Michael LaVoie

Though I haven't worked with those halogen work lights, I am very familiar with open faced tungsten sources. While you can spot and flood some open face units, the ones you're working with usually don't offer that option, which is one reason why they're $25. The cheapest and easiest way to narrow the beam spread is to use blackwrap on the unit, only be careful to allow a little breathing room so they don't overheat and blow the bulb. If you put gels or diffusion too close to any light, it will burn up and melt. Diffusion should be put on frames away from the face of the light. If you put it right on the barn doors it isn't really softening as much as it is just cutting the amount of light. The further away you can get it from the source, the softer the light will become. One effective way to turn those worklights into something useful is to bounce them into bead board and let the bounced light pass through diffusion, this practice is commonly called a "booklight". It's useful for creating soft light in close courters where the units are fairly close to the subjects. The other way, if you can get the lights far away enough is to aim them directly at the subjects and sets but make sure you have 6x6 or 4x4 frames of heavy diffusion. 216 or greater at least a few feet away from the light.

I've been reading a book on Hitchcock. It's called Vertigo - The making of a Hitchcock classic by Dan Auiller. Martin Scorsese wrote the foreword. I have to say, I always hated watching Hitchcock but I never really knew why exactly. Untill I read this book. It turns out, I'm not alone. Hitchcock's work wasn't universally loved and adored by all, the way the critics and film historians make it seem. His films are dense, complicated and sometimes just border on plain incoherent unless you really pay close attention. That's the main complaint I have. I can't get into the stories because I can't ignore the artifice of his mise en scenes and the heavy handed musical scores. I'd almost rather watch a Douglas Sirk film. At least I wouldn't be expected to take it so seriously. Having said that, I still think he was a genius for his time.. Even if I find his work cold and inaccessible. It's a matter of taste. I happen to love Atom Egoyans films and a lot of people I know feel about him, the way I feel about Hitchcock.

I was about to post the same question a few weeks ago. I just bought a smoke machine and used it for the same purpose. It was a ten day shoot in a variety of locations. Some small and some rather large. Each location seemed to treat the fog differently. In some locations the smoke hung around a while and in other larger ones such as inside a movie theater, I had to constantly keep adding it. After 10 days of experimenting with this thing, what seemed to work best was to hit the switch and hold a 2x3 solid about a foot from the opening and just let the fog build up behind this flag for about 10 seconds and then slowly and gently pull the flag away from the front of the machine, gently wafting the smoke in the direction intended. That created a much more dense and even type of haze effect. We'd do that and wait a minute for it to dissapate a little and then shoot. Simply filling the room with the smoke directly from the machine and then trying to fan it never worked for me.

Kino's flourescent bulbs are full spectrum and come in 3200K and 5200K. Regular flourescent bulbs come in 65KFull spectrum, cool white or warm white but usually have a more noticeable green spike to them that is easily corrected with minus green gel. If you're thinking of using Flourescent lights to light a scene as opposed to renting Kino's, you can. I've gotten great results with homemade foamcore softboxes that I've built for compact flourescent Atype bulbs. Not the tubes but the spiral bulbs. You can buy a 42 w flo bulb that puts out 150 watts (2800lumens). You can get these in daylight or tungsten. Pack six of them together in a box put some reflective material behind em and you'll get a F2 from 8 feet away. They're considerably cheaper than Kino's and the level of control is about the same. You'll have to make your own eggcrates for em depending on the size of the box you build. It takes a little time and determination but in the end you'll save a lot of money and you won't have to worry about someone stealing or damaging a precious and expensive kino light. If it breaks you can fix it yourself as opposed to tinkering with a KinoFlo ballast.

For mid level DV/DVC-Pro/Beta gigs (i.e. non broadcast, non-union, etc.) at your basic production company, a concert that's only around 2 hours long should be billed out at around $1000 per camera if you can get it. That covers the cost of renting the camera and hiring someone to shoot. Forget the fact that you may own the camera and you may hire someone to shoot for you. You don't have to resign yourself to $20 an hour. You can still realistically bill out $1000 per camera if the client can afford it because if they call around to established production companies, they'll get similar quotes. They'll also get freelancers fronting as companies who will charge freelance rates and then you might get screwed. Determine if they're on a fishing expedition for quotes or if they're just interested in you. If you're shooting and editing HD you can charge even more. Editing can be billed out at $85 to $150 an hour. Though again, it all depends on what the client can afford.

Hold onto your receipts. Article on the defect

Home depot has these carts in the gardening section with pneumatic tires that are pretty cheap and useful as a dolly and equipment cart. Around 60 bucks they beat any handtruck.

Once I explain how it's lit, it will seem like a trainwreck when you watch it again. Hold that thought that it "looked pretty good". The yellowish light is just a straw gel. The greenish tint is in the glass of the windshield and window. Most 2002 or later model cars have greenish glass. It's a pain sometimes in the day but in this case, I didn't mind it. The backwindows have a plastic sheet to diffuse the headlights behind them. In the wide shot a pair of headlights, (2 clip lights on a 2X4) periodically show up and move around very slowly and slightly. As do some red gelled clip lights which are meant to be brake lights. With the window acting as a hotter reference I could underexpose the talent without the image seeming too dark and then the passing lights could give you the periodical (I wish I could see more) effect. The light on the talent that doesn't move is from 2 clip lights placed outside the car with 60watt bulbs and 215gel that are blackwrapped and spotted on the faces alone. They are both 2 stops underkey which is why it doesn't appear "lit" The blueish light is from two open faced 650s outside the car that are heavily blackwrapped, punching through moonlight blue and bouncing into showcard and then onto the talent. Also under key. The only direct light that isn't diffused is the light coming from the sweeping clip lights with straw on them. This produces the moving shadows to help sell the motion effect. Very simple, very low budget. If I were to do this again I think I might throw a little more light on her face. I might also take down the back window a third of a stop or so.

Here's a link to some shots I did from a scene in a short film. It was too cold to shoot outside with the car moving so we parked in a garage. The scene was shot entirely from the front which is the easiest way to go. My model for this was Tom Richmond's work in the car night scenes from Waking the Dead. His looked much better of course but I tried to get something similar with the limited resources I had. Perhaps it doesn't work at all but hey, go easy on me, it was my first time and all. The brightness and contrast was raised slightly for web viewing. You'll need Windows Media Player to view it. http://www.ccpfilms.com/cardemo.wmv