James Steven Beverly
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Posts posted by James Steven Beverly
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This is a little off topic but what is everyone using for sound recording? I've seen a lot of Nagra's on sale on Ebay and they seem to go high. I thought the whole world had gone digital especially when it came to sound yet these old reel to reel analogue machines seem to bring good money. What's the deal?
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Unfortunately, as the sensors improve in quality, they start to show up the deficiencies of the attached lenses. And it's really hard to make high-quality lenses to work with the tiny sensors that are appearing in consumer camcorders.
Your right about that, glass is everything. Did anyone hear about those new expeimental lenses though, that were suppose to work like an organic lens and actually change shape. They're suppose to revolutionize camera design and allow for much better images from a smaller diameter lens
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The big problem with taping filters, even if you can get out all the flaring and light leak issues, is that is not a fast operation. How do you think the 1st unit DP will look at you as he waits while you tape on the next filter? Time is money.
Good point.
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Why not? If you don't have the money to make a 2 or3 minute trailer it could show your investers you have put some tought into the project and know what you want to do with it. Detailed storyboards was one of the reasons NewLine funded Lord of the Rings w/ Peter Jackson (a small time director at the time) at the helm.
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I'm fabrication a set of support rods for my mattebox now and may frbrcate a sheet metal lens hood (Bellows) to attach to the existing plastic Cokin hood for better light control. It is good to know I can tape my screw in type filters to the lenses,. I am a bit concerned though, I just didn't want a dp or the 2nd unit director to look at me like I fell off the turnip truck. Is ther any established ediquete in this area, i.e. jury rigged equpment?
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Well, I got some information from Clive at Tobin Canera Systems. He did some research and recomended the same thing as everyone else did, use 6 volt batteries in parrellel, however he did recommend something novel for a power supply, a 5 volt, 20amp computer power supply, He said it was the cheapest way to go. He said it would run slow, 5/6s as fast as a 6 volt, but would work so I guess to get to 24fps you would just adjust the motor to a higher indicated frame rate and watch the tach. I just thought I would share this information and ask if anyone has tried this. annother thing do watts make a diffence in any way? (something I forgot to ask Clive). Thanks
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It definatly makes a defference. I was on a shoot where Carl Weathers was directing and accidentally put the arm on backwards while building the video village. The french DP quickly tured it around with the comment "Come on! Zis is Grip 101" right in front of the Key Grip. I was enbarresed and he was embarressed, fortunately tyhe DP was too buzy to be pissed and I didn't get fired but I heard about it all day.
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I only payed 1 cent litterally plus 12 bucks shipping for it so I'm not really out anything. I haven't done a scratch test on this camera and I wanted to practice loading the dreaded Konvas mags, so i'm sure it's OK for that purpose. I'd rather screw up old worthless film then ruin good stuff with a mistake. It said in the ad it was old film, I just didn't realize it was THAT old.(':D', 'smid_4')
:D
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Is there a snowball's chanch in Hell that some Kodak 5247 from 1979 is still viable?
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Rodriguez it Rodriguez and you are you. You have to find your own way. But your right, discipline is not something that comes naturally to everyone, it's something that for most people, creative one especially, has to be developed. Try baby steps first, work 15 minutes a day no matter what and longer when you feel like it, at the same time of day or as close to the same time as possible. Let everyone know, this is YOU TIME TO WORK. No interruptions no distractions. After 2 weeks, go to a half hour, and so on, and so on, until your working 2 to 3 hours a day. If your problem is you have trouble coming up with original story lines and ideas, well then, welcome to Hollywood! A lot of films are adapted from books and other source materials. Go to the library and find something you want to make into a film. I know Steven King has been very generious to young filmmakers with some of his shorter works, sometimes allowing them to option the property for as little as a dollar. Write the authors, ask them if you can use their material, I meant what have