Thursday, December 25, 2008

Lighting Illness

OK. It may sound insane, but I (quickly) lit our holiday family iChat sessions.

First, frontal lighting is hard to do with the iChat camera. The camera is typically right next to the wall and monitor. I did a quick bounce off the wall, above and behind the monitor. The iChat camera seems to balance towards daylight, so the image was looking a little orange with the tungsten light. I corrected this with a very slight CTB and plus green on the light. The slightly elevated light also helps hide my turkey neck. I put a sider up on the monitor so I could see the image accurately on it and a sider on the light itself so there wasn't any direct spill on our faces from the side.

Then, I lit the background with a small fresnel (with a little CTB again) and a homemade cookie, making a nice background pattern.

Then, I added a specular spotlight to highlight a photo on the wall, knocking it down a couple of stops with scrims (CTB again).

To finish it, I wanted a little subtle color in the background. I wrapped a bicycle LED light in diffusion and taped off the some of the lights, to get the right illumination level. This gag didn't work very well. A bright red object would've probably achieved a better effect.

Looking at the image now, I think I would probably bounce a light into some Roscoflex for a nice silvery rim on both of us (on our left side). That would really add some life to the whole image.

Happy holidays to everyone. I hope that you all get to spend your days doing the things you love in the upcoming year.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Adobe's "Customer Care"

Am I the only person to notice how bad Adobe's "Customer Care" has gotten? I have been on the phone with them at least 5 times over a period of more than two months and still have not received my post-announcement upgrade for CS4 Production Premium Suite. The last time I called they told me it would be delivered today. What they didn't say was that it would would be delivered today to their warehouse in Georgia because they shipped it to the wrong address and FedEx was returning it as undeliverable. There is a serious disconnect between the quality of the product that they are shipping and the support they are providing for it. And don't even get me started on their update manager.

This ain't no Ricky Martin

One film that I hope gets at least a DVD release is a joint Spanish-French-Mexican production, "La Vida Loca." This is definitely a film to see. Claustrophobic and at times feeling like a fever dream, it shows that sometimes reality is so intense that you have no choice but to stand back and just film it (handheld).

The trailer can be seen here. It is worth watching. It conveys only a bit of the film's intensity. This film has the sustained intensity that I had hoped "Made in America" would have.

I felt as if I'd been hit in the head with a brick by the time I finished watching this film. It documents the life (it sounds strange calling it that in this instance) in El Salvador of members of the Mara 18 gang and their warfare with Mara Salvatrucha (13). Names sound familiar? That's because the gangs were formed in Los Angeles (18th Street and 13th Street) and exported in a big way back to El Salvador (and elsewhere in Central America) with the massive deportations of gang members from the U.S. in the past decade. It's a dubious cultural export, indeed. The cultural mirror created by this powerful film makes me ache for all the dead, the innocent victims and destroyed lives in both the U.S. and El Salvador. And, to wonder why we are willing to accept as normal the astonishingly high level of violence in our society.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Good cinematography find

This Pentax digital spotmeter is the one that you're most likely to see being used on a set. It is extremely accurate and has some nice features on it. It also is no longer available and "new" ones on eBay sell for about $600. I recently found, and purchased one from Provantage (a reputable retailer) for $426, a lot less than it cost when they were still making them. Someone must have some sitting in a warehouse somewhere. If you have any interest in buying a spotmeter, I'd jump on this because when they're gone, they're gone. It takes about two weeks to get it.

Even if you don't have the slightest idea as to how to use it, you can always pull it out, point it at something and say, "knock that baby down a half stop" and everyone will think you have everything under control. It also adds a nice gunslinger effect if you wear it on your belt.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008


I attended the International Documentary Association's annual awards recently. Werner Herzog received a lifetime achievement award. His acceptance was brief, but to the point. Documentary filmmakers need to break out of "outdated" modes developed during the 1950's-60's (that would be direct cinema) in order to reach current audiences. The reception to that advice, to me anyway, seemed, um, subdued. It's been a hard year.

I've been somewhat disappointed to discover that there are still a significant number of documentary filmmakers who consider other modes of storytelling as not being "real" documentary. Or, that many are still wedded to the idea of the documentary filmmaker as the noble underdog reporter of facts that represent the "Truth." Personally, I find it offensive that we live in a society where basic reporting of current events and issues (essential to maintaining a functioning democracy) has been abdicated to essentially poorly funded volunteers. Worse, those poorly funded volunteers have been made to feel like they have to limit their creativity to "objective" journalistic standards that many of the established for-profit media sources even no longer feel compelled to follow.

What is true is that while the number of documentary films being made are multiplying, the audience does not seem to be there for this explosion of films. The host Morgan Spurlock, who has a better handle on popular storytelling than most, mocked himself by pointing out that "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" grossed $384K domestically, while "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" grossed $92M. I should point out that I know several intelligent people who would, without question, rather watch a talking animal movie rather than any documentary.

Happily, both of the feature award winners offered less than "traditional" storytelling. "Man on a Wire" uses extensive re-enactments, which seems to be controversial with a surprising number of people 20 years after the "Thin Blue Line" and 80 years after "Nanook."

More interestingly, the co-winner "Waltz with Bashir," is an animated documentary. I highly recommend seeking it out. The opening put me off a little but by the end of the film I was completely engaged. The animation creates a distance from the actual people involved in the events while at the same time, it also draws the viewer in. I still cannot explain exactly why. Maybe our defenses are lower with animation than with actual video of conflict and atrocities. Maybe we don't judge animated "characters" as hard as actual participants and are more receptive to their story. Perhaps the participants themselves were able to be more uncertain and real, less defensive, knowing that their actual image wouldn't be used. As a result, the filmmaker is able to subtly communicate many traumatic truths and the nature of memory when trying to recall these types of events.

