Mark Allen

Before you get to the shooting or even shot planning - look at your script and ask yourself.... 1. What is the fulcrum? Through this movie there will be an oscillation between two equally powerful forces. (If they were not equally powerful, there would not be much drama. Godzilla verses bambi is not very dramatic - instant death.) If you're assigned the script and it doesn't have two equally powerful forces, then find it and manufacture them. The audience must not be sure which force will win. Do not think of it as necessarily being a "fight" - it's a balancing act. Will the relatoinship last or fail? 2. Identify the consequences of each force. Why is it good or bad if one or the other happens. Do not feel as though the consequence has to be "the world will fall into the hands of evil." Consequences that we can relate to on a personal level are very powerful. "He will be alone" is surprisingly powerful.... but keep in mind people will think "oh, but he'll find someone else" - so you'll need to figure out why it matters even more. But you must be very clear on this. Lastly (for this list) - make sure you know what the movie is "about" - beyond the forces - what is the movie thematically about... is it about racism? honor? trust? death? Now - start looking at your scenes. In each scene you need to identify the same thing. What is the fulcrum and what is the consequences. But this time, you want to ask yourself "how does this relate to what the the movie is about?" AND "how does the resolution of this scene tip the scale?" Each scene is going to tip the scale of the outcome towards force A or force B. Some scenes may place two pennies on the side or force A, but then you may have three scenes in a row that place pennies on the side of force B. If you suddenly have a scene that drops a big gold bar on the side of force A - that's going to feel fake. If the aliens come down and kill all the zombies and then leave... that's fake. As a director, you're a story teller and good story tellers know how to manipulate drama. Don't lose site of this. It applies to everything. Now, when you talk to your actors... you do NOT want to explain all of this to them. that can be confusing for them. What they want to know is this: Where were they coming from? This matters, it's puts them into the midset. Did they just come from the scene of an accident? A lounging day at the beach? a Jog? Where are they going? Even if they never get there, they had a plan. We're they headed off to a funeral? Heading to school? What are they trying to achieve? Actors like verbs. They like to know what they WANT and what they WANT TO DO. So put all together it sounds like this - "You just woke up and crawled out of bed after only sleeping three hours (you were up late working on your music), hard to keep your eyes open, you need to get to class because you've been late 3 days in a row and you don't need one more reason for the teacher to bitch at you. Then your girlfriend stops by and wants to talk about your relationship. She doesn't feel like you spend enough time with her - so you want to make sure that she doesn't break up with you and then get to class as soon as possible." This is all you would need to tell the actor in this scene. By the way - notice that the hard to keep your eyes open was included in here as a description. Most actors will figure this sort of thing out, but it's a safe time to ask for things like this and suggest them while your setting the scene for them. You should think abou these kinds of things long before you get to the set. What does it mean to be tired? What does it mean to be upset with your boyfriend? What do you do then? tap your feet? how does this happen? Then don't insist your actors do it - be open to what they do - but you should have some ammunition ready in case they are not doing it convincingly enough. And if you do find yourself needing to give some specific physical direction - consider doing it like a hypnotist would. don't say the end result. Don't say "your eyes should be about half open," say "your eyelids are heavy, they're hard to lift." About dialogue. Just make sure that they are speaking to eachother and responding to eachother. Forget your preconceived notions of what the dialogue should sound like. One thing that's interesting in a rehearsal is to have the actors memorize the line, then look at the other actor in the eyes and say the line right to them. then let it sit. Then have the spoken to actor say back what they heard in their interpretation of how the other actor feels. Then then respond back with their line. If the lines were: MANDY You're up late everynight and not with me! ROGER It's only because of the big showcase. MANDY Well, Danny is doing the showcase and he calls me every night! So actorMandy reads her line. actorrRoger says, "You're upset with me." (If that's in the realm of what you're thinking, then move on) actorRoger reads his line, actorMandy says, "you're making excuses." etc. etc. But then let's say that after actorMandy says her line and actorRoger says, "you like Danny more than you like me." But wait... in reality - this is the first time Roger has ever heard about Danny calling her. You didn't know that when you read these three lines, the actors might not know it either. But if this is necessary to tell your story - it's the kind of thing you want to point out. Michael Gordon (Academy Award winning director and teacher) once said - a director is a "mirror and friend" to the actor. You are there to help them. Don't try to make them into puppets or it will not work. Try to help them understand what they want and need - where the paradigm shifts for them are (Danny???). (must get back to work now, but Mammet has a good book called "On Directing Film" which has a lot of good info and is worth reading.)