you got to loose. Or find something in public domain. Look at all the Jane Austin stuff that's been done. Work on more that one idea at a time, if you get mired in one script, try looking a different one with fresh eyes for a while. Lay out the story structure instead of writing dialogueonce in a while. Sometimes a storyline and stucture will lend it'self to telling you what the charatures have to say in order for that scene to work. Ask yourself "What's the purpose of this scene. How does it move the story along. Is the dialogue truthful, the charactures speaking to one and other in a way that seem natural and what does each one want and how does this dialogue achieve that goal" and finally "Is this cinematic" because a movie with out sound are still a movie but a movie without picture is called radio. Try skipping a scene your stuck on and write one you've imagined for later or earlier in the story (the old index card method), sometimes it's easier to work backwards to find where you charactures and dialogue have to go in order for a sequence or the entire script to work. Go back and read a few scenes prior to where you've run into the block and let your mind wander, sometimes the next line will just pop into your head and sometimes the reason you get blocked is you took a wrong turn somewhere and you have to rewite an earlier scene to stay on track and make the later one work or maybe your just too close to the material and have to roll into it the get started again. I have a screenplay based on Robin Hood that I haven't finished the third act for because although I know in general what happens I hadn't come up with enough compelling details to warrent continuing at this point. so I set it aside, as I did when I had the same trouble with the 2nd act. I'll read it again at somepoint down the road, fall in love with it again and finish it when I'm ready. Above all scripts are made in the rewrites. If something is crap remember, It's a computer not a stone tablet, get it "on paper" and move on. Noone uses a first draft as the shooting script that I've ever heard of, and if they did, there are changes made to it during prodution, you can be sure. Be tenatious, like Cmdr. Peter Quincy Taggart said in Galaxy Quest "Never give up! Never surrender" and as Speilberg once said"Thank God for the 5th draft"
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I have the solution OVEN MITS!!!(':D', 'smid_4')
:D
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Does anyone have comments or expirence w/both true hd camcorders and HD cine camera. Also I notice a dramatic drop this last year in the price of used sony hdw-700s and 900s I wonder if true HD for the masses can be far behind.
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I see your username is well chosen, your position maybe less so.
If you mean the DP description below my handle, I 'm not sure how the "of Photography " got on there. I'm a director , writer, actor , video editor and a producer-theatrical and video, but I am definately NOT a DP, grip or gapher. These are things I feel I'm lacking in and am trying to learn in order to be a BETTER director. I am a novice at film, have worked 3 films as a grip, and assisited a gapher on 1, but I have done a lot with video and edited a feature shot on video as well as many other thing. I actually have spent a lot of time on this board trying to learn the things I don't know about film, which would probably fill a library. So your correct, I should change that entry on my profile. It's just something I haven't gotten around to doing yet, but be that as it is. The information you gentlemen have provided thoughly answers my questions. I passed up a deal on some fast film I now know I should have bought. Thanks to your instruction, I won't let that happen again
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never listen to people who don't spell correctly. do listen to people who don't capitalize, however.
jk
Spelling was never my strong point, but I have been directing, writing and teaching acting for a while. I've had several plays produced although I never show them to anyone without running them thpugh spellcheck first., 'smid_3')
:)
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Why would the lens on the camera affect whether a stock works in the camera? It's two separate issues.
If anything, being only able to use a slow lens may make using fast stocks unavoidable from a practical standpoint, but there is no reason why a camera would only run a slow stock but not a fast one, or vice-versa. A few 16mm cameras need to run double-perf stocks instead of single-perf stocks, but the speed of the stock doesn't physically affect the ability of it to run through a camera, nor would the lens on the front of the camera hinder the film stock mechanically in some way.
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I missundersood what Fast meant. I thought, for some some reason, that fast film meant it was more light sensitive and therefore need lenses capible o a wider range of f-stops. Thanks for clearing that up.
