John Hall

The layout of your site isn't that bad, but you really need to loose your logo from the background. That will make everything much easier to read. However, when I scroll down I'm treated to information about what type of girls you like and what drugs you do. That's not even the website of a serious amateur. This is a site for professionals, and amateurs employing a professional approach. Anything you post here will be held to that standard.

If you want something close by, and not too expensive, the Canadian Society of Cinematographers has a weekened workshop they put on every once in a while. http://www.csc.ca/education/ The course is taught by George Willis C.S.C., who is one of the best commercial D.P.'s in Toronto. It's two full days, Saturday & Sunday and they usually hold the course at William F White, a lighting & grip rental house in Toronto. Cost is $325. The website seems a bit out of date, so give them a call and ask them if they have another one planned in the future. You could probably go with the Intermediate Lighting course as I know people who have taken both and they said the basic one was pretty basic, but feel free to give the CSC a call and ask them what they would recommend for your skill level.

$3000 is by no means a paltry lighting budget. I've seen people do great stuff with less. How many shoot days do you plan in this location? If you schedule it over a weekend, you could have Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night on one days rate from a rental house. You will probably also find them to be fairly acommaidating to low budget productions, and you may be able to get a good rate on the gear, or a one day week or something. If you could post some photos of the space, or give some more details about ceiling height, location and size of windows, it would help to give advice specific to your situation. Does your show take place in the daytime, nighttime, or both. I would start by controlling the available light in the location. I would use polytarp to cover your windows. One $40 roll should do them all. I'd also use duvetine to put skirts on the flourescents, in order to keep them off the walls as much as you can. The lower you make the skirt, the more each unit will have a seperate 'pool' of light. If you find they are still too prominent, or too flat, try turning off (probably by taking out the tube) of every other light. As Tim mentioned, the colour of the store's flos will be a problem, but replacing them with daylight balanced tubes will be expensive and time consuming. And since your shooting at night, working in daylight doesn't make much sense. Your best bet would be to balance your lights to the store's flos (there are many forums here with gel recipes to match lamps to particular types of flourescents) and then colour balance your camera to that. You could gel each of the flourescents to tungsten, which may not be a bad idea if there aren't too many units. As far as lamps go, I would rent an assortment of small fresnels (maybe 6x650's, 4x200's) to do things like backlights and little hits on the walls and background. maybe get a 1k or two as well, but keep in mind power will be at a premium I would rent a couple Sky High stands and some grid pipe to hang lights on. Then you can raise them over and behind the talent with outhaving any stands in shot. To key with it may be worth getting some kinos since they put out a lot of light at very little power, and power will probably be at a premuim at your location. China balls are also a great idea as they are cheap and provide great key or fill light. Round off your package with several C-stands, a large and small flag / net kit, some assorted clamps & hangers, a couple hand dimmers, some expendables (tape, blackwrap, duve), an a-frame ladder. Without mortaging too much dignity (begging), you might be able to get that package for under $1500 a day, and like I said earlier, you maybe be able to get a one day week from a rental house (everything except maybe the Kinos), and you'll be good to go. Also do yourself a favour and pay a relatively experienced lighting/grip person at least a token sum to help you. I gaurentee they'll pay for themselves in productivity and overall quality of your show. Sorry if this sounds rushed through and full of typos, this is the second time I've wrote this. I was just about to post before and I clicked one of those ads on the right, when I pressed 'back' I had lost everything. :(

Thanks for your advice guys. I am going to go with the EXR 50D, partially because I got a good price on a 400' roll. Probably not shooting for a little while, but I will post frame grabs once I do. Thanks again!

