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Michael Collier

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Everything posted by Michael Collier

  1. Your asking a variable question. Can you light 100T with 7000 watts? Sure you can, but you might not be able to if you wanted an ultra soft look. A watt is only as good as the modifiers it goes through. If its uncorrected undiffused tungsten acting as a key, you might be able to get away with that. If you have an idea of what style and stop you would like to work in, a rough equation can be done based on what you have acheived before. You said you liked the vision 3. IIRC V3 only has its 500T out, 5219. So assume you wanted to replicate looks you have done in that format. If your going for 100T then you must assume at least 2-3 stops more light needs to be used. So if you used 5,000 watts to light a scene, you can (in macro view of the way light works) need as much as 20,000 watts to get a similar look. This isn't always true and you can't set up the same lighting, but multiply every light by 4 and expect it to be the same, but it will give you the ballpark of where you need to be looking. If you might key a scene with a 2K through a chimera for 500T, you might then need a 10K of bounce (since you won't find a 10K rated chimera AFAIK) to get a similar result.
  2. Try a source four. Best to start with a super hard light first, then back it off.
  3. In addition to that, you might also want to consider letting the light fall off the back layer. If it falls to black and you leave negative space in the back, then the brain can fill in and assume there are people there too. You can modivate the light fall off by assuming the light that hits the crowd is coming from the stage and would naturally fall off quickly
  4. Glad to see you got it sorted. Another way would be to import them into final cut, arrange them their, then export the XML file, and import that XML into color.
  5. I have heard (though I have no evidence to support it) that most likely if a kino bulb is not doing well in an archetexual fixture, its likely that the ballast is old. Green and flicker might be a result of an older ballast not supplying the propper voltage/frequency to drive the floros. I think in those cases it maybe likely that normal tubes would present with the same issues. I would be interested to hear if this is true or not, and if anyone has any evidence of it.
  6. Ah good catch with the soundy on mixer. Didn't see that. I think I got a similar pic at a different time of day when there was a lens change going on, maybe thats what I am thinking of. If hes mixing then its probably the love scene when the set was locked off, so hes sitting waiting for a call from the first. I take it back, hes spot on in this pick. I am sure me and ryan are just out of frame waiting for Hardwick to call for something (waiting by crafty though, like a smart grip) And yes, with the G&E list we had on that pic, it would be VERY difficult (or damn near impossible) to ND the windows and pull off a DFN look, or even a balanced DFD with the look out the window. But keep in mind all the daylight units we had on that pic was a single 800 joker and a couple of Kinos with daylight tubes. If you were to ND the windows for a DFN look, yes you would need A TON of light inside to outshine the inside. But it could be done as simply as a 6k (depending on room size, ceiling height, etc) into some ultrabounce or something like that to bring the ambient up enough to keep the dark out of the heel, and then just a few other units to add keys and highlights here and there. The important thing is to maintain a VERY high exposure level inside, and to be ready to change the exposure inside to compensate for what the outside is doing. edit** re-read your post bergstrom, I think you misunderstand me. Yes its a bad idea to use two nets in frame to cut light, because of the moire effect that can create. Even with the nets well outside the DOF moire patterns can still cause problems. What I was saying was not to put a double and a single outside the window to cut light, my point was to put the scrims on the lights themselves on the inside, all of them. If the cloud is jumping in and out, you won't have time to add or remove any kind of window treatment outside, so the only solution is to have the lights increase or decrease output to adjust. So I was saying when you light, start with the double & single scrim or even a double dub in the lights themselves, so that once its lit if the sun outside should peak out from a cloud and get brighter, you can quickly pull one or both scrims from the light and compensate the inside exposure to match the change outside. Thats what I was getting at, to build flexibility and speed on set into your light plan.
