soupkitchen

I have an L758Cine by Sekonic for raw shoots. I'm using it with Epics on Saturday. I'd suggest a light meter for all those working with raw video.
 
The reason is that you will know precisely what in your scene is in an out of the DR of your camera, rather than guessing using a screen or histogram. 
 
The 758Cine allows you to set a mid exposure then profile the meter to know how much over and under exposure you have in a given camera, so you'll know precisely what is recoverable and what's not.
 
It's pretty ace, though the ;learning curve is more like a cliff.

I think being objective and always wanting to improve is one of the most valuable traits for a film maker. If you looked back and loved it you wouldn't be improving would you? ;)

Large VFX facilities can't live off large VFX blockbusters, actually.  These are taken on for the prestige.  Large VFX blockbusters likely cost a VFX facility to be a part of.  Yeah, they're expensive, but not for the studios.
 
Success in the VFX business is breaking even.  You can extend this to success for a vendor in Hollywood is breaking even.  Historically the bigger facilities not subsidized by giant corporations or otherwise not bound to the same financial pressures as a standalone facility (ie. Sony Pictures Imageworks and ILM, companies with higher overhead than they bring in) have to keep their doors open by taking on work that's actually profitable.  
 
Both R+H and Digital Domain, prior to recent problems, had their doors kept open by having a very active commercials division, with a separate staff from features.  DD would have shuttered its doors after Titanic, most likely, if it hadn't been for the profitability of its commercial division.  R+H as well was kept afloat by this business which allowed it to take on feature work.  Sony has tried repeatedly to get rid of Imageworks because it's a money sinkhole with no chance of being profitable.  Lucas too, once he started to ramp down his interest in making more films, packaged up ILM, moved it to the city and started looking for potential buyers, because even they are more overhead than they can be bringing in.
 
VFX for motion pictures has pretty much always been a bad business to be in if your idea was to generate revenue.  And so everyone is looking to create their own content.  Perhaps a trade organization will improve things but it's pretty clear that content ownership is the only way to actually do better than squeak by or luck out and have a good year in the black.

once the 3D CGI boys get their hands on the elements the original cinematography
gets massively watered down and the cg element takes over the final control of the look and feel of the frame in question.
I have been directing Green/Blue Screen for 17 years now for MTV shot on film and now digital
and I have to say from my experiance the months spent in post completely re defines the cinematography , resizing , relighting , reframing adding cg background compositing etc etc grading etc
By the time I've finished with it don't recognise my own original work
it's been altered so much to create the final composite image of original film elements and added cgi elements.
 
I view 'Life Of Pi' in exactly the same way
that's why I was shocked that it won the Oscar for best cinematography over some of the other candidates I thought where more deserving of the award.

Leang and Mark sorry to be blunt but your ignorance astounds me on so many levels.
 
The logic of the argument is what matters, and the judgement & talent of the person making the argument.
 
There's no other creative industry where talent is trumped by some weird class order, as if having ASC after your name makes a mediocre talent great and 'ignore the rest'. There are people with experience who I don't respect, because I don't rate their work, their art, their taste, their world view and what they have to say. Doesn't matter if they are an ASC or not.
 
Doyle is not a career filmmaker, he only cares about the cinematography. If only more people were focussed on that, on understanding, refining and generally getting on with it - rather than climbing a career ladder. It wouldn't happen in the music industry. With music nobody sneers at a talented guitarist because he isn't part of the RIAA. It's the creativity, stupid. In the movie industry talent somehow takes a back seat to bullshit. It's weird.
 
And it isn't just about the attitude, if Doyle wasn't a genius behind the camera, his attitude would carry no sway with me.
 
Sean's work here could have any level of standing at all and I'd still admire it as the artistic achievement it is.
 
I respect people based on what they do, not 'who they are'. Maybe because I am a doer, and more interested in doing stuff than bullshitting around it.

Next to Bladerunner, my favorite film is Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.  I take a lot of heat for that with some of my friends but I don't care, it's beautiful and masterful.  Anyway, I watched it for the first time in several years tonight with a friend that had never seen it before.  I went looking for the trailer to show them and found this:
 
 
http://vimeo.com/56335284
 
 
...his combination of anamorphic photography with steadicam is a favorite facet of mine.

I don't care where he is born. I'm Australian. I don't like his work. I also don't think he deserved an Oscar. I don't think he was the person in control of the shots after they were lit and therefore he shouldn't be given credit for the final look of the film. I don't mean awards, I mean credit. Perhaps Chilean born is intended to indicate that he isn't Spanish, Mexican, Italian or anything else. There is nothing racist or sub-textual about that. And the wizard thing? Have you not learned that the internet is fairly conservative in its gender rolls, and also for a bunch of nerd guys who shoot camera tests, saying he looks like a wizard is unlikely to be genuinely pejorative?
 
Also I don't understand what you mean by 'blatant cinematography improvised at an amateur level'. Do you mean it is badly shot or do you mean they chose to shoot with an 'amateur', unpolished aesthetic that doesn't work for you? I would like a little clarification to understand your point as Coppola hasn't made a good film in 20 years and I'm not going to subject myself to this one to check it out ;)
 
Also, like I've said before, if you are going to make assertions about the real world of film making please put a link to your work or imdb page in your signature. It is nice to be able to give your pronouncements some context. Plus we are all here to learn and share.

