six-day weeks (24 days total). If you want to hire a bunch of film students or amateurs and give them a small stipend so they can pay their rent and eat while they toil away on your movie, then that's fine I guess. But working folk need to be protected from exploitation. I'm not saying that everyone deserves to live like a king, but this is a commercial -- albeit low budget -- production that is budgeted at several hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps a DP is going to get something out of a production besides the small check, but what is the average grip or PA going to get? Abused and exploited, that's what.

So I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. Cross-processing is something you do to reversal film stock to turn it into negative film so that you can make prints off of it. If you shoot negative, simply tell them to process it normally and prep for video. If you're unsure whether the camera works or your own skills, you can look yourself at the negative to see if there is an image or ask the lab or transfer house to check to see if there is a basic image. Assuming there is one then they'll tell you so and then perform the video transfer, which will standardly transform the negative image into a normal positive print image (unless you specifically asked for a negative image, but I don't think that's what you want). Don't involve cross-processing into the discussion when talking to your lab or you're likely to be very unhappy when all of your film comes back ruined.

As a non-Union DP who just left a job interview for a feature film where everyone on the crew was to be offered the same fabulous rate of $75/day, I can say that I think the union is a very good thing.

Quirks are mainly the erector-set construction style that has you popping sections on and off to switch the lights from one function to another. They simply wok differently than other style lights. Hand them to crew people used to dealing with standard fixtures and they'll be a little slow. Same problem as Lowel lights but an entirely different construction style. The Jokers are certainly more versatile than Kinos, although Kinos are so simple to use that they have to win in that regard. Transporting is probably easier with the Jokers as well since Kinos in their coffin cases are so huge. But the Jokers will cost you a lot more. But you should also understand that there are a lot of other choices out there for lighting fixtures. I don't know why you'd be comparing Jokers with Kinos--they are sucharadically different units. For the same range of money you could get a large Arri tungsten kit with a number of fixtures and accessories that would probably be a lot more useful for general purpose photography. I don't think I've used the Blackjack.

If you truly believe that three months is all you need to encompass a complete education into the possibilities and processes of cinema then there's nothing I can do to expand your world. I know there's the 2-day film school, but I'm still waiting for the 2-day brain surgery school. I'll spend the rest of the medical school money practicing on my friends.

Fun lights and very versatile, but you have to get used to their quirks. Best advice is to rent a set for a job or two and make sure you really like it. The fresnel attachent is particularly useful once you get comfortable with it.

It can also be useful to study a film where the camera hardly moves, then to note the impact when it does. Great examples of this are the Godfather films. The slow dolly in on Pacino when he announces that he'll do the assassination (the turning point in the first film), the parallel dolly moves of deNiro walking along the rooftops as his target walks in the festival on the street below (brilliant existential moment in the second film) or even the cross movement and -- heaven forbid -- ZOOM in on Pacino at the Atlantic City casino just before the helicopter attack (externalizing his internalized senses in the third film).

We just talked about this last week. For an external focus lens (I assume that's what you mean by EF), you cannot use a clamp-on mattebox but instead will have to mount it to frontrods. You can get a frontrod assembly from a number of manufacturers, including Chrosziel (the best), Vocas (aka Shade F/X), and Cavision (the cheapest--plasticy stuff from China). The frontrod assembly mounts to your camera base (you can still use your quick release plate) and the rods extend forward under the lens. The mattebox then mounts to this. The smallest size I would ever recommend is 4"x4", but for 16:9 you're really better of with 4"x4.560" to cover the wide end of the lens properly.

