Michael Collier

find out where the plane of focus is. On a film camera, there is a marking on the body and usually a pin to attach a tape measure. On a video camera its not generally marked, so you sort of have to guess. It will be a few cms behind where the lens mounts, where the chip(s) are. Offset the camera so the plane lines up with the axis of rotation in the pan head. You can also offset the tilt so that too is in the axis of rotation, but to do that you need a specialized head, a standard fluid head would be impossible to offset the tilt into the axis of rotation. The pan is easy though. Can't imagine why it would matter except for shots really really close to the front element of the lens. Even cameras mounted relatively far from the focal plane don't present much perspective change past three feet or so. Let me know if that helps.

ah point well taken Nash. I will learn my leson about never putting a definate number to the multitude of uses of any tool. I was talking in broad strokes, about the two main ways I think of light quality of kinos compared to the quality of any other light/tool in my arsenal, not so much to pigeon hole two distinct 'uses'. But great list, a lot of good practicle examples.

Thats a great idea with the chinaball mounted underneath a flag. Never tried that before. I have a bunch of duvey left over from my last show, and a spare open frame, I bet I could sew some velcro to the duvey and again on the flag, and have adjustable skirt in minutes (and pennys). When I use kinos I think about them one of two ways, I am either keeping it close for a med or CU shot where the actor isn't moving very much, and let the light wrap (much quicker than setting silks or a book light) or I am just wanting a little fill, so I place them farther back as a fill and have my subjects in the slow part of the falloff. Obviously in that case it has to be wall-o lite or a 4bank to still be soft enough, which is sometimes hard for me to wrangle on my shoots (afaik no wall-o lite up here...yet), so in the second mode more often than not its bounce/diffuse rather than quick easy painless kino. a key advantage of china balls over kino-they send light everywhere as was mentioned before, which is sometimes not wanted, but other times its almost required. If your lighting a dinner table for a move around the subjects, you could use two or three mini-flos or 2banks above the center of table, or one china. Guess which one your key grip will have a quicker time rigging.

I have been talking to a buddy of mine down in texas who is looking at building his grip truck. Hes thinking of getting a 5th wheel type trailer (the kind they tow custom cars to shows with, with the full drop gate in the back and maybe a door on the side) and building off that. At first that seemed strange to me. I mean every grip truck I have seen has been one of those box type trucks with a liftgate of some sort, or at least a full size van for the one tons. Now I am thinking its not such a bad idea. I mean, the deck would be very low to the ground compared to a box truck, there is a ramp to wheel heavy loads down that short elevation, and there would be ample room to fit a 3ton grip package inside, with maybe some room to spare, and there would be no extra drivers certification needed (no CDL). Plus in a pinch you can always block the trailer and unhitch the tow-truck to have a spare production vehicle. But what unforseen problems could using a vehicle setup like this present? It doesn't seem standard and I know how a lot of us respond to non-standard issue tools. Has anyone seen/used a grip truck set up like this? Is there any glaringly obvious problem with the idea that he or I can't think of. Its one of those situations where I think....that can't work. But on the other hand I really see no good reason it can't, other than I haven't seen it before. Any ideas?

I have always gone through film emporium for insurance. From what I can tell, there is rarely any variation on premiums, since they all are underwritten by the same companies. Usually what varies is broker fees, and even then it doesn't vary more than a few percent here or there. Just find a company that is geared towards film making. Note that I have never filed a claim, so I don't know how well they handle that if something were to come up.

Looks great david. I especially dig the night work. Always a challenge to work at night and it looks like your doing a great job. I can attest to that. A couple of weeks ago I helping my crew rush through a setup and was putting away dolly track wheels (we were switching to pnematic tires) and as I bent over to set them down I slammed head-first into the handle of a hand-cart. Lucky for me the rubber handle was missing. I had a good bruise/cut on my forehead for the next three days. I suppose accidents on set happen, but only when your rushing.

HMIs might be more advantageous in this situation (depending on what density of ND you put on the windows) HMIs put out more light watt for watt than tungsten (about 4 or 5 to 1) and that is before gelling the tungsten to make the color temps. match. a 1.2K or two might be all you need. with two 1Ks with full CTB, you might not get the value of light your looking for (without putting the light very close or leaving it undiffused) What is the speed of your film? Whats your working stop? What value ND did you apply to the windows? How wide is the shot and how hard/soft of a look are you going for? All those questions need to be answered before you can figure out what kind of lighting you'll need.

