Olivier Egli

I plan a shot with my cam rigged to a anti g hanger in a soundstage pointing down. I have video assist to preview the framing but I also would like to be able to start/ stop the camera remotely. Any ideas?

I have an upcoming shot of water dripping into a pomd shot in highspeed in fron of a black background. I plan to light it with backlight and add a little bit of fill from the side and top to help the texture. Is this alright that way, other suggestions. Also, how can I use my meter in this case? I have no real key except for the backlight that will shine through the translucent waterdrops, but how do I determinate exposure? do I need to take a incidental reading of the bakclight and assume that the waterdrops will cut it down 1 stop? or should I measure myhand in the light path and open up a bit for the water?

hold on, what BNC connection is it? SDI uses BNC cables as well but it is truly digital in high bandwidth. I know that DVCam is a 4:1:1 (NTSC) or 4:2:0 (PAL) component signal and not a truly 4:2:2 component signal as Digibeta but there might still be decks that output luma and the two substractive color channels in digital form over SDI as discreet channel information... so if your company does just that and uses RS422 as deck controller the BNC way is much much better than the firewire. Firewire is amateurish because the deck control information are known to be about 6 frames offset which can be a pain especially for tight insert edits. also the troughput of firewire is not nearly as good and reliable as the one BNC has to offer. IMO there are cards that supersample the 4:1:1 video signal to less compressed 4:2:2 D1 or maybe even truly uncompressed (?). In the case of DVCam you are fine because it does not take more data throughput than normal DV which is, to my opinion, about 3.6 megs/ second. check if they are working with SDi and seperate serial controllers.

so in another thread I discussed an upcoming musicclip I am shooting with a room that should get quite the harsh and evenly lit look of the two mentioned movies. bear in mind that the budget is tight on this one. I have 4 9K dinos with heavy diffusion and a few 2K arri apollos as well as a couple redhats and fresnels and only 3 daylight balanced flos in my package. I know that the best way would probably be a big fixature of long bank kinoflos hung overhead. cant be done on this one...budget. also HMI are more or less out of question. the floor is silver metallic and reflects light well but will have to be blocked in order to avoid too flat fill in the eye sockets. scoops might be okay. what else??

I know, if I wanted the task to be fulfilled easily and comfortably I would have to rig a dozen of 3 bank kinoflos, which would also give me the desired look. But here it is a question of budget and time. I think we have access to scoops or skylights, I will have to check with the gaffer today. Anyways, I am mostly looking into getting the THX/ 2001 space odyssey in the final room look. It was also acheived with underneath lighting, which I cant do in this one (budget!). Does anyone else have a suggestion to get this low contrast, diffused, evened out whiteish look to the room? There will be a nurse and a male nurse and a physist in it that will also bloom, but the main actor and his wife have a much darker wardrobe and no fill in the face in order to seperate them from the rest. for close shots with shallo dof should I try to create more light and shadow pools to help give it a compressed feeling?

I know about the horsepower of the dinos. the thing is that the room will be extremely bright and almost blow out compared to the dark skin of the actors which will be just a bit over key. I also want directional light so it is obvious where the light is coming from. the walls are an even painted white which should reflect the light coming off the silver floor in a way that you think the walls are glowing. thought of going 3-4 stops over key on the walls as I dont need details on them (they dont have any). would you suggest anything else than my 9Ks with frost for this purpose? A reading got me 500 Fc, 125 would be my key... would I be better off with just a few 2Ks hanging off the ceiling with heavy diffusion?

excellent! this is just what I was looking for. thank you so much!!

whyt do you think, would a mercury vapor lamp help the effect? or is it safer to do it in post as well?

I am shooting a new video in a psychiatric house. Therefore I want to use a very flickery light style. All my rental house has to offer are flicker free FL tubes which wont probably help when shooting crystal sync, 25 frames/sec with the SR2. My main lights are 9 K dinos hanging form the ceiling for general fill and kicker and some 2K apollos for highlights, modeling lights and additional keys. Now I also want to add this flicker like effect and sustain my cyan like look (achieved by filtration and grading). Anyone an idea?

