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Chris Steel

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  1. Chris Steel
    In the report I read they mentioned it would be a rotating group shown during commercial breaks, so next year it will be a different 4 categories. I hope as a sign of solidarity and fairness; producers, directors, leading actors, and composers all take their awards during commercial breaks next year... Yeah, thought not
  2. Chris Steel
    This video by Linus shows how they make it so small and also why the fans are so loud. Everything is super tight in there. Barely any air flow compared to even an alexa mini https://youtu.be/qFrK-l3VSzY?t=395 The new Red Ranger (for rental houses) looks very interesting. As it has an integrated rear module, the cooling area is increased and the fans can be made larger. All this adds up to 10db quieter running (according to the team at BSC this year). It's still smaller than the venice and has all the ports for integrated power supply.
  3. Chris Steel
    Might be worth having a play with different Power, Strength, Acceleration, and Deadband settings to get something responsive without side to side wiggle. I've used some kits that will bounce around an end mark if you pan too quickly until Hold Strength and Power are balanced out.
  4. Chris Steel
    Certainly sounds interesting. Beats making up 2m cables for everything and strapping them together. Is the umbilical relatively light and flexible? What outputs can be put on the end?
  5. Chris Steel
    Been an issue for a while with this combination. There are a few cable work arounds if you have a TC device that can loop through an RS signal but I think you'll lose the CTRL link. If you need remote RS for every shot, jam sync often and hope it sticks through an entire take. I'd recommend leaving a TC device on camera and switching the cables back and fourth depending on the needs of the shot or whenever the camera turns on. If someone has a better solution I'd love to hear it, this feels pretty janky to me still...
  6. Chris Steel
    This should work with all LANC style RS which includes most prosumer cameras like the FS7, FS5, A7 (series), Canon C (series), Blackmagic (series)
  7. Chris Steel
    Hawk woods make a Vlock plate for the TV logic which should sit on top of a teradek spacer (like the Media Blackout one) It's intended for use with the new HawkWoods Vlock Mini batteries as they're quite light. I power my 058 with VLM-50 batteries most of the time and mount to a manfrotto camera/umbrella clamp with the teradek on a spigot at the back. Not an ideal setup as it's a little heavy when mounted to the hand unit and not a stand. I've seen several people mount directly to a sun shade but I imagine that's more down to individual ACs and not rental houses
  8. Chris Steel
    You can get colour golf tees by the 50 pack for a few £ / $ - Check the sort of turf will be ok with being skewered. I'm sure sausage marks would be fine for dolly and crane marks. Metal T's are great, lots of gravity to them. Rubber marks are a good DIY option. Spray chalk is a thing. canned air held upside-down to freeze it then brush it loose for when you're done. I'm sure most 2nd ACs will have that sort of thing in their kit already or given notice could sort out such things for you.
  9. Chris Steel
    If it's particularly wet: Bag the camera, optical flat, allweather tape inside the mattebox to fill any gaps / wipe clean easily. PPE should also be worn if there's air canons in play. Sure don't want to loose an eye, not in this trade.
  10. Chris Steel
    I should preface, I'm a 1st AC and not a DP so this is all from what I've seen on set and I'm leaving things out which I would consider the working DP's IP or personal technique. 4'x4' Poly or bounce board hidden out of shot so when the torches land there you get more fill on that side. Far side seemed to work well. Maybe use unbleached muslin or other material to give a more natural feeling bounce. In close ups where one or more character is completely out of shot, have a spark operate the torch or instruct the actor to have the torch somewhere that gives more fill. Have actors point torches at each other when talking, to the chest worked well if standing close together as it wasn't too harsh. Finding some way of adding "realistic" practicals or external light could help you out. Inexplicable shafts of moonlight for example.
  11. Chris Steel
    I've had a preset with a slight crop on the framelines and a 75% matte to "hide" the vignette. Wont zoom in as such but it works well enough. I used the Arri framelines tool as it has more options than in camera
  12. Chris Steel
    The Ronin M is really quite small. Even the FS5 can be a pain to rig if you have a bigger lens, wireless focus, scratch audio on there. As shown in the video above, Cine Milled plate is a must. I'd also recommend the Pan weight system as well if you're using cine style lenses (even the Samyangs) with wireless focus as you'll only just get pan balance without. I've seen FS5 owners use an Atomos recorder to get better quality out. That adds a bit to the price but would give you a much better monitor to operate the gimbal with on top of better image quality.