I had a kit once that only had an ND8, when I needed ND9. Took a bit of work with the light meter, but found its 2 2/3 stop loss. I assume there are filters ND1-ND9, each incriment being 1/3 of a stop. I haven't run into any oddball ND filters since then however to confirm that assumption. Like Satsuki says, there normally no pressing need to be so inflexible, especially with all the other pressing matters at hand. Maybe when I have bigger crews I will call for an ND8, but it would only to establish my reputation as a tyrant. :P

I think your talking about a Mako Head. Nifty little gadget. mako head website

Here it is. My Alaskan Grip truck. If the short doesn't have the cash on hand to rent out the 5ton propper grip truck, this is what they get. In the back is an arri kit, a lowell 7 light kit, a 4 pro light kit, 7 C-stands, dolly, wedges, cribbing, two mombo combos, a 575 HMI and ballast, two dolly tracks, stingers, kino flo, speed rail, our 250lb turn table camera platform, various grip, 4x floppies, 4x with full grid, in the cab a big assortment of various flags, silks and nets, along with all the gell rolls. Just shy of 1/2 million miles put on it. I should cross that threshold this year. (picture was taken with my grips iPhone. Not bad for a camera phone eh?)

I like to be the easy going DP, who doesn't yell or get hot headed. Most I have yelled on set was last weekend, but that was because the pyro forced everyone to have ear protection (either that or the director/actor was in makeup and I had to call cut to a room of 20 people doing fight correography and yelling at the top of their lungs with a full band playing behind them.) I joke with my crew that I want to be regarded as a tyrant, and I hear that come back when I ask to switch a single net to a double. 'your a tyrant mike!' but I think keeping a fun open set is key, especially when it comes to crew interactions. I want my keys to be free to tell me exactly what they think. If they are concerned with how I will react, it may delay some vital peice of information from reaching my ears. Also a happy crew is a hard working crew. They won't flinch when I tell them that the day is going to run long and we might not get home exactly when the call sheet said we would. They keep the effort up, and I don't want to throw mud in the wheels in an effort to get things rolling. That said there are times when I feel frustration building to the point where I feel like yelling (I don't however). It doesn't get bad and I do my best to mitigate my outward demeanor, but on rare occasions I think to my crew at least they can see frustrations weighting me down. I don't spread that to others though. Last weekend we had a 180 deg dolly around action with a wall of mirrors behind the subject. I was able to hide the camera quickly and still get the shot the director was after, but my key light was the bane of my existence. No matter where I put it, either the light or the silk would show. I would move it until it was out of view, only to find another point during the dolly where it was clearly visible in the mirrors. I think at that point my frustration level was about a 9. First shot of the day of a 16 hour day with no possibility of pushing the shots, and a light was taunting me. We got the problem solved in a reasonable way, but for about 20 minutes I couldn't think without my brain hurting. I remembered back to our location scout and the director asked me if those mirrors would cause a problem. I said, 'yes of course they will, but they look awsome, and I can work around them!' at that moment I was kicking myself for that, but once the day was done I watched dailies and remembered why I wanted those mirrors to stay. That experience reminded me of how important it is to keep your cool on set. I wish I had kept a little cooler, but I could have been much worse. I kept the anger and frustration inside me until we got the problem fixed and were able to move on. It also reinforced to me why its best to keep a level outward demeanor. When we were able to move on, I was able to tell my key grip/gaffer what I needed out of the next light setup, and was able to go have a quite smoke and drink some water and calm down some. When I came back the lights were just about in place ready for tweeking (since my KG/G and grips weren't as frustrated as I was, they moved quickly with minimal supervision) and I was back to level headed, joking guy I normaly am. It seems the second you forget that filmmaking is problem solving, not plan execution, those problems will wear on your nerves. After that I was able to stay cool as fonzy the rest of the weekend even when dealing with more intense problems.

