John E Clark

Having done a 'Doritos' commecial with a group I've been a member of, I've reaffirmed that I don't do 'broad comedy' well... I can do suspense/horror in the 'Woman in Black' sense or perhaps 'Psycho' sense... but 'slash horror' probably would not work well with my 'style' and aesthetic tastes... I think even for porn my tastes would be too highbrow for the ordinary porn viewer... although some of the porn parodies look interesting... but I've never had any success in getting people to do sex acts for free... and then there's the matter of the Wife... but I digress... I do recommend anyone who is thinking about 'cinematography' to get at least some camera that shoots motion pictures and start 'shooting' anything/everything... and become one with the camera... in most cases skills 'scale up' when one has the opportunity to use more sophisticated equipment... or at least one can direct an operator of such equipment... (which is the skill a 'director of photography' is required to have... namely the management and leading a team to produce the image...).

I don't know if you are aware of it, but you probably can blame Tom Laughlin for the demize of the 'limited distribution' and the 'road show' programs. Tom Laughlin went 'independent' in the late 60's, and eventually put out a very successful film, "Billy Jack"(1971). There were several studios (the only way to get a 'real' film made in the day, and they had pulled out at various points, eventually Laughlin finished his film, and distributed it to theaters directly... it died... He then worked on rereleasing, and in 1973 it was a 'major' out of the 'blue' success. In his second "Billy Jack" film, "The Trial of Billy Jack"(1974) he 'opened wide', with major TV ads nationwide, and 'in theaters everywhere'... well at least far more than usual for the era. The film was a financial success... In 1975 a second 'small story' film opened using the same strategy of wide and supporting advertising, and again it was 'bottled lighting'... it was "Jaws"(1975). This showed the trend which has not stopped to this day, of wide and super wide film releases, massive ad campaigning, etc. But back to the olden days... In San Diego in the 60's there were 2 'cinerama' venues, while there were probably about 50 single screen theaters scattered throughout the county. There were also probably about 5 drive-in theaters, and in the downtown area, there were about 10 theaters, 3 showed 'quality' new releases, and about 7 showed varying levels down to 'grind house' material. (hard core X-rated material stil was not 'legal' until the late 60's...). Releases of new films in those days often were in 100's, and the films then made their way around the country. Not in 'road show' style just that's when a place like "El Centro" California could schedule showing one of the available prints... like 6 months or maybe a year after the initial release... The 'road show' presentations were sort of a 'competition' with perhaps TV, to give 'motion pictures' a more art look than ordinary 'films'... The road shows almost never went outside the major cities, so people in the 'sticks' only saw the 35mm prints, or the 'much cut' versions of some of these films. (I first saw "Lawrence of Arabia" in a theater in El Centro about a year after it was released... as it was still being shown around the country at the time...). As for my personal first experience of 'cinerama'... I attended a showing of "Grand Prix"(1966) and because of the sellout crowd, the only seats available were in the front row... I got motion sick beause of the camera technique... and exited the showing to puke... I did see "2001: A Space Odessey"(1968) on the 'cinerama' screen, but from my previous experience I sat in the back row... which sort of lessens the 'full visual' space effect. The theater I preferred to watch films in, was a small theater that had perhaps a 20' wide screen, seated about 100, and at the time showed 'foreign' as well as some Hollywood films (before Landmark theaters started up and begain the 'arthouse' type showings...). There were also 25 and 50 cent theaters in the downtown area which had the benefit of showing films from about 8 am till 3 AM... shutting down for 5 hours to clear out the bums and debris... In most cases, none of the films I have ever seen in theaters were 'first run prints'... before the super wide distributions, most of the prints had been 'well worked' before they got to theaters I saw them in. In a word, I have no fond recollection of watching pristine celluloid... below is an example of the 'quality' that was usually to be had... http://youtu.be/a3QufuTR_7M There's good reason why Tarantino and Rodriguez used that in their 'grind house' extravaganza. I have yet to see a 'digital' presentation reach the same level of crappy... ok... we went to a showing of the 3d "Wizard of Oz"(1939) restoration... and the sound was whacked from the lips... told the manager... go rain checks... I would also mention that for the Wife, who is hard of hearing, the digital change over has also allowed for 90% of the films to be supplied with captions, which even as recently as 5 years ago, was not the case, and we would travel perhaps 100 miles to see a showing in a theater that had a 'open caption' presentation... Anyway, for me, I have no need to see anything 'film'... As for why go to a theater rather than watch at home... one could ask why go to church if one has a Bible at home... for the shared experience... and since I'm not religiously inclined... perhaps theater attendence is as close to ritual as I come...

