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Jay Young

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Everything posted by Jay Young

  1. I may be an out of work IATSE member, but for me, IMAX has always been more about the presentation than production. Certainly 15p projection is a spectacle. In the proper setting it can be a wonder to behold. However, at my local AMC, IMAX means nothing more than a larger screen, and sound pressure levels so high it physically hurts. People walk out of shows because the sound volume is so great. This is not a "fun" entertaining experience, its perhaps something one can't get at home, but most assuredly a money grab from cinema owners because of branding. After the past years experiences, I will not attend an IMAX showing if it is not traditional presentation. I have heard the arguments made about the audio, even that mixing engineers mix at 130+ dB. Impossible, they would permanently damage their hearing. Rumors that Mr. Nolan prefers his explosions to be lifelike even in the theatre. Nonsense. Cinema managers state they have no control over the volume. Utter garbage. There is a single dial, usually set at 7. Turn it down. That is to say nothing of the actual visual presentation, which is lackluster. I notice no difference between the normal projection of digital shows, and the much hyped laser systems. Perhaps there are a handful of cinemas that care about presentation, but they are far and few between. Having seen the roadshow presentation of Hateful8, I was quite pleased. Having seen a 70mm showing of 2001 gave critical insight into the film I had never experienced. Having seen the rest of the so called IMAX shows in properly branded theatres, I can say I would have much more enjoyed being at home, watching on my hi-fi with the two speakers. Presentation needs to change.
  2. We move S60's on combo stands daily. I'm sure we would try to move a s360 if it was more compact. Anything that doesn't have a header cable really, we will pick up and move unless its going through a door. A lot of the smaller budget shows with inexperienced DP's think its saves time to do things a certain way. This usually is a result of no planning and making everything up on the day. Larger budget shows, even with only three or four electricians on set are much more manageable. Safety becomes something people talk about, both personal and equipment.
  3. Once somewhere here there was discussion about using an 85 filter or not. The conclusion was that while technically the density changes between the two options are different, if you don't need exact color critical exposure then not using the filter can easily be corrected in DI. Sounds like you are set to use filtration, so not something you need to worry about.
  4. I think, technically, with the amount of technology available, I would be happy wiring a 48v solar array, or a few lithium batteries direct to one of these batteries. The only hard part is crimping the connection, or finding a compatible male connector. Having built several of my own solar/battery power solutions this past year, the pieces are cheap, readily available, and easy to use. Paying a convenience factor to EcoFlow or PortablePower to put everything in a box for you may not be the best use of funds. Now, I realise I'm a gaffer with the technical knowledge to do this, and not everyone wants to go down that road. I feel like eventually, AC or DC it won't matter. Just plug it in and go. Which makes me think we are coming full circle.
  5. I agree with David and the rest, it seems like a large, soft, overhead source.
  6. I think this particular DP was scared there wasn't enough level. I lit the background outside windows with several LED lamps through VS Cyan at 20% intensity. There was plenty of room to go up. I am not really sure why that choice was made, but we dealt with it as usual. As far as I recall, all of the daytime EXT was shot at 800 with internal ND's as needed, and a pretty healthy stop. I didn't add anything except a bounce for closeup work. Yes I always carry ND for those times we need to dim from "0%". This is something I run into more often with inexperienced DP's. High iso shooting means they don't need so much level in the room, but it causes more problems than it solves, in my opinion.
  7. I have been a tungsten fan for a long time. I always carry tungsten on the truck. However, I see two things happening from my experience that will color the future. On the one hand, depending on budget, small independent features may not be able to afford led lighting packages, however I have shifted small fixtures over to led because I can now get a good enough 650 replacement. That color science will get better, and I believe can replace tungsten lamps up through 2000w of output. Beam patterns are getting better, as is color accuracy. On larger budgets or studio shoots where there is a green mandate, we might be asked to run as much as 70% led. This is problematic because even above $10m, that get expensive really fast. Zips still go in the perms because soft panels can't be ordered in sufficient quantity to meet the budget requirements. Productions can either meet their green mandate, or their budget line costs, not both. At some point, this will change and I have no doubt that LED's will get cheaper. Again this is why I often carry a mixture of small LED fixtures, and small tungsten fixtures. But David reminds us of something I talk with Aputure about often, the 10k problem. Making a big soft source out of LED's is easy. Making a 20k point source is not. There are several manufacturers working on the issue, but the technology does not exist yet. The second thing is camera sensitivity. A lot of lower budget shows, even shooting on the Venice, choose to shoot at 4000 iso. I cannot tell you the number of problems this creates for the gaffer. I constantly ask DP's not to do this. On set yesterday, I had 4 litemats, a few tubes, a few other fixtures, and nothing was above 8% on the dial. The levels were so low the actors were complaining they couldn't see where they were going. On camera, it looked like bright daytime. I asked the DP if they wanted to raise the level in the room, and close down a stop for the sake of talent, and was denied. I am 100% sure closing down from 1.8 would have made no difference in the quality of this film. I had enough light in the room to raise the whole thing 2 stops, but that's the way young DP's have been cultured to shoot. Suddenly, tiny sources contaminate the scene, and I have to cover status LED's on control panels! 800iso is fine, but I feel we really need to get away from pushing camera technology in this particular direction. If we shoot everything at 10,000 iso, we won't need to solve the 10k problem..... Food for thought, and just my opinion.
