|
Slim Pickens posted:
I'm a little late on this, but your biggest failure in this film is dead frames. As soon as that bike leaves the frame, cut, don't leave a single dead frame in there. It's boring, ugly and it stands out. And on a completely unrelated note, I'm a film student, I'm producing a 25 minute short, and I'm AD'ing a much smaller project, but it will be a while before I can post either one.
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2009 03:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:11 |
|
|
I have a question that you guys can probably answer. We will be shooting in a liquor store, and our director wants to use the RED, but I'm worried about not being able to create a shallow depth of field since our school doesn't have any long lenses. I think, THINK, our lens is like 30ish - 50 ish?  Click here for the full 1600x1200 image. Ideally we will want to shoot the cashier with the bottles out of focus, do you guys think this is possible, or should we just downgrade and use the school's 500? My biggest concern is that we can't get a shallow enough depth of field and the brand labels will be legible, which would exclude us from any festivals etc. Andraste fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Oct 6, 2009 |
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2009 06:54
|
|
|
Thanks a ton for the responses, I'm not a camera guy at all but I'll try and answer as many of the questions as I can. It is the school's RED and I know the school is trying to get a set of primes, but there have been issues with that, so at the moment we just have whatever lens came with the camera, 18-50 sounds right. And I think it is the HPX 500, everyone at school refers to the camera's we have as the 200, 500, and RED. 200 and 500 being Panasonics I believe. I will be talking to the DP more about lightning and camera choice later, personally I don't really give a poo poo if we don't use the RED. But the school has a couple, and they are only available to my class so we might as well use them.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2009 22:49
|
|
|
Momonari kun posted:
Good to know, we will be using the RED then. As far as knowing how to use it, we had a RED DIT come in an give us a class on it; and I know at least our main camera OP has used it before, and the AC knows how to build it. I'm not sure who's editing our project, but if all else fails, I know how to do it. I don't have all the software, but I'm sure I can get my hands on it.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2009 04:13
|
|
|
SquareDog posted:my e-mail is mansuit@msn.com which is a reference to a famous scene in Donnie Darko but NO ONE has ever said "Oh, like Donnie Darko?" I use the sparkle motion quote a decent bit, and maybe it's just the people I surround myself with, but they seem to recognize it. I wouldn't recognize mansuit though. on a different note, I just watched this documentary, and if any of you guys are Wong Kar-Wai fans, or cinematographers; you should check out this documentary on Chris Doyle. http://www.joost.com/272ij43/t/Chris-Doyle-Orientations#id=272ij43
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2009 21:03
|
|
|
Dr. Fishopolis posted:new reel! I like the lighting in the clip with the men coming through the wall, what was that shot for?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 14, 2009 23:00
|
|
|
for the night scenes in the last short I did we threw up some HMIs and balanced to tungsten light, so the lighting we used came out very blue. I haven't seen the shots in post yet, but I have high hopes for the night time , outdoors scene.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2009 10:59
|
|
|
SquareDog posted:Wouldn't it have been cheaper to use Tungsten lights with CTB for night shots? HMI's are way more expensive to rent. Sorry I'm ages late in responding to this. But we get our equipment from the school, we are lucky enough to have a tight-knit, small quantity of people film department with tons of equipment. So we didn't have to rent our HMIs and the EXT was a backyard of a house that we could run stingers to. As far as using tungsten to light EXT, I worked on an AXE Body Wash commercial overnight last night (and haven't slept yet unfortunately); and we used a combination of 10k tungsten and some smaller ones. We shot the whole thing on a Panasonic HVX500 and if I do say so myself it looked fantastic. On Saturday/Sunday I did another shoot, school related using the RED, and I'm stoked to start editing after a good nap.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2009 19:03
|
|
|
CRKramer posted:What books (or any other resources) would y'all recommend on cinematography and/or lighting? If you want a basic intro book that is really easy to read, http://www.amazon.com/Bare-Bones-Camera-Course-Video/dp/0960371818 Bare Bones Camera Course
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2009 04:50
|
|
|
Another excellent basic film book is The Grip Book, http://www.amazon.com/Grip-Book-Third-Michael-Uva/dp/0240852338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260784741&sr=8-1 And if you want an easy read and inspirational book, check out Rebel Without a Crew http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-without-Crew-23-Year-Old-Filmmaker/dp/0452271878/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260784884&sr=1-1 it's only $10 on Amazon it's more or less journal entries of Robert Rodriguez who made a feature for 7 grand at age 23. He then went on to make Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet Terror, and has a new movie, Machete coming out (was a ridiculous trailer for it during grindhouse).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2009 11:04