  7. Note the 2d AC on the apple box by soundy. Hmmmm, shouldn't chris be helping his dept? If I remember right they were in the middle of a lens change when that pick was taken. either way, whoever put together that tent must be GODS AMONG MEN! (my ego keeps me warm at night) If your intent on NDing windows (and come on guys, if he's DP on this, you know as well as I he won't bend on the desire to see out the window. Tyrants know their own) I would start at ND 18 but the key is to balance the light inside. You might need quite a lot of light to get the light where you want it. If you don't want to ND and 85 the window, you can choose to shoot uncorrected tungsten and grade that halfway back into a moon look. That would be my preferance because multiple sheets of gel can catch all kinds of reflections and headaches. Nothing outside will be right with more than one sheet. My approach would be to first ND the window with the heaviest single sheet of ND you can get. Then start to light with a double (or even a double and a single) scrim in every light (assuming the sun is out when lighting, if its behind clouds, light with the lights clean) I would also put a 12x12 or 20x20 black on top of the roof (assuming first story window) to cut any direct sun light that might hit the window sill or punch into the room. I would then shoot a grey card or mcbeth through 1/2 CTB (assuming light with 5600, no 85 on window with tungsten film) Keep in mind you will probably have to ND the lens to get to the stop you want and use a LOT of light to balance the scene to the outside, even with heavy window ND. It is possible, tents are for those who lack cahones (sp?) oh, I forgot. The reason to light with a double or a single and double in light is so that if the light does pop behind a cloud you can take the scrims out, and stop your camera down and it should match exposure, though of course contrast outside will change. The top cutter over the window should keep the light punching through the window consistent regardelss of sun/overcast situation. and looking at that pic again.....someone tell that 2d to get off his ass and do something.
  8. Love the look of the car's lighting, except the buildings reflection. Did you not want to put a floppy cutter on top of the car, or does the reflection hold significance to the story? i also dig the top light on the first pic. It really brings out his cheek bones (which I assume you were going for, since a guy like that would need lighting nominaly to reduce cheek bones) and makes him look foreboding.
  9. in addition to Rys advice, if you are close to an actors face and slating, call 'soft sticks' instead of slate or mark. Also make sure to clearly say the scene and take number, then if theres multiple cams call A mark or B mark, etc. If the sound dpt has a mic on their stand, they might punch in and audio slate the take, so all you'd have to say is A mark. Make sure you don't move the slate itself when marking. its a common first time mistake to pull the slate as your marking, as was said before hold it for a second after mark. Its best to hold the slate with four fingers and push the clapper down with your thumb, that way its likely the slate will stay mid-frame and steady when you slate. If your doing tail slates, then clearly announce after 'tail slate' and hold the sticks upside-down as they enter frame. Hold for a second then turn it right side up and mark it. Its also good to check with scripty periodically to make sure you both have the same shot, take and roll number. errors there won't be picked up until post, and you may never hear back on it.
  10. Thanks for all the suggestions! great to hear all the great advice. I took a lot of it to heart, but had to discarded most of it due to budget concerns. Truss was my first idea, but a no go since it was too costly. The crank ups, great idea, too costly (and there aren't any in state, so I would have had to ship those) As it was I built the overhead on the ground to see how it would handle the weight before running it up. It did indeed bounce when I was working on lights, but people walking around didn't start them swaying. Once the grid was up it looked rock solid. The stands were easily able to hold the weight without slippage, and the light was BEAUTIFUL. 16x4' of soft wrap with three backlights carefully flagged to create the illusion of parrallell backlight (the overhead was close, so spread had to be handled by many units. I did ditch the 650 arri in favor of omnis, since the omnis are so much lighter, and they were in the middle of the span. I did carefully restrict access to the light grid for saftey concerns. I even had to tell the GM not to stand directly below it (and beyond the bright orange caution tape) Other than that it went off without a hitch and without me worried at all. The real issue of the night for me, I was running around with steadicam flying for 2 1/2 hours STRAIGHT! Never got a chance to put it on post, except to change monitor batteries and tape. I only ever got two bottles of water, and they were gone in seconds. That night a beer and a soft couch were my best friend. Best of all though was that the clients stage looked the most professional and well funded, and thats even trumping the station who has a 60% share in the market. The light actually drew more people to our stage, like moths. Not bad for a number 3 rated station. All night long I heard 'what are you putting on a rock concert?' I said yes, we are mounting the disco ball next. **edit** Forgot to mention, it was 1 1/2" speedrail mounted onto jr. pins on hi-hi rollers, 2 12' spans coupled with sleeves, shot baged to all hell.