Having spent a few years in Kinkos serfdom, I can give you a reasonably qualified answer. 300 DPI is optimal for photographs, fliers, and about anything else you can hold in your hand when viewing, which is likely to be only a few feet from your eyes. For posters, which tend to be viewed from further away, you can use lower resolution for your photo to make it larger, but it will still have the same perceived resolution. So if your camera gives you a 8 x 12 print at 300 dpi, then you would have a 24 x 36 print (average poster size) at 100 dpi. Not great resolution, but as long as your camera has good optics, and doesn't have any nasty compression (or can store RAW photos) then you will probably have a satisfactory result. *Disclaimer* I'm not a camera guy or an expert in optics, sharpness or anything, I'm just offering my opinion based on my years as a copier jockey, and that I've probably printed more posters than anyone here ;)

You can sometimes find information on companies' websites. Mole Richardson has Product Spec sheets for some of it's lights (including tungsten fresnels). As does Kino-Flo. That should give you a rough idea of the output of most lights you'll be using. If you're willing to make the investment (a.k.a. cough up the cash) he ASC manual is the defacto bible on information about specific lights.

It is most important that the colours you choose look right in your scene, which I have no idea of knowing. If I told you that I once used 138 Pale Green & 778 Millennium Gold, that doesn't mean it will give you the look you want. Neons are sometimes used to portray a location as a seedy underbelly of a city. Or maybe they could be on a marquee, or in a night club, meant to portray a glamourous effect. Needless to say, these are two entirely different situations where you want the colour of the light to have a different emotional impact. I would use equal parts personal taste and whatever-is-available. What do you have access to? Any plus-green gel? Maybe doubling it up will give you the desired effect. Let's say you have no coloured gels (or you only have basic CTOs and CTBs) Get your hands on a colour gel sample book from Lee Filters. If your school doesn't have them, you could write to Lee, or visit them (they are only an hour away from Bournemouth, in Andover). Try to get your hands on the larger Cinematographer Editions, which are 90mm x 70mm, but make sure to grab one of each of their different product lines. Are you shooting an establishing shot of the exterior with a real neon sign? See if you can find a pair of gels that look close. If you aren't, see if there are any you imagine the sign looking like. Then I'd find a patient friend, sit them down and shine a flashlight through some different gels onto their face and see what you like. Failing all that, check out Lee's great section of their website site called 'Art of Light' http://www.leefilters.com/LP1.asp?PageID=21, which has a catalog of their products as well as suggestions as to what look they might help achieve. Buy a bunch of different gels for each colour and any other colours you might find interesting. A collection has to start somewhere. You can always get a more intense colour by doubling up the gel. Go walk downtown and find a real neon sign, look at the effect it has on peoples faces, what do you think it looks like?

I have a couple 400ft rolls of 7248 EXR 100T that I am planning to use to shoot a small short film. Despite being in my fridge since they were given to me (about 8 months ago), I'm sure they have fogged a bit, and am planning on overexposing by one stop to compensate. Even though this will be a very short project (4-5 mins run time) I anticipate needing at least one additional 400' roll. I'm aware that 7248 is a couple years outdated, and pretty much unavailable, even from recan sellers (at least, the two in Toronto I've contacted). I was looking for some advice as to what stock would be a good match for 7248. This is a telecine only project, no film prints, but I can't afford extensive post colour correction to make the stocks match. All exteriors, so I will be using an 85 filter (or perhaps a partial correction as the filter + overexposure will bring me down to 32asa). I figure my options are either: 7245 EXR 50D: Would it match well with daylight corrected EXR 100t? Would it be better to give it the same 1 stop over exposure as the 100t or give it 2/3 stop overexposure to rate it the same as the corrected 100T (32 asa). This would be brand new stock, so it wouldn't require any over exposure, this would simply be to produce a better match. Vision 2 7201 50D or 7212 100t (with filter): Assuming that corrected 7245 wouldn't be a good match, would Vision 2 provide the most versatility for a colourist to work with. Is it easy for a colourist to emulate the look of a different stock? Would using the tungsten stock with a filter be a better match for the 7248, or should I just use the 50D? What would you suggest? Is there another option I should consider? I will try to minimise any mismatches by using one stock for wide shots, and the other for close ups. I will be doing some colour and palette shifting myself to achieve a stylised look, but will rely on a professional colourist to do basic colour correction and matching. I will shoot a colour chart at the start of each roll in order to assist the colourist. Just for the record this is a personal project, inspired primarily by the fact that I have some free rolls of 16mm in my fridge (which is starting to irritate my roomates). Going out and buying 1200' of one stock just to make it match isn't an option. That being said, I'm not expecting to win a cinematography award, just trying to practice my shooting. Any advice is greatly appriciated. Thanks in advance!