My point is that filmmakers must become more creative in their stories and their storytelling. Audiences have become more sophisticated and jaded, whether we like it or not. If we want to reach them, and quite possibly even make a living doing it (remember that the people who created direct cinema all made a living doing their work--if we want to survive, we need to make money to film another day), we need to talk to them and not at them. I don't think that it's an accident that some of the most consistently successful documentary filmmakers of the last 25 years, Moore, Morris, Herzog are among the most non-traditional and innovative. If an intelligent effort is made, people will watch (although Iraq burnout seemed to sink "Standard Operating Procedure"--it grossed $229K domestically). There will always be a place for the direct cinema type of documentary; see my post about "La Vida Loca." It would just be a lot more interesting for it not to be nearly the only storytelling model used by filmmakers.

Other notable films that innovate with their storytelling?? "Bus 174" (in my opinion, one of the most important films of the past 20 years) and "Stevie" are two outstanding examples. I would even propose looking at some of Chris Marker's work, even his fiction work ("Sans Soleil"), for potentially innovative documentary storytelling models.

Buy this film.

These are hard times for filmmakers, just like the rest of the world. Funding and distribution seem to be more distant than ever. I know many people who have barely worked since August, and before that there was the writer's strike. The economy is in complete turmoil, class divisions are greater than at any point in recent history and we seem to have burned our bridges to many possible solutions in the past 8 years. As creative people, it seems like we have nothing to lose. We are funding ourselves, donating equipment and time....why aren't we telling our stories in our own way? It seems like this is the perfect time to innovate and be free to actually have a vision.

Here is one definition of documentary film: A non-fiction film that uses a minimal amount of re-enactments or fictionalization in order to present some kind of truth about its subject.
Non-fiction is defined as: the events portrayed in the film are/were in some sense "real." Truth: not necessarily based on facts; reveals some detail or experience that can be understood as "true" to someone. I like a lot about this definition. The one area that I still think about, and question, is how much fictionalization (and of what type) and recreation is acceptable for a film to still be considered a documentary. I come down more on the side of more as opposed to less, as long as it effectively communicates truths, personal, perceived, impressionistic or otherwise. I think that I'd rather have less facts and more truth, as opposed to the shovels of facts, with little truth, that we are fed every day by the mainstream media.

So, What Would Werner Do? This is an extract from an August 19, 2005 interview with the Austin Chronicle:

AC: In your nonfiction work, we see a blending of fictionalized moments and what we think of as conventional documentary technique. You spoke at Sundance about staging a scene with a droplet of water, glycerin, actually –

WH: The water drop scene and the dialogue that I purely invented is in The White Diamond.
But your question is somehow poking into what is documentary for me. I'm after some deeper truth [rather] than just facts. To find some sort of ecstasy of truth, I stylize, I fabricate, I stage, I invent dialogue all over the place. So when you speak about documentaries, do it with a necessary caution....

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

OK. One Last Shootout

Zacuto's Great Camera Shootout '08 from Steve Weiss, Zacuto USA on Vimeo.

Zacuto did an interesting shootout, covering pretty much the entire range for state of the art image aquisition in 2008, from 35mm to a D90 DSLR. They talk for awhile at the beginning of the clip and the actual footage starts about midway through. I recommend downloading the whole thing and then watching it in full screen HD. Again, creating this type of test is a very subjective thing, regardless of how hard you try to be objective.

What did I take from this? 35mm film is still the most elegant solution, both in the established workflow and resulting image. In the cheaper end, one of my favorites, the HVX/Letus Elite combo still looks pretty darn nice. A little soft, but pleasantly so, and as you'll hear them say in the clip, it required very little post production work. This is something that people really aren't focusing on in all of these discussions about what is the "best" camera, how much money and time you are consuming in post-production. You can also pick up an HVX used for a pretty cheap.

I thought the HPX 170 didn't look too bad out of the box, for the money. It'll make a really nice low-cost documentary camera. I'd be curious as to how it'd look with a depth of field adapter on it. I'm also curious why the color looked a little thin on it compared to the HVX, given that the image processing should be the same (if it was an HVX200A). If the HVX used for the test is the original model, the HPX should have improved image processing.

The new HPX3000 and the EX3, to me, looked the most "video." I also was a little disappointed with the color reproduction of facial tones for the EX3. I don't understand what was going on with the Red footage, it looked soft, maybe they used the stock "Red lens" (don't get angry, it's a joke).

My choices? For a feature, 35mm. For a guerilla budget, the HVX/HPX with the Letus Elite. For the "jungle documentary", the HPX 170 or the EX 3 with a Flash Nano from Convergent Designs.

OK. I promise my next several posts will only deal with creative issues. No technology.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

More ridiculousness

That's a crystal sync, super 16, Bolex EBM with a built-for-danger sound barney.

Sorry, you'll have to go here or here if you want to follow the latest from Red's PR trail. This is good reading if you want a Red non-believer's perspective. And if you're in the mood for a contrarian opinion about DSLR video, click here. These are some pretty good arguments for shooting in film (add the words "data extinction" to your vocabulary). I am in techno-burnout and am feeling more focused on images and story than data rates, data management or resolution right now.