Carlos M. Icaza

I shot this not long ago with two XL-1's on a white cove we built ourselves for the singer and his two other band bembers to perform their video. The video is the final cut. We are now working in the final "coloring" and Magic bullet passes. You can see a couple of Magic Bullet features on this video, including 24p Pulldown, White Diffusion, a little bit of bleach bypass, and letterboxing. http://www.ansca.net/EQVideo/across.mov You will need Quicktime 7 to preview Let me know what you all think. Carlos (ps: i know there is a little bit of shadows on the first few frames, we are working to remove them, and a small video on a computer monitor does not do justice to the video)... pss:: Also, please note that the music is Korean. So, on top of everything that goes into produciton, we had to work with a translator most of the time... psss: I have some behind the scenes pics if you want to see them, let me know...

Magic Bullet only works in After Effects. Magic Bullet "Editors" is available for Final Cut Pro, Avid, Premiere and Sony. Here is their website that discusses the difference between the two products http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/magicbulletfamily.html I have a like a 5 second clip that was processed with MB http://www.ansca.net/eqvideo/eq.mov as well as a full video, again, processed with MB http://www.ansca.net/lavabone/video.htm As to how good is it? Well, it certainly makes video less "videoish". I have been pleased with the results. Both videos you see shot on XL-1. (not the XL-1s). C. Hello GANG ! It's been a while....

Ditto Tenobell. Robert, for simple editing and not much fanfare, as I originally posted it, the mac mini will work. Will even run Final cut express HD like a charm. I played with the unit on Friday, it is small, very small, and you can use your current keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc.... And, and when you do, get your ram from a place like memoryx.com, they are probably one of the cheapest guys around town here in the Silicon Valley area. Enjoy, Carlos

I went to Macworld yesterday just to see the Mac Mini. it is the best design I have seen in an personal computer in a long time. It is small, the size of a two inch thick dvd. hardly weighs anything and does not run hot. And talk about the iPodShuffle. Apple knows how to get it right. Although it is one of the most excellent computer designs I have ever seen, and having ordered two of them, I would not recommend this unit for Final Cut Pro Editing. Several reasons, and above all #1. It only has a 32mb of VIDEO RAM, and the biggest hard drive you can get inside of the unit is an 80gig Ultra ATA, not even a SATA HD which the G5's uses. Yes, it has firewire, but it is only a firewire 400, instead of the new firewire 800, and if you really wanted to do some serious HD editing, when moving foward, you will want the fiber optic card with the x-raid, which you would not be able to do so connect. (I would guess that by the time you are needing an x-raid, you are into serious editing and making some serious $$$). NOW ! If you want to learn how to use FCP and do some home editing and play around with iLife, sure go ahead. I think the MacMini will serve its purpuse. But for real FCP editing where you have gigs and gigs of footage that you need to work from, go with a dual G5, and you can install two 400gig SATA drives and have almost a tb of HD to work with. I currently own a Dual G5 with 8Gigs of RAM, and with almost 2 tb of hd, and I also own a powerbook g4 1.2gigahertz speed. THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE between them when editing. My $0.02 as always. Carlos.

Hey Gang, Happy New Year. Hope all your resolutions and wishes come true this year. Best of luck to everyone on their projects. Carlos.-

Ah ! In that case, they have this nifty pocket digital camera cases you can get at Ritz or Wolfe for around $19.95 there that could do the trick. Also, Pelican has some that could do the trick as well... C.-

Dan, I use Pelican, the 1200 series is good... I have #1120 for my Sekonic and I can add a spare meter if I ever need to. I also have it in Bright Yellow so that it doesn't get confused with the other black cases I have. And I can always say, look in the yellow case; it is easy to identify. C.- [edit] Oh and it has the foam and water proof and I carved out a nice fit for the meter. The case can be treated pretty rough. [2nd edit] Look in http://www.pelican.com