SPOILERS: This was actually my favorite bond film in a long time. I'd pretty much written the franchise off as a loss. Previously my favorite Bond film was For Your Eyes Only. I've read many of the flemming books and people need to realize there are huge liberties taken with the stories. The books are much more pensive - but I don't think movies should be judged against their books, it's a different creature. As for Casino Royale, It's stongest asset was that the action felt motivated and integral into the plot. This is one of the things most lost in the recent movies where the action was huge yet still boring. I loved the opening action scene - the high energy, no holds bared nearing the impossible, constantly unexpected and moving. I liked Craig as Bond, wasn't sure I would. Didn't really know who he was. The weakest part I thought was that there was no real chemistry between Craig and Eva Green. I don't blame it on the actors, I think the plot didn't lend itself for that. Unfortuntely, a lot of screentime was spent on this which dragged the movie down a great deal once they hit the casino. I think a lot of consolidation could have helped the second act. I think the relationship would have been much better served by a single moment of absolute paradigm shift rather than trying to do a series of "armor breaking" scenes which never really showed any armor breaking. We needed to see some weakness in Bond, not just hear him say it. so - action was strong, the tenderness was lacking - but overall a good film. Had the romance come through and with a little 2nd act consolidation, I think it could have been a home run , but it was a fun movie to watch none the less.

Shooting on mini dv i think your biggest battle is going to be compression. I've never had an easy time of it with mini dv. the block compression loves to alias. Only way i've seen people get around it is to super blur their edges for a "stylized" look.

And now for something COMPLETELY OT (but in answer to this question and anyone interested in the sociological aspect of the dot com boom): I went to Paly. The difference is profound. It was a quiet little secretly wonderful town with a lot of smart, socially conscious and aware people and was NOT the richest city in the area. All the hang outs have converted to posch chains. The $30,000 homes now go for $1.5 million. People who inhereted homes from family who do socail work or kindergarten teaching are living next to high powered lawers and the dot-comers who sold at the right time. It has a club scene (what?) - kids come from other cities to party. The only thing people used to come there for was a couple little mom and pop restaurants and a night with what would become "windham hill" at the varsity. Strange place to be home to: Apple, Hewlett Packard, Xerox Parc, right after being home to joan baez, greatful dead (I'm told), windham hill (next door), etc. etc. etc. and a host of other innovations and imaginations... It was a very inspiring place to be back then... now, I'm not sure... it feels like .... a place where the fences have already been built... if that makes sense... like... uhmmmm Los Angeles. oh well. it's true what they say... "You can never go home."

There was actually the cyberframe (i THINK that's the name) which ran on a room full of laser disks which was a contemporary of the editdroid. It was not a matter of cheaper editing at the point, it was having the luxury of non-linear. I think people who have never edited linear will never truly appreciate the glory of non-linear until they have. (And if you've never edited celludloid, you may never appreciate the glory of not cutting your fingers to shreds.) There was even ANOTHER edit machine which Coppola had a great interest in which was being invented by Larry Seahorn (I think that is his name). My brother was one of the programmers on it (before he went to work on Quicktime at Apple. It just never got the publicity that edit-droid had. (Remember what Ted Turner says... if you want to make money at something, be the second.... (or in this case, the fifth or so). Digidesign made protools by internally developing "Edit" and the contractng out "Mix" - in protools version 1, you would switch between these two applications.... yeah, really... it was fun... especially when it crashed which it did a lot before version 2.0. When they combined the two, the folks who wrote the "mix" portion went on to create "Deck" as their own application. AVID used digidesign's audio interfaces for their own audio application which was really super great for ADR and perhaps foley and really sucky for just about everything else. They realized this and that digidesign was going to rule the world of audio and bought them. And when i tried to do a search to find the spelling of Larry's name... I came upon a site that I think a lot of people in this discussion will think is "neat." http://www.sssm.com/editing/museum/index.html Me: Born and raised in "Palo Alto" pre-tech boom when it was just a bunch of really interesting people doing really interesting things and I thought it was odd that our family friend was a programmer who would spend all day at the "PARC."

