Tim Sewell

Spenser Sakurai

Tenfold Productions

Robert Machado

- also deserve a mention.

6 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

Oh, maybe I misunderstood "big old lights" to mean "big, old lights."

Sorry. UK idiom. 'Old' in that context doesn't mean old. My bad.

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

Are you sure they were LED and not HMI? I don't think we've had quality LED lights that powerful for very many years so I'd be curious which old units they were. I could be wrong though.

The videos I've seen them in have all been from the last year or two - mainly Nanlites with a couple of Aputures and Godox in the mix. Of course, some of those videos have been in the 'gaffer testing stuff' genre made in guys' garages, but others have been, in the main, DPs on higher end shoots and some tutorials (I think quite a few of the notable working DP Tubers have been given freebies, so they reckon, 'why the hell not use it?'.

Sorry to take the thread off-topic, by the way.

2 hours ago, kye said:

I really don't envy you pros who have to go into who-knows-what situations and have to deliver professional results!

Well I'm no pro, but I do want to get pro results.

The tiles were, happily, a fairly neutral dark grey, but the room itself was tiny. You literally could not swing a cat in there. I lit it quite easily - 1 x 5800K Lupo into a bounce on the wall opposite the talent, a 3200K Lupo offside and behind, a 3200K tube on the floor at his feet and then the M20 at 6300K behind him lighting the sloping roof at around 40% to give a bit of separation.

It certainly looked nice enough in the monitor! Today's shots (which only took just over an hour - the advantage of the tiny location was that you can only do so many CUs and mids of a guy sitting on a stool playing a guitar and staring at a laptop!)n will be used as B-roll to run as interview cutaways and also to create a monitor LUT for all the other studio work we'll be doing over the next couple of months.

2 hours ago, kye said:

One thing I find in severe scarcity is people that have worked in professional settings and know how the real pros do things

Have you checked out the Shotdeck channel? There aren' a huge number of videos there yet, but those that are seem very good. Basically hour-long Lawrence Sher interviews with directors/DPs etc about their movies, using the images from the site as jumping off points.

8 hours ago, kye said:

Like Luc Forsyth, who has shot major network TV shows:

I like Luc, but it does seem that since he started really pushing his paid courses the channel seems to have shifted emphasis from practical stuff to more talking head stuff.

9 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

they're tiny and run off of USB-C so I can plug 'em into a V mount plate or even a battery bank.

I'm doing a b-roll shoot over lunch today for one of the documentaries I'm making this year (first shoot on this one, so looking forward to it!). I haven't been able to scout the room, which is a recording/rehearsal studio, but I do know that it's very small and that the walls are lined with those acoustic tile thingies. So I'm taking:

1 x tiny Ulanzi 40W bi-colour
2 x RGB wands
2 x Lupo 20W bi-colour Smartpanels
1 x Zhiyun M20 bi-colour
1 x FalconEyes RGB panel

Also a bunch of pipe clamps, spring clamps, 1/4 20 magnet plates etc, plus 2 5-in-1 reflectors, one of them folded out to black.

All battery powered. I probably won't use all of these, but I wanted to give myself some adaptability given that I'm going in near-blind.

The look I'll be gunning for is classic split tone so I'll be setting up a daylight wash with the 40W light and using some of the other lights for warm accents. Camera set to 4300K.

All of this fits in a single standard aluminium photographer's case from which I've stripped the foam, which is good because the camera weighs about 40 tonnes!

6 minutes ago, gethin said:

The specs sound like they're similar output to my 150s.

With reflectors on it's definitely around 2-3 stops brighter than my Godox SL200.

I've seen quite a few 1200 and 2400 fixtures in use on various DP YT channels, but really only when the spaces that need to be lit are on the bigger side. And they're pretty big old units, needing heavier duty stands etc and in a lot of cases no longer having Bowens mounts. You're really getting into van territory so I'd expect these bigger LEDs to be much more of a hire item than something you'd carry around in your daily kit as an owner-op.

I recently bought one of these (the daylight version) and am soon to get the bi-colour. I don't have the tools to test the metrics, but they're extremely bright and reasonably quiet. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/385671087101?itmmeta=01HWMW3M2R3J7XYR6MXF4WNV52&hash=item59cbc9c3fd:g:GeQAAOSw4f5kgv5S&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAAwFc8zK2w7uAzhpc1h248S6jNA5Gw%2FYnu0N1Oh9zktYieBDQ0XN3Y2S1YLVVfrVCJwMOe%2FWIN8QX%2F1Y6qh%2BuG964LZb8IkftuUcmkq%2Bxo6n1YRp%2BuqoPgcv84%2BMzIWIWVd3SNpq4mnPPPWRlsiCOiPNsl84vGLEZ4S51kzT17vRYoFI5EpvbRtTDEWvTvpSYVdxv4DenaLzgf0W37yPC5B%2FiZ3bP6%2BKW2Dm6iDH7x2H7AFj9ubifexmkIp5%2B%2FQ8Cxxg%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR7rBjpzlYw

This is a UK link, but I think they're available in most markets.