|
|
|
For my current class we had one last small project to do, a one page camera exercise. This is about the only thing finished that I can show people due to shorts being submitted to festivals and what not. So here it is, written, directed and starring a friend of mine is a parody of the Dexter intro titled, "Good". I gaffed, and we had one other crew member as our DP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBH4Y4SV7Ik be gentle on the critiques, we shot this in 3 hours, I'd love to the hear them though. EDIT: oh man, so sorry for the double post; I'm an idiot.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2009 11:30
|
|
|
SquareDog posted:looks good, not much to say. What was it shot on? Thanks, we shot it on a Canon 7D
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2009 19:19
|
|
|
Thanks for the feedback guys. I think we did shoot the shower in slow motion, and I don't really like the way that shot turned out; but I'm not the director either, and it may have been just what he wanted. As for the glass, that's just the shape of it, there were four indents, one on each side.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2009 08:31
|
|
|
I'm not a fan of the 3d stuff for a lot of reasons, and a big one being that the technology just isn't there yet. Also, if you watch movies that were made for 3d in 2d it's glaringly obvious which scenes were meant to be seen in 3d, and without the effect they are just boring shots without much going on; their whole point is to get you excited and "ohmygosh i feel like I'm falling" or something else as similarly stupid.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2009 07:15
|
|
|
Steadiman posted:
So I'll start out saying I haven't looked that much into this Disney Real3D or whatever it's called; but it's the technology every 3d film has used recently. But basically for 3d you need to have one eye looking at one picture, and the other eye looking at the same picture from a slight angle. So we wear glasses that limit each eye's ability to only see half the image (usually a vertical/horizontal setup). So you can only see half resolution on each image. and if you start flashing the images in complete resolution you only get half the fps. I've also noticed issues with having difficulty focusing on the proper depth of the image to see the 3rd clearly in fast sequences. Feel free to correct and enlighten me, but watching movies in 3d has not been enjoyable for me; there is too much effort involved to watch what is happening. TLDR you are either watching in half fps or half resolution, can't ever have both. (because our theatres are not running 2 projection setups) Andraste fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Dec 19, 2009 |
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2009 09:17
|
|
|
I don't think 3d in student films is something anyone needs to worry about. To shoot 3d you need a 2 camera, calibrated setup, and I don't think that's something that will be focused on in student production classes. They are more focused on learning the basics and how to run a set.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2009 10:38
|
|
|
The Affair posted:An interesting article came across Reddit a few days ago concerning the "film look" and how it relates to depth of field. It's here. I get what he's saying, but it sounds like the author has a selective eye. He sees what he wants to see. He chose some great shots to represent what you can do with a huge DoF, but it has to do with what you want your audience looking at. Using a shot of George Clooney with a burning car behind him in focus as an example is weird to me. why on earth would that shot be in a shallow DoF, the whole point of the shot is to see Clooney AND the car. Shallow DoF is used to get the viewers attention on one thing, are there other ways of getting the audience to look at what you want? sure. is shallow DoF overused to gain a "movie feel"? maybe. Can it be used very effectively and look good? hell yes. I don't think you can say "stop being lazy indie film makers", it's a silly thing to get your panties in a knot about. Instead, just appreciate when film makers like Tarsem do something unique with composition, lines and color to draw your focus.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2009 13:34
|
|
|
I'm curious about how using kids was for you. We had a little girl (9) in a short we did last semester, and we had huge issues with needing a studio teacher, we ended up not getting one because of cost, but because of that, we also can't send our project to any festivals. What did you guys do?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2009 09:40
|
|
|
I did produce the short. I think we are actually submitting to a few festivals, and most likely nothing will come of us not having a studio teacher. Maybe it varies from state to state, but in California, if you have a minor on a film set you need to have a state registered studio teacher, who has all the rights of the parents on set, even if the parent's were on set, the studio teacher makes the calls. Being a student film, and that our set was inside a private residence, and the little girl was the sister of a classmate, we just winged it. I guess the fear is that if you're short turns out really good, and gets recognized at festivals and lets say someone wants to buy it or something, they will want to see ALL of the paperwork including the studio teacher paper trail, if they find out you broke state law, you could be in trouble. edit: unfortunately if you want to play by the rules you have to pay that person to be on set, I think it's anywhere from 250-600 a day.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2009 06:04
