John Hall

From American Cinematographer July 2003 MPC believed the best results occurred with footage shot in the 4x3 aspect ratio but matted for 16x9 by the PAL XL1 (625 lines of resolution, 900,000 effective pixels over three 1/3" CCDs) in Frame Movie Mode, its pseudo-progressive-scan method, which is performed electronically within the camera. I'm kicking myself for not seeing it in theatres, would have loved to see how it handled blowup to 35mm.

Perhaps they gave you the short ends tail out, which means the keycode will run in the wrong direction, not be on the wrong side of the film. I did this once when winding down film from a larger roll down to 200ft for use on an Oxberry. I didn't have any problems though. You may run into some complications later down the post production road (neg cutting... perhaps someone else here could explain better), but it will not affect the image or the processing. You should just give the lab a heads up that the keycode is backwards, but everything should be fine. If you shot through the backing though, thats another story, see http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...?showtopic=5624

David & John, thanks for the advice. I think I may end up just getting a roll of 7240 to shoot the interiors. Since the project should only take 2-3 100 ft. rolls, and the interiors would have to be on their own roll for push processing, its easier to use the 125t film. Thanks again.

I'm shooting a short in a few weeks on 16mm 7285 Ektachrome 100D Reversal. Most of it will be outdoors, but there is one indoor scene. The location is a living room with large bay windows (most likely not in frame). Since I have a small lighting kit (all tungsten units, a few 1k's, MAYBE a 2k blonde), I'm hoping to take advantage of the daylight and correct my lights with CTB to match the daylight (and the film). The window is not likely to get any direct sunlight, and with the amount of light I'm going to loose from the CTB gels, I'm worried my light levels may be two low. One option I'm considering, should light levels be too low, is push processing 1 stop. I've checked with the lab and they can do it, but I have no idea what to expect from pushing reversal stock. Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with this? What would it be like compared to pushing a negative? Will there be way too much grain? Due to the scale of the project (short experimental film), testing isn't really an option (neither, sadly, are a few HMI's which would really solve the problem =). If worse comes to worse, I can probably get a hold of some 7240 125T, but that will require shipping from Colorado to Toronto. Thanks!

I'm sure quick turnaround has always been on of the most driving factors. Footage from Sunday's games (and Monday night's) has to be developed, transfered, corrected, edited & scored by, I'd guess at the latest, saturday night in order to be broadcast on the sunday morning pregame. When you consider the amount of stock they must shoot in a weekend (approx 15 games, all the coverage, plus shooting most of it for slow motion), it must necessitate not only in-house processing, but probably also the most time effecient system (e.g. reversal).

I think this will settle everything nicely. The people in the photo are chav's, the tacky gold 'round their necks is the bling.

http://www.nflfilms.com Bit of a poorly designed flash site, but some decent information on it. Some info on the coverage setup of each game, and at least a few clear pictures of the equipment they're using. As you said, they shoot loads of 16mm each game, and nearly all of it at a higher frame rate (for both slow motion replay and to have sharper details for play by play analysis). Being an NFL Films cinematographer would be the coalescence of the two loves of my life: Film & Football. Maybe I'll have to go back to my high school (Go Central Tech Blues!) and shoot some football footage for the demo reel.

Well, seeing as a few companies tried to sue Sony for replacing several of its competitor's logos in time square in Spiderman (notably, Samsung Electronics, a Sony rival), it seems unlikely that someone could do the exact opposite (though obviously not impossible). Article on the ruling from the Spiderman case. As I understand it, there is some legal difference between having a product in a shot, and having an advertisment or logo appear in the background of a location. A product bearing a logo (such as the aforementioned bag of fertilizer) can easily be moved, covered up, or replaced with a 'fake' branded product. However, companies make a conscious effort to have their brand logos prominently displayed in public areas (i.e. Times Square). They cannont in one hand justify spending a hefty sum to have their logo displayed in such a famous public space, and then on the other hand, sue a poor indie production because the companies logo appears in the background. I'm sure you'd get in much more trouble trying to scale a billboard and cover up a 'Sony' logo with gaffing tape. The only other option would be to censor your shots and make sure no logos creep in (as you said, an impossibility in Times Square), and THAT would be a first amendment issue. The best option with products, even on extremely low budgets, is to just design something quickly yourself and print it off down at Kinkos. You can even glue it on to an existing box, of say cereal or something. Plus you can print it on a nice matte paper so theres no annoying shine from the lights.

Be wary of some cameras offering 'manual exposure control'. Some of these don't have an f-stop relative exposure control, just an arbitrary +-10 adjustment range (i.e. +1 on the 'exposure control' is not one stop). Almost all prosumer, and even some consumer cameras let you adjsut the exposure in stops, but it is something to be mindful of.

A friend of mine, a still photographer, has offered to sell me his Sekonic L-558 at a VERY good price. However, it's not the 'Cine' version, and as I'm going to be using it almost exclusively for motion picture photography, I want to know if and what problems I may run into. To give you a background, I'm just starting off in cinematography and will be shooting mostly amateur stuff for some while. I know a good light meter is a great investment, but I realistically can't afford the 'cine' version. I really can't even afford an l-558 at the retail price. So will not having the 'cine' version put me out at all? I've looked at other lightmeters that would be around the same price as my friend is asking ($350usd approx) and none of them (as far as I can tell) seem to have as many features as the l-588, plus I really do want an incident and spot meter. Thanks in advance John Hall I appoligize if this is an oft covered topic. I'm new and I did a search through the forums to see if this was covered already.