Indy 4

Ok, so hopefully most of you have seen the new Indiana Jones. I won't spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen it, I promise. I just wanted to share an little bit of the article in this months American Cinematographer Magazine.

' A 4K Xenon lamp was used to create the hard shadow on the car in full daylight. “We were in New Mexico, and it was 108°, and all of our electronic lights kept shutting off because of the heat,” recalls Devlin. “So we came up with very elaborate air-conditioning and huts for all of the ballasts, and we made sure the heads and cables were out of the sun. We ended up giving a lot of star treatment to all the electronic lighting because it just hated being in that kind of temperature. Steven just smiled and said, ‘Well, that’s why we used arcs last time!’” '

...that's all I am going to say.



To read the entire article, click here: http://www.ascmag.com/magazine_dynamic/June2008/CrystalSkull/page1.php#

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Student Oscars!

Check it out, the winners have been anounced and you can see pictures and video clips here: http://www.oscars.org/saa/2008/index.html

2 USC films that I was Best Boy Electric(but pretty much gaffed) won Gold and Bronze medals for narrative films and a San Francisco State film won a silver medal in the Alternative film category!

You can see clips from some of the films here:http://www.oscars.org/saa/2008/video/clips.html#

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
Remember, you can't dim fluorescent lights... once your reduce their voltage then the bulbs will start to flicker. This is eve true with CFLs(Compact Flurescent Lughts).

The Start of Summer

Wow, I am excited for this summer. I have a few shorts lined up(at least one per month for the next 3 months) and a possible feature with Rb over the summer that might take us to Idaho! Plus we have plans to start a physical presence in the SF Bay Area by the beginning of July and other various travel, work and life plans that promises to make the summer of 2008 a very memorable one.

Aaron Rockwell and I kicked off our summer by going to a Dodgers game. We came by some free tickets through Aaron's work, he is a rep at the Musicians Union who has hired him full-time. One of the sales reps got 4 tickets and gate 2 to Aaron and 2 to one of his coworkers. So we get there and we have a parking pass with the tickets... that gets us into the Season Ticket holders lot... we parked less then a hundred feet away from the entrance. Then we go in and our tickets get us into the lower level of the stadium and we find our section, section 17, Row C. Turns out.. sections 17 is right behind the Dodgers dugout... and Row C just happens to be 4 rows from the field! I have never been so close to a sporting event before, I could hear the players talk and we even saw the owners, the managers, the presidents and a bunch of other "famous" old guys who have a history in baseball that I couldn't recognize but was told they were famous. We saw Joe Torre, who I guess had a long history with the Yankees?? Anyway, the only people I recognized were Jeff Kent(who hit a home run at his first at-bat as soon as Aaron Booed him) and Larry King, who was there with his wife. His hair is a lot darker then it appears on TV. Aaron is a big Giants fan, so he wore his SF hat, but surprisingly only got one verbal comment(because he was rooting for the Rockies) and one cheer. It was a lot of fun... and I am not a big baseball fan(...yes, still mad about the strike back in '94(?) but I won't say no to free tix).
Aaron Rockwell showing his SF Giants pride at Dodger Stadium in LA

Former Giant Jeff Kent warms up before his first at-bat, in which he hit a home run.

Recently, Joe and I went to Mole to test out some lighting for the next move I am doing with Rob. For the film we are mainly using beam projectors for shafts of sunlight attempting to light 90% from outside the house; but I needed to find a small HMI for inside so I went in and tested the Digimoles. They worked out very well, so I am going to get a few of them for this film.
400w Digimole into a 4x4 bead board for soft key/eye light

Joe with a heavy back light from the Beam projector and a soft key from the 400w Digimole bounce.

Shafts of light formed by the Beam projector.

We also tested out an old camera/lighting car mounting system that uses suction cups to attach to a cars hood. It wasn't the most stable rig, but we had fun doing it.
Frank rigging the car mount to the car as Joe prepares to "act".


PhillM tip-of-the-day:
Anytime you have a bar HMI bulb without a lens you run the risk of a color halation(color separation due to focal shift of the light) when you try and cut it with a gobo or cutter. Mainly, you will see an orange and blue halation on either side of the shadow.

Universal Inferno and Steve's Camera...

I am sure that a lot of you have heard about the big fire at universal yesterday. It's kind of tragic because a lot of film history was destroyed in the blaze including the King Kong exhibition hanger, a film/TV/music archive storage area, part of New York Street on the back lot where they filmed movies like "The Sting" and also the famous clock tower from "Back to the Future"!

Joe and I took some pictures on the way to set on Sunday morning, we had to drive right past the studio. We both were fortunate enough to work on the back lot at Universal and I think that a lot of people are sad about the destruction of the fire.










In other news, we both worked on a small shoot on Sunday for a former student of Larry's named Mike Parry. Mike is union and he called me a few times before for work. I think we really impressed him and the rest of the crew- it was pretty much just Joe and me for grip and electric. It was this simple little short comedy about goofy paranormal exorcists who help a young couple relieve their house of a poltergeist and it was really funny to watch.

But the best part was that on the bottom of the camera was a little label that said "Steve's HDR-FX1" Can you guess which Steve the camera belongs to?

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
A standard screen door is the same density as ND .6 which takes away 2 stops of light.