  8. That's pretty normal. 8x rags tend to come with at least two floppies, or four, or it can get real big with big pieces of duve wrapped around the whole thing. Yes, your experience is normal.
  9. You could probably use the plastic sockets with a little black wrap heat shield if you wanted a higher wattage bulb. I've been having a great difficult time finding affordable porcelain sockets - if stores have them at all these days. I've used plastic to build all of my battens in recent months.
  10. To answer some questions, after three shows using nothing but Aputure products, I can say that if one already owns HMI lamps, use them. They still work. My current show I have 4x joker 400w, and 4x joker 800w - they have never been out of the case. The DP insisted that we have them...... wasted money. The Aputure and Nanlight 1200w lamps are factually the same output as an M18 at about 30% cheaper to purchase. But there are drawbacks: The header cables have a finite length, of which I have sent my disdain to the engineering department. They advise there is too much voltage drop over distances longer than 25 feet to efficiently run the led engines. Well, I call bullshit on that. Engineers are always a wee bit conservative. They will figure it out. With a ballast and lamp head the size of the 1200w fixture, there is plenty of room to shove more lighting in. I don't know how many hours it takes for one of these lamps to color shift appreciably, because they are so new it has not happened yet. I own 4 600D's, and a 1200. They work all the time, and I have yet to see, on camera, an issue. This may have been an issue with older lamps, but the new hardware is pretty solid. Now we can argue that an 800w joker with spotlight attachment puts out more footcandles than an equally outfit 600d, but I would argue that one should choose the right tool for the right job. I am sure there are Gaffers and DP's which would need the extra few footcandles in certain situations where the output difference would make or break a shot. However, I'm not so certain that it would make all that much of a difference. Things will continue to evolve and the engineering will get better. Something must absolutely be done about the F35 fresnel, which is WAY too heavy, and creates serious danger problems on set. Anyhow, Aputure, at least for now, seems to be headed in the right direction.
  11. Sure, gel them to taste with blue. Or not, for some warm sun coming through a window. Technically Dichorics exist, but they last a very short lifetime, and are difficult to source. Blue gel is usually on every truck.
  12. DS Voyager Gen 1 issues I have never used these, four randomly showed up on the truck. Spend two days trying to make them work. I can get three working together, but only two will actually connect with wifi being the master, one only connects to the Bluetooth mesh, and the fourth never connects in any mode. All lamps are updated firmware, full charge. When I set one lamp master (yellow mode), and the rest to client mode, the other lamps only connects with Bluetooth (not to the console), and I can only map effects to the master wifi node. When I connect one lamp to the tablet over wifi, it always says there is a firmware update, but the other lamps which will work with wifi never says that. I'm sure I am doing something wrong, anyone an expert on these lamps?
  13. On small shows, I don't bother renting Jokers, especially the 400 anymore. If I need larger lamps, I'll get M18's or M40's. The 1200D is not an M40. However, for general use case, while the Joker 800 is probably brighter in the lab, real world use case the 600D can achieve the same thing. However, they go really green much faster than an hmi globe.
  14. I'm late to the party on these replies, but as a gaffer, I'll say this. If on the truck you carry two 18k's, and two 9k's. I'm leaving those 9k's on the truck. Beyond rigging, cost, planning for a long day of whatever - the 9k and 18k on most US sets use the same power rig/run, require the same logistics, same crew power, and generally the 18k is more balanced than the front heavy 9k, while also being more able to cope with temperature/weather. And trust me when I say, when its 116 in the Georgia heat, we only want to set one lamp, and we're super happy to clamp as many scrims as will fit in front of that 18k, rather than swap out the whole lamp because its "not enough".