How about using some nicely painted backdrops of a nearby skyline? You could also blur it a lot so it suggests a shallo wdepth of field since the background is so far away. It think it is important not to keep it black and dark since this would destroy the daylike feel of the set. Are you lighting with HMI from the outside? I dont think that simple overexposing and flaring out is going to help you, but if you dont have access to backdrops you could try with a big white and bright surface that you shine some HMI pars on to in order to exaggerate the hot bruning out look. if you are using a zoom it will most likely flare which could be good. but dont just burn it out if it is not in the sunpath it will look unreal. what you could also try is CG stuff. It is hard to key with harsh sunlight coming through the window, but if the camera is locked off you can use a soft edged mask and paint in the background in post. Altough the first idea seems to me to be the best I think just adding a bit of sunlight bathed texture in the background might just be enough for you. have the bg look bright, interesting and not flat

I am from Zurich/ Switzerland. But I can move anywhere to complete such a course, anywhere where they speak german, french or english is fine...

hi there. I have been working with film cameras for a few years and now I want to deepen my skills with some more on hands training by professionals. can anyone point me towards a good school or establishment that offers courses no longer than few months (max. 10) that will mainly treat film cinematography? It can be anywhere, really. just need a good hint..

so on my upcoming musicvid I chose the canon 8-64 2.4 lens as it might give me more freedom when setting the frame size. The tight budget does not allow for a set of ultraprimes but I have access to this lens in PL mount for the S16 Arri SRII dentz. Has anyone any experience in the use of this zoom? is it as hard as they say? I know Japanese lenses tend to be harder than others. How about breathing when pulling focus even at extreme focal lengths? Is the lower end of the length usable at all? aberration? barrel distortion? I know I should be testing it extensively myslef, but the budget and the time are tight tight tight...

I want to get a new sekonic incidental reading light meter but I wonder that the slides are for.

the second set (with the high grade of saturation and contrast), could I use a polarizer or maybe an ultrapol there? The camera is locked off hanging from the ceiling pointing downwards to the actors. Also, does anyone have experience with center spot filters? is it more wise to do this in post?

oh and what I forgot: I will be shooting most of the shots of the second set at 50fps. I dont think this will affect the reciprocity of the layers in any way, but it change the reproduction of the picture....?

i am shooting a new musicvid in 3 weeks. the video will include 2 sets, one of them needs to be very hospital like, cold and shiny, almost needs to have a bit of a "sick" feel to it. the other one needs to have deep saturation, hefty contrast and a lot of definition. I want this set to tend more towards the warm color range whereas the first set tends to be more cyan. what is the easiest way to achieve this beside knobbing around in telecine? I want to go into post with the best possible negative. I will be shooting on Kodak 7274 with an Arri SRII and Canon 8-64 zoom. I want to use the 200T as it has always proved to be my workhorse and the most reliable when there was a lot of shadow detail to be captured and when skintones as well as a medium to high range contrast mattered to me. But now I need these twoe sets to be totally different. First I thought of shooting a greyscale with a 81EF filter on it or a half orange gel on the key to have the telecine match it up. and then shoot uncorrected all the way for the first set (the sick looking one). would a dior filter help for the unfriendly skin tones? Also I might rate the 7274 160ASA to have that one third overexposure to help the highlights. What will happen to the shadows? as for the second set: how can I increase the saturation and the snappy look of the already snappy 7274 without having to push or pull? the budget does not allow for it, unfortunately. the first set will be mainly fill light. The light ratio will be something like 2:1, only using some kicker and eye light for the center of attention, but the rest should stay pretty even. the second set needs a lot of fill for the background but the foreground should stand out way more with keylight. Here I want something like 4:1 or even 8:1. can anyone help me? thanks

Hey I just played with my beaulieu and that mysterious filter and to me it seems like it only affects the eye piece for some reason. This filters does not cover the film path but the path that goes from the angled mirror down to the path for the eye piece, so i guess this could be some ND filter for bright situations in the eye piece. Also, it looks colorless. When I move the shutter I can see straight through the gate to the cartdrige department even when the filter is engaged. Can it be that my beaulieu 4008 features this?