Yeah but he wasn't composing the frames or lighting the final shots or grading the film was he? If anything he came in to R&H and spent a day or two telling the lighting or environment dept how he would light a scene. None of the actual physical lighting is that remarkable. He was getting a good evenly lit bluescreen and an image that would take well to grading. Luckily no-one really takes the Academy awards seriously these days do they?

Spotted this on Twitter, first shoot I've seen from the new Alexa at high speed.
 
Not that I'll own one any time soon, but hey, it's nice to look
 
And if someone gives you a budget, hire away!
 
https://vimeo.com/61256446

I came on here to see what people thought of the way the film looked and all I got was pages of argument based on textbook ideas.
 
My 2 cents. The film was insanely dull, yet still his best film since Pulp Fiction. Why do Americans fall down swooning every time Tarantino makes another long indulgent piece of crap. Robert Richardson top lights too much for my taste and aesthetically the film was pretty bland. For me it was a reminder of how beautifully composed the films he was referencing were, and how as a director I don't think he has the chops to do more than emulate better directors.
 
Leang that is an awesome picture btw.
 
Cheers,
 
Toby

Really, eight pages of this shite?
 
 
 
 
Eight pages and you still haven't learned the difference between "hero" and "antihero".  
 
Sad.

Um, rich that isn't shot with an anamorphic lens.
 
The Foton is a spherical zoom that was coupled with a 2x anamorphic adaptor but he's not using it. If he was he would be cropping anyway as the video isn't the right aspect for 2:1 on a 16:9 sensor but he even says on the vimeo page that it is spherical.
 
Cine zoom lenses will cover the full stills35 sensor (as opposed to cine) as you zoom in because, well, you are zooming in on the image and the projected image plane gets bigger as you zoom in.
 
So maybe the advice for the thread starter is just buy old, lovely, cheap spherical glass and frame and crop to your desired size? ;)

That's not anamorphic, Rich.  It's the cine zoom "taking" lens portion.
 
 
edit: ah, beat me to it.

But isn't vimeo and bokeh the main goal Burnet? ;) And lens flares. Don't forget lens flares.
 
 
Nothing is going to work as well as Iscoramas on full frames. Lomos are designed for 35mm motion picture film which is half frame anyway and aren't worth the trouble until we have 4:3 sensors. But I reckon now the Alexa has gone 4:3 there will be a move back to that sensor ratio from everyone else.
 
 
 
 
I'm not sure you will keep to that. Anamorphics seem to be a slippery slope dude.
 
For me at least the thing with the LA7200 and diopters is that even shelling out for the adapter and a 138mm .5 filter and +1 achromat will still be cheaper than an Isco these days. Hell, I'm looking for someone to rehouse the adapter and make it more matte box friendly so I can just drop diopters in but even paying for that conversion I'll still be significantly under the price of an Iscorama.

Slightly less welcome!

See all this crap is why I usually avoid forums. Thanks Burnett for answering my questions.
 
Slightly less thanks to OverCranked for initially answering my question then going on a rant about something un--asked for.
 
Props to Tony for his always impeccable spelling.

See all this crap is why I usually avoid forums. Thanks Burnett for answering my questions.
 
Slightly less thanks to OverCranked for initially answering my question then going on a rant about something un--asked for.
 
Props to Tony for his always impeccable spelling.

I think I know what you're referring to.  That 2.66:1 example image from Blade Runner, when this isn't an aspect ratio appropriate for any presentation of the film, amiright?  I'm pretty sure Andrew just cropped a screen grab to illustrate this unusual, but still pleasing, aspect ratio that you get simply as a mechanical result of combining the 1.5x options out there with the fact of our current 16:9 taking limitation.  
 
In fact the externally seen picture (external to the guide, seen elsewhere on the site) I'm referencing is taken from the section of the guide that does this, placed in between an example showing the mechanical result of combining a 2x lens with 16:9 (3.55:1) and one of the 1.33x lenses and 16:9, which only coincidently (and therefore lucky for us) produces the most common aspect ratio of ~2.35:1 
 
Using the Blade Runner imagery to illustrate these examples, rather than something unfamiliar from someone's VIMEO test footage, was an author's choice to make the math more relatable.  At least that's what I took from it.  
 
Regardless, I find myself referring back to both of his guides all the time.  In the case of the anamorphic guide it's worth it just for the research he's already done on virtually all of the types of lenses that pop up on ebay, each with their own personalities.  This guide could potentially save someone thousands of dollars.  However truthful the sellers might be this guide allows a potential buyer to skip the costly experimentation and potential disillusionment or disappointment.

He was asking about whether or not the guide was worth it and voiced a specific concern that was giving him pause.  You should have stopped at "yes", IMO, the rest was off-point and kinda all over the place, not particularly helpful.
 
Aside from a handful of folks on this forum the audience is mostly folks with an expensive hobby.

Shot out in the Hoh Rainforest. Heavily used the Kenko .3 105mm diopter. Edited in Adobe Premiere.

https://vimeo.com/52401060