[Bob Cole]

Sometimes the Hollywood look is not appropriate. For the D-Day landing, Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” emulated the look of film shot with a 16mm wind-up camera.

Afghanistan sounds like a dangerous place to be, and even more dangerous to videotape, because sometimes you can lose yourself in the viewfinder. Not even in a combat zone, just in a chemical plant, I’ve seen a cameraman get so wrapped up in a beautiful shot that he nearly got killed. Be careful over there.

— Bob C.

[Bob Cole]

[walter biscardi] “the HDV version of the same deck.”

Which deck is that? I’ve heard that the ballistics of the Sony HDV decks may not be as good as the DSR-11. Your experience?

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Chris D] “The company now says they are facing bankrupcy”

I love the fact that you have the drive and material. The claim about facing bankruptcy smells funny to me, Chris. It may be more strategy than reality. Debe’s idea may work, but if you erase the material and then lose it, you may be in trouble.

Definitely don’t return the drive with its material; consider telling them that you will settle for half-payment, upon which you’ll return the drive.

It’s been years since I’ve had slow-to-pay problems, but I have one now, and it is no fun. Good luck.

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

[Kevin Monahan] “to be honest, graphics guys work smarter”

Thanks. That’s not a rant, it’s very informative. Trish Meyers, After Effects expert, advocates the same approach, even to the point of scaling her originals no bigger than they need to be when animating stills.

Your original advice was that the cheapest alternative is to edit HDV, & take it to a dub house for SD out.

In what form would you take it to the dub house? And, if that isn’t usually an option for time reasons, what is the next-cheapest alternative, for in-house SD out? I’m thinking of buying the M15 or possibly the M25 deck anyway.

Speaking of which, if anybody out there knows the ballistics of these decks I’d like to hear whether they are easy to control, cue up, etc.

[Bob Cole]

[Kevin Monahan] “Edit HDV over FireWire”

Thanks Kevin. That works, but my understanding from posts on this forum is that editing HDV in FCP is problematic.

[Bob Cole]

First, learn to spell “professional,” at least when you’re posting to umpteen thousand people.

You’re lucky to have gotten such fantastic advice. There are some great responses here. It’s a very tough thing to achieve, largely because when you succeed, nobody notices WHAT you’ve done, only that it attracts their interest. Here is my sense of what goes into “the look.”

1. Actors — people that you want to look at on screen. Interesting faces, not necessarily pretty ones. Even when you’re making a documentary, when you see one through the camera, you silently go “Yippee.”
2. Shallow depth of field. Big blurry backgrounds, often with light sources creating blobs.
3. Shoot on film or a very high-end video camera. A creamy look rather than a harsh electronic one.
4. Lighting which undergirds the story. It could be the delicate use of fill in an otherwise strongly motivated scene which creates a nice luminous light on the faces (the current version of the “obie”) or it can be no light at all where that helps sell the character (exterior/porch scenes in “Unforgiven”).

[Bob Cole]

I know a good shooter who thought his time at AFI was worthwhile.

[Bob Cole]

The Kino operates in pairs of bulbs. If there is a problem with one bulb (or its seating) then its pair won’t light either.

Switch around as Tim suggested to isolate the problem to your one bulb, or to its seating.

[Bob Cole]

Not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. I have shot tungsten greenscreen foregrounds and successfully married them to exterior (“keyed-in”) backgrounds.

The claim was made, on another COW forum, that if the background to be keyed in will be shot at daylight color temperature, you should shoot the foreground (greenscreen) with daylight sources.

I was just curious what this group felt about that.

[Bob Cole]

John, did you realize I was asking about greenscreen? I think you’re agreeing, though.

— Bob C