So often people think of a film school as a place to make a student film. That is incredibly limited thinking. People believe that they can make a film simply given the resources. But there is so much to the education and discipline of learning in a workshop environment such as a film school. It's as if one said, "I can paint like Van Gogh, if only I had a brush and some pain." Well, obviously there's a lot more to it than that. Film schools can offer a wonderful education and teach us to think and study in ways we would be otherwise blind to and incapable of doing. It is a way to expand one's horizons and disipline the mind and craft. Beyond that it is also an excellent way to build relationships and network. One of the great values of attending a school such as the AFI beyond the excellent education is the direct connection to the working world of Hollywood production. A good film school will teach you not only how to make a film, but also how films are really made. This is an education that you'll never glean simply by making a few of your own shorts.

Everything David mentioned is true, and you'll really be struggling to control the image when blowing up reversal. And it will be much more expensive as well. While you save some money by skipping the IP stage, that cost is overshadowed by the increased processing fees. And if you see this movie to a distributor they will often require an IP as part of the deliverables, which means you'll need to make a safety IP off of the IN (a step I'd recommend anyway as a protection master). Flashing the IN, increased handling costs on the negative cut and other fees associated with the special handling working with reversal will incur means that in the end you're likely to spend a good deal more by working with reversal. Generally the common tried and true methods are in the end the least expensive and offer the most control. Special processes and workarounds generally increase costs and pose roadblocks to controlling your image.

Kodak actually did a test run of this very quietly last year and distributed it to DPs through Bono Labs. I shot some and it did make for a pretty wild look, but I found it of limited use. If you wanted to shoot an entire feature this way they might be willing to accomodate you, but beware that the processing was a fortune--about twice normal negative rates. Again for a feature you might be able to work out a deal, but this will definitely be a more expensive way to go.

Boy you're asking a lot. Focal Press has some budgeting books, you may want to start there as a guide. 5:1 is a very low shooting ratio, I would pick 7:1 as a minimum with 10:1 being more prudent. 35mm will run you about $.75/ft. to buy rawstock, get it developed and transferred to video so you can edit it. That's $67.50/minute or about $60,000 for your entire feature at a 10:1 ratio. Remember that's just your film stock budget, not crew, equipment, food, lighting, insurance, actors, and everything else.

You should contact Eastman Kodak directly. Try buying in either the US (New York) or France (Paris).

Actually all the B&W footage throughout the film was 16mm.

It was pretty common in the day to push process the film a stop and sometimes flash it as well. He could have done this to gain exposure and then printed back down to tighten up the blacks. ...and I'm wrong. Just grabbed my copy of Masters of Light off the shelf. Roizman had been regularly force-processing everything to gain exposure but director Sydney Pollack didn't want him to do so on this film. Roizman still did it on the night exteriors but processed normally otherwise and got to really like the richness of the blacks when working this way. From then on he stayed away from force-processing.

For no-budget horror, you can't beat the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Are you really sure you want to do day for night? One of the hallmarks of horror is the darkness of the creepy shadows, hiding whatever scary things may be lurking just out of frame. The image may feel far too lit up using day for night.

Anyone else who also have that fotonovel can join David and myself in the Geek Hall of Fame. B) I don't recall all those split-diopter shots off the top of my head. I do remember those lighting bolt "probe-effect" shots when they had to project the film onto an acetate sheet, pinch the frame together until the crew guys with the big light disappeared, and then they re-photographed the frames. That made a nice edging effect that looked similar to a split-diopter. Oliver Stone does split-diopters a lot. "Born on the 4th of July" has a bunch of really extreme ones. For a subtle and elegant example, look at Jack Green's work in "Unforgiven." There's a shot of Clint talking to the scarred prositute after he's been beaten up. She's in the foreground and he's in the background and the only way to keep them both in focus in the anamorphic frame was to slip in a slit diopter on her shoulder. Most people would never notice.

George-- Off the top of my head I have no clue. But if you'd like to get together some time I'd be happy to look. It sounds like one of those things I'd be much better at dealing with if I saw it in right in front of me. Feel free to email me privately.

I believe it was Matt Pacini, who has moved on to 16mm now. "Lost Tribes," wasn't it? Also there was someone in Austrailia or NZ who posted some frame grabs last year.