  13. Chris Steel
    My cheap backup torch which doesn't dim and has an unscrewable front (to easily put in CTO) has been used to replace the art depts torches more times than I care to count. Simple, cheap torches that don't have a complicated PCB with PWM dimming are the way to go. On a horror feature the DP had a LOT of torches but very few spares as there were so many characters. Switching out gels wasn't really doable on the time scale so bounce boards and spark operated torches were used often to fill in where necessary. We rather liked having different colour temps for the different groups/characters as sometimes that was the only way you could see which character was where. Something to think about before getting the colour meter out and perfectly matching 20 brands of torches together :P
  14. Chris Steel
    Generally speaking most LED lights wont flicker at full brightness as they will be running off of a constant DV voltage but will flicker when using their built in dimming feature(PWM). LEDs that don't dim shouldn't give you issues. If you get a bunch of good quality lights for cheap and they dim, by all means use them but make sure on every take that they are on full brightness. A good way to check is to point all the torches at the camera one by one before rolling. If one's flickering the operator should see immediately.
  15. Chris Steel
    Make sure you have the latest firmware and turn off noise reduction. With it on you get horrible ghosting from the temporal noise reduction algorithm. Avoid shooting silhouettes too harshly as you'll get green/magenta bands in the shadows which move depending on the scene (so not a black shading issue).
  16. Chris Steel
    More expensive per lamp but this is one of the cheapest HMI options for buying new. I don't know about American dealers though. https://cvp.com/product/photon-beard_a242_platinum_blonde_with_ballast
  17. Chris Steel
    I live in a baseball cap for this reason. I'm not a fan of sunglasses but I see it every now and then. I'd recommend non polarised and single shade so you don't have to keep taking them on and off ALL the time.
  18. Chris Steel
    The brightest parts of fire are usually the same intensity as north facing blue sky (84000 LUX or 15EV) It will depend on what material is burned. Magnesium will have a much brighter burn but it will be pure white so being over exposed is probably fine. If you set the camera so that 15EV is 6 stops over middle grey and light the scene from there. Make it look as bright or dark as you like. For reference 15EV is about T72 at 24fps 800ISO or 7 1/2 stops over T5.6
  19. Chris Steel
    I know the 416 plus and 435 Xtreme have LCS integration so most arri hand units should talk as long as they're the same "color" radio (white or yellow) The Arricam ST and LT have lens data boxes that have LCS but I can't say how common they are as the ones I've used have all been pretty bare bones. Don't know if they were upgradable to white radio
  20. Chris Steel
    I use Pocket AC on my phone but I learned the equation in "The camera assistant" by Douglas C. Hart so that sometimes comes in useful when working with PWM Led fixtures that have odd output frequencies. I don't think I've met anyone by that name. Lots of shooters here so can't have worked with all of them :P
  21. Chris Steel
    Shutter angles of 75º (1/120s) - 150º (1/60s) - 225º (1/40s) are your choices. 150º is probably your safest option as said above but if you need less motion blur or more light, these are the only speeds that'll be flicker free.
  22. Chris Steel
    The one that gets me is "2.8 Minus half" - doesn't compute in my head as they wanted T2 and a half. Only heard it once so can't call it popular. I had to ask what they wanted a few times on that one as I just didn't understand it. I occasionally hear Plus and Minus a bump but mostly it's "and a quarter/third/half" If I hear a term I haven't heard before, I'll ask what they mean. There are so many localisations and variations you can't possibly know it all right from the get go
  23. Chris Steel
    Here's some stuff that I write down after working with a system for a while so if I don't use it for a while I remember where things are and what's worked in the past: Fan noise shouldn't be too much of an issue now but the sensor temperature is annoyingly fragile. I find setting a consistent fan speed that keeps temperature stable ends up being quieter overall than Auto/Quiet record
  24. Chris Steel
    Looks like the RED scarlet but could be an epic. Doesn't seem to be the later raven, weapon or dragon. Probably the MX sensor. One of the monitors is the 5" touch screen which is mostly used as a menu controller as it's often easier than using the side handle or redmote. That B-Cam rig looks like a Ronin in overslung mode to get the camera to head hight more comfortably. Weirdly it looks like the wireless focus on that rig is the cinegears one which I can't believe moved for more than 10 seconds.
  25. Chris Steel
    Strangely, I mostly hear it from female DPs and ACs but I agree it is a bit in poor taste. I'd say it's only one step away from the project specific nicknames for things like calling the 100mm "Mandela" because he'd be 100 years old this year. I wouldn't expect people to know that sort of thing, just a bit of silliness really. One thing I am hearing more is "Micheal the head" or "Give it some Bublé" meaning to level off the tripod head. Which is half ryhme slang of Micheal Bublé. Not hearing 86 much. I heard that was a common phrase but I heard it more in kitchens than on sets. Another "take that thing down/away" shorthand.
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