Jody Lipes

what does extend the backlight time mean? do i have to green the screen aswell?

spot metering the screen is not an option? and when you say tracke them, you mean put pink tape dots in the four corners of the phone screen? if things do come out blue, couldn't i shoot the whole sceen a little blue and than telecine it out?

you have to have the most recent version of quicktime i think, which is 7 i think.

i am shooting a spec spot for verizon picture phones on film. i am not sure if there is anything special that i have to do (frame rate, shutter angle, etc.) to make sure the image on the phone screen comes out normally. also, not sure if there is a special way to meter the screen. any advice would be greatly appreciated.

www.vacationlandfilm.com/reel.html

"Get a 16mm camera with a PL-mount and use 35mm 2X anamorphic lenses?" -------------------- David Mullen, ASC Los Angeles I have looked in the archives for a more in depth expanation of how one can go about using anamorphic lenses with standard 16mm cameras, but I haven't been able to find it. Can someone point me in the right direction, or inform me themselves?

Does anyone have eperience with the Genesis? Digital Camera System from Panavision?

where is a good place to watch professional dp reels?

a student director i recently shot a short for gave it to me for christmas, unfortunately i don't know where he got it. thanks for the list david mullen, i have never felt so relieved as when i first picked up "A Man With A Camera" and began to see another dp's thought process on paper for the first time. a lot of the mystery of "what the other guys are doing that i have no idea about" got washed away (for the time being anyway). cinematography can be so beautifully simple. a good eye, understanding of story, knowledge of personal taste/genre, respect for your director/collaborators, and a little bit of technical knowledge can go a long way. do other people take extensive notes on all of their projects like it seems Nestor did? i guess this site is at least a starting point for some people.

I just completed A Man With A Camera, which was one of the most fascinating and educational cinematography books i have ever read. I have heard of the book New Cinematographers, but can anyone recommend other important and worthwhile books along the same lines as Nestor Almendros's semi-auto biography?

thanks - anyone know anything more specific? here is the article from the Villiage Voice for anyone who wants to read it: ["Cinematographer Harris Savides on Trust, Birth, and Invisible Light by Dennis Lim November 2nd, 2004 12:05 PM Related: Sean of the Dead About a boy: Upper East Side widow finds love with underaged object of obscure desire By Dennis Lim Birth Control Light motifs: Music video pro Jonathan Glazer conducts a moody symphony of shadows By Jessica Winter "I light a room and let the people inhabit it, as opposed to lighting the people," says Birth cinematographer Harris Savides, explaining his philosophy of illumination. "It's more organic. You want to protect the people you're working with, and there's a constant battle between the best light for their face and the best light for the story. You don't want to get to the point where the audience notices the light." Critics, for their part, have noticed Savides's work?he won last year's New York Film Critics Circle and Voice-poll cinematography awards. The New York?based SVA graduate describes his latest partnership, with Birth director Jonathan Glazer, as a product of trust and guesswork. "It's kind of like the Wong Kar-wai process," says Savides, who shot Wong's BMW short The Follow. "Jon's always trying to surprise himself?he told me afterwards that he'd improvised the whole thing. He showed me some films but was careful to say that we were not to take anything specific from it. I remember we watched [Robert Bresson's donkey spiritual] Au Hasard Balthazar. . . . I guess Balthazar's arc is the same as Nicole [Kidman]'s in Birth." Savides says that even though Glazer wanted the movie to be somber, he had trouble articulating the visual style. "Finally, we saw one location photo?the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, dark marble and warm colors. And Jon just said, 'That's it.' " Birth's otherworldly pall, Savides says, was achieved by lighting from overhead and through muslin, and "we also had to underexpose the film quite a bit." After getting his start in the European fashion world, Savides shot a few visually striking movies (James Gray's The Yards, David Fincher's The Game) and a string of iconic music videos: Fiona Apple's "Criminal," Nine Inch Nails' "Closer," Madonna's "Bedtime Story" (all for Mark Romanek). But he's best-known for his recent Gus Van Sant collaborations: Gerry, which pays tribute to the mystical powers of the long take, and Elephant, in which the signature shot?a spectral Steadicam glide from behind?deftly conflates an eerie horror movie trope and an empathetic documentary one (familiar from verité and the Dardenne brothers). Savides also shot Van Sant's just completed Kurt Cobain movie, Last Days, and credits the director with inspiring his new "story-based" approach. "After working with Gus, I can't go back to just loving the visuals," he says. "On one level, I don't want the work to be photographic. But I'd also have trouble doing a comedy, where there's so much that needs to be delivered verbally. It's about having an opportunity to tell the story without words."]

does anyone know anything about the Savides' work on birth. what stock, processing, theories behind his decisions, or how to find out this information? please let me know if you have any information, no matter how seemingly insignificant. thanks

thanks for taking the time to inform me.