I would say we got the former. For every type of pyro effect (including blank cartidges for guns and shotguns) he ran a demonstration, once for me, the director and the insurance guy for the bar location, and then again on set for all of the stunt actors/extras. I think everyone had a good idea of what to expect. It was a bear of a day though. 17 hours of fight choreography, FX makeup, stunts. I think we rolled almost 3 hours between two cameras. At the end of the day, we still had all the major pyro elements to shoot. We of course couldn't push the pyro to the next weekend and leave everything rigged into the fake walls for a week, so we had to push on until 2:30 to get everything. It looked great though. We have a little more pyro work next weekend, though nothing as big as this weekends shoot. I think the dart board kind of took everyone by surprise though. It was supposed to be 3 or 4 buck shots hitting from a shotgun, but the board was made of tightly packed hairs, which once blown threw those fibers everywhere. It was really spectacular. I am trying to get the behind the scenes footage (shot on an EX1 no less) onto youtube or something to post here, but I have to clear that with the director first.

The Film Incentive bill passed with overwelming support in both house and senate. It only has to be signed by Govenor Palin, who most certainly will sign it, since there is enough support to override a veto easily. Theres no new articles on ADN. They covered it earlier, I am still trying to find the exact points as passed. Last I heard it was 25% credit for expenses in state, 10% for local labor hires, 1% shooting off season (winter/late fall) and 1% for shooting in rural areas. I also heard debate about switching the general credit to 30% but I am not sure if thats how it passed. ADN article from october 22. I think some of the points have changed a little bit, but the idea is the same. Bill language I believe this is the bill as passed, but I can't find anything directly stating that. Either way, there are some exciting things going on in the land of the midnight sun! Rumors are already going around town of big names with interest in shooting in state. Take that Canada! (Boddington, I'm looking at you...wanna shoot your next feature up here? You could make a movie thats set in Canada but shot in Alaska.)

Thanks for the tip bergstrom...you could have told me that saturday on set so I didn't have to borrow a leather jacket from the stunt coordinator. Thats it...I hope we have 2 extra bags of c-47s handy next weekend. Its on like donky kong. If your back hurts mid day, its not the work, its going to be the 200 C-47s clipped to your shirt weighting you down. 'Theres so many pins! why are there so many pins?!'

Ask the welder if they have an extra mask you can rig to a C-stand and shoot through. They are usually small, so you might have to zoom to get the coverage. The mask will give you the UV filtration you need and the ND needed to be able to see the bead, without being at an f/16 -closed split. depending on the mask you may be able to also expose for the subject and let the arch blow out. I have shot wide shots of welders with nothing more than an ND filter and a UV filter. Wides and mediums work without much filtration, but I avoid the close ups of course unless I have heavy ND or a welders mask to put over the camera lens.

ask yourself this question: would being hasseled by the cops for not having a permit make the shoot difficult/impossible to complete? If so what happens to all that money that got spent on other things in this video? in film its extremely easy to be penny wise/pound foolish. (its also easy to be penny foolish/pound foolish) Especially if your trying to rig a camera to a window washers scaffold. If a cop sees that going on, you may have lots of explaining to do (and I imagine the washers might be in some kind of trouble for allowing that sort of rig to fly)

Good tip with the LEDs. I just happen to have a bunch lying around, I will bring them to set and offer them to the pyro guy to practice his timing with. Sweet video Kevin. Thats a little more intense than anything I will be doing. I won't be walking around a pyro minefeild waiting for FX to go off. Was the guy taking the video your 2d? I noticed he was doing tale slate. I figured on a big pyro shot like that, the insurance company would want as few people as possible running the course, and you'd have to have your first AC run tale slate, but obviously your first couldn't have the time to take behind the scenes video if they are pulling focus. I will take these tips to heart and post some behind the scenes clips on you-tube next week. Anybody else have any last minute tips?

I have seen that in really old cameras where there is no solid click between A balance and B balance, so during a shot the camera switches over to another mid-shot. But hearing how new the camera is that doesn't seem likely. Maybe there is a problem with the cameras QC on the switch they installed? I can't imagine it being a camera fleet-wide issue, maybe just a bad build? Shouldn't the camera be within the warranty if its so new? Did your op see an inicator to the effect of 'White B' when the switch is on A or visa versa? Last question, did it go back, either through operator fix or just by itself? That could be telling too.