  11. From the last Red shoot I was on (not as DP sadly, though the DP was very very talented and a pleasure to work for) we would use hard drive with out issue all day. The only time we would go for CF was a situation where vibration was expected (shooting from airplanes, card mounts on hostess trays, etc) Also make sure your tripods are beefy. I was not expecting a camera as heavy as it is. The first AC put it on my shoulder once, and I was very surprised. I was expecting 25 lbs or so, its heavy, so get good sticks. From what I saw it handles low light pretty well. As I said I wasn't DP or gaffer, so I wasn't taking readings by meter, but it seemed like he was finding exposure with very little light. As with all digital cameras, underexposure is your friend. You can push shadow detail out easier than with film in post, but pulling highlights gets very difficult (though less difficult with raw compared to a recorded signal that has been placed in a color space) and as always a clip is data lost. Use the on board meters (histogram, waveform, etc)
  12. your in a car and your worried about modivation? you can use virtually ANY color you want and call it modivated. Some cars have dashes that are blue, some green and others red/bastard amber. The list goes on. You could modivate light from an external source, like a streetlamp or the moon. I personaly do not mind the light coming from the moon, especially if they are in the forrest with no light at all, not even dash if that were the case. I did a show where thats all we did, because obviously the car was a 1957 with no dash lights, and there were no street lights, so moon was the only modivated source. You could also choose to light with dash/dome lights and just put a kiss of moon light as a subtle kicker. Your question it seems is in two parts. First which is better modivated, second what is easiest. To me, there are times to stick to modivation, then there are times to stick to the color palate you and the director have worked out previously, and have art dept. help you modivate the color you want. Look at a scene like the stabbing in Goodfellas. It could have been modivated by moon easily, it could have been streetlight (the horizon glow as they approach if I recall was orangeish.) they could have had a busted tail light and used that to modivate a white light. But Scorsese and Ballhaus probably wanted to represent the first death on screen (and the death that leads to the fallout between the Henry and Conway, and Tommy's death) dramatically so they planned to modivate really saturated red light from the tail lights. Not always do you have to modivate the colors based on whats real, its always better to consider the motifs and idea behind the script and modivate the image to look the way you want it AND still be logical and reasonable. Two sides to the coin, and your art dept in this regard is you best friend. modivation and motif is a symbiotic relationship, you must choose which wins out in your planning. As for easiest, the way you have it worded is a bit funny, but if I understand correctly you want to balance the light to the outside temps and want to know if its easier to start at 32 or 56. If it were me, I would start by figuring out what the temps of the real light is (the ones you can't change) and figure out how you want them to render. In seperate movies I have shot sodium vapor with tungsten and daylight balanced, its a matter of how you want the color and saturation to render in those lights to which you cannot change the output. Figure that out, then light from there. Your dealing with a small area so I would decide based on the look your going for, and the stop you want. 32 would probably be cheapest and easiest, since you don't have to be so careful about power, the temps are more stable and generaly a tungsten unit is easier to work with than dealing with all the quirks of HMI. That would by my approach, but I am sure all DPs have a thought proccess and a rationilization of why they do what they do that would be just as long to explain as that. Ah to be a DP...theres a million ways to skin a cat, but only mine is right. Or put another way, whats the difference between a DP and God? God doesn't think hes a DP.
