Justin Hayward

Another thing is we do "blocks" of movies, so we can compare and contrast. We just finished our Sorkin block, so we started with "Moneyball" (which is awesome), then the next week we did, "The Social Network", then "Molly's Game" and we finished with "The Trial of the Chicago 7." I'm a bit Sorkin'd out. Next we are going to do a Coen brothers block. It's a pretty interesting way to discuss their movies as opposed to a one-off in my opinion.

I started a movie club at the beginning of the lockdown where we watch a movie on our own and between 6 and 12 of us get on a zoom call and do a two hour review. I have a mixture of directors, DP's actors and producers (and one casting director who has quite a bit to say about the performances:). I also only invited people I've had long film discussions with and I know have strong opinions and will have a lot to offer. We do once a week depending on availability, so we're around 40 movies at this point. I thought I knew what I was getting into, but it has been shocking... no SHOCKING how intense these things are. People's opinions on movies are insanely diverse and people are so freaking passionate about their love or hatred. Movies I thought would be universally praised are torn to shreds by these vipers. You get a bunch of people in a room together that are passionate about movies to discuss something they all just watched and you'll see some sparks. I occasionally will invite someone new and I have to warn them not to take anything personally. What happens is when you say you really love something and someone else says they hated it, you feel like they're attacking your taste. It's tough to have someone sit there and refute every point you just made.... ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'RE RIGHT!!! I originally started with "popcorn fluff" type movies, cause I wanted this to be light and fun, but had to give those up months ago cause you find out there's just not a lot to say about them. We know what they are and why they exist, so there's not much to dive into. It's crazy though how I'm surprised by every meet. Last week we did the Errol Morris 1981 doc, "Vernon, Florida", which almost none of us liked, but one guy gave a very convincing argument as to why we all missed the point. He literally changed all of our minds and now we feel like we need to re-watch it. On the flip side of that coin, I was a huge champion of that Prime movie, "The Vast of Night." I watched it three times in a row and it became one of my favorite movies of the decade. Everybody else hated it and spent 2 hours telling me how wrong I am. I couldn't dig myself out of that hole. Then Team Deakins had the director on their podcast cause they loved the movie so much... so I got to throw that in their face. All that to say, it's a lot of fun. I say do it. Just don't take anything personally. ?

Wide open because it's a flat surface. 1.4 or 2.8... whatever. It's the 5 or 6 stops of frame rate that I'm talking about or some shutter if you want to add it.

Alright, I'll bite even though I'm pretty sure there's no solution... what if you want to use artificial lighting to create a tack sharp shadow of something like a martini glass with liquid being poured into it at high speed... like 500fps or even a 1000fps? Something high noon sunlight could probably create (although I haven't tried), but with artificial and controllable lighting. What is a source so small, but so bright that it could give that sharp a shadow with that much punch to expose for a 1000fps? I don't think a 4k xenon can't provide enough stop for a 1000fps if it's far enough away to cast that sharp of a shadow, right? If we're dabbling in theory, then I'll dabble... Thanks

I thought the movie looked fantastic and I think the opening credits easily set up how this was going to be an homage to "Citizen Kane" (and films made at the same time like it) while immediately being a modern interpretation of the same thing. The whole movie had references to films made at that time all the way to the way the movie was edited. Of course the "film reel change marks" (if that's what they're called) were super noticeable, but it didn't matter in my opinion. I was sucked into this movie, probably in every way David Fincher intended a person like me be sucked into this movie.

A couple years ago I shot a series of commercials where we used 20 foot LED screens for the backgrounds. It was fine for what we were doing because you got real reflections of the background in glasses and shiny surfaces and things like that, but overall it was pretty limiting, because we had to line up our shots with the angles we shot the backgrounds or it would look fake. You could do a little camera movement if you were on a long lens and the background was really out of focus, but other than that we had to stay pretty locked into the angles we shot the backgrounds. The behind the scenes of this show knocked my socks off. Unbelievable what they created with LED. I think this show looks absolutely fantastic.

If I were going to be willfully led into some kind of assault, it would most likely be by someone enticing me to talk about movies. "Have you read Sidney Lumet's book?" "Me too..." I'd follow like a cockroach to the dark. ?

Good point, but I will say a half power dedo is pretty bright these days in the era of 3200ASA. Maybe there's use for a 1/4 power? ?

This actually occurred to me shortly after I wrote the question. I can barely do my son's third-grade math, so... But wouldn't that mean if Dedo's had a 1/4 power (which they don't), then 1/4 power to half power would be two stops, right? They should make that. ?

