Michael Collier

I think back to my days as a telemarketer on this one. How do you get what you need, and make the client feel good about it in the end? First and foremost is set your rate on the table. Thats the rate, and its constant. Now if the production needs this or that, we can talk, and be open to talk, but if they want something for free, they must feel like they are getting a deal. If you do prep unpaid, tell them that you normally charge X amount for prep. If they don't want to pay it and start throwing up roadblocks, then casually tell them you'll throw it in for free....but make sure and emphasize that its something YOUR doing, not something they are intitled to. Then if they try and get you to shoot that night, tell them, well I already gave you free prep, and normally I only charge for full-day rate if I shoot (no half-days or prorates), but since I know your strapped lets call it time and a half on the pro-rated day rate (IE day rate: $1000/10 hour day, they ask for 2 hours shoot at night, quote them $300 for that shoot.) Again giving them a deal against your stated rates (while still getting paid for the shoot). As for transport, I usually quote my rate in 10 or 12 hour blocks, and anything over and above that is time and a half. That gives the producers modivation not to work me for 18 hours while only paying my 12 hour rate. If they want transport, tell them its counting towards hours and OT rates. If you do it diplomatically they will be thankful since they felt they got a deal, and they will be slow to take advantage of you because it took some negotiation, and they already got some freebies. They will also remember you in the future because they know they didnt grift you, and you were helpful to their bottom line. Its a tightrope to negotiate things like this, but there is an attitude and demenore that will make any producer feel like your on their page and a team player, while maintaning the intrinsic value your work has. The key is to be a salesman. Make sure they know the value and the savings they are getting, and make sure they know why they are getting them. --this is also why I want a rep. I suppose a few years down the line maybe, I would gladly give away 10%. For now like everyone else we must negotiate ad nausium to work a few days.

They say its 6000k, so even if its really expensive, so is HMI. It might be competitivly priced once its out. smaller bulb = smaller point light which means sharper shadow detail from an open face or fresnel.

I was reading the paper friday and saw and article about our mayors office testing LED lights. From the looks of it it seems as though they are considering 5500k (roughly, prob with a low CRI) and similar if not more bright than the sodiums. My question is how would this change the astetic of night city scenes. I can only assume things will change, but what are the upside/downside of doing this as it relates to cinematography? if the city is going to this length to change all lights, what could be implimented to help us out with minimal cost to the city (ie, a special bracket that would hold a filter tray that a production company can pay to use, simplifying adding minus-green or CTO/CTB to suit) Any thoughts? heres the full article: http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/350577.html

Well you could combine a small LCD,a UHF transmitter, a tiny digital camera, a clamshell recorded, a panaframe, some sort of archers wrist guard, lots of duct tape. But at that point it would start to look like a one man band rig. Did I mention lots of duct tape? That's kinda important. I just want a transmitter that works in 802.11 b/g mode and can send images to my I touch. That way I can check the frame and space without walking back to the camera or monitor. That and every film tool made out of antimantium. I always seem to find all gears engineering limit. One day gear will be antimantium 'collier proof' construction. Now if they could make it mike 'biffy' bergstrom proof' that would be good to. But that would be pushing even antimantiums limit.

they are around prefabricated. More interesting to me are the oddball Dutch fluid heads. I keep wanting to work with one but they are rarely called for.

If I were to buy a second hand old copy of xpress pro (fully legit, just used, with dongle) would I be able to upgrade to composer for 500 bucks, or is it only original registration owners? could be a nifty way to save 4grand.

Haha, never heard that saying. I assume its in referance to DC blowing you away from the circuit you made with your body during a short, and AC's tendancy to contract your muscles, usually causing you to grip tighter whatever it is you've shorted on? If thats true, explain 'Jurrassic Park'. That was 10,000v AC and it shot that kid 200 feet off the fence (kid should have counted to three faster).

