Dino Giammattei

As a compliment, not an alternative to microphones such as the KMR 81, 416, & MD421, you should consider a Bock 195. (Formerly Soundelux U195) It’s a mid priced microphone sold as an all purpose utility sound picker upper, and is a favorite of many recording engineers. I seem to recall it being mentioned as a good foley mic. I purchased one for home recording, but have found it useful in many applications. If something needs to sound big, this mic will not disappoint. Just make sure everything downstream is robust or this microphone will crush it. It’s equipped with a huge transformer that gives it a little extra mojo. YMMV… dino

This can be one of those problems you never see coming until you get on location. My mother was primarily a watercolor painter, but did work with oils and acrylics on occasion. I noticed early on that the morning sun hitting the paintings at an extreme angle would nearly obliterate the oil paintings. Oil and acrylic paints create what is really a three dimensional surface, made up of thousands of concave and convex areas. Depending on how shiny the paint and how heavily it is applied, you can get very dark shadows right next to really bright reflections. I’ve photographed hundreds of paintings for historical documentaries and the thickly applied palette knife styles always create problems for me. In galleries, I can just cover the opposite wall with foam core. I can see where this could really complicate a setup.

Can I use that... please? That's beautiful. ..d

Back in 84, working on Capitol Hill, I experienced a very uncomfortable thirty seconds by innocently using the words shoot and Kennedy in the same sentence. It’s funny now but… it wasn‘t then. I never really cared for the term before that, but since then I just don’t refer to myself as a shooter. Nope, won’t do it. ….Dino

Just this week I lost two 2K Ianero's that had been in place for years. The Hubbell twistloks between the fixture and the stinger just started dripping. And this was with 12g wire. The connectors just got oxidized I’m guessing. I’m now checking every light and stinger I have for signs of trouble. I should have been doing that all along I guess. My point is, you might get away with it for a while, or ten years in my case, but you could just as easily burn the place down tomorrow. I’ve also had problems when I was forced to daisy chain cords over a long distance. The number of connectors involved will have a profound effect. Four 25ft cables will be more problematic, especially at the connection points, than a single one hundred footer will be. Please be careful, we want you see you safely back here.. Old dino

+1 for this.. Sounds like a burnt or worn socket to me also. Especially if the fixture has been around for a while. As these things age, they tend to lose contact area, and trying to pass AC through a smaller and smaller contact area will create more and more heat until you get the situation your describing. Jerry's right.. Replace the socket and internal wiring. dino

Where I work, we use a Tanberg VXA tape machine. It's slow, and is a bit confusing to use, at least for a dummy like myself, but it does the job. It's also fairly inexpensive.

Is it too late to take a boat? Just kidding. Having spent the last 25 years hauling ridiculous amounts of TV gear on commercial airlines, I can tell you that it?s gotten to the point where I just freaking hate to do it. This new battery thing is such an unnecessary inconvenience, READ pain in the ass I assume that because the battery rule is so new, the agents are still getting used to it. On my last flight from San Antonio back to Virginia, I was sternly but gently taken aside to have my carry-on inspected. I got the distinct feeling that seeing the two dionics on the xray scared the bejeesus out of them. They certainly didn?t appear to know anything about any darn rule. I tried my best to tell somebody before, during, and after the scan that they were in there, but it got kinda tense for about five minutes . Hopefully, the TSA robots have been properly reprogrammed by now. All kidding aside, I?m always real nice to those guys. Doing a damn near impossible job definitely gets my respect. You should however immediately check out the official regulations about the way the battery must be packaged. If it doesn?t meet the requirements there?s a possibility it could be confiscated. dino

If I'm not mistaken, there were a lot of old guys that wouldn't give up their rack overs. Do the young folks now even know what that is? It's why they needed focus pullers in the first place. It's about a hundred years late in the process to be anti-technology. Inovations that enhance abilities are a good thing, as long as a skilled and gifted person is at the controls. If this crazy stuff is actually possible, then you know darn well, sooner or later some well meaning egghead will build it. Someone with respect within the industry will do something wonderful with it, and it will become the next standard. dino

Thanks Mariano, I imagine it's a bit warmer where you are. Here on the east coast of the U.S., my birthday nearly always coincides with butt freezing temperatures . I'm getting to the age where cold weather hurts. One of these years I should visit you on my birthday. d Even though I couldn't imagine turning over focusing duties to a computer, I could see the advantages of some sort of power steering for the focusing process. My limited experience with high def video has only re-enforced this feeling. Even in SD, the use of these huge panel TV's seems to make focus more critical. I'll be honest, I have had some difficulty in using the viewfinder to follow complicated focus shifts, or when instinctively following action. Even with a decent non HD monitor, I'm being fooled as to what I'm seeing. Is it just me? dino

