James Brown

From a lighting perspective - , "traveling", "walk away", "double/single down", "send it to go to bed", "it's a hollywood", "standing by". I guess there is so many and it works with individuals and their crew. The boss may call for the "shmurg from the dooveldot" and you see an electric run to the back of set and grab some wire bags from a picker. every set and every crew is different. James.

Hi, One thing that is not cheap is Big Night EXT......... The only way you can achieve this without it being a black hole is condensing your coverage into MCU's and CU's. WS on a beach with a 200W Sun Gun will not do. You can get a couple of 3kva Genny's quite cheap and join them, these will run a 2.5HMI PAR easily and a 4k if it wants. At least this way you could chuck a diff frame up and have a nice soft moonlight background or a Mercury/sodium vapour depending on your choice of colour. If you dont mind it falling into black, fine, try and position a source in the far BG, us that to justify a little back edge from a sun gun, some soft fill and let the BG fall off. Using out of focus sources in the deep background can also break up the blackness. Oh yeh, stock wise i would shoot it on 7218 purely for the stop..... Regards, James.

Even if you cannot shoot film tests why not get a DSLR, grab a few tungsten lamps, a 1.2HMI and shoot some tests at variable white balances or variable amounts of CTB or CTO on the lamps. That's how you will get your specific look, not by someone telling you how much blue to put on it. I cannot remember the specific blue your talking about but another nice blue night time that springs to mind is Oliver Stapleton's night in Cedar House Rules . Good luck with the project.

Hi, Harry Box has the answers. "An HMI puts out about four times as much light as a tungsten light of the same wattage, 85-108 Lumens per watt of electricity, compared to 26 lumens per watt for tungsten bulbs. James

Hi, You could go the other way and have a very sterile, white, overexposed look. I recently watched 25th hour again and it was quite interesting. I did something similar and had a bunch of Redheads (6) hanging from above with 251 & 1/4 + Green pointed directly down. A fair bit of bounce from the cream table worked in my favor filling in the eyes. Cheers.

Hi, One of my favorite scenes i have shot was of two brothers in a elevator. It was quite a dark film and later transfered to B&W. I lit the whole thing with a 2 foot double magic armed from a lip above the doors. It was a bit more sidey then 3/4. Just have the actor on the key side take half a step back to allow the light through. Using something like a 4ft single can get you out of trouble with reflections. Sometimes simple is the best. Regards James.

Hi, Personally i'm disappointed with the Cine award going to 'There will be blood'. In my opinion No Country or Diving Bell deserved the main award for visual story telling. my 0.02

Hey Bob, Are they 6k pars or something smaller? What style of grid are you wearing up top?

He's not only embarrassing himself but every DP that has worked with him.

4k Moley Moles are a great light. Rig it on the boom, spot it up a bit, job done. Otherwise why not a 6k par with a spot lens?

Wasn't it Paul Bruening asking for a bit of controversy yesterday? Here you go Paul, almost on cue. James.

Before criticizing this film to harshly at least have a look. http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/cloverfield/ If you are a filmmaker there will be appreciation for the technical achievement accomplished in this film. To have a realistic handicam look and really large scale visual effects seamlessly blending into each other is something special. James.

I'm speechless after just coming back from this film. In terms of Visual Storytelling i think Kaminski really has achieved greatness. So beautiful throughout, i haven't been this moved after a film for such a long time. The use of POV was perfect, stylised but realistic to the character. Taking into account the last month or so (in Australia) films like Jesse James, No Country, Kite Runner and American Gangster have came out i didnt think anything could top it. This just did. It will be a nervous Academy night. James

Bob, Second unit was the Underwater Unit. Regards, James.

Ill find out some info tomorrow, i'm working with a guy that did that job. I know the Electrics/Grip team did the underwater lighting/rigging as well as the dry stuff. James.

The question is will you get the throw that you need?. 10' to the middle is a long way for Kino not to fall off dramatically.

Looks good Bill, whats the specs?

Hi Eric, Congrats on such an amazing film. Beautiful, Subtle and complementary of the story throughout. You must sit back with the hugest smile thinking about the transition your life as a DP has gone through in the past 12 months Juno really was an organic piece of cinema, Congrats again, Regards, James. .

Hi, Whats a mini 9? Is it similar to a Source 4? Regards, James

Hi, Looks great, i love the Day INT's. Regards, James.

Hi, Depending on how strong you want the shafts of light i would recommend Mole Richardson's Molebeams. Molebeam Regards, James

Hi, A mini flow or a small 1ft Kino strategically placed along the dash can work a treat. They both work out of the cigarette lighter with the appropriate connections. I find Tungsten with 1/4+Green gives a nice dash light. Regards, James

Hi Michael, I just stumbled across your post about working with Tim. He actually got me into the film industry here in Australia. I have the utmost respect for him as a person and as a DP. His shaping of light is truly inspirational, his calm collective manner on set is admirable and he has the complete respect for his crew Recently when he was back in Australia i worked on a few commercials with him and it really was a festival of cutters, nets, frames and bounce (it looked great but very tiring for a two man electric crew). He does a lot of tinkering which can be quite time consuming, which, brought up the discussion "i wonder how much this will vary when a feature pops up" I can imagine it would be hard to keep that sort of quality on a low budget feature. A few questions.... How many minutes are you trying to shoot a day? How many crew do you have in the Grip & Electric team? Many Nights? Hope you enjoyed floating back to the Gaffing side of things. Regards, James.

Hi, As previously mentioned i think the best bet is a pole cat (depending on your room size) These will hold small kino's, china balls or 650's ect. If it's just a china ball you can always run it straight out of the light socket with a BC to Female plug (this is great for 360 so there is not a nasty cable coming down a wall) Regards, James Brown

Our country aims to to cut household incadesent light-bulbs in three years if reelected. Little do people know that this would only cut 0.7 percent of national greenhouse emissions. Seriously what is the point of going through such a massive step with such little change. The change needs to be in industrial emissions and renewable energy NOT changing household light bulbs. How will this affect the film industry?? I would go as far as saying it wont. David makes great points...BUT...why should the film industry be exempt? Because we are making films, telling stories, giving the public entertainment??? It seems that we should be allowed to run a ton of 500 amp generators, burn 10's of thousands of watts of light, use 1000's of paper cups ect ect ect. I could imagine the only thing that MAY happen is governments will bring in a carbon tax for big shows (like they will with mining and other industries) and the production would have to pay to offset emissions, put money into a future fund or something similar. Especially in a country like ours when global warming is such major issue and the environment is number one on everyones agendas these days. The reality is Gaffers will still source incadesent bulbs from wherever they need to, Large 18k HMI's and 20k's will still be used throughout the world and large generators will spit out never-ending harmful emissions BUT all this compared to something like a large coal mine situated out in the desert??? Dont get me wrong i'm not fighting to turn the film industry green, not one bit.... DP's are not exactly going to use a specific light because they are thinking about the emissions it will put out....."Put that 18k on a cherry picker washing those trees, oh hold on how many fluoros will we need for a 2.8 from up there" If just wont happen, EVER. Sometimes it's hard to do the right thing for the environment when your passion leads you against it. Then again, i can think of tons of industries that are more harmful for the environment then ours. James.