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Matthew Padraic Barr

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  • Occupation
    Director
  • Location
    New York City
  • Specialties
    Writer/Director/Cinematographer

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  1. I've dealt with these submission websites a lot, and they all seem to support Vimeo links with a password. You attach the Vimeo link and the password for submission. The purpose of these websites, including filmfreeway, withoutabox, and shortfilmdepot, is to simplify the submission process across multiple festivals. For instance, I submitted my short film to Slamdance, Seattle, San Francisco, cinequest film festivals, among many others, all through withoutabox and I only had to upload the video once to Vimeo and fill out one form for all the submissions. It's very helpful. Only one of the websites I've dealt with actually required you to upload the video on to their website (not vimeo) which can take along time and is prone to errors. I believe that site was shortfilmdepot, and that was only for European festivals.
  2. It is likely that this production used expensive lighting units to achieve the high key look you are referring to, but high key lighting can be achieved in a myriad of ways. For instance, in a room with many large windows, using certain camera placements can give you a similarly high key look without using any lighting units and using only available light. You would likely need a few fixtures to be used as a modeling light on the actors faces, but I'm simply pointing out that you don't necessarily need a ton of expensive lighting fixtures to achieve a high key look, especially nowadays with the fast film stocks and the sensitive digital sensors available to us. From what I've heard -- since Supergirl shoots on the Warner Bros lot and does location work in LA -- they shoot primarily on the Arri Alexa, and for some of the VFX work they shoot on the Red in 6k. Given that Supergirl employs a good deal of VFX work it is extremely doubtful that they work at a high ISO. Both the Red and the Alexa work well in the 400 to 800 ISO range, so that is the range they likely work in. Shooting in a high ISO in low lighting will give you a tremendous amount of noise and it will not help retain colors in the image. Colors only exist in our perception due to the reflection and absorption of light rays on an object, therefore colors need light to be vibrant both in our perception and in their reproduction with digital systems.
  3. I would also like to add that testing is extremely important. Testing lenses, cameras, filters, LUTs, and the overall look including the lighting, color schemes, overexposure and underexposure limits; when/if actors become available for you, you can test lighting for that individual -- every face is unique and responds uniquely to different colors and qualities of light -- this is especially important if they are female. Testing is always important, even for seasoned veterans. I think it's even more important early on when you might not have the experience; you can make up for that by testing a lot. Even if you can't test a lot of the things I mentioned above, you can be vigilant in pre-production, thinking up problems, and possible contingencies, scouting locations and taking lots of pictures and pre visualizing lighting approaches.
  4. Oftentimes, directors work with much of the same crew on every movie they make, which is probably what they meant by "tight crew." I know from my own experiences that shows always run much more smoothly when you work with a crew that you worked with before, so I completely understand why directors do that.
  5. May I ask you why you're inquiring about this? I might be able to be more helpful if I knew what you were trying to accomplish. This particular story was made in 1991, so the technology involved is quite outdated. If you're mostly interested in the ethics and general legality of hidden camera news stories, I can only speculate based on what I've heard while working for a new station. I was merely a camera operator, so I'm not sure how helpful I can be.
  6. I think you might have forgotten to attach the video, Harry. I used to work for a news station so I might be able to help answer your questions, but I would need to see the video to properly answer.
  7. I appreciate the sentiment, Adrian. I felt as though I was stepping out of my purview. Im hardly qualified to comment on getting into the business. I just got lucky: I was born in the right place.
  8. Oh no, I didn't mean to imply that it was a common occurrence. Richard asked if there was any examples. My impression was that he thought it was a myth, I just remembered Trost as one example. no doubt it's an extremely rare occurrence. I shouldn't have chimed in. Still new to this forum.
  9. What about the Boy Wonder Brandon Trost? Im pretty sure he was just 26 when he shot Crank: High Voltage, which was a 20 million dollar Hollywood action movie. I am not a fan of that movie at all but it's a good example. I do like Trost's work with Rob Zombie a lot though.
  10. You mentioned Spring Breakers, which was shot by Benoit Debie, AFC. In that film, they shot on 2-perf film, and Debie claims that you can't get the same amount of in-camera color on digital, you need to do a lot of work in post to get the colors he achieved largely in-camera with film. As Satsuki already mentioned, gels work great. And I love Storaro gels as well. But don't forget about lens filtration. Again in Spring Breakers, Debie used Blue/Yellow and Blue/Lime Varicolor Polarizers during the first part of the film, the music-video part, and that's how he got such interesting colors in the sky and the sea for those scenes, which were lit only by sunlight.
  11. I'm a little confused by your question. I wouldn't recommend thinking in terms of zones for exposure. You might use a 18% grey card, which, when properly exposed, would be exactly zone V. When you start talking about skin tones and "reflectiveness" you're now talking about exposure, and I think the the zone system is confusing you a bit. You should be thinking more in terms of exposure. Here's some good material that I think might help you: http://www.cinematography.net/edited-pages/Philosophy%20of%20Exposure.html http://www.chrischomyn.com/documents/book/05-understandingexposure.pdf
  12. I think you're slightly misunderstanding the Zone System. The Zone System is just a guide to help create a more aesthetically pleasing image through lighting and exposure. Normally, you would find something in the frame that is at key, which often time might be the face of the actor as you mentioned, and you would overexpose and underexpose other areas of the frame -- in a day interior you might blow out the windows, which would then be the most overexposed portion. You want to light the scene based on the latitude (aka dynamic range) of the film camera and film stock (or digital system), the desired look of the film, limitations of the location, time for set-ups, etc. For instance, you might not be able to create a perfect 10 zone system in certain locations, it might not be possible to sufficiently underexpose any area of the frame. The Zone System is simply a beginners guide to understand how exposure and lighting interact in photography. After a certain point, you don't even think about it, you simply light a scene and instinctively add or take away light to better serve the style of photography for that story. If you'd like to see how cinematographers actually use the Zone System I would recommend the book Reflections: 21 cinematographers at work. http://store.ascmag.com/product-p/10701.htm It's expensive but it's a really good book. -mpb
  13. I second Tyler's statement. Great work. I only see one problem with the reel. It seems that most of the reel is commercial work at the beginning. I think some of the work at the end would be better fitted in the beginning somewhere. The beginning looks a bit homogeneous. It would be nice to have a mixture of different lighting styles and film looks right off the bat, showing off your versatility. You might look into having one reel for commercial work and another only for narrative work, which might help with that. That way you could also keep it as short as possible. But again, the photography looks great man. -mpb
  14. I'm shooting a short film at the end of the month on the Blackmagic 4k system, and I'm not sure how the camera's timecode works. I read about how, when recording audio with the microphones within the camera, you can get a timecode from that data. But I'm not entirely sure how to do this in Adobe Premier CC. Does anyone have experience with this? Or can you explain to me how to use this audio timecode? We're recording location sound with a normal set-up. If it helps, here's the equipment the sound recordist is using: Sound Devices 664 Production Mixer with integrated Recorder Betso Sbox Time Code & World Clock Generator
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