Those folks in shot probably weren't that cold. It was around 33-35 that night, which for an alaskan just coming out of the dead of winter, thats summer shorts and a t-shirt weather. A couple of weeks prior (in a weekend that has yet to have a blog) we were shooting at -25 for 14 hours at night (with only cars to warm up in). It was so cold that it broke the vest of our steadycam rig, and my production folder froze up so badly that when I opened it, it cracked and fell into 4 peices. Thats cold. The lame part of that shoot was the wind and ice-rain (and trying to walk on the slick ice the rain created)

12.5 amps? That does seem a little high, they might be quoting striking amperes (plus overhead to cover themselves). When determining HMI current draw you have to factor in the efficiency of the ballast. Sure the head uses 800 watts, but the ballast is not 100% efficient. Typical efficiency of any transformer device is around 85%. Electronic balasts would be less efficient. Striking current I don't know for sure, but I would plan 50% overhead during strike for saftey. This doesn't mean you need 50% over all units, just the biggest device you have on any given circuit. You can strike them in staggered fassion. In practice I have personally used 3 575's (1725 rated, 2029 at 85% e) on a 20 amp breaker, and a 1200 and a 575 on a single 20 amp breaker. all that is with typical stinger run (100-300ft) Any other combo of lights you should plan to use a xstal sync genny to run. I suppose you could run two 800's, but I have never personaly run that off household current. When running towards the edge of power limits, or with long runs, you may experience strange shut downs. the other weekend I struck a 1000w tungsten only to see my 575 on the same circuit go cold. The breaker didn't trip, but the voltage drop of the tungsten unit switching on dropped the voltage enough to turn it off. If you have a dimmer, slowly dim any tungsten units up to avoid that voltage drop on initial striking. (don't put an HMI on a dimmer of course)

Yeah its somewhere in the 4 to 5 times range. But thats only off the incident reading. If you take into account the color balance difference, then an HMI puts out more than 16 times the light of a CTB'ed tungstend (4 times the light, plus the 2 1/3 stop loss of CTB) or if you were to convert HMI to tungsten, then its somewhere around 8 times the light (2/3s stop loss, but I am too lazy to do the math, so I will round up to one stop and call it 8)

keep in mind that true diffusion material is relativley cheap, and all true diffusion is rated for high temps. With work lights I have placed blackwrap between the globe and reflector. The stock reflector causes lateral hot spots which can be troublesome. Blackwrap cuts light output but if your not difusion or other modifier it gives a more even light output, though it does cause light loss and a funny smell on set. That said I shot only one short on work lights, and going to better lights I really felt the extra control was worth much more than the extra pittance I paid for them. Plus learning on equipment you might run into on bigger shoots has its own inherent value. So to does working with lower quality tools to achieve a higher quality result. Learning is never a function of resources. Just ingenuity.

I will say that the JVC is a pretty slow camera, especially if you run it at 24fps with the 180deg shutter (i rate it at about 200 or 160 under those conditions). Plan to use a lot of light to get up to key, even when running wide open. My hats off to Mr. Drysdale for making asa 40 kodachrome expose with photofloods. Also keep in mind that as a location grows, so too does the amount of watts needed grows at an exponential rate. check locations for multiple circuts when running more than 2000w. I would go for the pars over open face work lights. Work light stands are never tall enough and your built into the height. If you wanted to put it up higher, you don't have much options to place them on another stand. Also good for cheap lighting is a lowell kit. Omni, tota and pro light gives you good choices, and a riffa light adds a cheap softbox option. Britek lights are also very very cheap, but that discription also applies to their construction, so treat them gently. Lowells are more robust in construction.