  13. My keygrip is on a shoot, and I have to light a live remote set for election central (local primaries TV coverage). Because of a lack of baby source-4s, I am modifying my plot at the last minute to have both my backlights and key lights on one speedrail bar behind talent about 15 feet up. The source 4s I can only find pipe clamp mounts, so I figure If i put my backlights on the bar, I still have room to place the source-4s and shine them on 4 4x4 bead boards mounted on a speedrail in front of talent. I need to do about a 20'-24' span on both bars, mounted on high rollers, and I need to know the speedrail can support the weight. I want to mount (3) 650 arri frennels and (6) source 4s (25-50 degree jr. zoom source 4), all spaced equally (s4 , 650, s4, s4, 650, s4, s4, 650, s4) along the middle 12 feet of the span. heres the kicker though, I couldn't find 20' of speedrail in town, so I am leaning towards renting two peices of 12' and joining them with a coupler. Given the weight and span, do you think that would be safe? My keygrip hopefully will get back to me, but I can't pressure him when hes off on his other gigs. what is the weight loading rating on a speedrail setup like that?
  14. Yeah, thats exactly what I have done in the past. Its nice if you can get art dept. to either give you a fake ceiling to hide the cable, or a broken pattern to run the wire up the wall and along the ceiling. that only works if the spin is fast enough/lens is long enough that the background will blur out the whole shot.
  15. Well it all depends. I have had the good fortune of doing several of these shots before so there are a few questions you must answer first. what is the lens height compared to the hight of the actress compared to the focal length compared to the radius of the track.....or more simply put, will you see all of the ceiling during the length of the 360, is there a small circle in the center that won't be seen? is there a small circle in the center that will be seen, but the rest won't since the camera is so low? is there a radius on the floor that won't be seen? Figure out where the camera sees and does not. Place your lights where they cannot be seen. Place any practicles that make sense where they can. Practicles will save you in that kind of setup. If your hitting a brick wall, you might suggest a higher angle, etc to give you a small alcove unseen to work in, but as always thats the directors discression to give you that leaway. I have been stared straight in the eye and told....figure it out. We need it to be this shot. Those are the shots you always thank the director for later, even if your scratching your head and frustrated in prepro. Also see what can be done practically. I had the misfortune of doing one where most of the ceiling was seen, all of the walls and most of the floors were seen, and it was night, so no punching light through a window. For that shot since there was a small (3' radius) circle that was not seen, we set up everything in that space. I had two 650s on one nail-on plate (the second one was a maffer clamp to the baby spud between the plate and the light) and two more nail on plates ajacent to it with 250s on squeezers. Also to maintain a broken light patter established in earlier shots I had an open frame with a paper tape pattern tapped to the ceiling. All the cables were bound together and hung in the coolest area we could find. Then two stingers were run in a natural break up area (one that was not noticable due to art direction. Then to add a little interest to the shot I laid a kino flow on the floor just near the deck of the turntable, opposite the key light. Great looking shot, pain in the ass to set up...luckily for me it was the martini shot the last day of that show. oh, and if you use a camera light, it means you can make your lighting a bit more dramatic without loosing detail in those tricky parts of the spin. Good luck.....360s are fun and a pain. Enjoy both parts.
  16. My favorite recipe for this kind of look has always been some combination of plus green and CTB. Generally I would use 1/2 CTB, full plus green, but depending on saturation I am looking for, I have gone as high as full + 1/2 CTB, and double + 1/2 plus green. usually I prefer to use about twice as much green as blue, but that ratio also varies. as with any gel recipe, test to see what you like. The super saturated look I last used the recepie for may not be the same look you need for your project. I tend to avoid using poor quality floros with the green built in unless I want a practicle to have the color without adding a bunch of (expensive, ugly) gel tubes, since poor quality tubes can vary even between tubes of the same ilk. Also for a more stylized, less realistic rendering of a similar color, I have always LOVED calcolor cyan (comes in 30, 60 and 90.)
