AJ Young

I'll touch on the issue of women cinematographers. I don't know why only men are posting on this specific forum, but there are working women cinematographers and other online cinematography communities with active female members. A reality is that discrimination still happens in our industry, either through unconscious bias, sexism, or prejudice. I'm not an expert on the topic, nor am I the right person to be talking about it, but I know people who are: The International Collective of Female Cinematographers is a great starting point for your daughter to reach out to for advice on starting her career as a cinematographer. Website Cinematographers XX is another group, like ICFC, who I recommend your daughter contact and get advice. Website Cybel Martin is a working union cinematographer based in NYC. She responds to twitter pretty quickly, so have your daughter contact her through there. Twitter Website Julia Swain is a working non-union cinematographer based in LA. She is also working on her documentary titled Women of Light which explores the history and future of women cinematographers. She too is good at responding on twitter. Twitter Website I'm the last person who you should seek advice on about this issue. I am aware about this topic, am trying to understand it, and actively improve trying equality in our craft. The people and organizations I've mentioned are the ones your daughter should seek advice from.

I still believe, in the US at least, that your daughter should get a bachelor's degree. It can be in cinematography, business, or whatever. But, she should get a bachelor's; they've become the new high school diploma. The film industry doesn't particularly care if you have a bachelor's degree, but most other industries do. My wife is a project manager in manufacturing, but she has a bachelor's degree in film production. A film degree isn't entirely useless, it's better than no degree at all.

Don't forget to shoot a framing chart! http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=15084 http://www.stringercam.com/articles/frameing.html

I completely agree, freelancer seminars or small business classes will definitely help her more than figuring it out on her own. A straight out business degree won't really prepare her to be a working cinematographer because she won't be learning the technical and artistic trades of cinematography. It's a hard balance to find with a school; most film schools that I know of focus little attention on how a cinematographer runs their own business. Columbia College Chicago, my alma matter, did offer classes that taught students how to send/track invoices, run a business, network, etc. However, none of these classes were required and the school struggled to get those classes filled. Learning how to run a business is simply boring in the world of creative. On another note, related but wholly different: The secret to success for the industry is to maintain a low overhead. I have no problem with film school education, I have a problem with college costs in general. Graduates of any field leave school with a large amount of debt that can not be erased via bankruptcy. AFI, Chapman, and UCLA students pay upwards of $125k for a masters degree. They leave school and suddenly are hit with a minimum monthly payment the size of their monthly expenses. That is the career killer, not bad luck, bad attitude, poor work. As a point of perspective, I have colleagues shooting major TV shows who are still paying off their student debt. I truly believe everyone should get a college degree; non-film industry jobs almost always requiring one. The deciding factor on which college is the one you and her can afford. A quality film education that teaches her art, business, technology, and management will set her up for success, but only if her debt from school is either manageable or non-existent. Community colleges are an excellent way for to bang out general education classes. Hell, there are some great community college film schools, like Scottsdale Community College in Arizona. They can be a great starting point that transfer over to universities where she can finish her degree for half the cost.

If I may, can I add a perspective on working as a DP? The most important thing your daughter should remember is that being a cinematographer is running a business; very much like a dentist, hair stylist/colorist, therapist, etc. A manufacturing company doesn't have money always coming in, they constantly have to build relationships with new clients, develop new contracts, and so on. A cinematographer is self-employed and their success is dependent on location, the market, awareness of the market, networking abilities, their own motivation, and a great deal of luck. You'll hear arguments for/against film school, but the most important skills she will need to learn are how to run her own business. Self-employment is challenging in the beginning and the first ten years will most likely be the hardest. However, if you support her both financially and psychologically, she'll be set up for success. Every great business has had help throughout it's entire life; it's the same with self-employed family.

Hi Kris, Will you be submerging the camera in water? Light falls off more quickly in water. There really isn't a hard rule because it's dependent on the clarity of the water. In a perfect world, yes there is an equation. In an aquarium where fish live, it's just a best guess. This PDF may be of some use: http://www.deepsea.com/wp-content/uploads/201305_Understading_Basics_Underwater_Lighting_ONT.pdf An important thing to note about which light to use: water absorbs the warmer (or colder Kelvin temp) colors like red, hence why water typically looks blue. So, you'll want to use HMI or daylight balanced sources to maximize the amount of illumination penetrating to the lower surfaces. Tungsten light will be, no pun intended, swallowed up by the water and will offer little illumination. This blog post does an excellent job of giving advice for shooting underwater: http://www.diyphotography.net/natural-light-underwater-photography-tips/