Why do you think the difference between half power and 3/4 power on a Dedo is a full stop, but 3/4 to full power is only a half stop? Just curious. I haven't done much gripping in my career, but in the time I have I remember being sent to the truck to get something and not being totally sure I knew what it was. I had a hunch and out of embarrassment, I didn't say anything and tried to figure it out. Of course that wasted everybody's time and from then on if I didn't know what they were asking for I would just admit it and go with the person that did know so I could learn. I totally understand DP's getting very frustrated with this kind of behavior.

I'm guessing things like I just said above will sound archaic in like five years... or maybe it does now for all I know. I still don't use twitter ?

It's a good idea. I'll pass it on. Thanks. I have a commercial shooting in a couple weeks and this company I work with has a remote shooting system set up using Cisco Webex combined with a "secure" HD video stream so the client and most of the agency won't be there, but can still see what we're doing in real time. I don't know how efficient it is, but we'll see.

That's so true. This place has 7 or 8 really nice monitors spread out all over, but everyone still flocks around one. It's tough cause you want to talk about it and everything. And when you're in the thick of a job it's easy to forget all the stuff going on in the world.

Thanks Satsuki! I always enjoy demo-type stuff like this cause you get to catch up with your friends while playing with cool equipment, but without any agency or client breathing down your neck (of course they can't do that now anyway :).

With the pour rig pre-built, it was about a 7 hour day. Because it was a favor for a friend and everybody working on it was doing a favor for me, I was really hoping to get it done in the morning, but this kind of stuff is never fast. Plus it wasn't a full crew and the guy rigging was doing like three jobs. Getting the liquid to land in the right spot took the most time. If you just tip the bottle over, the water will go flying all over the place, so the bottle has to actually move backwards while tipping over to get the liquid to pour straight down and hit where you want. Most of the morning was the camera planted on the glass while we dialed in the pour with water. Then we switched to wine, but the density of the alcohol changed the pour and we basically had to start over. We eventually used water with food coloring. It looked more like rose than the actually wine did anyway and it was easier to control the pour. After we got the pour right we dialed in the camera move. That's a little easier because you basically start with a guess, but @1000fps it's easy to see if it needs to move a little faster or sooner or slower or whatever. I think it only took four or five tries before the camera was locked in. The guy doing the rigging is one of the smartest people I've ever met and he comes up with all sorts of crazy stuff. I shot a little behind-the-scenes of something he did with another director last year...

Thanks Robin!

Here's a quick behind the scenes of the rigging if you're interested...

Shot this for a friend the other day and I think it turned out nice, so I'm sharing it with you nice folks. It was shot 4k with the Phantom on the Kira motion control rig @1000fps. Lit with a single 5k through a 2x3 1000H frame with some small fill cards for reflections. Edit: There was a 2k fresnel hitting a small part of the background so it didn't fall totally off to black.

That’s most impressive. I would work on finding investors for one of those.

I don't mean to discourage. I actually think these hard facts are kind of encouraging. As long as you aren't flat out lying to investors about what they're getting into or knowingly and purposely ripping anyone off, then I think ultra low budget filmmaking is very freeing and possibly really satisfying in terms of creativity.

It's so true. It's always depressing when I watch some obscure indy movie I heard about on a podcast or whatever, and really love it. Because when I do the research, I find out it won a bunch of festivals like four years ago and it took more than five years for the filmmakers to get the movie made. Which means from the time it took writing the script to the time it took the movie to make it's way in front of me, the director could've have gone from their thirties... to their fifties. Then nobody I recommend it to has heard of it.

It can be a tricky balance for sure. I've seen things going the wrong direction, but didn't speak up soon enough out of being polite to a crew I didn't know, because I assumed they were getting to the same place by some different means... then regretting not stopping them, because it all had to be redone. Then other times I spoke up too soon and had to be explained the process to get what I wanted like a dummy. It's a balance. As long as it isn't some crazy OCD condition or an inflated ego, I think a little micromanaging to save time and extra work and ultimately money is fine if we get to the right place in the end. EDIT: ...and of course always being considerate and polite...

I don’t think it’s the same. Gordon Willis always had a point of reference in terms of exposure. There was always something properly exposed to counteract the underexposure. And actually enhance it.

I, for one, absolutely love unsolicited criticism from nonprofessional filmmakers or critics. It totally doesn't annoy me to death.

Nature of the world. Everybody's a critic. If you're too sensitive to it (as am I), filmmaking can be an extremely difficult hobby or career to navigate. It really sucks though. No question about that.