I was asked about two days ago why is it that I like working with people and mentoring them in my "real day job", and the thing that I often keep answering when I am asked that question is that I learn so much about myself and by doing so makes me a better person. So, ask your students to ask you questions, that way you can learn from them as well and learn more about yourself. I like your honesty coming on this board and asking what to do. Given that we have established a digital conection, I would like to share some of my thoughts. I think you can start by being honest with your students, setting expectations from the very beginning would be a good start, and asking them what knowledge they would like to walk away from after taking your class. You know, cinematography class is not just about turning on a light or the camera and shoot. You know that. I think that you could compliment your class with real life scenarios. Pick a scene from a movie and try to duplicate it. See how your students break donw the process, each one of them will try it differently, you can learn a lot from an excercise like that. Don't just teach them how to ligth that specific scene but also teach them about what tools are available as well. Can you get a dolly, jib, steadi-cam into the class room? Maybe invite some real world DP's that can inspire your students. Ask each one of them what to define cinematography. To tell you about their favorite movies and get them all involved in the process. You will see how all of them will give you just about every answer in the book. Sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Get them engaged with one another. Collaboration is one of the principal aspects of cinematography as well as taking directions (from your director) as well as giving directions (to your gaffer,grip, etc). Maybe you could teach them that discipline as well. Putting together shot list. Are you computer savvy? can you use tools like Illustrator and Photoshop or any other drawing tool that you could let your students reach into their mind and realize the potential that they could use a tool such as those rather than pencil and paper to draw up shot list, shot diagrams, etc... Not long ago I was working on a student film and I had a big kick at watching most of the student crew look at my beatup doorway dolly in amazement. When I inquired about how many of them have ever sat down and operated a dolly, not a single student raised their hand. I then made it a mandate that I would give each one a turn at being dolly grip, etc. They got a kick at how to mark each stop, what they learned from just pulling/pushing and tearing it down and putting it together was amazing. That was just half the fun. You should have seen them when I put the jib together for the last shot of the movie. They felt empowered and walked away with a new found sense of knowledge and felt that they have learned a ton. As usual my $0.02... C.

Yikes ! get some rest and good luck.... C.- (I think the board time is off, it is 5:45am when I posted this not 4:45am)... Hmmm...

I have a Sekonic 608-C. Been very happy with hit. Taken a beating though. Don't really like the battery life span, it just means I carry extra batteries. I have not shot any film. Most of my work has been digital and my Sekonic has proved invaluable. C.-

Hello Been a while since my last post. Been very busy :-) which is good. Not as a DP but on my real day job :ph34r: I like to start with what natural light I have available to me, for me, then the key then my fill and then my background lights. What I also mean by natural light sunlight and practicals. What is there first, then supplement. Some exceptions, are night shots like a beach scene. There, I had to create the natural light by setting a bonfire and some tiki torches.... I then had a moonlight fake background light. Fake = 1.2k HMI Par with 1/4 CTB. As always, my $0.02 C.-

Andy, Sorry for the late reply to your question of what is noticable sacrificed between 8 and 12 megapixels. To be honest, the only time when I see a huge difference is when I am either manipulating the image at a very high zoom, more pixels to play with at 12mb than at 8mb and smoother manipulation due to the larger number of pixels, and when I print large size. The bigger the #'s of pixels the better it prints. Other than that the obvious hard drive space :-), less number of picts fit on a 1gig micro drive and longer time to save, some newer camera models allow firewire connection to hard drive to save the pics right to it. C.-

Here is a really rough cut of the 180 degree turn sequence. http://www.fingerprintgraphics.com/gallery.../Stunt_test.wmv Remember this is a very rough cut slapped together to get an idea of what the film would entail. Feedback is welcome, not on the editing but for the car rig we built...... You will need Windows Media Player to view it. Cheers, Carlos.-

Andy, I own a Canon 30D. (3megapixels) and I have been extremeley happy with the camera for its ruggedness and still snapping after all the beating that I have exposed to it. I actually own three Canon cameras, two film slr's and the digital and I am in the process of upgrading to the newer digital models. My first camera was a Canon Rebel (film) bought in 1988. Several of my colleages have the new Canon Digital Rebel which is pretty much what Greg describes. Check it out at Digital Rebel Pretty much what am trying to say is that you won't go wrong with Canon. C.-

I got it about three days ago and I am done reading it. Anectodes after anectodes of what happened to Mr. Lazslo over his 50 year career. Very entertaining prose, some very interesting set situations. C.-

