Alain J Francois

Hi, I have just shot a short film where one of the scenes is 'moon lit' I used a 2k blondie at some distance and gelled with with 1/2 blue and 1/4 green - moonlight is essentially minus red. The combination of the blue and green gave me a very believable effect. Sure... I was shooting wide open (T1.3 Zeiss super primes) using Kodak 200T and exposing for the highlights but the result was amazing and the blacks were very rich. Cheers, Alain J Francois

Thank you both for your feedback - very much appreciated. Alain.

Hi, I have just had to quote on a job to go to a 35mm print from DI. Once you have processed your negative, you will need to go to a post production facility and request a 'Technical best light', which should translate to an HD Cam SR copy. (this is a high res 4:4:4 copy). From this you will need a copy on DV cam or other format that will allow you to edit. Once you have locked off your edit, gather your EDLS and go back to the post production house where they will then produce a DI from your HD Cam SR copy. Then it's just a question of doing the 35mm print. Hope that helps and I hope i haven't left anything out. Cheers, Alain.

Is there any advice anyone can give me to achieve good blacks with the RED camera? I realize that lighting will be an integral part of the outcome; but is there some advice anyone can give to minimize or do away with noise? Thanks Alain.

Hello Matt, I assume you mean a 'triple wick' candle rather than a 3 wick candle. 3 wick candles are easily found in a lot of hardware stores. I had the same issue recently shooting a short film (on S16 on Kodak 200T), where the main character had to carry a candle. Can't help you with LA as I'm located in Australia. But... you should be able to locate a local candle maker. If not you can actually make your own. You should be able to purchase a triple wick or buy a cheap outdoor candle (they usually have much thicker wicks) and you could strip the wax off and use the wick in your own. I enclose a still from the film to show you what we achieved. Cheers, Alain.

HI, the system you describe has been used out in the field by ABC camera operators for years. It seems to work perfectly for short dolly distances. If you required longer tracks it becomes a problem where you have to join the tracks. Also, I have seen operators place old mats under the tracks if the ground is uneven. Cheers, Alain.

Hi Just read the comments re DoF tables. I carry a PalmPilot on set with me. I have downloaded a free version of 'DoFmaster' which is a handy software for calculating DoF. You can reset the circle of confusion as well as select any lens you wish. It comes with preset film gauge as well as an 'other'. I have found it very handy. Cheers, Alain.

The answer to this question seems to elude me in a most vexing way. Given a desired aperture (say T/5.6) and an ASA rating (say 125), I know how to calculate the required FootCandles - answer 200 Fc. What I would like to know is how to calculate the amount of lamps, given the known wattage of each lamp required to produce that amount of 200 Fc. (I do realise that it is a mistake to consider wattage as output - it is a measure of lamp consumption), however there must be some calculation or simple relationship that would allow me to estimate the amount of lamps I am going to need for a particular scene. :unsure:

Keith - thank you for taking the time to respond and thank you for your suggestions. We will try these. Yes the alarm bells did sound, but neither of us were experienced enough to realise what the cause of re-rendering each edit was. The techs at Uni were not helpful either (don't know why) all we were aware of was that we had a fairly major problem - we had to dig around ourselves to find out the cause . Thanks to this site we are able to go some way to resolve this problem. Alain.

You may want to check out the Australian Director/cinematographer Geoff Burton. He is one of the most prolific filmmaker and still going strong.

:blink: OK We have just shot a film on S16 all well and good. Telecine onto DigiBeta cam and transfer to miniDV for the offline. After a lot of hard work, and mysterious dropped frames, black holes and media that constantly required re-rendering, we discover that some cluts has pressed the wrong button at the start and all of the PAL footage was edited into NTSC format. Platform used was Final cut pro HD. Obviously the post production facility had a mini fit when they tried to match the EDLS. We tried to convert the footage back to PAL and found that the computer wants to keep the same frame rate as NTSC (ie 29.98 fps), which makes it impossible to write to tape as the machine keeps waiting for a PAL signal. Is there a way of converting the NTSC footage to PAL at 25 fps without major loss of media, time coding, or anything else of importance? Basically we need to try to get the online as soon as possible. Obviously re-editing all of the footage is an option but a costly one at this point. Help please.