Joe Lotuaco

Get well soon John! As a film student I look to these boards for the advice from professional minds and when I see a thread that says "Last Posted by John Pytlak" I tend to go right for those threads because I know that chances are, I"ll learn something valuable. I know it will be tough as my father survived cancer (that was caught late too), but today he's stronger than ever. And when you're back to full strength, I'll be picking your brain now that I'm starting to shoot everything on film :D

From what I've been told, the red "effects" on the side of the screen are spots where there was light bleed on the film stock. I'm not 100% sure, but it could have been caused when they were loading or from the mag. Knowing that they shot on 16mm, I'm sure there were moments when they were in an extraordinary rush to load leaving more room for a small error that would cause the light bleed. But maybe there was one moment when the light bleed happened by accident, they saw it, liked it so they added it later digitally. Like the great Thelonious Monk...if you hit the wrong note, hit it again, and people will think it was intentional.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. The moving from room to room idea is definately much clearer in my mind now. I had originally pictured the actress walking towards camera (I guess the shot from ESOTSM was just stuck in my head), but now I can see shooting her from a more profile angle and tracking with her then cutting once she walks "through" the doorway. As for the dissolves, I will be using a K3 with a cable release, though I'm not 100% positive if the cable release only works in single frame mode only (have to pick up a cable release from B&H sometime this week). If it works in 24fps mode, then I'll be good to go. Regarding the shots in motion...I would certainly be going for tracking shots, unfortunately I don't have a motion control head ;) nor will I have the resources to afford a proper riding dolly or even a dolly grip lol. This is just for my final project for school and I'm just getting a little ambitious for what was actually called for in the assignment. I do however have a tracking dolly that worked really well on my last shoot, but it's definately not strong enough to ride on. I can add a couple sand bags on it, but that's about it. Thanks again for the tips. BTW, for this class, the assigned textbook was co-written by some guy named M. David Mullen, ASC, how about that?

bump...Anyone?

Also, most tracking dollies are over $1,000. The Micro dolly that was mentioned earlier is $2,795 for the basic 13ft kit. The ProMax I used was only $400 shipped.

I did some searching through these forums, but couldn't find the info I was particularly looking for. Basically, I'm a film student and I have a concept for my final project, but right now I'm trying to look into just how possible it is. It will be a short 3-4 minute piece shot on 16mm b&w reversal film on a Bolex 16mm and/or my K3 and there's a couple particular effects I'm after that I think I know how to do, but would like to get some experienced advice on. The film will be transferred to tape to be edited in an NLE. The story is about a woman who is in love, but the man she's in love with has either passed away or is someone she can never be with (this ambiguity is deliberate), but in either case she can't let go and still believes she is with him. Throughout the piece we will see objects and possibly a figure of a man "disappearing" from the frame. For example, a shot of a flower on a table where just the flower fades away leaving everything else where it is. For something like that I know I could lock the camera on sticks, shoot the table with the flower, then without the flower, and then just cut the two shots with a dissolve in post. I'm wondering if it's possible to do the same sort of effect, but moving? For example if the two people are dancing and while they're dancing, the man fades away while the woman continues dancing. Another effect I'm looking to try is to show my character move from one room to the next, but the two rooms are obviously in locations that wouldn't logically be connected. The best example of this would be in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind where Jim Carey's character moves from inside the bookstore to the living room of his friend's house as if the two locations were attached during the scene where he first finds out Clementine erased him from her memory. I was hoping they would talk about how they did that in the special features, but they only talked about the forced perspectives. I can see that scene being done in two ways, one would be to build a set where there were two physically different sets built connected to each other. The other would be to shoot at the two locations and cut the two together in post. I would like to try the second option, but how to make it look seamless so that it doesn't look like there's a cut when the character moves from one room to the next and make it look like one smooth take? I've been looking at a lot of George Melies work and what he did seems to be the fundamentals of the in camera stuff I am trying to do, but I can't find any information on exactly how he achieved his effects. Any advice would be appreciated as always.

I pretty much only do my own student stuff, so nothing particularly professional, but I did use the ProMax tracking dolly on my last shoot. http://www.promax.com/Products/Detail/6254 It's basically just PVC pipe and a skateboard type dolly. It worked really well and most importantly was extremely fast and easy to setup and move. With a bag of dirt or two, it was rock solid. Most of our runs were under 10ft as we only used the track in it's 10ft configuration.