Way Up North An Alaskan Short Film (all images copyright Crooked Pictures, Dir. Levi Taylor) I am a little backed up on these blogs, I have been extremely busy and sometimes its all I can do to prep the next weekends shoot, so I will start with the most recent shoot and work back as I find the time. This weekend we did the math and figured an average feature has about 300-500 cuts in a 2 hour period, our short will have 250 shots (more than half jib, dolly, steadycam, or some combo of all three) We started this week with what has become my favorite shot of the film so far. It was storyboarded as a long dolly with lots of background action going on. When we got there we knew we had a very short parking lot, depth wise to work with. We ended up laying 40 feet of dolly track, which was a challenge to level, but my grip Ryan did an awsome job of it. We are finaly getting to work on the end of the picture, so my color palate has opened up quite a bit. After weeks of cold night with deeply saturated monochromatic blues, this shot intigrated orange, green and blue. I lit the shot with a 1200 gelled with 3 CTO and full plus green, acting as a backlight for our charecter, pushed back so the fall off as he walked would be gradual, the idea being as he lost the backlight, he would be walking into a green pool of light that would symbolize his leaving the city for the seedy bar that our villain awaits in. It was filled with a 575 sunray ungelled through a 4x double silk just behind the dolly. it had to be carefully flagged to keep the charecter in a constant value of light. it was flagged so as he hit the halfway mark the soft frontal fill would subside as he picked up the green light. That light was an LTM 575 fresnel gelled with double plus green to add a deep green-blue hue (we were balanced toward the tungsten end of things). We lucked out with the street behind, since the temps are getting warmer, the snow melted and put a constant thin layer of water on the road, which picked up the citys street lights very well. I commented to the director that if we had the budget, in prep I would have ordered a water truck that night only to find we didn't need it. To light the background I turned to our tungsten kit. I didn't want the background to have the deep color our main charecter gets, since they aren't a part of his world. I lit the bulk of the background with a 650 fresnel, and hit the inside of a car with a 250 pro-light, carefully flagged to only light the inside of the car, and not the hood or roof. I balanced the camera with a 1/2 plus green filter to add a greenish hue to the tungsten lights and the soft fill in the middle of the push. After that we moved on to the arrival shot. I lit with the same 1200 punched hot in the lower corner to match the cities sodium vapor lights in the background. On the left side of the building I hit a drug deal going on with a 575 sunray without a lens to give them a hot pool of blue light. The building was lit with our villians green light, letting it fall off on one side. Again I don't feel a great need to achieve reality with this short, its almost a cartoon and indulging that desire to go very saturated and stylized suits the story, and the director loves it. The next day was in the same bar, in a tiny bathroom that hadn't been used in years. This too was later in the story and so I brought a deep greenish-blue light into the bathroom. All the lights were gelled with plus green and 1/2 CTB. We were going for the really harsh green light that cheap floros would give (while exagerating that color slightly). The bathroom was lit with a top 650 through double silk, the fill was a 250 pro light bounced off the bathroom stall wall, and backlight was provided by another prolight. The director had tried to find a bathroom that had the door positioned directly behind the mirror so we could watch our charecter walk out of the door through the mirror. That was not possible to find, so we found a thin mirror in the bathroom that we could remove and position. To keep the freedom to slightly angle the mirror, I mounted it with a maffer clamp on a C-stand. Outside the door I lit the wall with a 650 through silk. Since the wall was painted with a glossy black paint with lots of texture, lots of little specular highlights and sheens defined the wall. The last day was a day for night of our charecter buying guns. Sticking with our night-blue look (it was slightly earlier in the film, before the greens and oranges come out) I balanced to tungsten preset and filled the foreground action with a 1200 bounced off what snow is left on the ground. As we move forward I am getting very excited to shoot the climax of the film. By the time we get to the bar fight I will be able to introduce deeply saturated blues, greens, reds and oranges. Looking at this weekend, it almost seems like another film. I will finish this post with a short clip of an earlier shoot. We needed to place silk marijuana plants in 3 groups to be later matted together. Since we didn't want to disturb the camera and ruin the ability to matte them, I ropped off 5 feet around and nobody was allowed in once rolling began (even to stop camera between setups). I took the whole footage and time-lapsed it and thought someone might like to watch it. To me its funny. 25 minutes of work in 20 seconds. The plants were provided by the same company that does props for the show 'Weeds' and they look very good. Thats it for now, when I get more time I will backtrack a bit and fill in the past two weekends that don't have a write up. (Images were captured off the downconverted DV dub. Noise is less apparent in the HD footage, shadows are more detailed, but you get the idea.)