Unfortunately "Domino"(2005) is one of the few films I stopped watching in the middle and never resumed... Part of it was that the cinematic technique did 'irratate' me... and I don't think it was due to 'story choices'... it just was irratating... the other reason was more due to the lead actress, Keira Knightley, just doesn't have the 'action actress' presence... even her "Saint Cripsen's Day" Speech in the installment of "Pirates of the Carabbean: At World's End"(2007) was... uh... sort of limp...

When I began transitioning into using DSLRs rather than Film based SLRs, there was this sage advice 'shoot as if you were using revesal (slide film...)', which is to say watch the highlights, and limited latititude. Given that Film film has declined... the advice would work the other way for someone thinking about shooting with reversal film... 'think like you are using a DSLR'... The saving grace with learning to expose reasonably well for a DSLR is... one could look at the LCD display and histogram to get a quick look of how far off one was... These days with labs disappearing, what would it be for reversal film to get that warm fuzzy feeling... a week... and the worry that the FedEx truck crashed and your film is now destroyed or sitting in an impound area... (when the Wife was doing her wedding business I'd hand carry the film to the lab... so if it was destroyed, it was at least at the lab, or I was dead... Some of the organizations she belonged to did have insurance to 'recreate' some shots, such as the bridal party, if the film was lost/destroyed by either the fault of the photographer, or the processing workflow.).

I think Afga exited the motion picture film business in the early 2000's. Fuji as noted a couple of years ago, and Kodak has been under financial duress for the last 2 years, selling of their 'intellectual property' for peanuts, and most likely the Board of Directors are hiring executives that specialize in shaping up sections of a company for selloff or liquidation. The Film film portion of the business was being maintained apparently by the NFL using thousands of miles of Film film a year, but this year has gone digital. The use of Film film by Hollywood and other filmmaking centers would not sustain a market. What one could 'hope' for would be that some buyer could be found for the Kodak Film division, that could see a 'profit' from continuing the interprise.

By those standards and places... the New Zealand film industry is gargantuan... except... it seems mostly for export... like who's ever heard of "Once Were Warriors"(1994), outside of arthouse theater addicts, and obviously, because of that gargantuan industry, Tamahori was able to make his next umpty ump films in Hollywood itself... Peter Jackson... The Jackson Five's 'other brother'??? Again, once that Hollywood lighting struck... say sayanara to 'local' films... On the other hand Niki Caro seems to have stayed in NZ despite an international success...

I don't have a lot of time... but if you use google maps, and go to the 'street' level, I think most of Downtown LA would be covered and allow you to see some amount of 'waht the view would be' in the area. For example, here is a 'street' view of 'downtown' from the 7th street Bridge. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.038486,-118.2279444,3a,75y,314.53h,82.76t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1soe9XaOeikmgLBoh1IBpVSQ!2e0!6m1!1e1 These days you can do a lot of public location scouting via google maps.

In some sort of irony... BBC productions have a popularity in the US as being 'better' than whatever ABCCBSNBCFOX can produce... and in some cases better than HBO and other 'cable' content providers. There are other cable content producers that are moving up on the 'watchable' totempole, such as content from AMC... and then there's SyFy... but I digress... As for UK studios being used predominantly by US productions... the same is said by zee Chermans about Babelsberg Studios... directed mostly to 'international big budget productions'... aka US Studios... After the Wiedervereinigung there was a 'wild west' sort of freeforall where international companies with cash bought up a number of formerly East German 'state' assets, Babelsberg being one such. Eventually a german group did buy it 'back'... For 'german films' most likely Hamburg or München are the go to places... when I visit Germany I have to ask several times for 'german DVD/BD'... not 'dubbed' US films... when I visit a bookstore/videoshop...