|
|
|
I find that really interesting Zeroordie, now that our semester is over, we've had several lectures on festival submissions, and we're working through submitting stuff on without a box. It's good to hear stuff coming from someone who has some credibility and not just other filmmakers giving advice.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2009 10:34
|
|
|
Dr. Fishopolis posted:Your chances of selling it are tiny, no matter how good it is. You don't need distribution to win awards, and I'm guessing you didn't make a short to cash in anyway. This is precisely why we are submitting it anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2009 21:57
|
|
|
So, anyone working on anything cool or have something to show? I want to see stuff goons have made. Here's a webisode of Lunchtime Confidential, there was a 20 minute short made last year that is up for festivals this spring, and therefore isn't posted online. But we've done some short follow up episodes for fun, I didn't actually work on this one or the original short, but I worked on the 3 latest webisodes which haven't been posted yet. I'll probably throw up a link here when they are put on the page. http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=103693896312199 The original short was about the main character who is a high school student PI, and he investigates crimes on campus. It is set during the 1920s and 30s. Black and white comedy. Andraste fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Feb 11, 2010 |
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2010 04:35
|
|
|
Just finished shooting a 15 page project thurs-sunday doing some crazy hours. I don't really have anything to show for it, but I'm more stoked about it than I have been about anything else I've worked on. And speaking on stuff I've worked on but am not excited about, here's a short shot during one day, with no lights (only reflectors, duva, and bounce) on an HVX 200; and it started raining halfway through the day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTqvD262u14&feature=autofb
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2010 04:35
|
|
|
Steadiman posted:Oh God, during almost the entire sequence in the car the actor's mouth was blocked by the steering wheel! I wanted to rip that wheel off! I barely even noticed anything else. That was immensely frustrating! Ya, I'll be the first to say that it is pretty dreadful, they were just fun quick projects to work on with friends.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2010 07:01
|
|
|
I have a huge hard on for china ball lighting after a shoot this weekend. I was gaffing a short and I lit 90% of it with a kit of china balls and bulbs that all together cost less than $200.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2010 09:10
|
|
|
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd8TONyiABE Here's a project, or rather a trailer for the project (I like the trailer more than the finished deal). I DP'd it on the RED one. we had 3 issues which you can pick up on pretty easily. 1. Our AC unkowingly white balanced occasionally and hosed the color temps up. Not that bad right, because we're shooting in RAW? 2. Our DIT logged and transferred without correcting the hosed color temps. 3. Our Colorist boned us in the end. All of these problems are fixable and could have been prevented with better communication, but the director is being a tool and doesn't want to bother fixing stuff; but rather move on to other things. Andraste fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Jun 3, 2010 |
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2010 23:45
|
|
|
Well, you guys are great at making things up as if you had any idea how this set was ran and why things happened. I was hoping I could get feedback on the project excluding comments about the color; that's only one element of the film. You don't have to tell me how to fix the problems, I'm aware of the how. This was a student film, I was given a shot list 2 days before the project, never saw a couple of the locations until the day we shot. The director hired me on as DP, then came to me and told me who my crew was, I like an idiot didn't back out immediately because it was going to be my first DP project, and didn't want to give it up. To say the director's vision got hosed is to assume he expressed one at all, he left it all up to me; I told him I was going to go for a gritty feel and blue hue to match the theme of his movie. On our RED of the two buttons on the left side of the body, 1 punches in, and 2 auto WB. When you are shooting in RAW, you don't see any difference on the monitor, no matter what you are balanced to. And it was the CAM OPs first time using the red, he did not notice the color change each time in the EVF. it got changed on accident and fixed several times but many shots were shot at the wrong temp. I went out of town to Northern California when the project went into color, I saw it for the first time during the last day of class. I was approached by the colorist after class asking for feed back, he informed me that the director gave him the project and asked him to color it without any direction at all. I asked the director if he could sit down with the colorist and myself and go through the project together, his response: "Ya... I don't think that's going to be possible", that's all he said. So many paragraphs later, and I've basically summed up that it was a student project with many faults; I didn't even get into casting and location scouting. What I plan on doing is tracking down the RAW files and cutting a few segments together for my reel. Andraste fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Jun 3, 2010 |