If the camera is gong to be moving, make sure there are lots of trackable things in the frame. Doesn't necessarily need to be tracking marks, but things which are consistantly there (not a gleam) and high contrast but relatively small in frame - consult with your fx person on that one, it's a big issue. get measturement of cg subject from camera. make sure you record the lense width, fstop and all that good stuff. Get photographs and a map of where the lights are on the set and how strong they are and (if possible) measurements. All this helps the artist to build the basic lighting set up.

I wonder if it would be illegal to instead of paying the $50 / person fee that many low budget movies get away with and therefore paying $100,0000 for your 20,000 extras if you could get 20,000 people to show up with the hopes of winning $10,000. Basically a lottery. Probably illegal. I think even Wilt Chamberlin would have had trouble getting 20,000.... or... maybe not.

continuing my list: 5) Most of the most expensive things to achieve in visual effects are the ones which proper planning could have avoided. 6) Producers and dierctors are very aware now that they have options "can we just remove that sign later - it's blowing the shot?" So are studios "Remove that sign, it's a subsidiary of a competitor of ours." Lots of these calls are being made on non-visfx days which means there won't be a visfx person on set which means the DP should have a solid understanding of the basics of what makes things easier and harder. For example - on set once it was decided that a building would be replaced. The DP decided to blow out the building so that it would help us remove it. Well, what he ended up doing was blowing our 3D track options from the face of the building and not helping. He didn't know, not his fault - nice he was thinking about my team's effort. After that we had a discussion and he was able to make the calls on the set much more wisely. 7) Roto takes more time than you think.

Having come out of the visual effects world where I was actually the guy that was expected to a) figure out how to do "the thing" and B) budget it. c) make sure it was done well... I thought I'd share some thoughts. 1) I'm not really a big visual effects fan per se. I know somoe people like to read about them, talk about them... I'm just not that guy. However, I am a huge fan of what they can do for movies when used well. I think too often films are getting lost in their effects. Sometimes the drama is lost in the action - sometimes it's even lost in the story! (yes... think about it, it happens a lot in big studio movies - they get so into making sure they hit every point of their "hero's journey" they totally forget that great filmmaking comes from great moments of drama). So I don't think visfx are guilty of anything more than a super wide angle lense would be. It's up to the filmmakers to use it drama-appropriately. 2) Minatures are usually more expensive to make than CG models. My rule of thumb though was if the thing had to crumble or explode, then miniatures were a serious contender for the base layers. 3) I think the idea that miniatures or practicals look better than cg as a rule is outdated. It's very hard to get microdetail on a model and it's hard to shoot it with the appropriate lighting. As for creatures, watch Doom - when the CG monster finally arrives it's such a more interesting creature than the make-up monsters. 4) Fire, smoke, explosions, splatter. All these things are often challenging for CG and make good sweeteners to add into CG composites. Often the most powerful solution is one that is broken down into what each discipline (visfx vs. specfx) can do best.... at the moment.... ...and then it's just a matter of having the right talent available for a reasonable price.

When you remove the depth of field, you are losing your ability to control the eye with focal cues. That doesn't mean you can't use other design techniques. Contrast shaping (using darkness to frame the areas you want to have more focus because our eyes look for lightness), Color shaping (same thing with color contrasting), leading lines (our eyes will follow lines to find a resting point), contrast of motion, etc. Citizen Kane uses very little depth of field but is compensating with a lot of other techniques to help tell the story. This is something people shooting DV movies without 35mm adapters could make great use of. It would be a combination of efforts between director/dp/production designer. For a contemporary example, look at the trailer for 300. Not the greatest shot, but one that shows this very clearly is the boat sinking (middle of the trailer). Obviously the shot is about the boat sinking, that's what we need to see. So that's where all the light is. However... apparently it's even more important then that we see this army leader observing the boat sinking. The hottest spot in the fram is the water on his sheild (actually it might be the bald guy at the bottom, but... the lines lead us to the center). The most contrast is him against the water. The triangle lines lead to him, the boat's lines also lead to him. This is all fake, those boats could be put anywhere, but they curve in towards him. Another example is the early shot of the guys falling off the cliff - note that the sun is directly behind this point of action. Anyway - so without depth of field I would employ all the other options with even more ferver. But I'm not a DP per se. I would hope a DP would sit down witht he director and explain this and create a plan in the production design to address it.