No, this isn't another Niki Mundo post. I don't want to use real bullets, or anything like that. This weekend I have a shoot thats sort of the culmination of the short I have been working on for almost two months now (weekends only, and some weekends were skipped, so don't get on my case about a 2 month short!) Saturday is a big day, and it will involve almost all of our pyro effects. We do have a pyro technition working with proffesional stage explosives. Not sure the propper term for them, but I have been calling them explosives just to remind myself that though they are small, they are still dangerous. I have been advised by the tech about distance to stunt actors and cameras, so thats squared away. ear and eye protection is ready. My question is if you have pyro in a low budget short, where you don't have much time to reset if the first take doesn't go quite right, how do you handle it? In one shot I desperatley want to put the camera on a high hat on a dolly, and do a contra-move to the action, so the pyro wall sort of wraps around the actor. My concern is that even with lots of dry runs, there might be a problem with the move. We have extra walls painted and easily switched, but the pyro guy would need another 20-30 minutes to re-rig the wall. For saftey he says its disallowed to rig walls with pyro the day before or even early, which makes sense to me. I really don't want to call for another take if I can avoid it, but I don't want to limit my camera choices. How do you guys ballance those competeing concerns in a big shot like this? We have two cameras for every pyro shot to roll. The only tool I have thought of on my own was to place the wall hit pattern on the wall with white stickers, and had the art dept. measure those to place corresponding x's on the back wall so when the pyro guy rigs his hits, I will know roughly where they will be on camera. Also are there any other tips to working with a pyro tech? This is my first time doing it. I know I need to run him a monitor so he can see action, but should I rig it close to camera so he can see the action from roughly camera view too, or is that less important? As always I am sort of letting him dictate how he works, but if anyones ever worked with this sort of thing before, any advice would greatly be appreciated. One takers always scare me a little....not a bad thing, it makes sure I am top of my game when cameras roll, but if theres anything that could help, let me know!

as far as I know there isn't one. Check with the production team of deja vu. If I remember correctly they shipped film up to New York. If your looking for a lab near alaska, Alpha Cine is your best bet. You can fly the film on either gold streak or era air to seattle, and neither company has any sort of x-ray machine (they are too small to have it required) and they are very reliable. You could also get a frontier flight and send a courier down with it, also without fear of x-ray machines. If I remember correctly your planning to shoot out of dutch harbor/bearing sea, so it should be simple to get film overnighted to seattle with no x-rays (and those planes are barely heated, so it will stay a comfy 50degrees or so....comfy for film anyway.)

I can ask my steadycam op to be more specific, but from what I have seen of him flying the 110 on my current project, I think the steadycam (I think flyer) is best. We have also run a glidecam v-16 and that worked alright, but it seemed to be more of a hassel to balance. I didn't personaly balance it of course, but from what I remember it seems I waited less on the steadycam balance than I did the V-16. I also heard less problems reported with the steadycam. I will see if I can get my op to elaborate a little more fully.

...unless we are seriously considering asking out penelope when she comes out. But that might be obsessive. I think we need a new forum for Buick. The 'way, way off-topic' forum. John- 350? Ouch. Im hurting with the 250. But its 4 wheel drive, and last time I had to drive up a rediculously icy hill to get gear to take back to the rental house it was a life saver. 4 wheel is a nessisary in alaska.

You'd probably have the stop to shoot through an 85b on lens, and replace the floros with tungsten balanced tubes. Or turn them off and light with gelled tungsten floor units. That would be much easier that gelling the whole window. Consider your power limits, if your window is really bright, you might find you need A LOT of tungsten power, to compensate for the gel. if your struggling for stop, or just want a warmer look try gelling with 1/2 CTB instead of full.

Keep in mind that those DPs at the ASC clubhouse might be driving unassuming 4-doors, but those are the guys who also might own a 120K prime lens set, or a 170K arri cam. Given the choice I would rather have the lenses and cameras....though if I could afford a new range rover on top of that, I'd take it. I used to drive an old 91 dodge caravan as my primary set vehicle...it could cary lots of grip and 4x4s fit on end inside. That died on day one of the short I am finishing now, so I bought with what little money I could scrape together an 88 Ford F-250. Now that thing can haul some gear, my 3/4 ton grip truck! Once we finish that short, it looks like I have a feature after, and with money from that I think I can finaly buy a new fuel efficient four-banger (hybrid maybe? to offset my months of 250 driving?)...and keep the 250 around for 4xing trips out in jims creek (or for small indies that can't afford the full grip truck/uhaul rental. a truck is always handy)

you mentioned shakiness along with uneven pulls, nobody has brought it up yet so I'll ask to make sure...you are shimming the track before you roll dolly, right? That's $10 of 'gippage'(purchased) that would certainly make the move more proffessional.