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2010 09:45
|
|
|
Steadiman posted:My friend you really need to stop being so defensive. People got hung up on those points because you brought it up without provocation and because of the way you said them, it really did look you were shifting blame all over the place and that's not pretty so you will get called on it. As DP you are ultimately responsible for what the film looks like, not your AC or your operator or your colorist. So the fact that you came out blaming these people made people a bit suspicious at your motivations. Ofcourse there were problems and it's a student film and we don't know the whole story but so what? Every set has problems, not being able to scout or pick your own crew is a common thing nowadays. That doesn't mean you should run away from a production, it just means you need to be more on your guard. If you don't know the AC or operator, watch them like a hawk at first to make sure they're doing what you want. If the color temp thing happened several times, and it seems you caught it a few times, you should've figured out there was a deeper problem and solved that(I.e. switching the soft button functions) and taken extra care to check it after each take. Fair enough, you're very right about most of what you said. I have shortcomings in the management side of things; and because of that I've taken a liking to gaffing, because when I DP I don't enjoy what I'm doing as much. If I'm ever talking to someone about film things, I'm not nearly as hostile of a person as I come off as on this board; I don't think I've ever actually vented about this project before, it feels pretty good to get it off my chest. On set when I see that the Cam op or the 1st AC isn't giving me what I want, I never make accusations, but if I correct them a couple of times and by take 5 or so they aren't able to give me what I want I stop correcting and I tend to get a little bummed out, and bottle up my frustration. there is one, long handheld shot in the short, and I knew that we were pressed for time so I told the operator rather politely that I would be taking the next shot. He said ok, then once we were set and I went to get the camera, he threw it on his shoulder and said "I want to try it". I can understand that feeling, so I said ok, but we are way behind schedule, and I will be OPing after he tries it. 8 takes later he wont give me the camera and our 1st AD makes us move on; I mean seriously, only on a student film can someone pull that poo poo. I come off as a huge dick when I try and put my foot down so I end up backing off, and just getting upset because we never even got close to getting the shot. also, that gunshot was about 20 feet away in the parking garage, it's not evident in the trailer; but that's when the handheld chase scene begins with him behind chased by henchmen.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2010 21:32
|
|
|
Is it unkosher to solicit Kickstarter links here? I'll remove this link if that's the case, but here's a project we are currently raising funds to shoot. It will be a lot of fun for us to film, not to mention a huge challenge and a lot of good experiences. Some highlights are: Aerial plane to plane footage Digital SFX and green screen work and one actress fighting herself So if you know of a place where I can spam this link around, let me know, and if you just want to check it out and root for us, here it is. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/826244280/i-scream-you-scream-0
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2010 05:24
|
|
|
Oh God, In a week I shoot a school project that we've been doing pre-prod on for a few weeks. Things are starting to come together, but there is so much in this shoot that I've never done before. Shooting from a chaser plane to another plane, sword fights, gun fights, stunts, hand to hand combat, and tons of costume and makeup changes with multiple characters being played by the same actress. Kind of stressful having a couple grand of other peoples' money dependent on me properly executing a ton of stuff I've never done before; but also very exciting. Now that it's crunch time I'm still struggling with figuring out some of the finer details, like a few specialty rentals and transpo, making sure we get the shots planned to a T and securing our lighting rentals. Our plan is two shoot two RED camera teams, we have the cameras with 1 set of RED primes. I need to lock down renting a matte box / follow focus settup, and some sticks for one of them. I need to secure two sets of IR- ND filters, and dear God I still have to pick which Tiffen Promist filter I want and get two of them. Does anyone have any good suggestions as to a Frame I can transport in a pickup? I'm thinking I can fit an 8x or a 12x no problem. What I'd really like is a 20x that comes in sections of 10ft speed; can't say I've seen one before though. And then a ton of random stuff like 10 cardellini's and source fours. Which is going to be really fun to rig; we are shooting one day in a chocolate factory warehouse and I'm going to rig a bunch of source 4s to the racks and then menace arm some 650 moles as spots so she will have pools of light to walk between and I'll blue up the source4s with maybe some window pattern cookies as background fill. This is a pretty rantalicious post, but it's helping me organize a few of my stray thoughts after a 14 hour work day and a new set in 5 hours. Oh god, I'm going to sleep, goodnight SA.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2010 08:48
