Chris Cooke

Here's a thought... Get some 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 tough spun (get the wide version). Then die it a warm tint. After that, sew it together to make a 12' x 12'. Or, you could forget the die and just clamp some Bastard Amber (Rosco #02) to the barn doors on your light. Then make your frame.

I like the idea of shooting the footage that I put on the screen extra warm. The footage has allready been shot though, so I think that we'll color correct the footage before playing it through our LCD's. Thanks David and Phil. Chris Cooke LD/Cinematographer

I'm shooting a television show this summer and I want to put two LCD's behind the talent on set. I will be lighting with tungsten lamps but the color tempurature of the LCD is around 4800k. What's the best way to bring the color temp down to 3600k? I'm thinking a CTO gel on the screen but how do I mount it? Will static hold it? Is there special tape that I can get? There are no internal settings that bring the temp down lower than 4800k. Chris Cooke LD/Cinematographer

This is a scene from a segment that I shot for a television show. The director wanted a very surreal and soft look for the talent. It was basically the Christmas story told with aboriginal actors in their native land. During the location scout, we found this old tree that worked perfect for this scene. I knew that if we shot it at about 10:00am we would have perfect backlight on the actors and I could bounce light onto their faces for the very soft and surreal look we were going for. It does look a bit "lit", but you don't think about that within the context of the story. We only used available natural light during this scene. The smoke also worked nicely except that we had some wind bursts. I loved the way that the actors looked against the cool, contrasty foothills.

One thing that really helps with realism for night car shoots is rain. Your story may not call for it but it really adds dimension and depth. Especially when you light through the rainy window from outside. You get an interesting water pattern on their face.

No matter what you do in camera, regular floresent fixtures will look like floresent fixtures. The only way to change that is to put filters over the floresents but even then they're not your best solution for a night club look. If you have a little budget, rent some par 64s. If that's even too much $, use some of your dad's halogen work lights. The color temp is about 2400k or so but that shouldn't matter too much since you'll white balance to those lights. Make sure that you backlight the steam or you'll never see it on camera. Color gels and diffusion really help make a production look better. There are very cheap solutions for these as well. Stay away from handheld shots unless the scene really calls for it. Even the shaky NYPD blue handheld camera work takes a lot of skill in order to look profesional.

Arri Softbank Tungsten D2 is a good kit that works great for TV productions. It consists of a 650 w fresnel, two 300 w fresnels and a lot of extra goodies including scrims, stands and color-correction gels. I have that kit but it has all 650 watters. One of the downfalls to this kit is that it's basically indoor or nighttime use only. I would add an Arrilite 2000 w open face with both tungsten and 5600k bulbs for outdoor use. You can get all this for less than $2500 US. HMI's are easily that much for one light. But, if you need 'em, you just can't beet the output of an HMI.

I just bought 3 Altman Shakespeare Leko's and I'm looking at different gobos for them. The Rosco Image Pro system caught my attention while searching for the right gobos. I've read quite a few articles about the system and they're all biased towards it being really sweet. Does anyone have any concerns about color, contrast, resolution, blacks, etc.?

Caleb Deschanel is amazing. I loved the opening shot in The Passion where he had this steadicam on a crane that came sweeping down into The Garden. When the operator hit the ground he started walking and following Jesus (Jim Caviezel). It was wonderfully lit as well, Jim looked very human but at the same time, God was looking down on him with shafts of light. Anna and the King. I don't even know where to start with that movie. Amazing work. John Toll did quite the work in the Last Samurai when the Samurai's and the Imperial army met in the woods for the first time. Very good use of fog and lighting.

Thanks for the comments. One more question. How far do you put your talent from the screen?

I'm a Director and an LD at the Miracle Channel. I'm also an aspiring cinematographer. We have a greenscreen at our station that's been painted by Rosco chroma key paint. The way that we've lit it works great when keying it out on our Quantel but when we try anything on our Velocity Q's, it just has trouble getting rid of that notorious green halo. Right now I'm using Videscence to light the green screen and Fresnels to light the talent. Also, the amount of light hitting both the talent and the greenscreen is fairly similar at about 60 fc. Does anybody have some suggestions in a better way to light it so that our Velocity's can handle it. The camera's that we're using are Ikegami HL-45 W's and a Panasonic D-910.

When you're working out prices, also consider that most mini dv camera's under $1000 don't have built in XLR inputs. You'll have to add that feature on later. A smarter choice might be to step it up to Panasonic's dvx-100's. These are very good camera's (for the price) and I've seen them for sale on places like ebay for around $3000. Since panasonic released it's very similar dvx-100a and it's brand new hvx-200, the price on the dvx-100 has dramatically dropped. I've used this camera extensively for shorts and tv series.

Have you thought about using a graduated ND?

Thanks for the tips guys. I ended up doing the double exposure method and it turned out great. What made this even trickier was the fact that we shot it on two different days at an airport because the actress had to dye her hair when she played the twin. The one day we shot it during the day and the next time, we had to shoot at night. This made the lighting a little tricky, getting it the exact same but we had digital pictures of the cameras LCD monitor from the previous shoot. The other thing that really helped was that I made sure that there was a corner in the wall right between the twins so that when we edited we could use that corner as a cropping point. It turned out great so thanks for all the tips and I'll use more of them on future shoots.

American Cinematographer Magazine is the best magazine for filmmakers out there in my opinion.

I'm shooting scene where these twin girls (who are played by the same actress) finally meet each other. The producer wants it to be shot on a green screen. The only problem I have with this is that I absolutely hate when the viewer can tell that it's obviously a chroma key shot. My camera is a DVX-100 and the scene will be edited on a FCP HD edit suite. Does anyone have any advice for an alternative or a better way to shoot and/or key my green screen.