First night of S8 shooting

[ulrichsd]

Well, I began my first nights shoot last night.
General outcome:

1)I don't think the three coats quite deadened the sound. It seemed that the camera made more noise with film in the chamber.

2)With all the coats on top it was difficult to operate the manual exposure, so I just set it to automatic exposure for most of the shoot.

Well, I'll send the film in for processing and pray it turns out OK.

Its hot filming underneath all those coats.
I hope I wasn't too stingy with film, for a approximately 1 minute scene, I shot just less than 2 rolls of film.

Scott

[Alex]

Bad News / Good News

...the bad thing thing about shooting auto-exposure at night is the dark backgrounds (unless you were renting crane mounted HMI's and lighting up the picture dramtically) will usually fool the meter to basically stay "wide open" all the way.

...and sometimes, a backlight may be read by the meter as a hot-spot and underexpose your footage.

However, a nightime shoot with Kodachrome 40 and limited lighting available probably means wide open won't be too off the mark, unless you have really lit up someones face or they are wearing white.

-Alex

[ulrichsd]

Oops, I should have specified... the scene was shot indoors, in about a 10x12 foot room. Used the available tungsten room lighting, and two handheld 100W halogen flood lights. The f stop reading was about 2.8 and I filmed with K40 using a UV filter.

Thanks for the info Alex,
Scott

[This message has been edited by ulrichsd (edited August 16, 2001).]

[technicolour]

LOL!!

I like the bit about the coats!!! thats a good idea actually!!!!

What were you using for sound or do you have sound film or a sync tape deck?

hope its good when it comes back from the Lab!!

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Jim

[ulrichsd]

I'm sure it was a funny sight! A heap of coats with a lens pointing out if it.

But, for sound I am using a nice older reel to reel analog deck and recording sound wild. I plan to just sync everything up in post. That will be a pretty big task, even for a 10 minute short as there is a good amount of dialogue.

I'm assuming that my cameras internal light meter reads from inside the lens. I've seen a few cameras with the light meter on the outside of the camera. I didn't see anything like this, otherwise I'm am really screwed with the coats covering up everything but the lens! If I get back a roll of overexposed whiteness I'm going to cry.

Scott

[Alex]

and your 85 filter was set to indoor bulb? (which means the 85 filter is removed from the path of the incoming image)

-Alex

[Matt Pacini]

I told you guys that shooting with a noisy camera is a pain in the ass!
It really hampers your production, having to deal with all you have to do, to try to deaden the sound.
And the worse thing is, you may have bad exposure on top of the noise!
I've been through it all, and that's a big problem. It really slows shooting down, and you still end up hearing it on tape.
What camera are you using?
Because, as you said, if your camera has the meter reading outside the lens (the Nikon R-8, R-10 and Super zoom do this) you're hosed!
I wish you luck!
Matt Pacini


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[Alex]

Well, you can still set the Nikon's to manual exposure and be unhosed, as long as you are secure in the f-stop you have chosen.

-Alex

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[8th Man]

If you didn't already, it might help to record about 30 seconds of ambient room audio to have in the background later during post. You may find that when you're syncing up vocals you'll be separating bits of dialogue and ambient room noise would help to fill those slugs.


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PRM

[Matt Pacini]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Alex:
[B]
Well, you can still set the Nikon's to manual exposure and be unhosed, as long as you are secure in the f-stop you have chosen.

-Alex

(Matt Pacini responds):
Which would be fine if you are filming from one angle for the entire shoot, and the lighting is exactly the same for all your shots, which I find unlikely.
I'm always metering, and checking exposure, because I'm always moving the camera.
Sometimes, I'll do 15-30 setups in one shoot, and this requires either re-rigging lights, and if not, you have an even greater need to re-set your exposure in the camera.
This is compounded if you are using any daylight, because the sun is always moving, and/or you have different light values depending on where the camera is, what the light is being reflected off of, etc. etc.
So you really do need to get at the cameras controls, since in Super 8, that in-camera meter is a lifesaver, whether or not you're in auto mode.

Matt Pacini


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