I can't wait. It would be like win loose or draw on crack. But I fear that will drive up the cost of health care. Can you imagine how much it would cost to repair a squirrel with carpel-tunnel syndrome? and paying into a 401k (in accorns) would be a pain every time you wanted to watch a movie. Its not worth it unless the squirrels also crack flinstones-style jokes when they are off. 'its a living'

Have you rated the camera yet? I haven't worked with the HVX yet, but I suppose its similar HDV cameras I have used that seem to be in the 200-320 range, but mostly on the slower end, especially when the gama settings are applied. If you add the letus you might find yourself in 120-200 range, and for a 40x40 space a couple of 2Ks may be woefully inadequate. I didn't quite understand the part about the iris. Is your lens really an f4 lens? I know nikkor has some faster lenses, or is an f4 the best looking stop for the letus' GG? I think for a 40' room you will need a lot of light. 2 2k lights won't cut it, even if you go for a hard light look. I assume since you were talking about bouncing you're going for more of a soft toppy look? Are you needing to see all 40x40? is the steadycam well planned out, or is the director wanting more flexibility on set? Do you have access to large HMI units? Would the budget support a generator to run larger tungsten units? Do you have the budget for balloon lights? All of this must be accounted for to decide how to light. I would try and punch in as much HMI through the window to bounce off the floor(assuming is a specular complimentary color) and ballance with a balloon light or a book light if there is the room to do it, then add harder key light from off screen. If budget doesn't support that, then hopefully the budget supports a darker look. If so then you can add maybe a 5K bounced off the roof for fill and add spotty highlights here and there to justify the dark areas of frame. But tell us a little more about the shot and esp. what your rating the camera.

There are a few places around that have a full size poster with all the different workflows on a flow chart (traditional, Non-linear, DI, Digital origination). I was talking with a negative cutter one day and he ended up sending me 4 or 5 of them. I wish I could remember his name, I have it in my files, but thats not accessible right now. I know alpha cine had a small ad on the poster, you can call them and see if they have any, I am sure they'd send them to you for free. If I find the cutters name I will add a reply and let you know.

Sounds like a ploy by speaker makers. Yeah, your gonna have to go out and buy 22 bose sattelites at 300 each. sounds like I need to get into a new industry. And its 22.2 surround. thats 22 speakers and 2 subs. I wonder what camera they will get to produce for this new format (if it ever materializes). Red and Dalsa are the only ones that even come close, but neither covers the format without some up-res. Films would have to undergo a 4K scan just to fit the format. Lastly I think with all those pixels, they will still try and do some long-GOP 4:2:0 25 or 50 mb/sec stream, making it mostly useless. I would rather see less compressed HD rather than more pixels ultra-HD. But I guess compression ratios isn't really a marketing technique for the masses yet.

Thats like saying 'I can't promise we'll try....but we will try to try.' I think there are some glaring things that should be in there but aren't. First it never specifies that its supposed to be a legal contract. In that regard she could argue that she thought it was a deal memo, not the final contract, and its points would be null in court arguments. Beyond that....theres one thing I think should be in there that isn't. Where is the likeness usage clause? It seems like for an actors contract there should be something to the effect of 'we are allowed to use your image for any purpose....such as likeness in the film, in advertising and promotions etc' I don't see how you could call that a contract if it never specifies the producers have a right to reproduce her likeness (which would be the main intent of hiring an actress). It also doesn't specify the territory or timetable that her likeness will be exploited in. There seems to be a lot of holes in that...but also it seems to be a low budget one-day short shoot. I know how ragtag those things can get, especially on the legal side of things, and an informal agreement would be acceptable, as long as she doesn't feel grifted at the end of the day and wants to sue (which if she is made to work more than 10 hours the producers might find themselves in that position.) There has to be a contract that can be adapted somewhere. Most directors I work with have ones made up that they bought out of a kit. Just fill in the names and deal memo points and the basics are already covered. But I am not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer and I am sure they could find 20 holes that I missed. **Edit** I just re-read your post an noticed its a feature not a short. But still the actress apears to be needed only for one day. This contract is all the more worrysome being a feature since that has some chance of backend, where a short is normaly done for someones reel. The more backend, the more legal troubles if the ship isn't water tight.

Its there to give you an idea of 'normal' exposure. if you light to key then something dark under that light will read normaly dark. If its bright it will read normaly bright. skin tones (of any complexion) should read normaly exposed if its lit to key. Its really more of a referance mark to show how over or under key the light falling on a given subject is. If your at key then a grey card should give you a mid-grey density on the negative. There is a lot of subjectivity to 'normal' exposure however, so its more of a guide than any magic bullet tool that guarantees perfect lighting. Light everything to key and it won't look very good, in most cases.