  17. You could also use just one key light, and use two double nets to cut the light off the forehead and lower part of the face. Also you could use a source-4 and use the blades to shape the light, if you want a hard light. If you want the light quality softer, I would just use one key and two 3x doubles farther away from the light.
  18. Looking good David! I just gripped a feature for DP Michael Hardwick shot on two reds, and we were on 16. From talking to him and the 1st AC it sounded really stable, even back then (about a month ago).
  19. Dimmers always change the color tempature of any tungsten unit. No way around that. If you dim the lights that light the greenscreen, it will introduce more value in the red channel and the key won't be as clean. Now if your talking about light that only hits the subject and not the green, then its fine, it will warm your subject and your key will be easy. Otherwise avoid dimming. Put a scrim in there or light diffusion to control output. When I have too many scrims (any more than two usually) I find a frame of opal works to knock down the light without softening it too much. Although if you already have two doubles or a single and a double, you and your gaffer might want to talk about switching the unit altogether, since your so far off exposure.
  20. Frame looks good. The only suggestion i have is to leave one end open, especially for the nets. Its common to have the net cover only part of the beam (otherwise you might use a wire scrim) and its best if the frame itself doesn't cast a shadow. usually you have 3 sides to a frame in metal, and one side made of thin wire to hold the net securely. The exception is of course solids, with solids they are 4 sided (or open frames, very usefull to have a few opens around.)
  21. This winter I had some productions where we used HMIs in the cold, down as far as -25 (f). From my experience I can tell you that you don't need scrims when shutting down those lights (up to 1200 par). They never even got warm. The only pain of shooting that cold is the header cables freeze up and refuse to be coiled, and you can't put the header cable on certain head units with gloves on...not good when touching metal could mean instant frost bite.
  22. I have always found those appendages usefull when hand holding a flag while waiting for a grip to stick it. You want to see what the flag/net/silk is doing to your light without throwing your own shaddow, so it makes sense to have a small square of metal to give you directional control while hand holding. Plus if you hold that spot when a grip does indeed stick it, you have less chance of having part of your hand caught in the gobo. anyway, thats why I thought they are on there. Maybe they are there for the same reason Forrest Gump was named Forrest. To remind us that sometimes we do stuff that, well, just don't make no sense. I will second the baby-spudded vice clamp for cool grip tools.
  23. If your wrapping 4 minutes early, you know your doing something wrong....you should have made the gaffer throw up a redhead on the pin pointing away from the scene, and the grips put a 12x12 solid directly in front of it. Sounds like a great little short. rediculous shooting ratio. Its great that you brought it in, and still have film for another one.
  24. I have always done time of day as tc on set if I am running a double system. If not then I go with record run that hopefully holds its continuity throughout production (if not its not a big deal, its just nice for roll A001 to have a low tc, and the last roll to have the highest tc). I keep tapes logged with roll numbers, so that scripty can make notes that conform. If there are two cameras, it usually means there is a double system, and I try and jam all cameras to eachother and to audio tc (or better yet have them hard wired to a genlock so they are always in phase). Then I give each of the rolls numbers based on their camera (roll A42, B27). As long as the tape number, scene and take corresponds to the scene, take, camera and roll in scriptys notes, then TC should be useful no matter what the tc actually is. TC at that point will be to sync audio and to redigitize media.
  25. There seems to be two different flavors. One that bolts directly to the camera or cheeseplate, and the style that adds handles to the forward rails. I have always prefered the latter, and that will more than likely be your best bet if you don't know which specific camera you'll run. just stay away from cavision. Bought some of those for a short project that just needed rails added, and the handles were sort of an afterthought. The rail adaptor worked well, but the rails were carbon (not good in very cold alaskan winter) and one rail was way too big, making the build frustrating. I've always been a big fan of zacuto. Last red project I worked on they had the red handles but never used them, the AC commented that they slide too easily and don't lend a feeling of security.
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