Felipe Perez-Burchard

Has anyone heard of this realtime 2k color timing software for the G5? www.siliconcolor.com how does it perform? Are there other systems like it? I've always felt that eventually you'll get your film processed and then drum scanned at the lab at some sort of raw/uncompressed data and then you take it to a home system and do all your color correction there. Although this is still not feasable as not everyone can afford a pair of xServes, that will change with time... (of course files will get bigger as well). Anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks for your time. -felipe.

The Fuji stocks are available in 35mm canisters... just call Fujifilm up and they send them free of charge. Very nice folks... I've had good experiences with RGB Labs, they have most of the kodak stocks. -felipe.

A more recent example, "The Others" shot by Javier Aguirresarobe has extensive and beautiful candle light simulation. -felipe

Wow, Great post... learned a lot; curious about this though: "Blade Runner effect with the semisilvered mirror to encourage retroreflectivity in the eyeball" Could you tell me a little about semi silvered mirrors, how they are used and when were they used in blade runner ? Thank you very much. Regards, -felipe

slightly off topic but touching on the issue of the hard matte on the camera... some months ago (actually a year ago) I interned on a feature and the 1.85 hard matte used in front of the lens covered only the top portion of the frame, I thought this was odd, and the mattes in my schools 35mm cover equal amounts in the top and bottom (putting the image on the center as opposed to the bottom). 1) first off all, am I wrong and there are no such mattes as the ones I beleive they used in the feature? 2) how does this affect image quality, I would assume that the image that is captured by the center portion of the lens would be optically better, is this a correct assumption? 3)what would you gain by having the image at the bottom? The depts. on the film weren't to crazy about my questions, so I left that one unanswerd and I was just reminded about it when I read this post. Thanks in advance for any info. Regards, -felipe

Just got back from the film, wanted to ask you guys about something that relates to a scene in the movie. One of my favorite lighting moments is when Jim Carey is sitting on the steps depressed talking to kate winslets relatives about what she has done, and the source is from behind him, somwhere above in the second floor and there is no light directly on his face so it is underexposed... I feel the lighting greatly enhances the emotional state of the character as well as fit within the overall visual scheme of the film; In fact I have found myself wanting to deal with some scenes like this but one side of me is too afraid and feels that we need to see the face becasue it is an important character moment and usually the director is with this side of me, my other half tells me that I need to take the risk and that the lighting itself is part of the performance and complements it and so I should let it fall into darkness... in practically every case the presuure of shooting makes me decide to bring some more light and then I look back on it and I feel i shouldn't have done it - it's too bright, but then one time i did do it (not exatly same situation but similar enough), killed that fill and now I feel like I should have kept it. Have you guys had similar experiences or have had to deal with a situation where you want to take a risk but maybe not everyone is supportive? Furthermore, on a more technical level, if you have seen the film and remember the scene, how much underexposed would you say the face is? and would you always put in a little fill to render some detail - or better yet what do you think Ellen kuras did there? or maybe it's just pretty wide open and the ambient fill is enough... finally, how important do you think it is to have dailies (print or video) as far as your own learning of how what you are doing is working... does this make any sense? bieng a student, I never see what I've shot till the project is wrapped and I feel that if I was getting dailies, I could improve as the shooting progressed. Thank you very much for your comments. regards, -felipe

Hi, I noticed a couple of things in The Passion, which I just got back from seeing, and was wondering what you guys would have to say about them... First, I noticed that in the opening scene, the fire of the torches looked very pale in wide shots and much warmer in close ups... could it be that during the D.I. they cooled down the image further which would make the fire paler, but in the closeups because the faces were lit probably by another source and the torches are less prominent, the genral warmth on the face made me perceive the torches as warmer too, even though they actually were the same?? And then, near the end, when thunder starts to threaten the people up in the mountains, when Jesus is in the cross, in one cut, the colors were suddenly totally different, much greener and desaturated, it looked great, but it seemed a bit abrupt... i was wondering if it was the print or, since I read in AC that they were working on matching the skies still, maybe it was a choice made in the DI suite. If it was the print, why does this happen so often... I noticed it in KILL BILL as well, and I saw that in different screens (the cut is in the begining when it goes from the shot from inside the cops car with all the sunglasses to him getting out of the car)... And it happened in FRIDA as well, but that was for sure the print, because it happened in the middle of a scene (She is in a bathtub I think, I can't remember exactly). Thanks for your comments. regards, -felipe

I was never taught NOT to over-under a stinger... why shouldn't we do this? the answer is probably pretty obvious, but I can't quite pinpoint it. Thanks.... -felipe PS - I like his site quite a bit, I felt cinematographer.com lost some jazz when it changed its format... and this is pretty refreshing, i like the articles.