wow, 7 days a week is a pretty heavy load. it is unfortunate that this time commitment doesn't seem to match the output which the program dictates. shooting 1 35mm 25 minute short in an entire year of seven day weeks seems like a low number. I would think that 3 or 4 would be more appropriate for a program like this. is it possible to shoot more of the student projects than you are assigned, or is every director arbitrarily matched with a dp? i would definitely want the director and i to find each other, rather than have the school decide. is there simply no time to do more than 1 film in the second year? what kinds of jobs do students leave for after their first year? and which camera companies sponser the school? is it arriflex, panavision, aaton? and what type of lighting instruments is the school equipt with?

so there are under thirty students in the first year program? (84 films, 3 for each student?) when you say three a year do you mean three that the cinematography fellows direct, or that they shoot? are you excepted to direct as a cinematography fellow? how many films are you expected to make second year, and does the number of students change the second year? is there competition to decide who makes their second year films, or does every do it? are their limitations on the films? are they all supposed to be short films/features/documentary? do the cinematography fellows put money into the films they do, or do they just hop on to the directors projects? i apologize for asking so many questions, i am just really interested in knowing if this place is really for me or not. i know you are really busy so take your time responding, if you can write back. Thanks For Indulging Me, Jody Lee Lipes

thank you for responding. i'm in brooklyn ny. the next time i go to LA i will defintely arrange a tour. i'd like to know more about the specifics of the program if you have time to wrtie about it. what was your experience before starting the program there? is it true that the first year is all video? what are the technical classes like (hands on, small groups of people?), what are the theory classes like? is there an emphasis on some sort of job placement in the program, or is it more artistically oriented? are the directors in AFI prone to work with the cinematography students or more experienced professionals? if you are to busy, what is the best way for me to learn more about this program without physically being there?

does anyone know the answer to my first inquiry? Phil, you seem to think that AFI is great, but what is the skill level they are looking for?

i have just completed studying undergraduate with a specialization in cinematography. i shot about 25 shorts in school, and i have been considering continuing my education after crewing/shooting professionally for a year or so. does the afi dp program accept applicants who have a strong student level understanding of the craft already? or is the program geared more towards people with absolutely no experience?

i was just kidding David. i think your work is outstanding, and i would need about another twenty years to come close to being able to duplicate it.

thank you both. i'm going to do a test at CSC this morning, and this added knowledge makes my goal more clear. now my only concern is that this film will look to much like Northfork. any advice David?

thanks, that makes a lot of sense. knowing the physics always helps me. but again, good cinematography is just a case of trusting your eye.

i am shooting 5277 and bleach bypassing the print for desaturation and contrast control. i am also planning on shooting the interiors with an 82 filter, and the exteriors with a half correction to increase the monocromatic desaturated image and give a slightly blue tone to everything. what would the effect of timing out the blue in the print be? would this process increase the desaturation of the entire image, or just a specific group of colors. lastly, by adding various contrast reduction filters i am making the effect of the bleach bypass more subtle (in terms of the dramatic contrast which the processing yields) and increasing the desaturation?

what is the purpose of adjusting the intensity of diffusion filtration when the focal length of the lens changes? why does a filter appear more or less intense because of the focal length of the lens?

can anyone tell me, or at least give there best guess about how "3 women" was shot. it's seems to my young eyes that the film is desaturated a fair amount, and also low con. I guess these are common visual traits in his films during that period. are pre or post flashing definitly techniques used in this film? what are the difference between these two methods in terms of the affect on the image? and lastly, what are all of the ways that desaturation can be achieved when finishing on film? excluding bleach bypass, so far i have underexposure, stock choice, pre or post flashing, cool filtration for a monocromatic wash, and art direction as possible tools. what else can i do for dramatic desaturation if i have very little control over the colors in frame?

thanks, i didn't know there were archives. i found something very helpful, and i'll post it for anyone who cares. Date: Monday, September 08, 2003 02:00 PM From: David Mullen davidm2@earthlink.net Topic: filming a television Message: 6 of 7 Read 48 times ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Basically you first set your shutter angle to 144 degrees. This has the effect of making your wide roll bars into thin rolling lines, which maybe enough for a wide shot of the TV. Then you need a film-video sync box. This will allow you to run your camera at 23.976 fps instead of 24 fps (you'll need to tell your sound person to record at 29.97 fps instead of 30 fps). Running at 23.976 fps (since an NTSC TV set runs at 59.94 fields per second) will stop the roll bars (now thin) from rolling. The phase control on the sync box allows you to adjust where the lines stop on screen. Your choices are either two lines, one near the top and one near the bottom -- or a single line, in the middle of the screen. You can't completely remove the scan line unless you: (A) bring in a special 23.976 fps TV set and playback equipment from a company that specializes in 24 fps playback, plus get your NTSC tape converted by the same company; or (B) shoot at 29.97 fps, which negates the ability to run dialogue during the shot, and when the shot is played back at 24 fps, it will look slightly slow-motion.