What are you looking for... From looking at a map the Elysian Valley area is somewhat distant from Downtown, which I think of as being ringed by the freeways, I-5 on the East, I-10 on the South, S-110 (How did that ever get renamed 110 from 11... but I digress...) on the West, and US 101 on the North. There are many many films that use the Los Angeles River bed, and the 6th and 7th Street bridges. And of course... there is the every popular problem that LA does require film permits and if one looks like one is 'pro' filming... one may have a visit from some form of law enforcement to make sure that permits have been issued.

Here's a Scheider split focus diopter: Notice that only half the area has the diopter lens, whereas the other side is 'empty' allowing for the lens's natural focal length to be used. Here's the URL where the above picture was used to illustrate the concept of Deep Focus using split focus diopters. http://vashivisuals.com/splitting-focus-de-palmas-blow/ The other 'meaning' of 'Deep Focus' would be use a small F-stop to have a deep Depth of Field. But DoF, is dependent on a number of things, one of which is expected enlargement. Whereas the split dopter actually changes the plane of sharp focus. From the article here is a pretty obvious example of where the transition from one lens curvature to another for the different focal planes is.

Would there ever be a case where during the process, Newton's rings would show up. Or were most prints 'optical' and hence not bring two surfaces in contact... or was a vacuum used for contact printing? In my still printing, some glass negative holders, ostensibly to hold the negative 'flat' could cause Newton ring patterns if 'the right' conditions were met.

I liked the presentation. The only one 'minor' nit that I have is the use of 'crop factor'... I know this has crept in to become some what of a standard phrase, but it is actually more confusing, especially when discussing 'movie' cameras. In the olden days, one would usually ask what is a 'normal' lens for a given film negative aperture, and the rule of thumb was 'the negative diagonal'. While here and there one may round to the next nearest even number or the like, but from there one could easily judge what was a telephoto such as '2x the normal', or 'wide angle', like 1/2 the normal... But it was always in terms of the given negative aperture. Similarly with current sensors. Why is this a problem... because a 35mm movie film camera, depending on the aperture, can have different so called 'normal' lenses, and of course still DSLRs were never used for 'movie' purposes, although there is a movie film negative aperture that does have more of the 35mm still film aperture, it was more likely that the horizontal was across the negative relative to the film feed direction than along the line of travel... There is also the rule of thumb that a 'normal' lens has about a 40 deg horizontal angle of view. So, I estimate that the BMPCC has a 'normal' lens of about 18-20mm. So a telephoto would be about 40mm, and a 'really' wide angle would be about 10mm. But in any case these days I use pCam or Tolland apps on my iPhone for critical parameter calculations... I would also point out that even 35mm DSLRs till the advent of Full Frame cameras, were not the 'standard 35mm still film negative aperture'. So there are a large number of people who have never used Full (still) Frame values.

Do you have a parts list... looks like you used 10 strips of RGB and WW LEDS, with about 2'x3' housing. I'm in to the DIY projects...

Back in the days when everyone smoked... cigarette lenghts use to change dramatically, like they were in their own little time warp... As for actor motion... since I don't have funds for Real actors, one of the things I have to watch for is major head bobbing while delivering lines... of course since for my projects I write my own scripts, I try to follow the Sergio Leone principle of much visual, minimal dialog... The first comment I make when reviewing scripts that the groups I've participated in, is 'does this dialog need to be this long'... people look at me like I'm calling their baby ugly... and in many cases the baby is in fact ugly... few people can write long passages of snappy dialog ala Tarantino, or some of those Golden Age Studio productions... in most cases it is expository to the extreme, void of 'emotional' content, and the actors, even professionals, would stumble along like a 5th grader at a school Christmas performance...