Not really. The pola filter was for the reflection. We were trying to cut down the intensity of the midday sun. That shot came about noonish, even with pola and the camera's nd filter it was still too hot. This helped in cutting down the light. C.-

Alvin What we did is, for the cymbals, we taped wads of paper towels to the bottom part of the cymbals. For the snares, they too were disengaged, and the tom filled with rags. But still, on a 30*30 set, it was loud ! Don't forget we had about 100 extras as well. But kudo's to brining it up. I kinda figured that the drummer would figure that one out. Thanks ! Oh and by the way, when you see the video, you can, for a split second, see the wads of paper towels taped to the bottom part of the cymbals. But it is too fast for a normal eye, meaning if you don't know it was coming up, you will not think of it or even see it. Cheers, C.-

Make sure you have playback(sound) so you can sync the quality mix later when editing. I don't see a problem. C.-

Consider the following, Microsoft Paid Rolling Stones 10 Million for the use of "Start Me Up" for the Microsoft Windows 98 campaign. You will most likely need to contact ASCAP, and or BMI Hope this helps and be prepared to hear big $$$. C.-

Ok, "I can only interpret that to mean the festivals have not advanced any careers here except Mr. Mullen's." I have to chime in, it all depends on your definition of advancing in the cinematography career. It seems though that you are meaning in terms of Hollywood movies. It seems that you are equating Enter Film Festival = Get Hollywood movie. I know plenty of DP's who are happy doing non hollywood movies and are actually very successful, and, for one reason or another, don't want to enter film festivals. I know of other's who have entered film festivals, and gone nowhere, they get jaded really quick. But I know this much, I didn't enter any film festivals, and I am headed to LA in the coming weeks to work on a real Hollywood Movie, not as a dp, but as G&E. So, it all depends on where you knock and your definiton of advancing. As usual, my $0.02c from my little experience in the film world. C.

Alex, From my experience, while you shoot the video, you playback the music and the band sings with it. (Lip sings to it). If you have a drummer, you usually use big speakers to overcome the drumming sound, obviously, depends on the song, depends on how loud you want ot play the music. This is what is used to sync the music and to do editing. C.

Ah. One thing that is really important, other than being overly prepared, is to REHEARSE ! REHEARSE ! REHEARSE ! I can't tell you how much it saved us in production time and money when we had the band rehearse one day prior to principal photography. I recall getting all the lights setup, light readings, test our smog machine, our dolly, etc....all on a Friday, while having the band rehearse as well, so that first thing Saturday, nothing but shooting the video. C.- here is the link to the music video am referring The video Feedback is always welcomed. I shot with two Xl-1, post processed in After Effects with Magic Bullet. C.

Eric I like the lighting on the room with the Neon's and the Patrick Nagel Painting. Very 80's.. and the hair.... C. PS: clearlake link looks broken...

Here is my $0.02c. Have you seen the band play at a venue in front of people? go film them. go get them in front of the lens so they can see themselfs and see what they are going to look like before you do principal photography. I have shot two bands, the first band we went to see then in person at a concert venue and brought two cameras and capture them while playing. When I played back the tapes they saw themselfs and most of them were surprised that every little nuance is shown through the lens. Specially the sweat ! and the other lead singer made sure to go on a diet to loose at least 20 pounds before shooting began on the video. He saw how much heavy he looks in front of the lens. Make them see how they look like because they will be expecting you to make them look like AeroSmith if you don't. Also, is this a known band ? if you say their name, do people stop on their tracks and congratulate you or scratch their head and ask you to repeat the band name again? If it is the latter, think very carefully what type of video you want to give them. A lot of bands think that it is cool to have a super duper concept video, but the reality is, concept videos work for established bands or singers whose names and songs (tunes) are recognized without you knowing who is playing. IE: Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, Stone Temple Pilots etc... And last, prepare, prepare, prepare... For the first music video I worked on, I worked so close with the director that at the end of two weeks of prep time, we were finishing each others shot sequence's. For a three and a half minute song, we filmed for 12 hours, luckily for me and my G&E crew which was overly prepared not a single hitch. Good luck, C.-

DC, Do you have a website with a trailer of your movie we can look at ? C.-