Michael Collier

I have created 2.35:1 frame lines in Photoshop within a 4:3 window and recorded that onto DVCAM as suggested. However I may want to shoot in 16:9 mode on the DSR 570 for better resolution and since the image is squeezed in the viewfinder how will this affect what I have done. Would the solution be simply creating new 2.35:1 frame lines within a 16:9 frame? that plan is probably best, since you will loose far fewer pixels recording 16x9 than 4:3 (and I think that cam is 16x9 native, right?) Since your shooting 16:9, just adjust the math you use to make the frame. 16x9 in DV is still 480x720, but the pixel ratio changes from .9 to 1.185. so if you have to get a window that is 2.35 from that. obviously you aren't cropping the sides, so the horizontal would still be 720 pixels. If we were talking about square pixels, you could calculate 720/2.35 =about 306. now factor in the 20% larger area needed to overcome the squeeze and you get almost exactly 363. So if you make a full frame 720x480 work area in photoshop, you would make a rectangle that measures 363x720. and center that in frame and record to mini-DV. make sure it plays in the 16x9 mode like it should and mark your veiwfinder. I believe shooting 4:3 you would be recording only 720x275? so you would see a great improvement in pixel count (thats recorded pixels, actuall resolution and sharpness depends on how your camera does the 16x9)

well......why don't you? Client is always right, right?? My opinion on multiple takes, from the few times I have directed, I sort of side with hopkins, after 3 or 4 it seems as though the takes start to resemble previous ones. Its like saying 'railroad' over and over. But I still have shot upwards of 8 takes for one scene, just because like mullen said, you didnt feel it or a techical error ruined the take. It is lame to do lots of takes, but much MUCH lamer if you get to post and find that you are working around not having any good takes. On the 8th take, maybe thats the one where you get the 15 frame reaction you needed. I say shoot until you get that warm fuzzy feeling that you got one or two good takes. make sure the focus puller and camera op agree. (they see little errors in operation you may not see on playback)

Be wary of no name brands (or even cheap name brands) at work we got a spirit head with a cartoni legs. The locks barely work, and the legs slip, even after much adjusting and tightening. We took it out of use after just 2 weeks.

Low con Polorizer Tobacco Grad Coral Grad. Ummmm, can I have more filters? no just 4? weak. alternate list: Low Con High Con 1/4 promist polorizer wow. this is really hard now that I think of it. just 4?

I think this comment shows how little you know about video tech (or how twisted your view on current technology is) VHS could barley provide 1/3 of the resolution or colorspace that an uncompressed SD signal could, and very suredly, an HD VHS would be worthless. Consumers have gotten used to the random access provided by DVD, along with the quality. Blu-ray or HD-DVD is the future (Blu-Ray I hope, just for its capacity and java capabilities) but like anything market decides. jim, your a good guy and I have gotten a lot of insight from some of your posts, but you are roasting this guy unnecissarily. Its unproven, nobody here is ready to sell their SR-3 for the Red, but yet you continue to bask in this guys failure (even though he has yet to fail or succeed.) I am hopeful he will be successful in providing another tool. But in the end who the hell really cares? If your shooting 24p or 60i you dont really change the way you shoot. If your shooting HD or 4K I doubt it would matter, or film vs video etc. You use the tools to get the look you want. Some looks are easier with one format or another, but (and this is the important part) if you get yourself too wrapped up in the tools, you forget we are here to tell storys for the eyes. I can recall shooting videos when I was young on a b/w camera that could only record if hooked up to a VHS recorder. I think the story still came through, even if it was amaturish. Thats the key. I think I could make a movie on nothing more than a camera phone if I wanted too. i guess what Im saying is ease up on JJ, hes honestly working hard in a difficult and ologopoliptic environment (I know I cant spell ologopoly, but I know what one is, and what makes it so hard to break) we should be cheering him on. The more people we have trying to advance our field, the better it becomes.

you dont neccisarily need a new lens. Some 16 lens' can cover the whole frame without vinetting. Stay away from wides, of course, but I would at least test the lenses I have availible before buying new sets. Also some places will convert some of the agneuxies and other lenses into super 16 lens. Note that with most of these, it does increase the focal lenght (a 12-120 might becoem a 15-125 or so) I am not sure what the change in view angle would be, as the super 16 frame changes the angle weather or not you upgrade your lens. If you get the S16 upgrade, talk to your tech about those options as well.

If your talking about actually marking the vf with a china marker or something similar, one thing I have found to work (and this depends on equipment you have availible) you can go into photoshop and create the framings lines you want with the aspect ratio you want in a 4:3 window. Dub that onto a tape and play that through the vtr function on the camera, then use the china pens to trace the outline. perfect center framing. now if you want a digital line, your on your own.

