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Chris Cooke

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Everything posted by Chris Cooke

  1. The video is now up on YouTube for those who are interested.
  2. I took the time to re-size some of the screen grabs to the proper aspect ratio... I will try to remember to post a link of the actual video when it's completed. Let me know what you think. Here I was shooting without the lens adaptor... in an infinity black environment, DOF is not as noticeable and I wanted to make sure my focus was on. We were using the Fisher 10 dolly with a Schactler head.
  3. Good call. I was exporting them quick in the airport this morning and missed a step. Thanks for the comment.
  4. I just finished principal photography on a music video for a gospel artist named Kevin LeVar. We shot it all on the EX1 at 1080p with a Letus Extreme adapter. Director: Chris Atkins Producer:Steve Prankard Director of Photography: Chris Cooke The locked version will be completed by August 1st. 28mm lens The lighting was perfect this evening. It was shot beside Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada. Shooting on the beach (I'm behind the camera and the director is over my shoulder) 50mm lens I had a soft light to supplement the window light in front as her key and bounced another light off the ceiling behind her for a soft kicker... again, supplemented by natural light coming through the window. This was one of those happy accidents where the actor pulled up the picture when we were doing our OS and we saw his reflection. Decided to go with it. 28mm lens Dappled sunlight coming through the trees and some reflected light onto the tree trunk on the left. 50mm lens Another shot in the cemetery. 50mm Shot this in at 60fps and the light had to match with our beach scene. A lighting diagram I drew up for our studio scenes. No lens adapter on this shot. Screen grab from our studio shoot. I used a heavily flagged Chimera with a 2K Fresnel for the keylight and various Source 4's, Par 64's, Par 56's and Fresnels for modeling.
  5. Hi David, I'm looking forward to seeing this film. You do great work with the Polish Brothers. Are you concerned about multiple light reflections on reflective surfaces such as the car in the sample frame you showed us? I'm sure that a DI could solve that problem but it's probably not an ideal use of budget to go that route. Will you just let the lens diffusion soften these reflections?
  6. This product might spark some ideas... http://www.elementlabs.com/products/versatube-hd
  7. Thanks for the update, I really enjoy these. Sounds like you're liking the HMI Source-4 Joker. I don't remember you ever mentioning using these before. I remember on "Big Love", both you and Jim Glennon used tungsten Source-4's a lot and bounced them off show cards but is this your first experience with the Source-4 Joker? I still haven't had a chance to use them yet but I'm sure they work just as slick as the tungsten Source-4, just brighter and bluer. Do you ever use them for hilights in the background? Or do you just use them for bouncing?
  8. You may need to explain what you mean by "an additional dimmer" but with professional dimmers, the amount of power consumed is decreased as you dim the light. With Maxi-Brutes, you can switch off each bulb individually if you want to maintain colour temperature and you have a limited power supply.
  9. Thanks for that. What would be your choice for a portable fluorescent then? I've only used Kinos and Videscence and I definately like Kinos better.
  10. http://www.cinemills.com/index.php They look like good lights and I'm considering ordering HMI and Flouro Light kits from them. Any thoughts?
  11. I interchange the words Pup and Baby as the same thing. They're just 8 inch 1K Fresnels. The light that I was actually referring to in the podcast was a 6 inch 750w fresnel which is somewhere in between a Baby and a Tweenie. Therefore my use of the name Pup.
  12. Here's a simple lighting setup that you guys might be interested in. This is a goofy podcast to create some awareness for a new daily music show that I'll be lighting (I'm actually in the podcast as a "potential host" for the show). We shot the first one on an infinity white set and you can see my lighting setup at the begining of the first podcast. Very soft yet contrasty lighting. Junior through 4'x4' of Grid Cloth as side key light Naked pup for kicker Soft light through Grid Cloth for uplight Spotted Junior for White Glow Cyc Lights for green wash To subscribe, click this link; if it doesn't open iTunes, open iTunes yourself and under the 'Advanced' menu, select 'Subscribe to Podcast...', copy and paste the URL below into the box that appears. http://www.miraclechannel.ca/channel/our_p...UF/mainfeed.xml
  13. I just saw a segment on the Daily Planet that talked about another new lens design made out of crystal, calcium fluoride. The technology has been used in telescopes since I think about 2002 but this new design is more compact and will be perfect for helmet cameras and cell phone cameras. Light loss is reduced as compared to glass lenses and the resolving power is "supposed" to be better. Here's an article for those of you who are interested. http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/5853
  14. One of my greatest challenges right now with concert and theatre lighting is to make hard light look soft. Unfortunately, I can't have a 6'x6' of diffusion just outside the frame because the frame becomes the whole venue. Good looking trusses are almost as important as a good looking stage.
