Will Barber

I've encountered something I think may be relevent, and I have questions about. Has anyone ever shot with Unity WB? It's a setting on the AJA Cion that I've never encountered before, but I've been using. It apparently bypasses any in camera white balancing, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. However, I've shot both daylight and tungsten with it, night and day scenes, evening with mixed light, and night scenes with a sodium vapor key, and they're all grading very easily, most of the time with just a simple contrast curve and slight gamma color shift for WB. If anyone could shed some light on this, and maybe how to further utilize it better, I've still got 2 more weekends of shooting and it'd be good to maybe have some tips.

What do you mean by "this effect"? It looks like a pretty normal shallow focus, possible with a black promist, though that could be the jpeg compression in the shadows.

The Xenon's are pretty nice. I haven't had an overwhelming amount of experience on them, though. To me they seem pretty sharp, especially on C-series, so for a Weapon I'd personally be looking for a lens with a little more character to make up for the sharpness of the camera, like we're looking to rent the Alura 18-80 to use on the Epic Dragon because the softness negates what we see to be a really negative aspect of the Reds in general.

I bought a couple 150W sodium vapor lights from Home Depot and rigged them up to mount in a knuckle and be wall powered with a switch. They work terrifically. I've heard they're supposed to be equivalent to a 450W tungsten, but by my judgement it's closer to a 650. Having used 400W sodium vapors in the past I'd of course love to have that sort of output, but the 150's work great for something like that second shot in the first post.

Also, don't let a big production change how you direct. The job's the same, you just have more tools. Seize the day, make the best film you can make every day you're on set.

But if you already have 4 takes of basically the same thing, that "one more for safety" is probably going to be no better than the 4 similar takes you already got. Obviously if every take was for a large error, then yeah, you might want another clean one. But in most cases, I've found that the safety take gets abused.

I was on a feature where I heard "one more for safety" or "another one, just like that" on just about every angle. That's how many is too many. I personally think 3 or 4 should be what you aim for, but obviously something complex should allow a little leeway. Get the performance you want, but I think its the director's responsibility to get the actors ready for take one to be golden. Then after that, only slight performance tweaks between takes during the time it takes to reset. Be efficient on time, roll digital like you're rolling film. I hate being on productions that roll the camera before they're ready, resulting in extra takes that are barely usable because of blocking or camera issues because they didn't rehearse or get marks or anything. All because everyone has a 5" glowing monitor and can "do it on the fly." But then on the camera report you have several minutes between take 1 and 2, of a scene that lasts one minute on screen, because no one knew what was going on before they pressed the little red button. Long story short, have the scene ready before you press GO, and cut down on the crap that digital has brought to production.

Lens wise, I'd go for the Speedbooster adapter for Nikon and the 16-40 or 17-40, as well as a 50mm prime. You don't have to buy Nikon brand lenses, but I'd also suggest looking at vintage Nikon primes instead of zooms. Vintage glass looks beautiful on the BMPCC, and Nikon never changed their mount, so they're still usable on the Speedbooster. I used a friend's vintage Nikon macro for a couple shots on a film and it was beautiful.

You could probably find stock video of it somewhere, if your client would allow that option.

I once shot the first weekend of a short comedy film, scrapped almost everything we shot, rewrote the story to make it dramatic, and ended up making a pretty damn good comedy film, for a couple of freshmen. On another film I shot last year which my friend wrote and directed, he had an actor bail after multiple days of shooting, stepped into the lead role himself, shot multiple unplanned nights at a sketchy motel, and basically wrote the film as we learned more about how stories work and as we shot it. On top of all that, he had a hard drive failure the last week of the semester, and we had to re edit the entire film based on the exports he had used for class and the backup files. On the film we just shot, our actor got too drunk in a bar scene and we had to reshoot. It wasn't the only reason we had to reshoot, but the second try went so much better than the first on just about every level, and it's now one of my favorite scenes in the film. In addition, our screenings limit is 20 minutes, and the 12 page script had turned into a 24 minute epic short. Our director worked for a solid month on the edit, including major structural changes, leaving me with a golden 2 days to do the color correction. But it's going to be a damn good movie, and I've done my best to make sure it'll look like one, too. Looking back on it, I don't know if I've ever had an entire film go smoothly. But that's where I find the excitement. It's how you adapt and overcome the struggle that will define you as a filmmaker; your ability to carry on. Turn this into something positive, and not only make up for your mistake, but use it as an opportunity to do something even better. I've made more mistakes than I'll go into detail about, but you can be damn sure I'm not making any of them again.