Could you not just add 1/3 of a stop to the interior light level in the car? That has to be cheaper and easier than anything involving replacing windows. Failing that, you could take two thin peices of plexiglass and sandwhich a sheet of .15 ND in between.

You could perhaps try and find lower wattage bulbs for the headlights. Find the ANSI code for the bulbs that the car uses normally and see if you can find a bulb with the same connector base, but lower output. Just make sure you swap them back before you drive at night. :D

Richard, are you shooting overnights or are you tenting off windows as you go? Either way, it seems like you've put together a tough crew that will pull hard for not much money, good on you. If you don't mind me asking, who is your Gaffer and your Key Grip?

Well, that really depends on the individual, doesn't it? If you're not built to crawl under a package truck with frozen seeway between your teeth, then no, you probably won't find work as an electric or grip much fun. But I wouldn't make a blanket statement such as 'ask anyone'. Great crew members love what they do. I don't think make-up is looking at wardrobe and thinking 'wow, I wish I had that job, it's so much more fun'. I love lighting, and wouldn't want to do anything else. I think most AD's, Camera people, Props etc feel the same way about what they do.

Find an old CRT monitor (a 30 minute drive on garbage day should net you a couple), remove the 'innards' and take just the plastic shell of the monitor. Put a 300w fresnel inside the shell and tape some diffusion and CTB (can't remember if I used 1/4 or 1/2) to the screen. You'll want to put some blackwrap behind the light so the light doesn't spill out the holes in the side of the monitor. If you want it to look a bit more realistic, tape a couple different densities of CTB to different areas of the 'screen' to simulate different coloured 'windows'. As with David's sugggestion, this really works only when filming the back of the monitor, but it may be passable for a brief, out-of-focus glance.

I'm sure some of you have heard this one from a Grip before; "A light without a scrim is like an Electric without a job" wokka wokka wokka

I don't know about that. Unlike you, I can count the number of times I've performed a tie-in, and I would never describe my connections as 'dodgy or half-assed'. As long as your cables can't be tripped on, kicked, or otherwise pulled out with moderate force, then they should be as reliable as the the rest of the household circuits.

Richard, I'm afraid I don't understand. Was the issue of Work / Study Permits raised (by any party) during the election? To be perfectly honest I couldn't bring myself to sit through any of those insufferable debates. :) Riku, he's joking (I think). The outcome of our recent election won't have any bearing on your situation, though you do stand to save 2% on the sales tax in five years....

If you are planning on doing a co-op or internship through your program, then you must apply for a student work permit. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/study/work-opps.html This is the Citizenship & Imigration page on Working Options for Foreign Students. Other than co-ops and internships, it doesn't offer any info on unpaid work. If you are thinking of trying to find unpaid work on commercial film sets, there may be issues with insurance and liability (but I doubt it). Otherwise, if you just plan on volunteering on small or student shoots, I can't imagine there being any problem with that. I don't think they stop foreigners from volunteering anywhere else, I doubt this would be any different. However, this is UNQUALIFIED advice. Call the CIC or whichever Ministry is involved in your study permit and ask them. Enjoy your stay in Toronto! Make sure you check out the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (http://www.lift.on.ca). They are a great resource for indie cinema in our city and you don't need a work permit!

Well, 300 meters is 984 ft. So if you are getting it for $250, that's $.25 a foot, which is about what you'd pay for recanned stock from a reputable source which has been fog tested. Do you want 7245 specifically? Do you live near a recan supplier? (you should include your full name and where you live in your info). At that price, I would be inclined to just buy tested recans or shortends from a reputable dealer and avoid any surprises. If it wasn't stored in the freezer properly than the film may be ruined anyway. The answer to both questions is no. The price is fairly average, if each roll passes a fog test. If it hasn't been tested, it's a risk, and the risk is that it's worth nothing.