I bought FilmConvert years ago but balked at paying for Dehancer. And yes, of course you could do subtractive sat before now, but nowhere near as easily as slices and FLC make it.

Scared the shit outta me! Well done.

14 hours ago, mercer said:

Making a film is one of the hardest things I've ever attempted... especially in a DIY, low/no budget space... but it's also one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had...

When I did the music video for that band a couple of months ago - it was a nightmare, but at the same time had me thinking - this just feels so right and so much what I want to spend my time doing. If only I didn't have to make a living!

1 hour ago, kye said:

The music remixer will allow much easier and more powerful editing of music to fit your edit, rather than the other way around.  I frequently chop up a song and cross-fade between clips to extend the same section or glue the ending onto the middle to end it sooner etc.

I was avoiding thinking about that having recently paid £50 for NeuralMix, which basically does that!

And yeah, FLC doesn't do it all, but it sure does get you a lot of the way there. Native subtractive saturation is a major win too, given the relatively high cost of the better DCTLs people have developed to do it.

7 hours ago, kye said:

Also, what about Resolve 19 are you excited about?

Film Look Creator all day long! Slices seem cool too. Only trouble is that render cache seems a bit borked in the beta - where I was previously getting real-time playback it seems to be falling over a bit.

You?

So there's a guy who lives near me - young guy, good looking - who 2 years ago gave up a film-making degree at a London university (can't remember which one - but a good one, I can remember thinking when he told me) to go on the tools with his dad, because he couldn't see any way that an expensive 3 year course was ever gong to wash its face.

Was talking to his sister this evening and she reckons he'd be totally up for getting involved in my short. Which could mean I've either got talent that isn't me, or a camera op that isn't me. Either way, it suddenly makes this project a whole lot easier.

(Not to mention Resolve 19 - which changes the space entirely!)

14 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

What was your take on the first film? 

Actually unreservedly loved it. I'm finding that I'm gradually getting further and further away from preferring verite/realistic looks and getting into the wilder end of things!

I watched this yesterday and it inspired me to watch the first film (only 5 years late!). It's unusual to see Waqas quite so excited about something but it was an excellent view into the art, rather than the technique, in top-end colour grading.

27 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

It's great that you can reshoot!

There are *some* advantages to being both crew and talent myself! Obviously this is a passion/learning project, though, so reshoots aren't a problem, except for getting the time to do them.

In terms of movement - I'm not missing it too much. There is one point in one shot where a subtle push-in would really help to sell the moment. I can do it in post, but that it won't have the (very mild) parallax that a 'real' push-in would give me.

So an update, if anyone's interested. I shot the first scene, which was made up of 5 distinct shots. They came out OK. They were... competent, but only that. The lighting was good - nice contrast, nice colours, well-motivated, but that's all.

Can you tell I'm dissatisfied?

I was so focussed on getting everything 'right' that I didn't pay enough attention to getting it good or interesting.

So I'm going to reshoot and one of the things I'm going to do is lean in to the limitations I have - first among which is that I'm doing this almost completely alone. I am both crew and talent! The biggest limitation caused by that is that camera movement while I'm on screen is not going to happen, which means that to create interest I need to make my angles and composition more interesting.

Also, the lighting as I did it the other night looked, basically, like a commercial, not a movie, so now I'm happy with my ability to get decent levels etc, I'm going to really try to push the envelope with ratios and temperatures and try to have some fun with it.

Once I've reshot I may post both versions for comment before I continue with the remaining scenes (it's going to take a while to complete the whole project given that I work full-time and my main set is our kitchen, which is in near-constant use as my 3 children attempt to bankrupt me purely through food costs!).

12 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Buying off Ebay is an option too, but you never seem to find good deals anymore (I gave up).

I've had some great bits of luck recently by using search terms that reflect what a person who didn't know what they had would use as a listing title - 'camera light' and so on... then sorting by Ending Soonest.

I've owned many cameras (too many) and i think I've only ever bought 2 from new. Thing is, there are so few moving parts on cameras these days that there's not a huge amount that can go wrong in normal use. That said, unless an eBay or similar deal is just too good to pass up, you are safer doing it through a dealer, as @ac6000cw says.

12 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Since one of the stated reasons for documenting the journey was accountability, how did your first night of shooting go?

Reasonably well thanks - will write it up soon!

My intention is to document this journey here and I’m doing it for the entirely selfish reason of keeping myself on it!