From the half serious, answer department: With the way cosmetic surgery has almost become a requirement for an extended acting career, how much more trouble would it be to start implanting multiple micro devices under the skin. Perhaps a couple right between the actors eyes, and a few others at different places on the body. It would work like a tollbooth sensor. When excited by the cameras transmitter, the sensors would reflect a signal back to the focusing computer, running some fuzzy logic program. The software would not only extrapolate the distance, but also the position of the sensors, relative to the camera, and most importantly, to each other. That way, the movement of the actors head and body would be automatically compensated for. Now if we could implant something that would help them remember their lines, and work for peanuts, that would be something! It's my birthday, I can be silly if I want... dino

At this point, you should be learning a process, not necessarily any particular technology. So find something that makes pictures and work on learning how tell a story. Learning to organize, plan, and manage a shoot, is an important, even crucial skill that rarely gets discussed. For the most part, it stays the same regardless of the medium you are working in.. Obviously, if you get bogged down in logistics, your creativity will suffer. Establish good habits and techniques as part of the way you work. Do it now while you are in your formative years. It will separate you from the pack in the future. Learn your photography. Breaking the rules is OK. Not knowing the rules you're breaking is living on the edge of disaster. Make films any way you can, work hard, and most importantly maintain your passion, even when the $#!+ in your life makes it hard to do so. That's really what separates the brilliant people here from people like this old burnt out, bush league, junk yard dog. I think I learned my craft pretty well, but I may have learned way too late how important it is to follow my passion. I will always love this work, but the opportunities to do work I love are now almost non existent.. Get out there and find a way to make a film. Don't wait. Do it now. Don't get comfortable. Don't get lazy. Be obsessed. It's the most fun you will ever have. I promise. dino

Sir, you have touched a raw nerve with this subject, and I too am pretty pissed about it. Probably too much to even be writing this post. The conversion to digital has become a real problem for me in my little bush league part of the business. I don't have the technical background to know if the following statement is related to what you were referring to in your post, but since the facility I work at switched me from a BVW 600/Betacam SP to a DSR370/DvCam, my life as a videographer has become a very unhappy thing. I have had black level issues, among others, with these cameras from day one. The systems at work are sending component analogue into the NLE's off the DV tape. Why? I don't know. I noticed right off the bat that the black level was being crushed, but it took four months to convince the editors that something was wrong. They kept blaming my photography, or worse yet, not noticing that anything was wrong!. I finally insisted that they start paying attention to the damn waveform monitor! Lo and behold, everything was coming out at zero ire. They say that only a poor craftsman blames his tools, and I have always tried to take that to heart, but the misuse of this new technology, and the myth that "If it's digital, it must be better', coupled with expectations exceeding the limits of what people are willing to spend on the technology, makes this humble journeyman's life a living hell at times. This, and the lack of discipline in following the fundamental techniques, and total abandonment of anything close to getting decent flesh tones is starting to make me think that perhaps my time in this business is sadly coming to an end.. I've spent thirty plus years sweating and fretting over my pictures, trying to make people and things look the best and most appropriate for the scene that they can. I really don't know how long I can endure, or even remain competitive, in a business that espouses this quick and dirty, "fix" it in post and call it art, mentality. Funny, you would think I would feel better now, but I don't. dino

Working in the medical film making business, I've spent countless hours making pictures with steel in the shot. When shooting on location, the fore mentioned light placement and artistic use of reflections is the whole trick.. For product type shots in the studio, where detail is critical, I have come to rely on a lot of foam core and seamless paper. For your situation, which is much more involved, have you considered painting the ceiling gray? Chances are good that the ceiling will get into any downward camera angles anyway. Dropping the ceiling a few stops worth of gray paint would be a good way to control the brightest areas just a thought dino

You have me there Matt, I stand corrected. Somehow I got it into my head that we were comparing video to film. If the stills are digital, your right, it's a different story. You just made me realize that my dislike of miniDV and DvCam, may have more to do with the differences between the cameras than the recording media. I guess it's not surprising that a BVW600 with 2/3" chips is going to look different than a DSR570 with 1/2" chips. I'll say this though, I have a lot more trouble getting the picture to look the way I want since having to switch to DvCam digital cameras. On occasions where I'm able to use DigiBeta, I don't seem to have these issues. Again, this probably has more to do with the camera than the tape format. As for the original topic of this thread, It's still more an issue of technique rather than technology, isn't it? dino

It looks to be an entirely different lighting setup to me also. Another factor worth considering is that most studio strobes have considerably more pop than a your average portable tungsten light. If your using a softbox for the stills, perhaps acquiring a speed ring for your tungsten light would allow you to use the same setup for both photography and video. On top of that, remember that mini DV does strange things to your pictures. Because of the bizarre compression algorithms going on there, you may only be able to get a close approximation of your still shot. I don't know the capabilities of your camera, but I've matched between 35mm stills and a BVW600 Betacam by using HMI's or gelled tungsten, the daylight preset, and tweaking the color if necessary, in post. It really wasn't that much of a big deal. I think if you match the wonderful technique you used on the first shot, and WB that thing properly, you'll have no problems. You do very nice work? dino