There are two basic types of compression... lossless and lossy... in the case of lossless no data is lost, that is the exact bit pattern of the original can be reconstructed from the compressed version. In lossy compression some amount of the data is 'thrown away', never realistically to be recovered... Most video compression techniques are 'lossy', and it is a matter of judgement how much data can be thown away, and still have the 'average' viewer not really notice the difference between 'is it Memorex or is it Live'... to use an old ad campaign slogan. For example, 'edges' require more data to accurately represent the 'edge'. So if data points at edges of elements are 'thrown away', the edge will be less sharp, and the human viewer may detect that by stating the image looks 'soft'. Colors are 'tossed' as well since the human vision system can not detect all the colors that, for example, a 48 bit, with 16 bits per RGB, color representation the data can be 'reduced' by tossing color data. Same for grey values, depending... I think humans usually can detect say 64 shades when focused on a small region, but on a 'large' region only 16... so, why represent things with more grey values than 64, which fits into 6 bits, with an 8 bit number... one has a 25% 'compression' savings right there alone... But the take away message is that most video codecs are lossy, this limits the 'reconstruction' of the actual values taken by the sensor, and one can readily see that when one tries to 'grade' DSLR footage, that has been compressed to say the H.264 codec. Banding and 'wyrd' colors often result because the original scene data has been lost. With that in mind, then the there is a 'race to the bottom' on squeezing images to the point were any 'sophisticated' viewer will immediately notice the compression artifacts. Same is true for highly compressed MP3 audio... high frequency squealing, 'wind tunnel effect' etc. are noticiable... but you can get 1,000,000 songs on your player device...

Well all 'recommended viewing distances' are based on the Mr/Ms Average Human Viewer's visual accuity, and the point at which the 'display' artifacts are 'averaged' out. Someone with 10/20 vision may need to be 20 feet away from a 4K 32" screen for the micro-pixels to average into non-pixelated images... on the other hand for my pre-replacedlensed cataract+lifelongmyopia eyes... I was ok at about 3 feet even with corrective lenses. This is not to say that TV broadcasters wouldn't cheat their mothers if the opportunity arose... Since I don't watch broadcast TV, cable TV, or for the most part TV shows, especially TV shows targeting the US TV broadcast market... ok... I watch some BBC via Netflix(the Daughter pays for Netflix, I pay for her cell phone... I think she is a better wheelerdealer than I...)... and HBO for 'cable' distribution on disks usually... but for the most part, I've not cared about broadcast TV in a very long time.... The problem with these ancient specs hanging around, is that the 'engineering' reasoning goes like this... "I have a $10 crystal, operating at 15 MHz.... and 14.3181 MHz one for less than 20 cents"... in the case of the latter that is a popular crystal frequency to divide by 4 to get 3.5795, which should be well known to all... uh... probably not... but it is the color burst frequency for NTSC color TVs...

I could take the position that nothing less than a 8x10 contact print from an 8x10 negative is the 'only true and accurate' representation of any scene, relative to photographic reproduction. All this clamor over a puny 35mm negative being processed through several interneg/interpos then a print projected to a screen 30x50 (or whatever) is just noise... But each medium has various strengths. To be sure that until digital recording got to the 2K level, there were some pretty obvious limitations, but as it has gone beyond that for high end cameras, first for stills then for moving pictures, and the 'intensity' resolution/depth gone beyond 8 bits, things have changed dramatically. I would also note, that when digitizing for DVD's first started transfering 'old' films, from 'original' negatives, all manner of 'defects' started to appear, even more so on Bluray transfers. Makeup lines, etc. so what people were talking about 'skin tones' was previously seen through a process that 'hid' some amount of detail. And perhaps because even for Film film captured movies, a digital process is expected, less makeup seems to be the trend, and so, one is seeing 'real' skin tones and not pancake and powder.

The 'differences' and the the evaluation of 'better', leads to the philosophical debate on Film film vs. Digital film. Since I know there is a difference and accept that difference and prefer 'digital' overe 'film' for a number of reasons beyond the skin tone consideration, I stand in the digital camp. I also strongly consider using monochrome aka B&W for my own narrative work. I may choose to go with color, but with B&W I don't have to worry so much about ineffable sense of color relative to human skin tones (as well as specific colors of lights for that matter... although there are effects on the resulting grey tones due to colors of lights... most people are not so sensitive to such subtileties.) As a note, 'skin tone standards' often were of 'white' women, and relatively few 'standards', at least in the US, were developed for latin/mediterranean/black 'skin tones'.

