Michael LaVoie

Probably not the whole scene. It's customary to light a wide shot and allow for your subjects to remain a bit underlit knowing that it's an establishing shot only. When you go in for coverage, you add in some level from film lights and shape it more precisely. In closeups of that scene, there was probably more at play than just the practicals. Especially given how yellow that lampshade is. Would have made for nasty closeups. Now when you get to films like Eyes Wide shut where the camera is moving a lot, you notice how underlit the actors actually get since the practicals are indeed doing most of the work. Kubrick was rumored to have been more of a shopper than a dreamer when it comes to lighting and he would ask the gaffer "How many ways can we light this set?" Gaffer - "Maybe 6?" Kubrick- "Okay, show me all 6". Again, this is a rumored conversation I heard from a doc somewhere. So if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.

I think if you're noticing underexposure, then something went wrong either in the shooting or post phase. Compare The Beguiled to another period, candlelit movie with Nicole Kidman, The Others for example, The Others has many candlelit nighttime scenes and I don't recall any reviews or critics being pre-occupied by how underexposed it is. Probably because it wasn't. But it looks dark and very brooding. Only you don't even notice it. The movie looks great and the nighttime look doesn't distract you at all. That's an approach I'd sooner subscribe to when it comes to achieving a "low lit" look.

I like Pale Gold to warm up an HMI for early morning daylight rather than CTO. Burnt Amber is a good gel for a direct sunset look on the background.

Girl Skateboards is keeping the memory alive. I got this board recently. My favorite stock I used to shoot back in film school. So I had to get two. One for collecting and one to actually skate.

With any production you want to keep the scope of it within your means financially and logistically. Here are some producing tips. Radios for exterior shoots. Have walkies for all outside shoots especially if you're working in a loud urban environment. Call sheets are a must. Learn how to prep those. 20 locations is a lot of shooting to manage. Typically you don't want to do more than one "company move" in a day. Unless they are all within walking distance or something. Company moves are the worst. They take up your whole day and really disrupt the flow of the shoot creatively as well as financially, practically etc. If you're talking about 20 different street addresses that are each more than 10 minute drives apart, you are probably looking at a weeklong shoot at the very least. Are you doing scenes at each location or are some of the locations just cutaways? If you have full on scenes at 20 locations, you're doing a pretty big short film. $2000 would barely cover crew and gear costs for a single day even on a student film. Sound and your DP alone will take at least half that unless they are friends. Then there's hmu and the A.C. / grip. Transpo locations, insurance and catering would eat up the rest. If all that and the gear is being given to you free of charge, you're definitely in luck. In which case my final piece of advice is to feed everyone really well. They are doing you a huge favor. No fastfood or pizza on set. haha. When everyone is contributing their time and gear free of charge, you show your appreciation through kick ass catering. Offer a 2nd meal if the shoot gets to hour 12. When that happens, sometimes pizza is all that's available and it's usually okay. Just not as the main meal. Have a p.a. do frequent coffee runs and have bottled water on set. Good luck.

I doubt they'd willingly return to the old 60i 4:3 look. The early season look feels authentic because it seems like BTS or news footage. There's more depth of field and it's got a traditional video aesthetic so it doesn't feel "scripted" It wouldn't make sense now. It has to evolve to the standards of most current shows like Louie or Portlandia. I think the new look is great and we just have to get used to it. At least they didn't over do it and frame it in a 2:35 aspect ratio like Master of None.

That's probably on target for most situations. I wouldn't put things past that point in camera but then in post you can lift it if necessary. Same with titles. When doing titles or even backgrounds that are meant to appear as pure white. I would let the opacity go to 80% or so. Just shy of pure white and it looks way better. Pure white is kinda harsh in general. Unless you want to blind the audience for an effect of some kind.

If I was a gaffer and a DP that didn't know how to light was leaning on me to do their job so they could be a camera operator with a DP title. I'd be super pissed. A DP should know how to light the set. They may not know exactly how to calculate the electrical distribution to every unit of the stage but they should understand quantity and quality of light levels, contrast and color temp theory and be able to articulate how they want something to look with a rough idea of whether it can be done on time and within the budget given the crew size and schedule.

The tug of war between not wanting to flaten a commercial image completely but still make it seem high key enough that it's bright and cheerful is a challenge. It's especially tough in a modern apartment with white walls and furnishings because the LUT applications later become more noticeable. I thought that looked great. Nice job.

Sony's M.O. is to unveil a camera and then 4 months later, offer up a cheaper version that's got 90% of the capabilities of it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a little brother version of this with a 6k sensor in something like an F5 or FS7 body on the way.

When you rent equipment, depending on where from and how busy they are, it can be an all day soul killing nightmare going through checkout. So if you have an A.C. doing it all for you and production is paying them, then it's a non-issue. If you do it yourself, yeesh, be prepared to spend all day there and plan to get a parking ticket. If production doesn't spring for the A.C. to do the checkout, and they just send a P.A. you're likely to wind up with a rental order that is half filled or just plain wrong. That alone is enough to think about investing in your own camera kit. Especially if you produce a lot and shoot a lot for yourself.

Have you tried Gracenote? If they turn out to also be a reliable source to get data for accurate VOD revenue figures for any comparable titles from Amazon, Hulu, netflix Vimeo or any other streaming platform let us know. I've been curious to know if Studio System has that but haven't signed up yet.