  15. It really depends, having done both. Example 1: 20k and 18k in a lift, 500 feet away from talent lighting a farm field, and trees in the deep background. A 360 would have no where near the reach, and while it may be able to light a wider field of view, it would fall off too fast to be useful. Example 2: 18k in a lift for heavy stylized moon night work. We dropped a home run in it, and it should have probably been a 4k, but it was already mounted on the lift and we were running out of time. It worked, but was, in reality, a little too much. Even 100 feet back it was reading T8 on the meter. Same show, different DP, we put a 360 in the basket for the same type of thing, and it was maybe 80 feet away. Backlighting a group of people was easy with this setup, dimming was simple, and fast to control. It really depends on what the situation is, what the shot is, and what the DP is requesting for the look. It also depends on how fast you need to move through the day, or how constrained the physical location might be. I will side with the rest and say, I never trust HMI's, and tungsten always strikes. For the same power runs, Maxibrutes all day. I've tried 4K's with soft boxes in a lift, but they are simply toooooo unweildy to do anything meaningful with. In large rigs/boxes on lifts, skypanels are great until you need quality tungsten, then its usually cheaper to go with parcans. Don't get blinded by technology. Tubes/Creamsourse/Digital Sputnik/new hotness, don't solve all problems. They just help us learn new problems we didnt' know existed.
  16. So I just visited Epcot, and viewed both the old and the new circle-vision 360 presentations. Canada was presented in bland HD at best, with bland color and a bit of trick editing. China was presented in 9 screens of real projected 35mm. It was old, scratched, stained, and in very much need of restoration. It was AWESOME! The colors were great, most prints were decent enough, optical dissolves were fantastic, it just felt very nostalgic and “right”. On other person in my party remarked that the China presentation was grainy, and old - mind you he is Chinese and commented that most of the presentation was filmed in the 90s and most of that stuff didn’t exist anymore. He also said that the Canada presentation was far superior because of the presentation. It was better to him, because it was new. This is the most present issue in these arguments, presentation. It is quite difficult for most people to compare a photochemical workflow to a digital one. We have cut out 80% of the photochemical process that gives us a final image. We then further take away films inherent qualities in the digital realm by using tools on that process that were not designed to manipulate film negative. I agree we should not argue film vs digital, but rather we should look at the end presentation. After all, I don’t care which camera body one chooses, laying in my bed, watching a show before sleep time.
  17. I own a cp, am a gaffer, and would happily come light your film. DM to discuss. Happy to negotiate a rate.
  18. You defended film, but complain about what it takes to shoot on film? Then you praise digital for being able to allow you to shoot on a budget you can afford? In the DIY purchasing world, it doesn't make sense to me. If a filmmaker doesn't have any money, why buy expensive LED lamps that look gross anyway? Just get some blonds and bounce them. In the professional rental world, cameras are still huge and heavy - The Sony Venice Panavised with a full cage, 10:1 zoom and gak still weighs 50 lbs. the AC's would treat that camera no different than an Arri ST with 1000' mag. And the ST would be far quicker to setup. The gear never made a difference. But now it does. Tungsten is still cheap, and LED lights get hot. There are false statements coming from all sides. In my experience, the only thing Digital has done is allowed the creation of content that would never have been made previously. I have worked three films so far this year with budgets over 10 million in which production was given $900,000, and the producers took the rest. With named talent, they will make their money back and more. The bigger issue is that it all looks like garbage, and cameras that can see in the dark with extreme high iso's are promoting this type of shooting. Conversely, rental budgets for the gear are so low, we are stuck in a bad spot because LED's are expensive to rent, and so are generators. Its a no win scenario. Praise film for the look it gives. Don't judge too harshly, because in the professional world, all of the same tools are used. The Digital choice has caused more problems than solutions.
  19. Recently I applied for a job in which I was told they would hire a “musical DP”. Beyond tooting my own horn, how does one become a musical DP? Sounds a but like catch 22. Yes, that would have been the first musical I have shot, but I also know they don’t have the financials to hire top tier musical experience. Anyone else have any advice for future job applications? I would love to shoot a musical or 5.
  20. This gives me hope for my Kodak Cine Special! I have to admit, I got sucked into the story.
  21. In Atlanta, older lenses are renting higher than Cooke S4's. Baltars are just about the most expensive rental package. Less than 5 years ago it was the opposite.
  22. I constantly use either a Quasar 6", or an Aputure MC depending on the matte box.
  23. I thought I would update this. I actually found the answer in an offhand comment from one of the production designers for Voyager; it’s neon. the long winded explanation went on to say the Next Generation warp core, and corridors are lit with neon and they wanted a much simpler effect for voyager, which ended up being foil spun on motors for the warp core effect…. in case anyone else was curious.
  24. David, this was my thought as well, but wanted someone else to give an opinion. I’ll have to do an experiment with fluorescent drivers to find one that can mimic that on/off action in a timely manner. Kino ballasts seem to have a delay in firing the lamp? Maybe old ballasts... plenty of them on the shelves these days!
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