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I want to be brutally honest with you. Please take nothing I say as an attack. It is meant to give you an unfiltered critque of your work so that you can take whatever you feel is valid from it and use this information to make your next film better. It is just my opinion, but here it is. This script made absolutely no sense, especially after reading the description next to the screen. It looked to me like it was a scene taken from a larger film. I think the overall style was an atempt to go Terrintino-eque that simply did not work and that honestly just looked like a watered down version of some else's vision. The pacing left a lot to be desired and the acting was, well bad. The quick cuts at the beginning seemed to have no purpose. It's like you didn't trust yourself enough to simply stay on the actors for any length of time. Maybe you had to cut it like that because these were the best line readings they gave but it distracted from the action rather than enhansing it. The shot with the gun pointed at the camera was especially out of place. I think if you had continued with the slow dolly shot in the opening seconds when the gun and bad guy comes into frame from their hidden postion behind the prisoner and had them pick up the pace in their line reading, it would have been much more effective. The guy who was about to get shot didn't seem to care that he was about to get shot. When being dragged to the car he didn't struggle or look for a way out or even look particularly bothered or annoyed. Some direction giving him more specific subtext for his characture would have channeled his preformance into some more consistant and believable with a stonger impact. The lighting was inconsistant as well, at times so dark, that what little emotion there was in the actor's faces, was obsured and lost. A bit more of a Key light inn this situation would have helped. The first shot from inside the trunk was just plain disorienting, screwed up the pace of the scene during those few moments and was completely unnessesary. I can't figure out why you put it in. The light in the truck was distracting even when the truck opened. It should have been totally dark, held for a 1/2 beat or so, then the light should come on as the trunk opens, lighting the faces of the 2 guys for a reaction shot, (a small focused Key doing the actually lighting on the actor's faces) or lose the interior light completely and the trunk opens to reveal the scene outside, again for the reaction shot. There were moments where you lose camera focus walking to the car. The musical bangs when the guys got out of the car were interesting but probably belonged in a misic video more so than this piece. They just seemed contrived and again, distracted fron to menace that should have been created by the men geting out of the car. The girl turning out not to be dead was predictable and seemed like just some sort of cheesy "hook" to end the piece instead of making the effort to find something interesting and original to say. I would have felt much more fulfilled if the bad guy had simply slammed the trunk closed as a cheshindo to his vigillanty justice or had turned to the girl and gently caressed the dead woman's face while he softly sobbed or better yet tried to hold back his tears as the screen slowly faded to black then right as the screen went dark a deafing gunshot rings out and we know the prisoner is dead. The dialoge didn't come off as odd, just incomplete, and somewhat lacking it truth. There was no relationship established between the charactures other than they knew each other. In the beginning had you added a line or 2 to the effct of..."She was my wife." "Yeah but she was my mother (or girlfriend from the girl's age)" or something like that, the relationships whould have been defined. Had her characture really been dead from a beating, the audiance would have understood why the bad guy did what he did and possibly even sympathize with him, after all He did somethinng we all might have done under those circumstanses, in addition you make a statement about a topical subject that the audence can relate to. The color pallet was nice but the black most of the charatures wore, tended to make their body definition dissappear and give them more of a genaric quality. They became less indevidual and more caricartures. The next film you do, remember the old adage "STORY, STORY, STORY" . The girl looked attractive but the way you dressed her, made her look frumpy and the white seemed out of place and distracing, A pretty dead girl gains instant sympathy and attention from an audeance so you lost that oportunity. If you wanted blood to show up use light colors within you pallet not white. Adding a tight med shot of her and maybe a C.U. or 2 from the prisoner's P.O.V. might have helped people care about her. Also directing the bad guy to be more menacing would have help the audiance fear and/or hate him. I never believed the bad guy had any intention of shooting the prisoner and he nor the prisoner didn't really believe it either. I couldn't tell if that was blood or a pattern on yhr girl's t-shirt. Again, the tighter shot I mentioned before would have helped. There should have been no question, if your going to emulate Terrintino, for godssake SHOW THE BLOOD. Some brusing on the girls face from the beating and maybe a fewon the prisoner may have made the lines and her death more belevable to us and the brutality of the bad guy more evident. You could have augmented the sound from the doors banging in order to enphysize the finality of the prisoner's plight. Having the bad guy get more physical might have added to the tension-like a med 2 shot from behind of the bad guy shoving the other guy to his knees when they get to the car before he opens the trunk or having him yank to prisoner more, maybe slap him, shove the gun up under his chin while looking him directly in the eye. Anything would have emphysized who was domiate in the scene and added my visual tention and excitement. More closeups during some of the key lines and moments like when the prisoner first sees the girl or when he tells the bad guy he didn't kill her would have brought more emotional impact into the story. Remenber in film the story is told in the closeups. This piece suffered from an almost complete lack of closeups. Again I don't want to hurt your feelings and hope you will take the thing I said and suggested in the spirit with wwhich they were written. I hope the things I said will help you. If you find no value in them, ignore them or tell me I'm full of s''t. I won't be offended. It's just my opinion.