Actually film noise can't be added later - not the good part of it. I think the positive aspect of film grain is that it's not pixellimited so there is a very very subtle phenomenon where you start to see a slightly different part of the negative each frame so that there is this odd persistance of vision added clarity - yet combined with a softening effect which ends up sort of pleasing. That said often film grain just looks utterly terrible. (espcially 16 and S16 on relatively flat color planes.) I'm not an engineer, but I've spent many profressional hours working with both film and HD frame by frame and in motion and it's just something that SEEMED like the truth to me. That said... while I was working with it professionally, grain was often my enemy as it would kill a track or make a composite annoying. Video noise does not seem to have that same property and to answer the question that started this thread, I would say that grain become the enemy when it became related to video noise. I would much rather have a perfectly clean image thatn video/digital noise any day. Once that thinking kicks in, I think film grain becomes suspect. I think I point to 16mm as the grain evill because S8 grain is obviously an "effect" while 35mm grian is usually subtle enought to be an aesthetic. 16 grain seems like a mistake. Don't flame, it's just a personal opinion and I'm not writing any books.

I'm not a big fan of the greenscreen movies - but mostly because they tend to be emotionally bereft. I do think the art design on this trailer seems superior and exciting... However... my gutt tells me this will be another movie which leaves me feeling empty and longing for the sharing of humanity which I love the movies for. I would LOVE to love this movie. What makes me think I won't is that just about every line in the trailer is delivered in the same empty feeling bravado "SPARTA" proclamation tone. I could hardly tell the voices appart from eachother because everyone was acting from the same page. The line "Then we will fight in the shadows" stands out so strongly because it's different. But every line should stand out because it's different. So, if this is a taste of the movie - I'm thinking "ugh... how much of that could I eat?

I've noticed this a great deal while using the HVX200 where if you are shooting a wider subject it gets soft (and the darker you go it gets even softer). Are you saying that this is a property of the sensor? i had assumed it was a lense issue.

I don't have this handy - but if yo uhave quicktime pro - you should be able to convert anything you have on your drive to this format for testing.

I've done GS work off the SDX900 and found that you really fight the compression still. Not as bad as DV per se, but not a lot better. If you could record those out to something else, that would make keying life easier. The HVX200 at 1080 (100 mbs) is much much easier to key than sdx900.

See? Another first time filmmaker gets to shoot on whatever he wants. This is what I hate about nepatism! And for the record, one of the main reason I put in an early reservation on the RED was that everyone was saying "There is no way that camera could be made right now." If it was too good to be true, then I wanted one.

Does anyone know how many production versions of other cameras exist? Like - How many varicams? How many sdx-900s? Genesis? Dalsa's? HVX200's? I'm just curious.

The photos? They work over here (mac osx, safari)

Just adding that as a hired director on a project once a script supervisor started making comments to the producers about how was planning my shots - that I wasn't getting enough coverage. The producer/investors came to me and said "I know, it's your movie here, but maybe we should add a little coverage for this." Eventhough I thought it was totally unnecessary as it wouldn't relate to the story I said, "That's a great idea actually. It'll cost us a few extra hours to do that - so we'll go into overtime. But it soundslike that's okay with you? Can we do that? Can we afford the extra money?" Never heard another suggestion from the the script sup. I'm sure there are some great script supervisors, but my luck has been mixed. The best one I ever had was right out of school and it was her first job in the industry. She was great and the most professional. Just to add another anecdote, last month I had a teleprompter operator riding the dolly. I called cut and the telepromter said to the talent "you need to read it a little faster so we can get through more of the material." The DP gave me this horrified look which almost made the indescression worth it. I thought he was going to kick her off the dolly right there. But I keep things light on sets always. As we reset I casually said "in the future, please don't talk to the talent as I might have a different goal for them than you."