I'll use 'still 35mm' Film film vs Digital film to suggest some differences. To some observers, there is a 'greenish' emphasis of Fuji film vs Kodak, Kodak having perhaps a 'yellowish' emphasis. I use 'emphasis' rather than 'cast', and perhaps this is an almost subliminal evaluation. To be sure most color casts can be 'dialed' out, but even when matching one skin area to another, there would be other areas that didn't get the same mount of light, and there would be subtile differences in the 'color'. The same is true for digital sensors, and what critieria the engineers used for determining the sensor's response to color, and the resulting color gaumet the camera yielded. The Wife and I shot Kodak color still negative for years, but when we switched to Fuji, it was because the 'color' had a more 'natural/pleasing' effect. When we finally bought into digital still 35mm cameras, we chose the Fuji DSLR S series. The color that camera yielded was 'better' for us than Nikon (which we had used for Film film for years... so Canon was not really an option as we would have had to buy all new lenses...). Even so, at the time Canon's produced a 'yellowish' cast image and Nikon produced a sort of 'violet' twinged cast. Even now, having participated in a couple of 'canon' shoots, I'm still left with the 'yellow' twinge impression... perhaps I'm more sensitive to yellows... but the Wife's Nikon D600 does not have that 'violet' twinge I saw years ago. (I've not been allowed to test it much with a color chart, as I'm too 'careless' with equipment... but I digress...). When Fuji and Kodak were both making Film film stock, one could see differences between the two, and while all the material was graded, or printed to various standards there were still differences. Again, the same is true for high end Digital Film cameras one to the other, as well as when compared to Film film. Within broad limits I have no problem with most 'digital' original captured Hollywood films. In other threads it has been mentioned that over the years Film film stocks have changed, and some cinematographer's have lamented the 'changes'... but for better or worse change happens, and one needs to understand what has changed and use that to create images that support the story of the Film.

I can speak somewhat to 'wedding photographers'... The Wife did quite a bit of 'personal photography' for about 30 years. This included about 20 years of 'wedding/event' photography. She also got on the seminar circuit for a couple of professional organizations Wedding and Portrait Photographers of America, and Professional Photographers of America. We would do these seminars together or at least create the program if the sponsoring entity didn't want to pay for my way. For most of the attendees, few had actual 'art/photo/film' degrees or training. Part of our seminars did in fact address the fact that many of the people offering photo services had no formal 'art' background. There of course were the 'equipment junkies'... but hard core 'talking about art for art sake'... not much. Very often we would have the 'spouse' of the main photographer, and typically that would be the wife, who was taking up photography to assist in the business as the second shooter. That was not the case for the Wife and myself... we had become photographers independently... and perhaps that can explain some of our battles over the years on 'things art'... but I digress... In terms of our respective backgrounds, I entered San Diego State as an art major, with photography as my medium... should have investigated the school better... as in the Art Department 'photography' was not seen as a legitimate 'art medium'... and photography was religated to the 'industrial arts'... that is training future highschool shop teachers... The Wife did a 2 year junior college photography program and the spent time in New York at the "New School" (never did find out what the 'Old School' was...). But didn't get a degree. In any case it was clear to me that if I stayed in 'art', I was destined to follow my peers in to 1) teaching art at some level between Kindergarten and perhaps junior College, 2) finding any form of employment outside of 'art', 3) change to something that looked like it had more income potential than becoming a social welfare worker (several MFA's of my friends went that route...). I took door number 3... In terms of 'education', my take is, if the school does provide 'contacts' in the industry, that is probably the 'best' benefit. In terms of getting work as an independent contractor... I don't think the Wife has ever been asked for a resume and proof of diploma by a prospective client... they see her work... like the work... want that work done for their image(s)... I would also mention there is a growing number of 'photo chain' stores, where they hire local 'talent', again don't know if a 'degree' is required beyond a good portfolio, but that is a trend in still commercial personal photo work.

Yes, naked boobs... R... guns, shooting, dead... PG13... well unless there's too much 'red' blood... green goo is ok... Broadcast TV is even more restrictive.

