Tim Kolb
Forum Replies Created
-
From the photos, the place looks very evenly lit for a bar. Too evenly lit for a dark story I would think.
If it’s a dark comedy, is the bar a dark place?
I might test shoot a bit using your lights to put light into key areas. The place looks like someone’s top dresser drawer exploded onto the walls…I think I’d like it if the walls weren’t all that well illuminated. It will keep the focus on your subjects.
The other thing about bars is that there are all sorts of light colors. Tungsten balanced (or at least close) fluorescent tubes can be used above the pool tables to bring the room into more uniform color temperature, but then sometimes the different temps work. Maybe the wattage could simply be reduced so they aren’t pushing quite as hard…
The lighting scheme looks really crowded. I hope you have some generators as finding enough power for all that will be a challenge, even in a commercial building.
My personal advice would be to do some tests with the filmstock and use one light to light a scene, then two…but try to be minimalist and bring in some big sheets of white styrofoam (the 4’x8′ kind made for insulating houses work great, and you can cut them up to be different sizes and throw them out when you’re done..) and a couple of sheets of Celotex or something more reflective than just the white styrofoam and start using bounce as fill where you might need it as oppose to so many sources.
For lighting the wide shots, yes, you will probably need more sources as bouncing light from great distances is rarely possible and even less often practical, however in a dramatic film, the bulk of your shots shouldn’t be wide shots, so this gives you freedom to tightly manage only what’s within the lense view for the bulk of your shots.
Keep in mind that in a bar, or in life, the key light is rarely in front of you.
I’m sure there are lots of people here with more 16m film experience than me, but those are my thoughts on the general lighting scheme.
-
Dream chasing…
I’ve found that my dreams have evolved over time.
I used to dream about doing higher and higher profile projects…now I dream about doing projects profitable enough to fund a couple of college educations, and maybe even some sort of subsistence retirement…
Weird how that happens…
Best of luck my friend.
-
I had tears running down my cheek at the Yamaha bit…
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Several threads on this very topic in the Cinematography forum here at the Cow…
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
I like to “toss in” certain elements at no cost as an incentive rather than lower your rate. Once the rate is lowered, it will never come back, but comping certain elements of the project can be done at will and gives you something you can offer when you need it, or not…
Just a thought…
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
[Mark Suszko] “My guess is they wanted to re-do your spot without calling you in.”
I doubt that anyone is debating that…I think the point is that most of the time, even if you train people like this, they won’t have the “touch” to be ultimately competitive.
Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but we had a project start recently where one member of the team was afraid that the client was trying to expand to bring the production role “in-house” and I was singled out as one who should resist “training” anyone.
The problem with that strategy is that the project went south right out of the blocks because nobody on the production team stepped up to help the client make some sort of sane plan… It’s getting back on track now, but the whole thing was just absurd.
Where the buttons are in After Effects (or whatever) isn’t a secret to be protected and how to use them to solve complex production problems is a secret too large to simply steal.
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Closing?
What’s up with that Grin?
(I’ve got lamps for the client comfy leather chair area behind me…I need color neutral light (sunlight 5600 was what I was originally aiming for…) to keep my battleship gray walls gray so the color correction gods find favour with me…
🙂
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
I should also have added that yes, it certainly would qualify as a “weird call” and I agree with Mike_S that perhaps the call that he describes could square things up at least somewhat…
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
I’ve found that being stingy with knowledge usually has no long-term upside.
I’ve found over the years that training people a bit…like the scenario you mentioned…tend to send a message to them that you are knowledgeable and they’ll tend to keep coming back for sophisticated projects. You may lose some of the simpler ones, but in this case it sounds like you may have lost the client.
For me, it’s a matter of what constitutes the outer dimensions of “my knowledge”…it’s a combo of know-how and “know-what-works” and it took me 20 years to accumulate this experience. I couldn’t train my replacement in a phone call, or even a week of tutelage.
Teaching someone how you create one solution isn’t the same as teaching them your problem-solving technique.
Saying “I think the chicken could use a touch of thyme” isn’t revealing the content and proportion of all eleven herbs and spices…(I’m not sure if you’re old enough to get that reference, but someone will…)
🙂
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net -
Hmmm.
I think that the only real “correct” things about editing to learn is how humans see images and process them to understand what’s going on.
After that…I think that “correct” is whatever is right for the project. Pacing, cutting techniques, that sort of thing is what constitutes your style. Learning the mindset behind some other styles is helpful to start building a feeling of what others are doing, but I’d hesitate to call any editing style “right” or “wrong”.
I think that young editors who ignore the ramifications of breaking the plane of action or jump cutting and call that a “style” and they are just breaking new ground by breaking the rules are missing the fact that these “rules” were created to give an editor tools to communicate with human audio/visual perception.
Knowing the “rules” and breaking them as part of a strategy to cause discomfort or confusion in your audience as a story-telling device is different than ignoring the rules because they are confining.
You can walk around speaking in Klingon all day and you’d be quite a trendsetter…but it’s going to take some extra time at the McDonald’s drive through.
A good book to get a feel for an editor’s point of view is “In the Blink of an Eye” by Walter Murch. As far as basic editing techniques, I suspect there are too many texts to mention. Maybe someone else here has a favorite?
TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net