What ISO are you working with? I agree with Adrian on an ultra-bounce, but if budget is tight then I recommend sticking with your original plan but add diffusion to the heads to spread the light onto the larger diffusion. I deal situation would be an book light, combining both an ultra-bounce and diffusion on the door frame. The reason an ultra-bounce may work better is because it'll scatter more light. Shooting an fresnel/open face straight through the diffusion may still result in a flare in camera because just enough light will pass straight through from the fresnel and flare the lens. In a pinch, though, diffusing the fresnel/open face before the larger diffusion will help spread the light more and cut down any potential lens flares.

It's important to remember that frame rates are defined by the producers. They have an end delivery format that they have agreed with the investors which will turn a profit. As DP's, we can of course recommend a frame rate, but in the end the decision is above our pay grade. We have more say if the project wasn't shot in 60p, but we can't complain when we entered the project knowing it was intended to be shot in 60p. One of the questions I always ask in the initial interview is the intended frame rate for the final delivery. Seems trivial on the surface, but it helps me gauge what kind of production I'm potentially joining.

We'll have to agree to disagree, then. :) I always err on the side of caution and request the exact same camera body I used in testing from the rental house. That's just my M.O.

I don't mean to argue, but I've had lots of cameras from the same manufacturer be inconsistent. The problem isn't quality control at the factory, but the maintenance and longevity of the cameras at the rental house. I agree, fresh off the factory floor, cameras from the same manufacturers will be pretty close to consistent. However, it's a different story when using rentals. Rentals clock in hundreds of hours on the sensors in various lighting situations. These rental cameras are like cast iron skillets; one Alexa will degrade differently then the other Alexa on the shelf. Case in point, I shot a feature in May with two Red Dragons. One sensor had a green shift. We accounted for it in prep and were able to keep our look consistent.

I recommend shooting a test of both cameras, side by side. A color chart will help a lot when trying to get the cameras to match on a baseline level. However, the differences will start to show on the fringe areas of the image like highlight rolloff, shadow rolloff, etc. The side by side test will allow you to develop a look for both cameras that will make them match. HOWEVER, you'll need to use those two specific camera bodies from the test on your actual production because you've tuned your LUT to those two specific cameras bodies.

Sand will get into your lenses really quick, especially on windy days. We shot a lot of beach scenes on Watchman's Canoe and my AC Renni Pollack was a master at using compressed air to get the sand out of our lenses. Lens swaps may result in fogging of either the rear element or sensor, depending on the weather and camera heat. We fixed this problem by mounting the lens, but before locking the PL, pulling it out just a bit to let the air settle in side. We then locked the lens properly and shot our hearts out.

An ellipsoidal such as a Source 4 will do a fine job. They're designed for theatre and have a GoBo slot (GoBo = goes before optics) that takes thousands of different patterns and crisply shows them. https://www.gobosource.com/gos/stock-metal-gobos-c-60.html You can also make your own gobo with black wrap, an xacto knife, and patience.

Yes, you should adjust your gamma curve to place middle grey at 45-50% IRE, but a grey card won't be enough. You'll have to shift the shadows and highlights as well. Your best bet is to use a color chip chart that has values to represent black, white, middle grey, RGB, etc. This helps you precisely adjust your shadows/midtones/highlights as well as saturation, color balance because the chart is designed to align with the waveform and vectorscope. The DataColor Spydercheckr is pretty excellent, and DaVinci can recognize it.

Instead of comparing waveforms, compare your images to his. Start asking why you like his specific frame? Is it the quality of light? The color? Composition? A waveform, histogram, vectorscope, and so on are just tools to figure out exposure and color. They will never tell you WHY a decision was made.

You should read up on how they shot Francis, Ha. The June 2013 issue of American Cinematographer has a great article on it.

If budget is your concern, then I recommend building your own Mac. http://nofilmschool.com/2017/06/hackintosh-101-beginners-guide-to-building-your-own-4k-editing-machine A DIT friend of mine built his own and has been using it for the past few years. NOTE: GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is the most important part for any video editing system. DaVinci, in particular, relies heavily on a powerful and specific set of GPU's.