I think the standard student kits are usually filled with lowell and LTMs. They are usually cheap and effective, though still somewhat limited. if I were you I would find out what the school has and buy something complimentary. That way if you find you need a few frezzys and the school has a good assortment of that, maybe you can buy some openface that work well to bounce or softbox. I hate to recomend these lights because they are flimsy and plastic construction, but look into britek lights. Like I said, they aren't very high quality, but if they are treated well they will last you through school and above all they are cheap. Only work with the softbox briteks. When the box is off and its used open faced, they are nearly worthless, their spread is too uneven. I think you can get a full softbox kit with 2 or 3 lights, stands, bulbs and softboxes for around $600-800.

To my eyes the first two pics look like sodium vapor, the first pic being daylight balanced, the second being tungsten balanced. The last pic looks daylight balanced sodium vapors (being that there is more green than blue) Take that into consideration as you pick which light source you want to emulate. Bastard amber and CTO works. I have always favored plus green and CTO, since it more closely emulates the color of sodium vapors. For a look that matches the first pick, maybe double CTO and 1/2 plus green. Second full CTO and 1/2 plus green. last pick maybe 1/4 CTB and 1/2 plus green, or maybe calcolor cyan30+ 1/2 CTB. Keep in mind there is actually matching the look and using it as an inspiration. On several projects I find myself trying to find a stylized color that evokes the feeling of moon, street, candle light etc, without keeping myself so strict to actually replicate it. It all depends how natural/stylistic you want the look to be. If its more impressionistic peice (or director) you get to start playing around with gels that you wouldn't normally use. If the background is lit with practicle city lights, and you can't gel or change bulbs you might be forced to tone down your stylization, lest your foreground looks artificially lit, or somehow seperated from the natural background. If you shoot with a slow stock you can light the background yourself, without fear that the actual color of the lamps will spoil your artifice. if you need the extra stops or lights from the city to do the work, you get a little more pinned down to a naturalistic look. CTS (straw) is similar to CTO, but it is a bit more yellow than CTO. If CTO to your eyes reads too reddish, try CTS.

if a warmer look inside (or a colder look outside) works for the concept, you can always use 1/2 CTB and balance accordingly. You'll be really pressed for exposure, and you'd have to forget softlighting, but you might be able to get close to what your looking for as far as exposure. But to truely get the outside, you are pretty much limited to ND. If you ND one of the windows and not the other, you can maintain a lot of the ambient light, which would reserve your lights for key. This assumes there will be one windown never on camera however.

I read somewhere (probably from a redhead) that the cookes were S4s modified to focus the image on the chips plane, rather than a few micrometers back, 2/3 between the first and last layer of film emulsion like most lenses are set to give the sharpest image possible....and I believed them. Cooke mentions nothing about them. Its marketing. Buy our lenses, the red markings will make you look cool! I was trying to swing a production over to renting the cooke red lenses, and now, I think i will just test a few lenses out and see what fits. Cooke will be tested, but I am viamently apposed to renting a set of cooke reds...I am not that big of a consumer whore yet....yet. witness marks like Tstops seem to costly to put into a cheap lens. We can't fault them, I suppose, it gives options to those who wouldn't know the difference, economics drives products. The more I look at red, the more I think they did a bang up job on the camera....and sort of dropped the ball in accessory build quality and lens quality. No mater, there are 3d party solutions for both. at least the cameras good.

If the scene is short (or you can span the shoot over several nights) you can always do dusk for night. I did a scene like that last night and it was pretty convincing. I waited until the sun just went down (ambient light read about 50 FC when we started) The sky had gotten somewhat dark, but not really. Then on the forground action I lit with a 575 enough to bring the level of the sky down until it was about 2-3 stops under, when exposed properly. Then as the scene progressed I added more and more scrims to the light to keep the light in ratio with the dimming sky. If I had ND I would have been pulling that out of the lens as we went, but budget forced me to just iris up as we went, which was OK because it was a one shot scene, with a complex move that I wanted several takes of. If its a multiple shot scene, then you'll want ND of various value to keep the iris constant, so lens charecteristics (sharpness, contrast) and DOF stays the same throughout the scene.

Excelent. I can't wait to see the 'in production' blog. Any word on when the first day of photography is?