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I hear what your saying. 9:16 does look newer. I was also planning to shoot digital to give it a stronger sense of feeling of reality and help break down the separation between the charactures and the audiance. But I wanted to play with aspect ratios to convey the sense of restriction and captivity differently than I'd ever see it done before like your not seeing the whole picture, and use the wide screen the John Ford used the desert, to covey the magesty and grandure of space to the point where it become overwhelming and frightening. It's funny you should mention long shots of the ship. Most of the acton takes place in a nebula The shots in open space ( ther are only a few) won't use some of the odd angles and perspectives I'm planning. Theres's also a gradual rransition from the gorgous, stunningly beautiful outer areas of the nebula to the dark and turbulent inner areas near Pandora (the system's only planet, a gas giant) I had planned to use a lot of long shots including the sequence where the ship enters the nubula where the ship keeps getting smaller and smaller until it's a pinpoint aganst the wall of nebulious gasses to help convey a sense of proportion. I planned to vary my shot between very close leaves the background as close to a boarder on very long shots w/ very few what might be deemed normal prospectives. (it lends it's self to the story) The sets are big tha largest being 75' x 20' and can use longer lenses to compact the background but I wanted to try something different.
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I axed this question in annother post was give great resoures for film questions but never really got this one answered. I have a somewhat early Konvas 1m w/ mostly Lomo slow lenses will fast film work in this camera?
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Thanks for the website, I put it in my favorites and shot them off an email. I'll let you know what happens. Also thanks for the advise on the 4 pin plug I'll check th polarity. I suspect it's correct though, I used it a lot with my JVC GY-500 dv camera.
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This is an interesting thread. In the film I'm working on (The Black Sky), I was concidering trying to shoot the interior scenes that take place aboard a starship in 3:4 to help convey the sense of being trapped and not being able to see the entire picture (medaphorically speaking) and "shooting" the exterior animation in a 9:16 aspect ratio to help convey the feeling of being lost in the realm of God, and using a transtion that kinda rolled or streched the frame wider as the camera pulled through the hull of the ship. But after talking to my animators we were not quite sure how exactly that would work, wheather we would shrink the top of the frame and roll or stretch out and in the sides between ratios or simple stretch out the sides, and what that would do to the audence. If it would be too jarring or distracting.
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I read this tread and found it very interesting especially the cinemtography vs the story debate. There an old saying what makes a great movie- Story, story, story. The story is the alpha and omega of a film but what David had to say rang the most true of anything else I read. John Cassavetes didn't seem to give a damn about cinematoraphy but without the sweeping vistas of a John Ford western how could those films have been made? They are another character in his movies and who can say who's more valid a filmmaker, Ford or Cassavetes? I want to make my own films, find my own voice. I think the greatest film ever made is "Apocalypse Now Redux" Coppola's director's cut (I don't even acknowledge the first studio release) because he did something I've never seen anyone else do or even come close to doing with the exception of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" . He managed to actually capture a nightmare on film with all it's vivid beauty and horror. Now THAT'S cinematography and could have been done by NOONE else. That's what I want to do. Ridley Scott's Alein was amazing but he couldn't have done the same thing with Aliens" that James Cameron did nor SHOULD he and this is after seeing Black Hawk Down. I admire the hell out of Stanley Kubrick, The Shining and 2001 were masterpieces. Hitchcocks Psyco and Vertigo, Speilberg's Shindler's List, Jerrasic park, Jaws, Close Encounters, E.T.and Saving Privite Ryan, Lusas's Star Wars and American Graffetti, David Leans Lawrence Of Arabia, David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, Rauol walsh's White Heat, Serge Gainsbourg's Scarface, Sergio leone's The Good-The Bad and The Ugly, Peter Jackson's The Lord Of the Rings, Howard Hawks' The Thing, Mel Brook's Young Frankenstien, Quenton Terrintino's Pulp Fiction and From Dusk Till Dawn, Keneth Banaugh's Hamlet and Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliette, Micheal Curtiz's Casablanca, Davis O Selznik's Gone With The Wind, Victor Fleming's (among other's) The Wizard of Oz, Nicolas Ray's Rebal Without a Cause, Fred Wilcox's (and Gene Roddenberry's) Forbidden Planet, Cicill B Demille's The 10 Comandment's, Byron Haskin's War of the Worlds, Ron Howards Apollo 13 and a Beautiful Mind, John Surges' The Great Escape, Mike Nichols Catch 22, The Grduate, Who's Afraid of Virgina Wolfe and Carnal Knowlege, The Coen Brothers Blood Simple, The Marx Brothers, Coconuts, The Farlley Brothers There's somthing about Mary, Fellini's Satyricon John Turney's Preditor and Die Hard, James Cameron's The Terminator and Titanic, John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, Cassavetes Faces, A woman under the Influence and the Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Ingmar Bergmann's tThe Seventh Seal and lirterally Thousands more (I watch a lot of Movies) Have influenced, made an inpression or inspired me. The way the were lit or the way they were cut or the way they were framed. But I'm not David Lynch Or Steven Speilberg or Woody Allen. I may admire Sergio Leone but I'm not going to make a spagetti western the way Sergio does. All of these men and women that I admire can only take me so far. If you want to know what people pay for it's originality. So I want to make films that look like mine.
