Richard Herd
Forum Replies Created
-
“Editing is not the most important part of making a movie. It IS the movie.” –Anonymous (but some say it’s Stanley Kubrick)
-
I ain’t so bad at judging EI with my eyes. Actually, I use my hand. I can tell ’round about the EI based on what my hand looks like. I got good at this trick shooting film stills, with that little button on the side where you can preview.
The light meter is for “measuring” light, especially when designing contrast ratios in a scene/frame.
For example, the past weekend I installed baseboards. Yeah, I can eyeball it to about three feet, but I need a tape measure to get 36-1/8″, or even better, I need the board itself and a pencil to tick it off. And then what happens? I cut it long, walk to the saw, shave a bit and test till the board fits.
-
That’s a good point, Sam.
But in defense of the point, which I only partly agree with, is working with lights that have lots of electricity running through them is not the same as working with, say, an After Effects plug in. There are legitimate safety issues. Just recently, for example, I had a photo flood bulb explode. Thankfully no one was hurt because it was a bare bulb, and it was before any actors were on set, but had it been in a china lantern or someone standing near it…whoa. (Note: I also had $1,000,000 insurance liability policy.)
When it exploded, there was literally a 6″ white hot flame shooting down, which lasted easily 5 seconds. The pieces of the bulb were burned into the carpet and scattered in literally in infinite directions. I was hit by a small shard that burned my arm.
What caused this? I think it was a dirty bulb and the finger prints and dust on it heated it up and it exploded.
Having said that I too am a annoyed with the “hire a local gaffer if you want to learn” approach to lighting. However it was their tip, an answer to your question, and it’s essential nature is about safety.
-
[Aaron Cadieux] “How would someone know that I obtained that photo from their book (unless they altered the picture), and not some other source (since the photo is in the public domain)?”
More than likely, they’ll never know.
You have raised a particular lex causae, a conflict of laws.
One law says “after x amount of time a work becomes a work in the public domain.”
Another law says “entity y controls the work.”
As a member of society, I would argue we are bound by our word and good faith. That is, just because a law cannot be enforced does not mean the law is void and or that we should try to get away with it.
🙂
-
The American Cinematographer magazine reported https://www.ascmag.com/magazine_dynamic/digital_edition.php the footage went through a digital intermediate process, which, if you haven’t looked into, is a very expensive process.
-
[Asmund Voll Tesdal] “Just one thought; how does the cost of extra time spent grading less-than-ideal footage compare to the savings of renting cheaper cams?”
Correct!
It depends your final deliverable. “Crash,” of course, went to a film print. The overwhelming majority of microbudget movies are lucky to get an audience, much less a film print.
I’m repeating myself, but here’s the answer for a DI: At monacosf.com the price ranges from .55 per frame to $1.20/frame. at 24fps
24*60*120=172,800 frames * .55 = $95,000 and at $1.20 = $207,000.And transferring video to film costs about $3000/minute. 120 minutes * 3000= $360,000.
Question is, with half a million dollars in services on the table, is it possible to get a reasonable discount?
I think we call that question “a grinder”?
So there you go! -
No time, as I was a varsity wrestler.
-
One quick point: Cost.
The latest Panasonic monitor costs $5,000.
How much does a video village cost?
Light meter…$200.Bang for your buck, a light meter is a great tool. Especially for people who have recently purchased their first light kit.
-
That’s a hard question to answer, in sum: to capture the image in such a way to manipulate it in post.
It’s somewhat subjective, so I hope this makes sense. Price is definitely a factor. Light meter v. monitor v. zebras–they’re all tools, but regardless there needs to be some way to measure the light. In my opinion, anyone who takes photography seriously will carry a light meter around with them, for a while, because it’ll fit in your pocket, just to see what’s going on. I learned a lot one day walking around Muir Woods, in the dappled light.
Anyway…
I use the Panasonic AG-HVX200, so it’s somewhat limited in its capabilities: 8-bit DVCPROHD. So there’s almost zero margin for error (or rather, there’s a lot of places it can go wrong!). Here’s how I construe it: The manual says the HVX200 needs a minimum lux of 100, which is 10 foot candles (on my Sekonic L-398A) @ 325 ISO — an f-stop at 1.4. I set the aperture at 2.8. (If I have to open up more than that, I boost the gain instead due to the lens causing a fuzziness.)
Unfortunately anything between “no light” and 10 fcs gets gunky. I get the room ambient light to 10 fc = 0 IRE = f/1.4, which to the naked eye is actually kind of bright.
Using Apple Color to manipulate the image, my goal is to get a clean “gradient” from black to the second stop (f/2.0). I use the luminance curve in the first room of Apple Color to achieve this, almost mimicking a log curve.
I also shoot a lot of golf, and I hate it when they wear hats. I meter under my own hat, and set the aperture accordingly. Pretty straight forward there. As the sun moves, I check the meter, now and again.
-
🙂