Since I don't know these shows... I can only speak about generalities of US TV... and I don't even watch US TV except in Hotel rooms when there's nothing else to do... But I am aware of FCC regulations, usually more 'technical' side of FCC but on the topics of what is allowed and what is not, I am aware of some things... 1. When people in the US talk about TV these days they often mean Cable TV. The meaning of TV as 'over-the-air-broadcast' is becoming less and less used by actual people... but rather they are watching stations that do have over-the-air-broadcasts via cable... no sense in switching from the cable connection to an outdoor antenna... well... oddly there is a small but growing trend of people cutting the 'cable TV' package, keeping the Internet service and putting up an antenna for 'local TV broadcast'. 2. The FCC, Federal Communications Commission regulates all radio eminations. For equipment that is not a 'radio', the regulations are directed to what it can produce in terms of RF and how it may generate interference. That's the 'technical side'. 3. The FCC regulates all 'broadcasts', such as Radio and TV over-the-air. That's where such words as '**(obscenity removed)**' or 'poop' are 'censored'. In the case of TV, images of naked humans are typically censored, and given how some set of people are given to complain at the least provocation, many broadcasters stay well within some bound of what could be censored, hence in the case of female tattoos on the female's breast or buttocks... I would say a show that fuzzes out most of such imagery is targeting 'over-the-air' broadcasts. A few years ago Janet Jackson was giving a performance, and she had a 'wardrobe malfunction' which revealed a nipple covered with a 'shield'... a 'pastie' of sorts... caused an incredible amount of commotion. The FCC tossed out fines, CBS fought the fine, eventually prevailing, but obviously at some cost for legal defence... 4. There are 'cable only' content providers, such as HBO, Showtime, and others that produce shows for the cable carriers. The FCC has limited control over the content produced by such content providers, and distributed solely through 'cable' (that is not over-the-air broadcast), and so a show may be made by one of those entities, and it is up to the cable company to carry the content or not. In addition some content providers want their shows to have a maximum coverage and so may 'shoot racier', but tailor edits to the cable carrier's standards. The word 'indecent' is often used in regard to FCC regulations, so 'indecent' speech and images on over-the-air broadcasts are censored. It would seem that you are watching shows made by 'cable content' providers in one case, perhaps 'censored' slightly to be transmitted to a wide audience, where someone some where may object to some types of material, but it is not an FCC regulation situation. On the other hand the other show sounds like they were targeting 'over-the-air' broadcasts where FCC regulations are much tighter. There's a new 'rage' on the reality show circuit... 'nake dating' or 'nake survival'... as far as I can tell, all of these shows fuzz out the 'naughty bits' (cue Benny Hill...). *You will notice even my post has been censored to FCC standards...

One of the problems with looking at current 'stills' is because they came from a BD or a DVD, they may have been processed for 'best look', depending, and so don't actually represent what the negative may or may not have had originally. On the other hand, the transfer could have been done badly, some DSP futzing with the image to 'make it look better' by someone somewhere... but again not representative of what the neg or projection print would hae been. There are some movies that I distinctly recall 'really liking' when I saw them in theaters in the late 60's and 70's... that when they were transferred to DVD looked like crap. I'll give an example... "Romeo and Juliet"(1968). When I saw that movie in theaters when it was released, I really like the 'pastels'... the DVD... (There has been a Bluray transfer but was only available in Europe Amazon now seems to have it as a UK import...) anyway... the DVD was totally botched relative to my recollection... same for "Brother Sun, Sister Moon"(1972)... On the other hand "Taming of the Shrew"(1967), wasn't too bad relative to my ancient recollection. In these examples I'm using films from a particular director, Franco Zeffirelli, and though all three have different cinematographers, and different looks, the all had a sort of 'pastelish' look to them. Perhaps less so with "Taming of the Shrew"... it seems to have a Tuscan 'yellow' sunny look... but then since I've not reviewed the DVD I have in several years... perhaps I've misremembered that as well... The point being, it may be unanswerable for some number of questions that run along the lines of 'what was the original film look supposed to be like'...

For one example, if you look at the shot of Dave in front of the computer panel, you can clearly see 'softer focus' as the light slots recede into the back ground. a deep DoF would not do that.

Fairly old thread... but a number of the 'examples' were not shot with an anamorphic lens. Personally I sometimes find the 'flair' and some times the soft focus fall of 'true' anamorphic somewhat irritating. I'd perfer widescreen spherical most of the time.