Did something stupid today. Shooting Super8 indoors wirh tungsten light on kodachrome40 and did not realise that I had the built-in 85 filter engaged. I exposed all my 6 rolls for 40 ASA instead of 25, which means I have underexposed my dear reversal by 2/3 of a stop. Will I run into any trouble? Is it probable that this has thrown my shots out of focus? Can I throw it all away since the latitude is so narrow? Please help Thanks Olivier

sounds a bit dangerous...

As for 16mm I heavily depend on my Zeiss 10-100mm. It is great at all the focal lenghts and shows minimal distortion and good color rendition. I remember shooting a music video with heavy heavy backlight of the actors (2 9K dinos through a silk) and even tough it is tricky and risky to shoot scenes like that with a zoom because of the many optical elements giving potential risk of flares, it held details and resolution very well. No flares or glare at all. As for shorter lenghts I add a 9mm Zeiss to it. This works perfectly for me. Of course there are the ultra primes as well, but I hardly ever use it on small budget shoots. When there is more dough around, then these are the ones I would go for. But still, if not artistically motivated, zoom moves are a big no no for me...

I agree, Michael. When I said that wide shots tend to look "brighter" than close ups then I meant of course in a sequence of shots where you have the same objects in the frame like in my case: you have the snow and the guy. So in close ups you expose more for the actor and in the wides you rather want to expose a bit more for the snow to keep some detail or it might burn out. as I said I will try to expose for the skin tones in the close ups with the incidental readings and then bring the face down one stop (the bright make up used to make him look unnaturally pale and desoriented reflects probably more light than average caucasian skin). there I do not worry about the snow or sky burning out too much. of course I will still look if the snow burns out over 4 stops over key, which would be 5 stops over the skin... in the wides I will take the incidental readings and bring it down a notch to be able hold the details in the snow as there is probably 90% snow in the frame. but I am shooting all the way at F5.6 which will probably force me to use more NDs in the wide shots. funny, I took readings at different locations in the alsp and at 5:30 pm everywhere the light was at key level giving me the exact foot candles for a ND-less exposure at F5.6 at 6 pm I wasnt able to use that iris anymore. it had gone far beyone F2.8 so, that's what I learnt from you guys...

funny, I have never heard of this rule before. But it makes sense. Although my camera doesn not take different shutter angles and therefore I cannot change between different exposure times which makes it kinda obsolete... I will follow the incidental readings but I want to have my spotmeter handy to be able to interpretate the readings according to what I want to be resolved and visible. In the close ups I dont need to worry about anything but the skintones. I want them to look pale (make up and 81EF on 200T) and a bit underexposed... probably 1/3 of a stop under key. but in the wide shots I need to watch out to hold some details in the snow. The landscape up there is not just flat, it has very much detail... But the detail is hidden in the snow. I think the rule of thumb with the 4 stops over key is probably the best way to go. If I measure 3-4 stops over my actual iris setting then the snow will probably still hold detail. But I though that in general you tend to close down in wide shots since wide shots give you a general feel of being brighter than close ups.

Yeah -- what 200 ASA stock are you exposing in sunlight with an 81EF filter, but no 85? If I recall from your posts, you've been trying to warm up the image beyond a normal balance. The only 200 ASA stocks I know of are tungsten balanced, so you'd need an 85 filter PLUS whatever warming filter you want. With only an 81EF you'd end up with an image that's bluer than normal. Also, 1/3 stop compensation from 200 would be 160, not 120 (125). 120 would be 2/3 compensation. Ah, yeah, of course I used 160ASA, I confused it with the 2/3 stop compensation of the 85...

Haha, yeah, i know, I tend to confuse people with all my posts... David Mullen is right, I want the image to be cold and the orange blouse to pop out. any thought about my readings? cheers