|
|
|
Tiresias posted:They make 20x frames made out of 10' speed rail, just ask for it at the rental house. Corners and ears are the same as standard 20x, but you'll need 2 speed rail connectors. Not really a specialty item, pretty common really. Right on, I'm going to be making a bunch of calls to a few rental houses over the next few days (indie, HD, etc, for those of you familiar with LA rental houses) and I'll ask specifically for that then. Well, it is going to be a hell of a day, but I'm getting more and more stoked, we got our complete funding of 3300 off kickstarter, and I'm hoping to see about 600 or so of that to spend on camera/lighting; fortunately I am able to get tons of free stuff from our school. Chimheil Smoke pick ups best if you backlight it, you mentioned putting lights under the gun, try putting one behind it.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2010 10:12
|
|
|
Thanks, I'll do that.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2010 20:56
|
|
|
I get to gaff my first paid green-screen work this weekend, I've had green-screen in shorts I've dp'd and I've worked with it in my digital SFX class as well as in an editing class. But boy, I'm still a little nervous about properly exposing it and using my lights to light the subjects without loving continuity or anything else.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2010 10:22
|
|
|
Steadi: Thanks for the tips, I did some pre-lighting tonight at the studio. I didn't know we were shooting on Panasonic's new pro-sumer 3D camera. Which shouldn't effect my lights too much, except for the fact that even though their lense is rated to a 1.8 it is taking 8k watts of light 4x2k fresnel to light our 40x20 green screen and we are still using some gain in the camera. The native ISO on the camera has to be like 100 or something equally retarded. Tiresias: The camera has a minimum convergance distance of about 8-10 feet, so we are sort of forced to put our cast about 10 feet from the wall; due to our space in the studio. I had to drive to LAX before we finished, so the DP stuck around but when I left we had successfully lit the screen/floor without throwing too much on our talent. I'm not sure what other lights I will find tomorrow morning that are set up to Key our actors and such, but whatever it is the trickiest part will be moving them to match our characters when we go for OTS shots and POVs. We are making a star wars spoof with a dental spin in 3d for a dental school. We are re-creating the fight between Darth Vader and Obi Wan. Sounds absolutely retarded, but the gimmicky-ness of the project is cool
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2010 09:27
|
|
|
Oh God, after today I'll be happy if I don't have to rig another china ball for a good while. Had to wire up 126 china balls for a high school prom scene. ended up looking pretty drat good, but not so much fun rigging them. Overall though the shoot spanning 4 days this weekend and 4 more next weekend is of allright caliber, one nine-light, and two 12x1k lights, (nine-light?) im not even sure what technical name you'd give it. and an array of parcans. It's been a while since I helped out as BBE and I'm remembering how much I hate laying cam-lock and distro.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2010 08:10
|
|
|
Sorry for the cell phone quality image, this is the only one I had of the set-up unfortunately. Two RED Ones rigged inside an old Russian biplane getting ready to shoot areal footage of a Piper for a project I DP'd in October.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2010 01:44
|
|
|
How many grips does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two, one to hold it and another to hammer it Best Christmas gift for me this year is definitely a subscription to American Cinematographer.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2010 22:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:11 |
|
|
Tiresias posted:This won't be the first time you meet a producer who thinks they know how to light. Usually, the cycle goes that they think, with newer cameras, you don't need lights... then they get a project to a client, the client HATES it, and they wind up deferring to the knowledge of the camera/lighting crew. I would say, if you're working on a real project, just let the producer say whatever he wants and just smile and nod; then continue to do whatever you key told your to do. For even if you are right, it's not worth it. edit: I'm a little confused, the Producer was spewing poo poo about how good RED is, but he has you shooting on 5Ds? Andraste fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Jan 4, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2011 11:07
|
|