Sean Cunningham

That's a swell looking light.   Switronix TorchLED

  It's a significant issue even beyond that, though the Nurse Betty article is the main reason I still pick it up to look through from time to time.  It also has a really cool article on the first ever, end-to-end, digital IP with the cover feature on Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?  And though I'm not mentioned by name, Eric Nash is quoted in there, in the sub-story about the effects for the film, discussing what I and my team did extending the water out to the horizon and putting the tops of houses and trees and such in there.     Dave Prescott was the overall CG sup on the film and I headed up the team that did the flooded valley sequence.  What's extra nifty about how we did it is how shader sup Johnny Gibson gave us raytraced reflections of the building and tree cards in the water before Renderman ever officially could do raytracing ;)   Anyway, it's got a really good article on the cinematography of Requiem for a Dream as well, which also has extraordinary cinematography.

Hmmm, good to know on my PC.  I wonder if this quirk with VLC is the same for the OSX version.  If I'm looking at ProRes I'm generally using the QuickTime player which I've been conditioned since the DV days to not fully trust.

Well, the two studio banks you linked above, the ones with the stands, they went right into my Amazon wishlist so that I had, quick handy reference to investigate them more.  I liked the looks of them and the price seemed very reasonable for the amount of light they put out...though it didn't seem clear to me if their specs were combined for the two of them, which would be disappointing, or if they represented the individual lights.     Honestly I don't get the comment on spending thousands.  LEDs themselves, individually, cost what little they do because they have to cost something.  The money you'd be paying would inevitably be related to the construction of the case and associated hardware for dimming, etc.  I mean, maybe if every one of those little guys was hand wired in someone could justify a tall sum but, even then, that hand wiring would likely have been done by someone in a far off land who might have been paid a dollar that day.   The high cost is all mark-up and branding.   Take one of those 160 LED lights...that's less than $2 worth of actual light-giving-device and the rest of the cost is due to wiring, dimming and the materials + manufacturing of the case, and then mark-up.   I've been looking at replacing all of my signals and blinkers on my car with LED bulbs and if you go to a major automotive retailer they're asking upwards of $20 or even way more for a pair of bulbs I've been able to find for about $6 at a lighting-oriented site that's not specialized in automotive products but is more closely related to the actual manufacturer who produces all manner of LED lights.  

Also, don't be afraid to build your own fixtures, especially for interior location lighting, if you like a natural look.  Even with Kinos on set a lot of great DPs augment practical lights with their own homebrew creations, bat strips, China balls and the like, because these tend to look less contrived than studio lighting.  They're also less stressful on your actors and don't chew up as much space.     edit: I looked but they don't have it in their online archives, but if you ever see for sale or get the chance to pick up the October 2000 issue of American Cinematographer Magazine there's a great little article on the lighting philosophy of Jean Yves Escoffier and how he applied it to the Labute film Nurse Betty.  It's been a touchstone and reference of mine all these years whenever I think about interior lighting and the legitimacy of homebrew lighting fixtures, even on the set of a major motion picture.  People talk all the time about what they think they could or couldn't pull out of a bag in front of a client and that's just ridiculous.  The end image is all that matters.

VLC has become my go-to player, since you can lock in your aspect ratio, etc.  I do sometimes get glitchy playback at the beginning of a clip but I have my player default to looping a clip so that I can ensure it's a quirky playback issue and not in the footage.  Only the first play ever shows any issues, if this occurs.

I don't have any experience with LEDs.  I ordered my first one just the other day, a small unit to have in my kit for emergencies.  I'm hopeful that they (in general, not necessarily the one I got) are indeed the future because they have many practical advantages over any fluorescent technology.  It just all comes down to light quality and I haven't used them on a production yet or seen their use enough to have any kind of meaningful judgement.     I just know I'll never use fresnels or the like unless I'm lighting exteriors and just need as much light as I can tap for large areas where most of their faults become less of an issue.   As for Kinos, I forget the models we borrowed but my understanding with them is you're paying for the ballasts, the tubes and the ability to dim.  Construction-wise, I've never seen one that isn't a let down, they feel cheap as hell.  But the light quality and your ability to control it is what's important.  That said, I'd try to get at least a two-bank or a couple two-banks in, I think we had the 4' size.  For smaller work, eye lights, putting a tiny fill somewhere I'd look to cheaper solutions that work in a pinch and get the best you could afford for your talent key and fill, or at least their key.

Those fresnels are cheap and available for a reason.  Their time has passed.   The look is old fashioned.  They're inefficient.  They melt your talent and turn your set into an oven.  Blast them into some diffusion outside a window maybe or to throw light down a long corridor, or possibly for supplemental light outside.  Unless you're just trying to be ironic using that stuff with contemporary camera gear.     If you're going to actually invest in something I'd suggest Kinos, or the equivalent.