That's surprising given the fact that many of your films were family oriented with child actors on set a lot of the time. I would expect that to keep people on their best behavior. After these mishaps are you more inclined to want to weigh in when crew are hired or do you rely on the UPM and their recommendations? What steps would you recommend a producer take to avoid hiring crew that may be distracting or even dangerous on set?

So then are you using mostly Kino Celebs and Skypanels? What about L10's? Have you tried using those outside in mixed weather? How do they hold up?

Laura Beth Love was around this forum for a while. http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showuser=62362 She's definitely busy. I wish she'd post more. Would love to hear what the Sharknado 4 set was like.

The path to success in entertainment for anyone behind the camera is not that different than it is in front of camera. Talent and determination are required but opportunity is not at all guaranteed. Much of it is timing as well as the success of the films you do end up working on. Both of which are out of your hands completely. As an actor, sound recordist, HMU, whatever. Doesn't matter the job. In entertainment, it's your network that will get you the next job or the cataclysmic success of the film you just worked on (four - 6 months or a year ago). So given that, the only guaranteed method to keep working in the industry is to produce. Cause it's the only avenue where you actually create opportunity for yourself rather than wait for it. Tell her to study producing and development. It may seem like starting a publishing house so that you can write but hey...worked for Henry Rollins, literally.

That looks hilarious and awesome. I think it may actually be easier to get the greenlight on something like that then a film like Manchester By the Sea.

There is a high demand for crew for sure. If you have no experience as a grip/electric or camera tech, and no friends in such departments, you're only real shot is through production as a P.A. P.A.'s are the folks you see bouncing people off sidewalks and blocking traffic with officers around the set. Keeping cars and people out of the frame. They are the entry level P.A.'s They usually have walkies on their belts and surveillance earbuds. It's not glamorous but if you're solid and have a good attitude you can move up quick. Just try to make friends with people in camera and G&E so that if they ever become short staffed or need a dedicated P.A. or if they allow for camera interns they'll turn to you. Then you work your way on up through the ranks. May take a while but that's one way. How do you do this? Next time you see a production near you ask someone with a walkie to direct you to the key P.A. Then ask if they need additionals. They'll probably say no but it's worth a shot.

The Hero is a good recent example of a small indie arthouse with a great cast that actually got into multiplexes. It happens. Just extremely rare these days. Bretts first film though "I'll See You in My Dreams" was definitely in that ultra low budget category. But it did pretty well, clearing close to 8 million. Which helped his credibility but still didn't really guarantee funding for The Hero. He had to hustle and they shot it in 18 days.

Even if you find the LED's you're looking for, I'd recommend some standard soft white incandescent bulbs in various wattages on hand just to throw in there if you get frustrated with how stuff is reading. I usually have a crate of those on set for practicals. They tend to have more flattering light. I've never been a fan of cool temp bulbs in practical lamps. They still look odd to me. I like the color contrast of incandescent with daylight or moonlight. But that's mostly residential. In a commercial location, it would depend on the overall set design whether cooler temped practicals might work.

The first time I rented the F55 I went through Alistairs blog thoroughly to find out all I could about the camera. Fortunately for me someone in the Sony ICE program was at Duall checking out a few lenses at the time I rented it and he was kind enough to answer a lot of questions I still had about it. So I was able to go into my shoot very prepared. I definitely recommend that for anyone considering the camera. If you have a film background, it'll be an easy transition. If not, there's a bit of a cognitive hurtle with the whole Cine-EI mode.

Trying to calibrate the dreamcolor display with an XRite i1Display Pro I've exceeded the internal calibration so I had to figure this out. The guys at HP's Workstation team are not really much help with this as I have basic menu questions that nobody can figure out. If anyone out there owns one and has some experience calibrating it by all means, chime in. Also of interest is the way windows handles color management. That seems to be an odd hiccup to this whole operation and I want to see if I need to do anything to avoid Windows or my graphics card software interfering in the process. Menu-Image Adjustment - The selection for use video levels 16-235 is greyed out. So I can't select it. I'd like to know why. Also curious if anyone out there uses this for grading and I'd be curious what color space you most often grade the work in. For web as well as for broadcast. Any help is much appreciated. Even no response is better than what the folks at HP have been able to offer me.

I'd suggest to the director that they may want to draft a shot / setup schedule. The more you know about how much they actually want to do in a given day, the more you can predict and know when you're ahead or behind. That list should be qualified with "essential" shots and "nice to have" shots. So that you don't miss anything important if you fall behind and need to cut stuff.

A xenon bulb that's on it's way out will vignette the edges of the screen and cause an overall drop in brightness. They likely run them all the way down. Stupid really cause it's not an easy and quick process to change those bulbs. You have to wear a suit like in The Hurt Locker. In case you drop it. It's like a grenade.

I'm super psyched for the new Optoma 4K projector that's 3000 lumens and only $2,000. Looks awesome and it's about time. I was a projectionist way back in high school. We were trained properly. I had to take classes and get a license. There was a union and everything. This was the early 90's. Nothing like the situation in your standard theater today. The movie theater experience was over a long time ago. Home projectors are now on par and the 7.1 atmos sound is incredible. You can DIY a theater so cheap today there's no reason to subject yourself to a bad public presentation of it. Although Love Witch at Nighthawke in Brooklyn was a lot of fun with a crowd. Sometimes it's worth it. Most of the time, I'd prefer a bluray and my own theater.