Tough problem, you've got two different sensor sizes, even with the focal reducer. A 16-35 zoom lens is pretty wide to begin with, especially on full frame. In theory, the Canon EF should work on either camera. The Autofocus should work as well because it's a Canon brand lens. I've never had issues with Metabones not communicating autofocus.

Focus at 2K and beyond is literally splitting hairs. It really depends on screen size and viewer distance. Steve Yedlin does a great break down of resolution: http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/ And he has a chart for screen size: http://www.yedlin.net/ViewingAngles_v004.pdf In general, the bigger the screen, the more prevalent the buzzing of focus. The smaller the screen, the less noticeable buzzed focus will be. Case in point: Dunkirk and Intersellar in IMAX 70mm vs. 2K.

Shane Carruth! Upstream Color is one of my favorite films.

I occasionally shoot for Mixed Make-Up, a beauty channel on YouTube. They own their lighting package and their studio situation sounds similar to yours. We use two 4x4 kinos, daylight balanced. We stack them on top of each other using two c-stands, essentially creating an "4x8" kino flo. We cover both heads with a 6' diffusion (dollar store white shower curtain is working great!) that creates a single soft source that comes from above camera. (fun fact: that lighting pattern is known as a butterfly or paramount light. Common in beauty and fashion) For the background, they have a white seamless that we hit evenly with kino divas. On a recent branded shoot we did, I rented LiteMat 4's and did the same stacked set up that produced the same results, but with less stands and less heat. If you've got the funds, I say do LiteMat. In my experience, beauty and make need lights with higher color quality (CQS, which is a better metric than CRI, and light sources that are continuous rather than discontinuous) and a camera that has a good bit depth and chroma sub-sampling. Kino's and cheap LED's are good enough, but there's a clear jump in quality on our branded content when we use an HMI or LiteMat as our key light because of the color quality. DSLR's are typically 8-bit with a 4:2:0 chroma sub-sample, but you'll notice another clear jump in color rendition with a 10-bit 4:2:2 image when outputting to an external recorder. --- CFL's, like kino bulbs, are technically a discontinuous color spectrum and can spike in green or a specific color temp depending on the coating on the tube. Remember that color is hugely dependent on how many wave lengths of light are hitting and bouncing off the subject. The less wave lengths of light hitting a subject, the less will bounce back to render color to our eyes and the camera. I assume you're versed in continuous vs. discontinuous light, but if you're not a google search and reveal a plethora of breakdowns. --- Soft light seems to be the name of the game currently in beauty, so LiteMat's are easier to make softer than a fresnel because they take up less horizontal real estate. But, size of source and distance to subject will be the most important factor. A big soft source close to the subject will always be better than a thicker diffusion farther away. You also want to make your key light act as the eye light, so the shape of the diffusion is another consideration. Square eye lights are fine, but circle ones require either a specific frame or specially made light. --- Don't forget fill light, particularly from below. It can fill in shadows and can increase the perception of soft light. Plus, a 4x4 bounce card from below can catch the eyes really well and create a more marble like look to them.

Please excuse me if I'm incorrect with my question and response, but are you essentially trying to install a built in focal reducer for the PL mount on an Ursa? I don't think that'll work for most PL lenses because their image circles are designed for a S35 film or sensor size. The Metabones focal reducer (speedbooster) is designed for full frame image circles. However, I believe more and more lens manufacturers are making FF PL lenses, like those new Cookes or the cine line of the Sigma Art lenses. But, you'll be SOL if you want to use standard/super speeds, Ultras, Cooke S4's, etc.

Where do you want your career to go? Do you want to do more narrative or more commercials? I believe the project you choose, given you situation, will push your career more into the direction. Congrats on such a happy problem!