In short? seafood display + hot quartz lighting x several hours = well done sushi. Quartz or HMI lighting was actually the plan at first. I came to the conclusion that for most of the shots, I would really need more depth of focus than I was going to get using anything but some serious lighting. The thought of ruining 70K worth of product scared the heck out of me. Besides, I grew up on the northeast Atlantic coast and can't stand the smell of rotting fish. dino

Barn doors. I was recently asked to do some still photography for a corporate client. Having not done any still work on a professional level in several decades, I was rather intimidated by the thought of having to reacquaint myself with the whole electronic flash thing. It made me realize that there's another big difference between still and motion pictures. Lighting techniques and equipment for stills is incredibly primitive compared to what we have in motion media. Everything is about big old softlights that blow out the background and make any real control difficult to achieve. It takes so much putzing around to get an electronic flash to be civilized. Measuring ambient light against the flash. Trying to finesse a pleasant looking picture from the harsh blast of a flash has been a real challenge. The thing I miss the most might be barn doors. It had never occurred to me that I take these little guys for granted. I will have to flag the dickens out of this setup to even get close to what I can do with a few fresnels. Yikes. dino g

To light a simple traveling sequence where the subject would be heard thinking to themselves, I needed to fill some time and the elevator gave us the opportunity to have the actor alone with their thoughts. It was a short scene that I broke down into three parts. After removing part of the ceiling lights to open up a place to hide some small fixtures. I attached foam core to the walls with loops of gaffers tape. Outside the elevator, I baselit the area with a softlight and a bounced Totalight to approximate the soft ambient lighting that was there. I then added a small Fresnel which was highly diffused, pointing straight into the elevator. As the doors open, and the actor entered the elevator, we secured the doors so they wouldn't close. At that point one of the assistants who was manning the Fresnel, brought together a couple of pieces of foam core wrapped in black wrap in front of the light. When the shadow of the foam core crossed actors face, and it became dark, it appeared to the camera as though the doors had closed. The process was reversed for the actor to exit. The actors blocking was crucial to making this work of course. The actual shot would be a single unbroken view of the subject entering the elevator, turning to push the button, thinking to themselves, then exiting the elevator.

Time Back a million years ago when I was a US Navy Combat Cameraman, we had a friendly war of words with the still photographers. They would say that us mo-pickers would shoot a hundred feet then look for a bar. It was actually the truth for many of them. I would counter that a still photog only has to be a photographer for a hundredth of a second at a time. dino

I have found that for my purposes, even the factory ½ warm card is like whacking the picture with a hammer. I scanned and PS'd several versions of the ½ and cut the chroma. I now use those more than the factory cards. If they made a quarter, eighth, and even sixteenth, I would buy them in a minute. The finish on the real cards is almost indestructable. Really a great product, just needs a few more options. Tired Old Dino

If you use anything with wheels, try laying down several layers of indoor/outdoor carpeting. You can always find scraps of this stuff if you try. It has the interesting effect of dampening the tiny vibrations that ruin the look of a moving shot. It also creates a little drag on the wheels that helps in maintaining a consistent speed, . I have used this with everything from office chairs and wheelchairs, little kid wagons, to my favorite improvised dolly, a large heavy industrial flatbed cart with pneumatic tires. Of course the dolly grip, or grips, have to practice the move a gazillion times, and you have to be prepared to do a bunch of takes, but I've saved a ton of time and money for people doing this. WARNING: This can work so well it might get you on the wrong side of the real dolly operators. One individual still won't speak to me, and it's been seven years. old uncle dino

It's the no image in the fiewfinder that gives me a bad feeling. I can't think of a sony product where it isn't automatic. Stupid question number 847... Did you actually record anything? I know that I have scared the .... out of myself by FFding past pix into empty tape, then forgetting I did it. Hit review, see nothing, change shorts... dino

I spend much of my life working under just these conditions. Messing with a couple to a dozen four foot lamps in somebody else's place just isn't an option sometimes. Assuming it's either overheads or darkness, I prefer fooling the WB for longer shots but play it more honest with portrait framing shots. I own a popular white balancing and WB fooling system and actually ended up modifying them to decrease their effect. Those clever folks should add an eighth and sixteenth versions to their system. I use them more than the originals! What ever you do for the close to the camera lighting, use some bits of color in the background on everything. Warm or cold as needed. Gels ain't that expensive, and short of blowing the budget at the rental house, a little ingenuity can get you some very nice looking stuff with todays cameras. DinoG

In my very humble opinion, I would suggest that most any decent incident meter would be the first thing to own. If you want to add something like a spot meter later, it may fit the way you work. This old junk yard dog wouldn't know how to light without a disk and globe to do ratios. Seems to me that esoteric meters are more for final exposure calculations, and the trusty incident meter is what you use to paint your lighting.