Caitlin Cisek

The lovely and talented Caitlin Cisek shows off the mercenary killers.

Sagan. She'll probably get a lot of sand in her shoes.

Cameron seems appropriate.

Varl and Rove ready to rock out some vengeance.

Warfield. We don't need him in the desert of course. Just everywhere else. By "everywhere" I mean Allentown.

Nearest ER

When you need to find the location of the nearest hospital for your call sheets (or, you know, if you're actually having an emergency right now) there is the ER Wait Watcher. The purpose of it is to find wait times, but it also shows the nearest hospital. It's surprising, to me, how otherwise difficult it is to find the nearest ER. I suppose most GPS's do it.

Varl Gets a Uniform

Spot Caitlin Cisek

In praise of the sci-fi corridor.
An unfunded Kickstarter for Bladerunner tiles.
Ennis House tiles for 3D printers.

Roll With the Shutter

Cinema5D did a rolling shutter comparison of a bunch of cameras.

There are interesting tests between the GH4 and the GH3. At 4K the GH4 actually performs a bit worse than the GH3 but to my eye it seems less "liquid-y".
Phillip Bloom on the GH4.
At one point I had found a thing which gave the equivalent rolling shutter speed for motion-picture film with a 180-degree shutter. Because there is a little bit of "rolling shutter" on old-fashioned chemical film. But for the life of me I can't find it.

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Sunrise and sunset times in Denver, CO.

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Over the years I've gotten in more and more trouble for stuff I post on this blog. I keep being surprised at who reads it. I'll probably end up putting more troublesome stuff on Pleasure for the Empire. "Troublesome" in this case simply means more information about what I'm doing.

Color Correction and You

I know nothing about color correction other than watching Stu Maschwitz' Lightroom Iron Chef.
He's working in Lightroom, which doesn't have a direct analogy to the programs we tend to use for video (and we certainly aren't shooting in RAW) but it's very helpful -- even where I don't exactly agree with his decisions on the final correction it's nice to see how he makes those decisions and experiencing his (very sophisticated) sense of color. 

The video it entirely worth the hour-and-a-half to see the process. Note that the changing the aspect ratio is not something that's really a thing that's possible in the world of movies. But the way he approaches the skin tones and using gradients is really interesting to me.
Honestly I just use his Magic Bullet Looks, maybe adjust the exposure, maybe fade the effect back a bit, and then move on. I'm not saying it's a good idea, it's just what I do.

I Mentor Ye

One Thousand Birds is a post sound facility in Brooklyn.

It not often a man gets to offer advice to the world. But on occasion he can because the wisdom he has gained should be passed on to others. I have the opportunity to impart knowledge I have gained so that you might benefit from it. Do not tell your distributor you're making a movie about robots playing chess.

Talk myself down

So we're going with the Blackmagic URSA camera on this next movie. With all the kit and kaboodle it'll be about $2400 for the movie.

This is the quote.

What are things that concern me? Well firstwise I worry that after all is said and done we're going to need to do some reshoots/additional photography. Hopefully we'll get everything we need and not have to but I've never seen that happen in the history of things that happen. So we're going to need to get a 4K camera eventually. Or something.

The other thing that concerns me is something which I actually have trouble uh, making clear with the verbal thing where you say the stuff and then other people understand what saying you are making with the sense.

In short I feel we need more sophisticated and elegant camera moves in our movies.

I think this solves a couple big problems, not only does it make the picture look bigger and more expensive, but also it serves for visual interest while we watch characters think for a while. We've noticed that our movies tend to go a quite a clip and that we tend to be a bit "breathless" as well as going under-time. We need a moment, to watch the android inside the derelict ship, as she decides whether to kill everyone aboard or not. It's these kinds of moments which we need to be able to sit on, to experience, to bring us closer to the characters in the story.

If we were to rent a Fisher 10 (or 11) with a dolly grip for a weekend it would be about $2000. Thing is that on our sets we don't have more than about... er... 10 feet(?) to go on those tracks. Not side-to-side anyway. We could go with one of those gimble stabilizers, but only if we were to do a smaller camera.

Well, that's a $600 difference in price. There's no quality hit that I know of when going from the Ursa to the Production 4K. But the 4K will be easier to bring to remote locations and such. Hmm...

I'm kinda talking myself out of the Ursa.

L'Horror

13 classic scenes that explain how horror movies work is interesting in that it shows some different techniques and counter examples to how they work.

Horror films are just too hard. I have no idea how to make them. So I don't.

On Reddit

On Reddit I am UnicornCommander.

Too Old to Play with Dollys

Everybody's been talking me out of a dolly. I would love a Fisher 10 or 11 and a full-time dolly grip. Then I got talked down to a Matthews doorway dolly, and now I've been talked down to a slider. Sigh.
One day. One day I'll have a Fisher with a jib and a dolly grip. One day.

Leviathan

This is a beautiful short, The Leviathan.

The Leviathan -- Teaser from Ruairi Robinson on Vimeo.

I may end up with a Matthews Doorway Dolly rather than a Fisher 10 dolly on our next movie. Sigh. I want the Fisher. The producer part of my brain is yelling at me. But the director part really wants a Fisher...

памяти и куклы

памяти и куклы

That means "Memories And Puppets". Which, I think, is the Russian name of the shop in Android Masquerade where one gets one's android from.

Apparently I do not post this image often enough on this blog. 

Voles, Crimea

So we're just pricing some things around. Looks like two days of a Fisher jib and dolly grip will be about $2000. That's to be expected, right?
Dealing with insurance. About $600 for liability and another $400 for workman's comp? That's about right, no?

Crimean vole. Do we need a geared head? Or should we give up on all this whackadoo grip gear?
Also, in the future there's some kind of space knife. There are at least two in this movie. What kind of knife to people have in the future? Maybe I'll make one of those bondo switchblades out of a comb switchblade...

More on Ursa

The awesome Libby Csulik turned us on to borrowlenses.com which is where it looks like we'll rent the Ursa camera.
Shane Hurlibut says the Ursa wants to shoot at an ISO of 400. He says that whackity-doo* things happen to the image at both 200 and 800 ISO.

The fact he has a football strapped to his kit is all kinds of awesome.

The trick is to use infrared resistant ND filters for out there in the sunshine. Whether we feel the infrared pollution on the image is a good or bad thing may be up for debate, but we're GOING to need some ND. This morning I measured an f45 out in the daylight at 400 ISO at 24fps and a 180 shutter (I still have my Sekonic light meter from Pandora Machine). That's right, an f 45.

Obviously that will have to be knocked down a couple stops. The IR ND filters are delightfully expensive. Delightful!

This is information I frequently need:

Neutral Density Factors

• 2x = ND.3 (exposure adjustment = 1 stop, reduces ISO 1/2)

• 4x = ND.6 (exposure adjustment = 2 stops, reduces ISO 1/4)

• 8x = ND.9 (exposure adjustment = 3 stops, reduces ISO 1/8)

*My words, not his.

Update: a complete explanation of f-stops!