If its already on computer, why are you trying to film it? (also, how do you plan on filming it? just shooting the monitor?) Seems if its high quality raster, or vector animation, couldnt you just render out to a HD, 2k or 4k file and send that out for a laser print? Seems like that would be quicker, easier, and maybe even cheaper than trying to do it on a still camera (and definatley cheaper than printing out each frame and photographing it.) I guess we need a little more info to give advice. we know the equipment, but I think few of us are animators. Sorry, i just saw the part where you said you dont have the money to film out. If its for festival, is there anything wrong with showing an HD cut? there is no worry about highlight handling, video look etc. so actual film may not impart any advantages. Sorry, i just saw the part where you said you dont have the money to film out. If its for festival, is there anything wrong with showing an HD cut? there is no worry about highlight handling, video look etc. so actual film may not impart any advantages.

I think its funny that even though there is no camera around, david still refers to his desk lamp as a practicle. Shows just how wrapped up we get in this profession.

You have two options. You can buy a shotgun with an unballanced output. You wont find any with really high quality sound, but there are a few outhere that are decent. These mics are also much cheaper than a proper shotgun. If you have some money to kick around you can buy an adapter. They run somewhere around 200 bucks and require constant bateries. Add to that any XLR mic you want and a short unballanced line connects the two. I suppose you also have the option of getting an external recorder and record a double system, but given that wouldnt be required unless studio perfect sound was required.

If the lab has digi tape decks, they can handle rolling video over audio, and dubbing with sound. The question is how you communicate your decisions to them. Is there any chance you could edit with a non-linear and produce a machine-generated EDL that a computer could read and automate the edit? If its automated or near automated, you would get a much better rate than if a person has to interpret your list. A computer capable of that can be had quite cheap (and sold afterwards) you may even be able to borrow a friends computer, then you only need to get an old copy of adobe premiere.

Oh, I definatley plan on it :) I have been shooting negative and walmart proccessing up to this point because I can't meter properly. I get a baseline and guess, or maybe use the zoom to try and cheat my camera as a spot meter, but then I still have to estimate the zone based on the tone of whats being metered. leaves me with a very uneasy feeling. Also I want to get my light set ups at work done quicker and before I set up my camera (an old beta has a way of making every room just a bit smaller and harder to manage, and most talking heads I have to light for are in the smallest office possible) Alan: great advice I will definatley take it to heart. Spectras do measure incidence. They are marketed as cine meters. They also have a spot attachement I am looking at getting. In alaska we have a constant problem of clouds throwing spotty light on the mountains. Looks great, but if the mountains are sunny and the area your shooting your subject is under cloud cover, obviously there is an issue, especially if those mountains are covered in snow.

No lowell I know of has a heat cut-off or fuse. They are straight wired to the juice. We used to have some of the round 'scrims' built for the omnis, we bent those in two places to make a wrap around grill, but after a little bit of use they would bend and it would be difficult to mount them onto the tota. I have dropped using totas all together. In my head I avoid them unless there is no other solution that would work. They have way too much spill, get way too hot and are very hard to controll (any they explode? maybe thats why they have so many warnings on them about turning on without opening the doors, I myself have turned on totas like that, not for long, but someone in our shop did. We have a tota that has completley melted through the reflector and warped the whole unit, though it didnt explode) Sounds like the way you shoot, you need to look at HMIs or Kino-Flos. Both are expensive, but you need daylight at 64asa at an f8? Seems like a lot of light. I would recomend you look at changing something in your shooting, at least for people. What are your stills for? Are they blown up to rediculous sizes, or are you shooting an 8x10? I can't figure out why you need an f8 for people (a typical wide lens you would shoot a portrait on should have plenty of DOF to cover their face) and as far as the speed, it seems like the boost in sharpness and lack of grain would be marganilized by the softening caused by subject movement. Other than that can you get a tungsten based film? This would get you another stop or two of light (if your a photoshop guy, maybe you wouldnt mind shooting uncorrected and doing some color correction?)

Thats about what I got using a waveform and a grey card. What is your gama set at? I had a bit different results because I balanced tungsten and used a blue filter for daylight, but when you compensate for the filters light loss, I got pretty close to your reading.

So I finnaly bought one, a Spectra IV-A. Seemed like a simple enough unit, though it does calculate contrast ratios automatically. I love that because I try to minimize math on set. Since this is my first one I wanted to see if there were any tips on care of light meter, or when to get it serviced/calibrated etc. Any advice on using them would be good too. The basics I know, but if there are any cool tricks to apply a meter to, let me know. (I found it odd that when I logged on and clicked new posts, getting ready to post this, the first thing on the list was 'shooting 35mm tommorow sans light meter')

You can log onto B&H photovideo and see what they have. I think they have several frame kits (6x6, 8x8, 12x12 and 20x20) then with that you can hang either difussion or bounce or neg fill. They arent cheap though, but will be very durable, and easy to break down and most importantly, easy to rig up.

I don't know about all that. Did you see that mythbusters where they put several boxes of TNT into a concrete mixing truck(with about 4feet of dried concrete on all sides of the drum)? If they had shot that on film, it would have been the most cinematic explosion ever. It seriously released a shockwave that was visible from the dust it kicked up like in Sum of All Fears.

Check out Darren Aranofski (I know I probably misspelled his name, I appologize) commentary track on Requium for a Dream (also check out the DoPs commentary, its great) I believe he says what kind of cam mount it was. If memory serves I think they called it a Snori cam, and an eymo was mounted, but of course this is from memory so I could be wrong.