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Make up, lighting and filters are what make screen gods and goddesses. Marlene Dietrich carried a set of small lights not normally used on most productions with her. She would then instruct the lighting guys on how she wanted them set to make her lighting perfect and she knew more about lighting herr face than most DP's. An old trick used by cinematographers to reduce lines on an actor's face is to shoot through a sheer stocking stretched over the lens or to use vasoline smeared evenly across a glass plate in front of the lens. Using preperation H to temporarily reduce ines and baggy eyes is a well known trick of makeup artists. There was one actress, I can't remember who, that used to acutually pull her skin tight into her hairline and secure it with pins. Now that's dedication to looking good. It's not one OR the other. They're all inportant. You can make a goddess look like frankenstien or a toad look like a Playboy centerfold. It's all in the setup.
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"Nadja"
THAT'S IT! I loved that movie.
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One more very compelling reason for using storyboards on ultra- low budget films is to utilize techniques of the martial arts films made in China. To save money on film and processing they used a lot of in camera editing rather than using a master shot w/ coverage. By breaking down fight sequences into individual shots they would stop the actor or stuntman and have him freeze reset the camera and cantinue the scene. This saved a tremendiuos amount of money but the only way to make it work with any kind of proifessional looking result is to storyboard extensively so you know exactly what the next shot will be.
:ph34r:
Which computer for edit?
in Post Production
Posted
You need something with a lot of processer power, a lot of ram and a lot of storage, I would go with a 32 g/64 bit processer w/ a matched mother board, a gig of ram, a 100 gig C drive w/ 2 or 3 200 gig slave drives and a dvd rw, firewire and usb-2 ports, dual monitor video card, large cooling fan and power supply, big tower case to fit everthing inside, no kitchy extras like neon clear cases or fancy braided wires the novelty wears off very quickly and it's w waste of money that can be spent elsewhere for increased preformance , until you are editing a mega-buck feature go w/ one 18in crt monitor and one 15' crt monitor Place ypur preview screen on the big one and your timeline and other stuff on the smaller one. Go PC because of cost. Order the components online and look around for the best price. Get a freind who ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT THE HELL HE"S DOING when it comes to computers and have him build it for you Go with windows xp, Premere Pro w/ the HDV package, After effects or combustion, Photoshop and Final draft ( Later on add sound forge lightwave and Frame Forge if you can't draw for story boards) as much as you can from ebay in new cond. at a good price to keep costs down. Write the script of a brillant characture w/ a very small cast (2 main charactures and 2 supporting the most and a few day players) driven peice set in the here and now (again to dfray costs) with Final draft. Buy a dv or hdv camera and with the $10, 000 you have left. cast some friends or locals who can actually act and hire people whom either know something or are willing to work hard to learn for little money as a crew 4 at the most. Pay them, (NOT UNION WAGES BUT SOMETHING) and feed them (Pizza or homemade pasta, sandwhiches anything but FEED them and make sur they have water and something else to drink)Be prepaired to be your own PA, Find places to film and get written permission to use them and releases from everyone, Don't buy anything you don't HAVE to make your movie. shoot 7 d to 10 days for 14 hours a day. Use natural and ambient lighting everywhere possible. Cut your film together w/ Premere. Use the $1000 you have left (Yeah Right, OK Get ANOTHER 1000 from relatives)and enter it in film festevals. Sell it to a distributor and use that money to make another film. In a year when that computer is obsolete you will be going "WHOOOAAA am I glad I didn't spend 15 grand on a computer that's already obsolete and used that money to make my dream come true.!"(';)', 'smid_14')
;)