Michael Rodin

Kodak 5207/7207 250D and 5203/7203 50D Vision 3 stocks.

Printing, not processing. 500T is more than enough, forget about pushing. I'd shoot that on '07 or even '03 given a lighting budget.

Do you really need that much sensitivity for a day INT? Even ASA100 is more than enough to overexpose windows and then you can light the INT with small HMIs - 1,2-2,5K fresnels or same wattage diffused PARs are usually enough. Or gel windows and light with tungsten. You can get away with '13 stock and you'll need ND filters with '19. 320T was once considered high speed film, 500T ultra high speed... You've got a typo, Adrian. CTO not CTB. Don't forget the 81EF.

Why not call a spade a spade, i.e. an amateur an amateur. Actors who yell at crew, ignorant sound men who don't know the basic tech, DP wannabes who can't wrap their head around metering - they aren't "typical indie crew" or whatever, they're amateurs. No way are you going to shoot a quality movie with amateurs - inevetable it will be sh-tty in some aspect (sound, picture, performance, etc) or, more likely, in all of them, no matter what it was shot on. Digital doesn't make amateurs do acceptable work - it only allows them to pretend they know what they're doing. Until the dailies come. But an actual cinematographer who knows his craft will have an easier time producing an expressive image on film, and you'll likely work faster and more creatively. Instead of erecting forest of nets/fingers to control problematic video highlights you'll be lighting for mood. Instead of spending tens of hours trying to get flesh tones which don't make one throw up, you'll be color grading for a look. Rehearsals are a norm in film. Amateur filmmaking is a different story...

Do you mean the normal exposure for a window view? It should be more like T16 at 25ASA. You won't balance that with a reflected-then-diffused Vistabeam. Instead of bouncing an AS18 I'd shine an M18 directly into a 6x6. Basically the same light quality but more output.

For a price of couple larger Skypanels and small HMIs you can get (at least in Russia where I mostly work) a sizeable tugsten package with a 10Ks, 5Ks, smaller fresnels and some 50-100Kw of soft light. It needs heavier distro though - not as much a problem on a stage where you have multiple high-current connection points. But on a day location HMIs will be cheaper and easier.

Are you shooting on a studio stage? I'd get tungsten lights - much cheaper and better color.

I'd say, if you care about the image, you'll find a way to shoot it on negative film. And 16mm isn't necesarrily grainy or gritty. Overexposed Vision 3 stocks look very clean on the big screen. 7203 shot with high MTF lenses like Ultra16s has insane resolution and clarity/microcontrast.

That's quite a thin negative! It's got to have huge amounts of highlight detail in it. In the DI you can often use power windows to completely bring the BG window views down to normal brightness range, for a very realistic look. They're gonna be on the linear part of film's curve so they'll have normal contrast. Did you use smoke or lens diffusion indoors?

Great work Mark! Would be interesting to know the technical things. How did you rate the stock? (I remember seeing tighter grain on '07 overexposed 1 1/2 stops, but we scanned in 2K on an Arriscan and it's a subjective thing...) How hot did you let your backlights read? How underexposed did you feel you could have shadows on faces before they lost texture and needed more fill?

Soundguy's problem is being an amateur...

I stack them between flags and poly bouce board, tie their ears together and wrap in some canvas or tarpaulin. Don't stack different-sized scrims/flags though as smaller scrims' metalwork can tear the larger ones' fabric. A special scrim bag with dividers is better though. And the "right" way to do it is a scrim box in the grip truck (usually a wooden box on the side by the doors), with separate sections for different sizes/types, so you can quickly pull out the one you need.

It doesn't guarantee frame-to-frame sync. TC does and it's much more "instant".

You'd need a reader for an optical audio track as well. And TC is a more precise and faster way to sync.

They use an LED instead to flash TC. Which is more useful than ref audio.

Well there's AatonCode and Arri SR SMPTE code for those who don't trust their clapper/loader :)

It's not my business anyway, but... Is that DoP the same moron who told you fairy tales about "film look" being lost in DI? Don't believe that nonsense about film giving problems in audio post either. Once again, it's not my business, but why not let these amateurs go and replace them with a qualified crew.? They're bitching and moaning about "problems with film" not because there are actually some problems - no, there are none, except for logistics sometimes, - but purely because they feel insecure working with film. Take DoPs for example. It's much easier to produce a high quality natural looking image on film, and one can experiment with lighting and color more freely, as it's void of limitations video has (highlight handling, colors saturating unnaturally, etc). As a DoP you can get a vastly better image with the same schedule and G&E crew when shooting 35/16mm. But still now and then somebody calling himself a Director of Photography insists on digital, screaming how film is obsolete and inferior. Why, you'd think:)? Well, it takes a bit of solid and sytematized knowledge to shoot film without relying on fortune. And they never bothered to learn. Why would they? They've never been interested in creating good imagery it seems. And they're too sneaky to admit they're not pros, they'd rather go bullshitting.

No need for extreme incompetence here. A defective casting is enough to, say, drop an HMI and crack the globe with mercury vapor inside. That said, I own some cheap chinese gripware, but my combos/windups which support heavy lights are "proper" brand.

And time of free fall in seconds is roughly 0.45 x square root of height in meters. It's physics, gt^2 = 2h :) Several hundred fps can be shot on many 16/35mm cameras, and it might end up cheaper than a Phantom.

Hi-end Ikegamis were vastly superior to equivalent hi-end Sonys, so I think there's no need to compare them to an XL1.

Was it that you had to shoot on the wide end and didn't like the distortion or flare or what exactly?

Having only one source can be very limiting and you might end up with a forest of grip equipment which always gets into frame. And the approach doesn't work well with small diffused sources - the method of cutting&reflecting a single light really starts to work when it's directional, clean beam and far away. It's like dealing with sunlight. IMO, the fastest/easiest thing to light with are Dedos - most controllable, need the least grip to be usable. But very limited in power so only for the smaller INT setups.

Light meter ergonomics is a personal thing. For me the 758 is very easy and comfortable to use. The EI/fps/T-stop readout in the viewfinder is brilliant (not all the meters have it), makes spot metering much easier. That "delta-EV" function also helps to work faster. I won't ever buy a meter with a backlit a-la smartphone LCD - harder to read outdoors and power hungry.

In a word, no. 0.3 is 1 stop log-exposure - that's the input value. How much density increase it'll give you depends on the gradient which is different in various parts of the H&D curve and the 3 RGB curves, differs for various stocks, etc. For the linear part of the curve, you can just multiply 0.3 by the gamma of the stock, which's around 0.6 for color neg. So 0.3*0.6 = 0.18D per stop

Tyler, have you read what OP posted? plus he needs tighter grain. How on earth underexposure will help with that? Tyler Purcell, on 06 Mar 2017 - 02:13 AM, said: What's the point? 1) getting texture and details in shadow areas instead of murky mess 2) underexposure can screw your footage, overexposure (unless extreme) never will 3) getting more information for post work OK, what's the point of underexposure? Tyler Purcell, on 06 Mar 2017 - 02:13 AM, said: ND grads are basic items, not some rarity like C-stands in UK... Tyler Purcell, on 06 Mar 2017 - 02:13 AM, said: Diffusion and reflective fabrics. Tyler Purcell, on 06 Mar 2017 - 02:13 AM, said: Changing an ND or T-stop costs nothing. Push-processing comes at a price. Underexposing to preserve highlights and then overdeveloping to somehow return shadows? That's plain bullshit, sorry