This is a question for anyone that has experience in using archival/stock news footage for use in a documentary. Is it normal to pay for the licencing of footage before the project is picked up for distribution? I understand that footage is licensed by the second, but I'm a little confused as to why it is necassary to pay for licensing when the project might not even get picked up for any kind of distribution. I assume it's so the news agencies covers themselves, but what if the amount of footage that actually gets used changes once a project is picked up? Thanks in advance! Joe L.

I'm probably not one of the most experienced people here and a film student myself, but I definately think being a PA is very helpful. It's probably very tough to get on bigger budget union productions, but I would look to low budget independent features. An advantage to working on a low budget indy is that you stand a good chance of getting involved with all the departments and not just firewatching a truck or blocking people from walking down the sidewalk. As a film student, you're in the learning phase of things, and you don't really learn much standing around. Last year I worked on an indy feature as a PA/Intern, and I was able to help out with every department, from camera to art to g/e. It was my very first serious film related job so going into it, I really had no idea what to expect. But I came out it with such a huge appreciation for filmmaking, what's required, and the challenges that you have to face. And because of my experiences as a lowly PA on just that one job, I learned the importance of taking care of your crew, especially on smaller lower budget films (ie your student films). I'm now in preproduction for only my second short film, but I'm working with some pretty decent caliber actors and crew who have worked on much larger projects, but are dying to work with me again because they saw how much "professionalism" I had on my first short film especially for some one with very little experience in filmmaking. I can't really say how "professional" I am, but my PA experiences were key to learning the production process and how to handle almost any situation. My suggestion, try to get on as many indy features as you can. I'm not sure how it really is in LA or Canada, but here in NY where there are tons of indy features shooting all the time, it's pretty easy to get PA jobs. But most importanlty to keep an open mind about the whole experience. You might get stuck with doing some really crappy tasks, but always think about how you would do things differently if it was your production.

I was actually talking to a friend of mine about possibly using short ends or recans to save some money on a shoot. What is the typical price difference between short ends, recans, and factory packaged film per foot (for both 35mm and S16mm)? John, does Kodak in NYC sell short ends or recans or are those typically only available from resellers? Thanks in advance... Joe

I third (or is it fourth) the recommendation to go S8. I'm a film student in college right now and I can tell you that starting out with film gives you a much better foundation for what it means to work with light. Plus, you get to learn first hand the general work flow involved with working with film. Something that becomes very important when you're out on your own productions and you have to make fast decisions that can cost thousands of dollars. I wouldn't worry about buying any video camera any time soon. Any reputable school with a decent film program will have all the equipment you'll need for your projects and they'll rent it out to the students for FREE. Can't beat that. Plus with the current technologies changing so fast, it'd be hard to get a camera that won't be outdated in the near future. Just look at the video section of this forum and see how many threads there are of people trying to decide whether or not to buy ABC camera with X technology when ZYX camera is coming out with Q technology in a few months. Actually I recommend going through those threads, they are an excellent way to learn about all the nitty gritty details of all these new technologies and real world applications from guys that need to make a living off of them.

Filmmaker Magazine also did an interview with Chris Doyle, I'm not sure if that's where you got your quotes from, but an interesting read nonetheless. Here's a link.. http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/fall2005/...es/wild_man.php

very very interesting... On an independent low budg feature I recently worked on the 1st AD would sometimes call out "Marsha's up!", but no one would really take it seriously because the day could be on it's last three shots, but that didn't mean that anyone would be going home anytime soon. It was always called out before an Abbey. What was intended purpose of calling out and naming the final shots?

Just out of curiosity, how did the named shots come about? I know they refer to the the third to last, second to last, and last shots, but how did shots get the names Abbey, Marsha, and Martini? Do the only refer to the last setups of the day or the last takes of the last setup? Of the few sets I've been on, these were called out differently, one short production only named the shots on the very last day of shooting, but on a feature, they would call them out at the end of everyday. I was always busy doing the usual PA stuff so I could never keep track of whether they were called on the last takes or the last setups. I do remember hearing "Martini is up" was the biggest relief at the end of the day. Also, in the interest of conversation, if anyone knows any interesting stories about how terms came about, it might be interesting to learn about them. Like why are shots without sound referred to as "M.O.S."? I heard it started from a sound guy years ago that couldn't pronounce "without" because of his accent and would say "mitout sound". Is that true?

Thanks guys. It amazes me how much thought has to go into making up a shooting schedule. Makes me appreciate the work of the ADs much more.

This is probably a silly question to be asking, but on a call sheet, what does the notation "D/N" mean? In the D/N column are the notations N3 or N4 or D2. What does this refer too?