  LOL, at this point I'm scrambling to make sure I can pay next month's rent.  I'm currently doing some stuff for a Cinetics commercial in exchange for gear and am going to try to squeeze in a commercial shoot up in Oklahoma before the end of the month, or at least get them to pay me half up front.     As a VFX guy, working on stuff like that, I never had money problems (that I didn't create...or that weren't female related) but I never had time to work on anything but other people's movies.  The trade off to not being tied to a workstation with golden handcuffs, to have a shot at being able to, drop of a hat get rolling on another feature or explore other personally creative exercises, is I don't get the six figure paycheck anymore.    Tim moves his family back to Texas in a month's time and he'll finally be able devote, at least for a while, full-time attention to making the next film from beginning to end, and I want to be flexible enough to get rolling on shoots for investor packages, etc.  This will be an interesting phenomenon given he was VFX Producing Snow White and the Huntsman while squeezing in what time he could at FCP to get the Sick Boy edit locked (we shot it while he was on vacation).  When we were finishing post on Xtracurricular he was having to squeeze that in while working on Chronicles of Riddick and I was doing development on Day After Tomorrow and then Big Fish, Peter Pan and a few shots on Spider-Man2, and, man, that's a hard way to finish a movie.  This next one, we're not going to have to "fit it in" to everything else going on.   Anyway, not in a hiring place right now, sad to say, but hopefully that changes sooner rather than later.

  Ah, hopefully they knew to get them from somewhere in the town.  Their little version of the "roach coach" that would be open on the lot in the mornings, for breakfast, that wasn't bad at all.  But that cafeteria...the worst.  I based the scowl for our Xtracurricular lunchroom lady, Olga, on one of the Pinewood lunch ladies.  I don't even think I was exaggerating when I suggested to Tim that she should be smoking.   Anyway, we had to get out of there at lunch because there was usually three, sometimes five of us, all working in an office that's smaller than some walk-in closets I've seen.

  Please tell me you didn't eat in the commissary.  They couldn't even get a simple ham sandwich right.  Made me re-think every harsh judgment I ever had for school cafeteria food.  Ultimately, we ended up going out every day for lunch to get Indian or little mini-pizzas all the pubs were serving.

  Funny you should say that, they did, basically.  The film began its life as a childhood creation of Luc's while reading the original French version of the magazine Metal Hurlant.  Moebius was a prime inspiration for much of the look.

LOL, the only move this guy's kung fu has is the ad hominem.     Talk talk talk talk talk...     edit: Hey, Leang, why don't you try making a film in the West that will stand up to real economic pressure where pandering to the Right or Left doesn't give you an automatic leg up for limited theatrical distribution.  Then maybe I'll take your air of somehow being above the ghetto of commercial home video distribution seriously.  Maybe.  Probably not.   LOL

'atsa'lotta pixels!

  That's the thing, I don't go around trumpeting that just to do it.  Not unless provoked.  I'm here because I came across one of Andrew's reviews when I started investigating anamorphic lenses for DSLRs.  I'm happy to share with anyone but my primary focus is as an enthusiast who also enjoys learning from others every day.   I was impressed that Andrew was a doer and not just a talker like so many on the internet who are really in it for some sense of celebrity and not doing the work.  I like the fact that I don't know what Andrew looks like, yet that's the first thing you learn when you go to see what someone like Philip Bloom is about.  "Oh, he's so dreamy!"   I make mistakes, have made a fair amount here, because I can be a loud mouth too.  But, seriously, I'm here to learn more about these tools and all the various creative solutions people find for shooting, largely on a budget, so that I can apply that to further narrative feature films.  I like that they're so far under the radar of the establishment that it feels like being part of an insurgency.  That's why I'm here.     edit: and I wanted to make another thing clear.  I try to always interact with people here, on Vimeo, on PV, anywhere, based on the work they show and the words they say.  Not their resume or filmography.  When I click like, or add a comment of praise or anything like that it's not predicated on any pre-existing knowledge or bias involving someone's background.  I don't believe in someone's credentials as a means to judge their imagery.  If anything, I'll only go look if I'm at odds with some concept or statement that they've made and my own credibility has been challenged.     The only time I think I've really fired off a tactical ego-bomb like this one was to shut down a particularly belligerent fellow on the Bloody Disgusting forums who didn't think I was either justified or qualified to have an exceptionally low opinion of James Cameron.  I don't want to make a habit of it.  It doesn't feel good to me...after that first couple seconds of hitting 'enter'.

  Yeah, I met him at the Floston Paradise party at Cannes the year The Fifth Element opened the festival.  One of the many great experiences associated with that film.  Luc and Gaumont got us all invites, those of us interested in attending Cannes.  Like when he booked the Cinerama-Dome to give us an exclusive screening of the film when Columbia either failed to have a crew screening or didn't invite the FX team.  He's cool like that.         Who are you talking to?  Yeah, I know...     ...my FB album with stills from the actual film...         ....oh, or did you mean to pose that as a question?  Yes.  Yes I do like working with actors.  They seem to like working with me too.       edit: here's the PV topic where I outline more about the latest film, including a bunch of behind-the-scenes videos shot by one of my PAs...I posted it there rather than here, I dunno, at the time I wasn't feeling like most of the prevailing voices on the forum here would be interested...