If you wanted to do it quick and cheap, you could get some 4x8 collapsible reflectors and mount them to a 4x20 homebuilt pvc overhead frame. Then 4 lightstands can prop it up above the set, and you can place your lights behind the set, maybe behind a speaker or something. This would aliviate saftey concerns, because the whole unit will be lighter than several 300w heads on a speedrail, and there is no electricty involved in the overhead. If you wanted a soft backlight, that would do it for about 20 bucks and whats on the grip truck.

The best way to describe the difference between Premiere and Pinnacle is its like the difference between a pro ENG camera and a mini-DV handycam. With Pinnacle, as with a handycam, you can get acceptable results in general, but to control the specifics of the program is difficult at best. Premiere gives a cleaner interface for cutting and managing a project. Its effects are more in depth than Pinnacle. As was mentioned earlier, Final Cut is good, but for the money I think either are great buys for someone who wants to get their feet wet. If you decide to persue it both will suit most of your needs for several years. As for a camera, some E-bay ads are new in the box cameras. I dont have any experience personally, but my roomate bought a package he was happy with through E-Bay. I would not buy a used one. Try the DVX-100(a or B) for shooting music videos you would get much better images from it (in my opinion) and if you get really into it you can always get the andromida upgrade.

I would sugest 60i, just because the event is very traditional, and you dont want 24p or 30p getting in the way (to some it might seem like lower quality video on a story like this) As to what you should shoot, that usually depends on whos paying. If its one parent, be sure to get their kid walking accross stage, if its a school, you may be asked to get everyone. Co-ordinate with the money-men and see what they want. Be sure to get lots of cut aways though. If you get 10-15 shots of the parents either before the cerimony, or during a dull moment, you can use those anywhere. Same with shots of the kids in the seats. If you have the freedom to get a variety of shots and dont need every kid walking accross stage, dont ignore the whole event. It is really easy to get wrapped up shooting the stage and sometimes you miss the best moments. Follow a kid from the stage until they walk to the stands and hug their parents. Get good moments from the kids celebrating their accomplishment (these moments are almost always off stage. Eitehr they run into parents, a teacher they had or other friends.) you can use tracks from the teacher and validictorian throughout the walk scene. If you set a mic on the podium and shoot continuously you would be free to get plenty of cutaways while still getting the sound bytes. Then you can work the most poigniant soundbytes into the walk, maybe with nats of the school band underneath. Its all a matter of how creative you want to get. Be shooting the stage when you need to be, but get stuff to cover the rest when they arent walking. If you get a chance, you can attend the graduation of another school in the district to see how the event unfolds, so you know what parts you need to be shooting.

Theoretically no, an optically pure glass plate will not induce a focus shift. You would note a small shift in sharpness, as every time you introduce more glass into the path of light, the sharpness is reduced. you may also note reduced contrast, especially if the glass is not well flagged/matte boxed. All these effects are relativley mild, and would be covered by the glass' filter effects (ei you would not see much reduced contrast from the glass itself in a frost or diffused filter, because lower contrast is part of the effect of the filter.) As for focus, the only way it could possibly throw off focus is if the glas were to warp, which is mostly unlikley. (unless you happen to have a scene inside a kiln, though at that piont glass would be least of your concerns.)

Tom Hanks in 'That Thing You Do' and Emilio Estaves in 'The Mighty Ducks (1)'. I had no direct contact with them (I was still in elementary school and was an extra in the scene shot outdoors in Orange County, where I lived at the time. It was earlier in the film, when they played outdoors on a stage modeled to look like a record of their single. The Mighty Ducks was at the final game scene, which interestingly enough was the first event (that I know of) to take place at the anaheim pond. I doubt it was built exclusivley for the film, I think the film was built to provide marketing for their new team. Anyway the experience of seeing the stars really didnt strike me that much. It was the cameras. By that point I had made 2 or 3 shorts on my RCA moviecam VHS camcorder. I was enamored by how the crews worked. everytime they would cut and I would see all the different people chatting, I tried to figure out what they were talking about, in a failed attempt to reverse engeneer the film for my own understanding. I watched as closely as I could, but that young it was hard to understand a lot of what was happening. It was a great experience though. That solidified for me where I wanted to be.

Shootist if your going to bash members like that....why not post your real name instead of some lame moniker? Your the only one with an attitude problem I can see. Hes probably very green, but it seems he has a lot of gusto, and the DP and director aren't complaining, so why do you gotta break balls? You have yet to give any qualifiers as to why you are the foremost expert on paintboxes. Maybe your just angry because your stuck where your at, probably more because of sub-par work and attitude, I would imagine. But you seem to think that paying your dues is about time put in. Its about quality produced and work ethic. It seems from the limited anonymous info we have on both of you two you we cannot make an educated decision as to where your both at.....so why not chill out and help the guy?

I'm confused, how are you planning on presenting this. You say 95% super-16, so I assume you will be projecting it for a large audience, if you do it on film are you going down to a matted 16 frame or are you blowing up to a 35mm frame? Or are you telecining the whole thing and presenting it on tape?