Also, in this month's AC, Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC goes into great detail about how he lit the scene where the soldiers watch a screening of Apocalypse Now in Jarhead.

Both actually. In the July 23, 1991 entry he writes about how he called up a camera rental house in Texas that he consulted to find out how to use the Arri 16s. First the guy asks him (RR) if he has a torque motor, which he goes on to explain was the motor that drives the magazine and cost $800. Relieved that he had one, he asks the guy what were the two other "motor looking things" he had. One was a 8-64 variable speed motor and the other was a constant speed, non crystal-synch 24 sync motor. Was that the section you were referring to?

Good memory... In the Mon July 8 1991 Pre-pro entry, he describes drooling over the Arri: "It's a 16mm, it's got a 5.7 Kinoptic wide-angle lens that is so wide it doesn't need focusing. Point and Shoot. That would really come in handy in action scenes and general running around handheld, because the wider lens the smoother the shots. It also has a good zoom lens on it (a 12-120 Angeniuex zoom lens)."

I agree. I percieve shooting "available light" as a sort of style of shooting that lends to the overall motivation of the film rather than a universal "cover all bases" type of tool. I don't know if I'm making my point clear, so for example, Sidewalks of New York was a psuedo documentary style film so shooting available light, though used for economic purposes, served to set the visual tone of the film as it was shot and cut as a documentary. If it were lit as a stylized piece, the psuedo documentary style wouldn't have been emphasized and the film wouldn't have told its story effectively as it were written. I can't think of any really good stylized films off the top of my head at the moment, but in the movie Boiler Room, they lit scenes of the trading floor in a very cold, blue tone which made the scenes and dialogue feel very cold and harsh which played well to the way stock brokers interact with one another and their clients. Sure they could have shot the scenes with available light since it was an open office space with plenty of windows during the day, but had the lighting had any more warmth, the mood and sense of personal indifference of the stock brokers wouldn't have been as effective.

Correct me if I read this line incorrectly, but I thought film has greater latitude since film can handle more in the highlight area of the curve.

You're right... From this month's issue of American Cinematographer, Elswit says "To get a black-and-white print, I had a new film-out done from the original scanned and timed material we'd already printed on color stock. Technicolor Digital Intermediates had to make a new color Estar neg because the contrast and density parameters are different for black-and-white printing. The resultant print very closely resembled the look of 5231 that we'd all liked from the beginning." It also mentions that Elswit considered printing on Kodak's 2302 black-and-white print stock, but decided against it because Kodak doesn't keep a lot of it in stock and would take 8 weeks to manufacturer and also because it was a more delicate stock that might not stand up to the heat of film projectors.

Thanks for the info, I will email them with more specific questions I have about their services. Are they the lab you use? If so, how is their service (customer service, processing/print/transfer quality, etc). Thanks.

Hello, I'm a new film student and I've been rummaging through these awesome forums for weeks now and as I try to wrap my mind around all the information, a few questions popped into my head. I recently picked up a Canon 514xls off of ebay for peanuts and I'm anxious to do some experimenting with it. I live in New York City and I was wondering if anyone knows of any good distributors or labs in nyc that cater to S8mm. I could probably just pick up a yellow pages and go to any number of the labs listed, but if I could get some personal recommendations and experiences with a particular, it would be greatly appreciated. Also I've read some recommendations for Spectra and with them being in California and me in NYC, would it be advisable to get my film stock from them and then send it back to them for processing and telecine? Again, whatever advice you guys can give would be awesome. Joe Lotuaco

As a fellow film student and one who is just starting out I can only offer my few experiences. I'm not yet into the my film courses yet so I think I'm in a similar position as you as I will have to make a similar decision soon, but recently I got to work on feature film that shot on super 16 and I was fortunate enough the DP and director were cool enough to allow me to work closely with them. The amount of work that went into lighting and the entirely different level of creativity that was involved (ie thinking of new ways to shoot a particular scene to achieve a specific look for the film stock they were using) was incredible. Film added the pressure that EVERYTHING had to be just right or else they'll waste precious (read 'expensive') film stock. After working on this job, video has lost a lot of it's appeal for me because I see how much more creative film allows you to be and even forces you to be sometimes. Video just seems like it does too much work for you (compared to film) which I guess can be a crutch at times. I'm also an amateur photographer and much of the principles of still photography regarding focal lengths, depth of field, and exposure relate more to shooting film than video, so that maybe another reason why i'm more biased towards film. Joe