  I'll name one I'm pretty proud of.  I created the flying traffic system for The Fifth Element.  The whole thing.  The whole system, that I then made workable enough for the lesser experienced team of about twelve artists assigned to me.   This was after being sent to London to work directly with Luc Besson and his editor Sylvie for two months during filming at Pinewood Studios where I pre-visualized the chase sequence as Luc was doing it, getting Avid rushes from the day's shoot so that I could place building extensions and cars in the scene to help Luc decide on further shots.   When I got back I created the entire system that let other artists on my team place traffic and give them a randomized selection of flying car models.  I had to build in the ability to, if necessary, control all of any specific car's appearance features (dirt, scratches, color, etc.), or model, or possible elimination entirely, without disrupting any of the other cars.  There was no one else to rely on.  I had already established myself within the company, founding artist #7 of Digital Domain, as the guy you went to when you had a VFX task that you didn't quite know how to do but knew it needed to be solved.   I went further, for the fun of it, giving the artists the ability to assign personalized license plates and custom signage to the flying bus lines.  That whole sequence is literally filled with subliminal in-jokes and references only we'll ever fully appreciate (along with Mark Stetson putting us into that sequence...I'm in the first shot where we see Leeloo's POV, across the street, swinging a broadsword around Kurgen style).   While not a favorite in my filmography to actually watch, it's one of my favorite working experiences for the work itself and all the surrounding experiences.  It would go on to win the BAFTA that year for visual effects and be nominated for an Oscar in VFX.  You can read about me in the Cinefex issue for that film, maybe the American Cinematographer too, I forget, as well as the hefty, hard-bound, coffee table book on the history of Digital Domain.   Presuming I'm any sort of bench warmer, I guess I should be angry but it's just so ignorant it makes me chuckle.  You really don't even know what you don't know.       edit: I do like how you skipped over, despite all your "filmmaking" talk, that I'm one of the few here that's actually done it.  Not clever, but predictable.  Your talk might impress or intimidate other folks who also talk about making films but not me.    PS: all kidding aside, if you want a clear understanding of what I did on every shot in that reel there's a downloadable shot breakdown document on the vimeo page.  Feel free to verify any of this by contacting folks like Mark Stetson or Eric Nash, they're on FB.  Just, please, screenshot their response when you ask them if I was a "benchwarmer", lol.   The only time that I have ever been a COG, implementing an FX solution created by someone else, that I can recall, ever, would be the digital webs created by Theo Vandernoot for Spider-Man 2.  I was happy at that point, coming to the end of my contract with Sony Pictures Imageworks, to not have to think so hard for a few weeks before going to AFM to get mine and my brother's first feature, one of the first feature length narratives shot on the F900, on the path to distribution.

    A VFX lurker that has two fully independent narrative feature films under his belt in worldwide commercial distribution.  How many have you done?  How many has PB done?  On top of more than a decade's experience creating work that's been nominated or won multiple BAFTA and Oscars in his field, among others.   I don't like whipping it out, but I'll whip it out to bitch slap a douche bag.

I'm still trying to figure out this Philip Bloom thing, can someone help me out?   He travels all over the world shooting short subjects with no commercial appeal or hope for a return with $100K+ (thinking conservatively) in camera gear and lenses and such.  He's obviously doing something right but...this picture doesn't add up.

That Canon 85mm L is like Charlotte Johansen's posterior dipped in butter (or chocolate, if you must, I'm just not much for chocolate).

  Whatever it is or where it's coming from, it's cool.  Some of these lenses produce more or less extreme or pleasing flares but they mostly tend to be homogeneous in the coloration of their flares and internal reflections.  This one has a nice, unusual mix of both cool and warm tones.  I've always liked how some of the Panavision lenses give that nice blue flaring but often put a red ring around a bare light source.  This is way more, I don't know, organic.  Maybe it's partly the Helios too?

The rainbow diffraction patterns, is that from micro cleaning marks on the lens?  It looks really cool and I don't think I've seen that effect quite so pronounced at high flare incidence.  Neat.

  I wasn't sure if I remembered right what Dione Bebe shot on for In the Cut...alas, spherical (still gorgeous use of the swing+shift).

http://vimeo.com/58588025     ...I went back and revisited an old project file to test out my recently purchased license of ColorGHear.  This was one of the first pieces I shot with my Century Optics and still didn't have all the pieces to use my Nikkors or my Tokina so it's doublet-less and on the kit lens.     The lighting was really bad, I thought, for the kind of show this was where cars at the outer edges you could barely see anything going on under their popped hoods it was so dark and me limited to ~f/4 with that plastic zoom.  Still, when there was light it picked up a lot of detail in the textures and surfaces of the cars that cleaning up the color with CG I was able bring out.   Location: Palmer Events Center (Austin, Texas) Camera: Panasonic Lumix GH2 Lenses: Lumix 14-42mm (kit) @ 18mm and ~F4 for all but a shot or two Firmware: factory (non-hacked) Editing +  Finishing: Adobe CS6 Premiere Pro and After Effects, now with more ColorGHear

Nicely done.  Is there a, probably German, word that means "to find beauty in decay", I wonder.   Were the flashes done in post or were you using a flash off axis in those shots?