I'm aware, which means if you need to adjust to an exact stop you're going to have to do some math. I don't like adjusting aperture digitally, I prefer a ring, even if it doesnt exactly mark the stop.

Put the light on the side, so that the distance to the subject is always close to the same.

If you watch a video from NAB of Zacuto's new one, they essentially max out at 720p. Any higher resolution won't have any discernable difference so close to your eye. I pretty much take Adrian's stance. Nothing's better than optical viewfinders.

I have the Rig Wheels slider, and I know the rails are closer together than the Dana, but those are the only 2 I've used so I can't speak for anything else.

As far as I know, there's not much of a cheap solution that's actually worth it. I personally am waiting till I can get a Zacuto or something similar before I try to buy something like that at all. Even on the Zacutos that I've used, there's a noticable lag in the image, which will be far worse on cheaper devices. For DSLRs, I'd suggest a loupe that goes onto the camera, and making the rig offset so it sits in front of your eye. The new 720p Zacuto EVF they just announced is looking pretty beautiful, but that'll run a pretty penny. A guy can dream...

Has anyone ever used plasma lighting like this? http://www.hivelighting.com/wp-content/uploads/HornetOneSheet-Compressed.pdf It promises more output and lower draw than an HMI, quickly gets to full power, and has a 94 CRI. Here's a link to the prices on AbelCine, they seem to be pretty high value for the money. https://www.abelcine.com/store/Hive-Plasma-Lighting/?sort=price

If you shot the full IMAX frame with anamorphic and just projected it smaller so it'd fit on the screen widthwise, you'd get a tighter grain. But it does seem a bit excessive. Kind of the same idea as downsizing 4K to 1080.

The focus assist/peaking is WAY better on the Pocket than on the BMCC. I personally find the loupe style viewfinders a complete impossibility to use. When do you ever stick your face right there? It's not practical for use on a tripod, and it's only in the right place for handheld if the camera's in the wrong place for handheld. I've sworn off viewfinders until I can buy a good EVF and put it in the right spot. Also, the Pocket's screen is so low resolution, you're just magnifying pixels, so using the loupe won't help with focus too much. Also, let it be known that I totally came up with RedRock's trigger handle and loupe idea. I wish I had the production resources, I would have made a prototype myself.

I recommend using the extra light not to shoot with less lights, but as an opportunity to stop down or take your ASA down. Light so you can stop down a bit, I really like the 16mm feel it gives when it's got a deeper DOF, and the better contrast control I can get from 200 ASA. Cropping down to 2.35 on the wide end in particular will make it feel very anamorphic, and you can compose very deep frames with the infinity focus the 17mm gives you, with lots of action to transition spaces. Also, focus on that tiny screen is a bitch, so I try to ease my suffering.

It goes to a 2.8 normally, I believe, so about a third over 1.4 if I'm not mistaken.

Still would be cheaper to do it the normal way, if we lowered the taxes on it and stopped **(obscenity removed)** with environmental regulations. http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/concept-cars/vw-reveals-new-300mpg-coupe That car is illegal in America.

If you want to see the best example of the use of natural light indoors in my opinion, look at the daylight interiors from There Will Be Blood. Of course, that's a bit more stylized that what you're going for.

Here's a test some Motion Picture Science majors did at my school with 4 cameras, including the D21. It might help you with a couple of questions. http://sofatube.cias.rit.edu/videos/show/2671 I haven't used it personally, but all I've heard about it is how much of a pain in the ass it is to shoot on because you have to tether it, though that could be solved with an SDI recorder like the Samurai I suppose. I wouldn't say 11 stops is really a limit, that's a pretty acceptable range, especially if you want a falloff to black. I've seen some pretty beautiful stuff shot on it. There's a short film also shot at my school, which intercuts the D21 with Kodak stock, I'm not sure which one exactly.

I'd attempt to get the Speedbooster if at all possible. I just finished shooting a short with that and the Nikon 16-35 and 17-35, and you couldn't ask for a better wide-end zoom to use for all your wides/mediums. The speedbooster is a long-term investment that will pay off really quickly in how much it improves your shooting. So if you want to spend around $500, maybe you could look into the Speedbooster and a vintage Nikon zoom. I'm ACing on a feature right now, and we're using old Nikon primes on the BMCC, and it's absolutely beautiful.

Why must you shoot in front of the window? Try going sideways to the window, and using a backdrop if it's not that pleasing of a background to use. Then it'll be easier to fill in the contrast with a bounceboard or light, rather than trying to bring your overall exposure all the way up to the level of the direct sunlight.