  15. I began my cinematography career with lighting talking head tv shows and then short films and music videos. I'm still in love with dramatic filmmaking but I've found a second love... concert lighting. I've been doing a lot of studying how to light concerts and theatre lately and a week ago, I got to do my first large venue concert. It was an experience to say the least and I'll be doing more in the near future. I would recommend this for any cinematographer who wants to improve his/her skills. Here are some pics.
  16. The newer HID lamps (in S4's and newer pars) and Ceramic lamps (in Arri's new lights) are considered Gas Discharge lamps. Not incandescent. It can even be argued that our typical tungsten lights are not incandescent, as they are filled with gas and a trace of halogen. Don't tell the legislators that before they make the law though.
  17. My biggest deterent to bouncing light is that it spills everywhere and controling that spill would take way too long on a film set. There are times though where bounced light is the only practical way of lighting a scene and there are times where you don't need to control spill (eg. night exterior of forest bouncing an HMI off a helium baloon).
  18. Why wouldn't you want it blown out? White is white. The caution that I have is that you don't blow it out so much that the edges of the talent in the forground start to blow out. I've lit these type of situations on video before and lit the background to about 110 IRE and the talent to about 70 IRE. This worked well.
  19. Here's an example that I shot of a red head through a 4x4 of 251 like I mentioned in my earlier post. This picture was shot before the backlight was in place. mm_angle50000.BMP Like Brian D said, kinos are nice when shooting in a small room for a long time when heat becomes a factor. Also, they're handy when you need to hide a light in a tight space like behind a couch or on a ceiling.
  20. Well, the first suggestion that you'll get from most people on this site will probably be to use a kino such as a diva light or 4 bank and then diffuse it even more by attaching 250 or something of that nature to the barndoors. I like to put a 1k redhead, 2k fresnel or 1.2k hmi par behind a 4x4 frame of 250 or 216. Just make sure that you place your light far enough behind the frame in order to completely fill it. Also, put the frame no farther than 6 feet away from the talent on a closeup (if you want that soft effect). Placement if very important to achieve the proper mood. But that's up to your judgement. The next thing to do is get a c-stand with a flag on it and put it as far away from the light as you can without entering the shot. This way, the light becomes very controlable.
  21. Ok, I just saw We Are Marshall and couldn't stop from commenting on the shallow focus of that movie. In some scenes, the shallow focus really added to the story and seemed to seperate the football players from what was going on around them but there seemed to be a lot of soft shots in the film. I did like the look and I thought that Shaun Hurlbut, ASC did a great job with lighting but it seemed to me that maybe when they were cutting the film, the director and editor chose good performances no matter how soft the shot was. This would be my main concern on a film like We Are Marshall with so many action shots coupled with a shallow DOF, you would have to talk with the director before hand to make sure that he didn't cut in any soft shots. Either that or get a flawless 1st AC.
  22. In the studio that I work in as the lighting director, we have a green room (three green walls and a green floor) painted with Rosco DigiComp, a white cyc and an infinity black set. In the last 4 months, I've lit the white cyc four different times, the infinity black set six times and the green room not once. For daily tv shows and commercials chroma keying doesn't seem to get used as much as white cycs because of the ease of use and also the "anti cheese" factor. Chroma keying is not as easy as finding the right software to do the keying for you. You also have to light it the same as the background that's getting keyed in and find/shoot a good background that will suite your specific need. White backgrounds seem to be apealing to producers and directors these days because of the clean and professional look that you can achieve by using them without spending much money. And infinity black is always a safe way to go for interviews.
  23. I bought a large china ball from Ikea the other day and fitted it with a 500w EHD bulb from osram. I then proceeded to put 250 inside the ball as a heat barrier so that the paper lantern would not burn. The light from it looks good but I'm still a little nervous to use it for more than a couple of minutes at a time. What are some ways that you guys have made fire safe china balls and fitted them with large bulbs.
  24. Try buying a white shower curtain liner. I have used this for quite a few scenes where it's the perfect size and weight of diffusion that I need. They're less than $10 and work well. Just make sure that the curtain is far enough from your source (you'll get a softer effect this way because it fills up the frame and it won't catch fire).
  25. In the situation that I was talking about I used the fresnel with CTO and a water jug as my key light and used real fire as my fill (it was actually a wood fire that we built into an outdoor set). I put up another tungsten fresnel with CTB as a backlight/kicker.
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