Not exactly sure what your question is. Are you looking for a place to buy these fixtures? Do you want advice on your package selection? What sort of stuff will you be shooting in this studio? Is your blue screen only going to be on the wall or will it extend onto the floor? If it's just on the wall, you could use cyc lights. If you are installing a grid, they can be hung from there, or they light the wall from the floor up. If you need to light the wall and the floor for a head to toe shot, I would recommend a couple space lights. These provide a great general ambience for a cyc. The beauty of these lights is they are about the simplest design possible. a metal ring with six 1k bulbs, with a cloth skirt. No lenses, no moving parts. The only thing you may have to replace are the bulbs, sockets, and perhaps wiring. Don't know what the configuration would be to power these in South Africa, but in North America, each light has three u-ground plugs, each controlling 2 bulbs, so it's intensity can be modified without dimming. You may find that these provide great general illumination for most projects you may do. I would save on the Kino's for now and get a couple Lowell Tota's with Chimeras for a fraction of the price.

This is the list of required equipment for IATSE 873 grips: Leatherwork Gloves, Multi Driver, Hammer, Tool Belt, Lineman?s Pliers, 10-inch Crescent Wrench, Safety Glasses Hard Hat, Tape Measure, Olfa Knife, Rain Gear, Safety Harness. for gripping, I usually bring a cordless drill, a full set of woodscrews and fasteners, some rope & a few pulley's, plastic ties, black wrap, some short bits of sash (which can save the day), tape measure, and an empty travel sandbag with some snacks ;)

I would make a Mod Rock-Opera that would put Quadrophenia to shame.

^^^ No Relation, but good advice :D I've used a similar techqnique with silver party streamers, but only in a studio. The wind conditions can make the effect way to pronounced though. And as Mike Whatshisname said, 'Less is More' with this sort of thing

Flicker boxes are great, but nothing beats just twirling your hands in front of the light. I'd use two or more of the redheads, experiment with combinations of CTO and yellow until you find something that's suitably 'fiery'. Try using different combinations on each light. Then have a couple of grips (or anyone you have available) twist and rotate both hands a foot infront of the light. You will probably find that this produces an effect as good, perhaps better (definitely more tiring) than a flicker box. This will also get the most out of your lights as you don't have to bounce them off anything.

This isn't strictly true. You can give people all the snake oil in the world and say it may heal them. You cannot, however, advise someone to take something and say it will heal them unless you do a certain amount of scientific study. You have to show that not only is it actually beneficial, but that it doesn't cause any harm. I do believe that the pharmaceutical industry exercises an unhealthy (pardon the pun) amount of influence in Washington, and perhaps have drugs approved that perhaps shouldn't be. But that doesn't mean they should open the floodgates and let any confidence man (Trudeau) advise you to take whatever he says.

Always use professional grade media. This may determine whether or not your disc plays on some of the more particular players. I'd recommend HHB. For CD's and DVD's I've always got the best results, even on players that had been deemed 'unplayable' for recorded media. http://www.hhb.co.uk/hhb/usa/hhbproducts/m...ct=DVD-R4.7GB-G The problem with Lightscribe is that you have a limited selection of media manufacturers who support it. The HHB discs are ink jet printable (on printers that support the option), or thermal printable (if you buy a thermal printer). Software is crucial too. If you use poor quality authoring software your .VOB files may contain errors, which may cause some players to 'choke' and stop playing your disc. Same thing for the burning software. A few minute errors may play undetecable on some players, and on others may stop playing the disc entirely. I've never had problems with Nero 7. It handles authoring & burning (and encoding) well. It also supports burning on multiple players simultaneously, which I've done frequently without problems, but might advise against if you're trying to make a 'foolproof' disc. Nero does also support Lightscribe if you wish to go that route.