In the US if you were doing this like an effects situation, you would scan the film to cineon files which After Effects handles fine. For editorial, you'd then make movies of those files in a corrected colorspace and of an editable size. Then conform them back in AE based on your cut. In theory you could use a program like automatic duck to do the program to program translation and then swap out your footage (treat the editorial versions as proxies). But with a project as short as yours and eye conform might make sense. Then, you work on the project in AE with an adjustment layer converting the cineon to rgb for viewing while you work (or your own adjustment thereof). Then, when you're happy, check your cineon files to see if they also look good, render out and deliver to the lab cineons. The theory of using cineons vs. tga 8 bit is that you simply have more range to work with and less data loss in transfers.

A paradigm shift is (quoting dictionary.com) " afundamental change of approach or assumptions." The assumption (evidenced by the mass amount of people saying it was not possible to have a 4k camera for even 40k) would be broken if RED delivers. Thus, a paradigm shift. I think DV was a paradgim shift as well. If you dont believe me, talk to distributors who are now innundated with movies shot on DV. A movie-making culture burst into our lives. Was that a good thing? Not really in the minds of most distributors who probably more than anyone else started feeling "shot on film" was a good thing simply because the sheer number of home productions entering their submissions. Yet, it was a huge change in the culture of movie making without changing the basic premise or necessary skills. And the technology does affect the end result - sometimes in unexpected ways. Look at when 16mm cameras were introduced. Suddenly the cinema verite entered into the filmmaking vernacular. Today even in 35mm movies you see this as part of the language of movie making.

Do you (or anyone) know if shooting at 4k, but finishing at 2k would make up for any lack of clarity in the lense? When you say cheaper... what kind of prices are we talking about for the non PL? And how much are we talking about for PL? My thinking is that once you have a drive and camera you're at around 19,500 for the RED... so if a useable lense was 3k. You're at 22,500. Well, people are easily spending 12k on their HVX with data and lense kits (which btw need lenses too). So, the difference there is pretty huge in what you would (assumming RED delivers) get for your additional 10k.

Perhaps someone could suggest a list of PL mount lenses which would be "good enough" for when one is shooting something on the spur of the moment and not in a case where they can rent the higher quality lenses for more structured projects.

I just wanted point out that you're reading a RED forum within the cinematography.com > cinematography forums > HD Only forums. This information isn't being emailed to you, you have to click to it yourself. If it bores you, stop. While not being a paradigm shift for movie-making and not a substitute for talent, the RED camera is somewhat of a paradigm shift in professional cameras and that's intriguing for people and people will start to fantasize about how this could enable them. Why is that intimidating? That's all part of the creative process. Since the RED camera, as you point out, does not exist - any discussion at all is going to be speculative. So, what else would you find in a RED forum but speculative information? If speculative information is bothersome, this would not be a forum to read. I wouldn't want to read about surgical procedures, it would make me feel queesey probably. So, I don't read about them. And now for a mildly related esoteric thought: Something I learned from coaching actors for many years is that one of the greatest things for people to overcome is to allow themselves to lose their shame and let themselves shine. People talk about "presence" from an actor. While it is assumed that this is something someone has or does not have, I disagree. I believe it can be learned because I've watched it happen. It can take years and lots of training, but it can happen. Most of that training is focused in two steps. 1. Learn to lose the fear of being shamed by others for trying to act or think or be outside of the conditional accepted norms of expression. 2. Learn to share that level of comfort with others and give it to them as a gift in your awareness of them.

Primer is good for beginning or indie filmmakers. He is a guy who learned how to make a movie on this and his process was a little unusual and his explanation of it unusually honest. I can't stand it when people talk about how hard it was with their low budget and the budget turns out to be like 20 million dollars or more. That rubs me the wrong way irregardless of what kind of movie it is.