I wanted to share a problem I recently encountered on a feature I shot in May/June of 2017. This website is a great resource to search for solutions to film specific problems and I feel my experience with G Drives, partition maps, formatting, and Red Undead can help others who may end up in the same situation. I will go in depth on what I learned and end with a simple tutorial on how to fix the problem. Detailed Story The production I was shooting decided to have post-production be a Windows OS based workflow. Per usual, I checked in with the post-team to figure out their OS and together advised the production on which types of hard drives to get. Remember, a FAT32 file system is largely unsuitable for video production because of the file size limitations. The production was opening formatting all of the hard drives FAT32 so they can work on either a Windows or Mac OS, but I advised against it for the above reason. I haven't had much experience with ExFat, which holds larger file sizes and is cross platform. We decided a conservative approach and felt formatting the hard drives for Windows was our best solution. The film was low budget and slightly inexperienced, so we received our hard drives on the first day of production. We used G-Drive branded hard drives with 3TB each. Our camera system was the RED Epic with normal SSD magazines. The first night after shooting we started to format hard drives and discovered that G-Drive is specifically designed for Mac. It can work on Windows, but G-Drive's workflow for formatting hard drives on and for a Windows environment is convoluted. Instead of having the hard drive in a FAT32 format that both systems can recognize for initial formatting, the drives came pre-configured for Mac. To format them, we had to use disk utility and command prompt (see instructions here: https://support.g-technology.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=14080) A key thing to note about this process: command prompt uses the clean command that erases the information that tells the computer the layout of the file structure of the hard drive. In a nutshell, every hard drive has a file that is a roadmap of all the data it stores; where each physical gate is, what row, how it's fragmented, etc. Windows and Mac have very specific structures, hence why Mac hard drives are largely unreadable by Windows and vice versa. [TANGET] Software exists that allows the OS's to read hard drives for opposing OS's [TANGENT] The clean command erases that file, but nothing else. When you're in a Windows environment, a Mac formatted hard drive will not even be recognized by the OS. The only way a user can see it is through the Disk Utility program; at that point a user can only see that a hard drive is connected, but nothing else (because Windows sees nothing else either!). When you use clean in command prompt on the Mac hard drive, it creates the drive as an "unallocated" or unused hard drive. You can then create a new volume out of this unallocated hard drive and format it to a Windows structure. From there you have a hard drive that Windows can read/write to. What if you accidentally use a clean command? What if that command was used on a Red SSD that has undownloaded footage? That happened to my production. There is no way to undo a clean command; the partition file that describes to the OS what the structure is becomes completely unique once content is written to the hard drive because the partition file is updated to reflect where that new information is written. It's like a dynamic rosetta stone; without it, there's no way to decipher the data written. It is better described as a partition map. With the partition map erased, the SSD had undownloaded footage with no way to find it. This became extremely stressful for me. However, I did find a solution. Red Undead is a Mac based program developed by Red. It's designed for recovering data from accidental formatting of SSD's. Essentially, when an SSD is formatted in camera, the partition is re-written to display the structure and all of the data is made available for re-writing. But, none of that data is changed; physically the bits are still in the position they were last in (either a 1 or 0). Red Undead takes advantage of these "old states" and reads the data. From there, based on how Red's own R3D files are constructed, Red Undead can re-create the lost footage. To recap, we had accidentally erased the partition map of a Red SSD. There's undownloaded footage sitting on the magazine, but there's no map available to tell the computer a) that a hard drive exsists and B) what and where each file is. So, we decided to try Red Undead. We formatted the Red SSD in camera (to write the Red partition file) and then brought it into Red Undead. The program then spent an hour or so reading every gate, eventually spitting out nearly all of the lost footage. We only lost a portion of the first clip, which is a lot better than losing the entire card. NOTE: do not perform a secure format of the SSD in camera. A secure format rewrites the partition file and writes 0's across the entire SSD. A secure format truly erases footage. There are a few things to learn from my experience: Hard Drives must be delivered during prep. Be adamant about it as a DP and DIT. Erasing a partition map is part of the formatting process; the damage is done. An unsecured or simple format doesn't erase the already written data, but makes it available to be written over A secured format erases the partition map and writes 0's across the entire card/hard-drive, fully erasing footage. Red Undead reads old written data that hasn't been written over yet Red Undead is only available for the Mac OS. (we should keep pestering them for a Windows port) The obvious one: DO NOT FORMAT HARD DRIVES WITH CAMERA MEDIA CONNECTED AT THE SAME TIME Of course, this technology may change over the years, but the concepts should hold. Tutorial: How to fix a Red SSD Mag that has its partition map erased If the partition map has been erased, do nothing else to the SSD mag if it's still connected to a computer. Insert the SSD mag and do an unsecure format in camera. Reconnect the SSD mag to a Mac computer. Run Red Undead in the computer. Verify which clips were saved and which were not. Ensure recovered clips are backed up before formatting the card again. --- I hope my experience can help others! I'm in no way an engineer (software or hardware), so please correct me if my terminology or concepts are wrong. Has anyone else had experiences similar to this? Does ARRI, Canon, or Panasonic offer data recovery software like Red Undead?

Ah, my mistake. Thank you for correcting it, Dom.