I was fortunate enough to work with the amazing director Ryan Bosworth in 2 great projects as first AD. Ryan is a creative director for a post production house based in Santa Monica called Pistolera. He has done tons of work in the advertising business and now he is devoting some of his free time for side projects as the two I was hired for. Because of his background, Ryan is very good with visuals and he can be very organized when it comes down to what he wants to see in the picture.

The first project was called Followers. It is a thriller short film where an internet group is doing some very creepy on line services. We scheduled to shoot in 2 days a 11 page script. We had a very concise and thought out story board and amazing cast.

The whole crew/casting was Jack Brungardt as 2nd AD and sound, one gaffer, one best boy and 4 actors. On the first day we had a company move, with a total of 7 sets. The second day we didn’t have a company move, but we had 5 sets. We got everything we need and both days we wrapped early.

I watched a pre cut of this short film and looks and feels AMAZING. The story is catchy, the visuals are strong, the acting is spot on, and the scoring is powerful. We shot this project with a hacked GH2.

The second project was a little bit more audacious. We had a experienced camera crew, we were using the RED camera, we had a 1 ton grip truck, we had impressive casting, and we had harder to achieve camera set ups. For the second project Ryan hired 2 producers to take care of locations, insurance, craft/catering, and contracts. The crew also had a competent Make up person called David Charles, and also a wardrobe department lead by Terra Brody and Jackie Fanara. The DP was Tristan Whitman, and he brought his crew mattes Iggy, Hillary, Igor, and Tally. We also had help of Jessica Brody who was doing the behind the scenes and Oscar Arvizu as AC.

Both projects were written by Jennifer Bosworth, Ryan’s wife. The second project was called Struck and it was a trailer for the upcoming book of the same name the Jeniffer is releasing at the end of this year. This trailer will serve two purposes. One is selling the book and another is selling the film idea to studios that are already interested in buying the rights of the book.

I used scenechronize on line service to manage the schedule on both projects.

As soon as I know more about the book and trailer release I will post something here.

My friend Nathaniel Nose called me one day asking if I could be a grip for the production company he was working for. Well, I am not the grip type, but I needed an extra cash so I decided to go to the interview in his office. At the interview I realize that they were in need of a production team as well. So I ended up getting hired as 1st AD. I brought my friend ML Wills and Jack Brungardt to work with me. ML was the 2nd AD for 2 days and Jack was the 2nd 2nd.We had a production manager called Jaydine Valencia and we also had a producer called Cyril O’Reily.

The production office was located in west Hollywood inside of a building complex. The owner of this company is called Dana Schroeder and he is also the owner of the building. He is a very nice guy who is starting his career in filmmaking. He has a lot of gear that helped us in the making of this picture. The film is called Lost Soul and stars Dave Vescio, Nick Mancuso and Zadran Wali. It is a psychological thriller where Dave’s character Donald is searching for love using dark magic.  I was hired to do the additional photography for the film that was shot in 2009.

The dp was Pierre Chemaly. We worked together a couple of times before. I also brought Amor Sanchez as the costume designer and Kevin O’Farrell as sound guy. My friend Felipe Borges also helped us one day as an actor. He is my buddy from Brazil and we worked in a lot of projects together.

We shot everything is 4 days at the production office. The last day we had a company move to Hollywood Hills in a Mansion overlooking Los Angeles. It was really cool that night, because the place was amazing, we had a lot of extras, there were a fire going to warm everybody, we had implied nudity in one of the takes, and we got everything we needed, and we wrapped early.

At the production office the hardest part was working with cats. We had to do a couple of scenes with cats jumping the camera, running down the corridor, and being held by the actor. The good part was that the building was filled with cats. I mean, there were at least 20 cats laying around the building. The bad part was getting these cats. We had to come up with a strategy where we had a holding area for the cats, and we would lock all the exits where the cats could leave from. This way the cats had always one path going one way. At the end of the path, we would have a couple of PA to get the cats back and bring to the holding area. Even with this strategy, we had a very hard time dealing with the animals. My suggestion to anyone is to hire a professional animal handler because it will avoid  being scratched all over your body.

]]> http://marioamadeu.com/2011/1st-ad-lost-soul/feed/ 0 http://marioamadeu.com/2011/scenechronize-mmscheduling/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=scenechronize-mmscheduling http://marioamadeu.com/2011/scenechronize-mmscheduling/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:22:05 +0000 marioamadeu http://marioamadeu.com/?p=580

There are 2 software that I need to post something about it. Both are for the field of Assistant directors.

The last 2 films that I worked (April Apocalypse and Lost Souls) I used this software called Scenechronize (more information please visit scenechronize.com).

It is based on cloud computing technology, where by all your data is saved and managed on line. It is very user friendly and easy to use. In my opinion it is a Movie Magic Scheduling on line. The advantages of this Scenechronize over Movie Magic is that your data is always available on line on any computer, you can easily manage changes and updates whenever and wherever you are, and it is free for a basic use. I believe that Scenechronize it is definitely a step ahead in the game when it comes down to production of films. The disadvantages of Scenechronize are the fact that it is not yet popular as MMS, your options are still limited, and some feature (like inserting new scenes and creating reports) are not as efficient like MMS.

I strong recommend for every 1st AD to take a look at this software and get the hang of it. If you are on a budget and can’t afford MMS, scenechronize it is your best choice. It is way better than Celtx because it has an interface that it is similar to what the industry uses, like colored stripboards, breakdown elements, and DOOD reports. There is also a call sheet export to excel that is pretty useful.

The other software that is calling my attention is Movie Magic To Go. It’s been quite a long time that MMS doesn’t upgrade their system, and now I understand why. They were developing this App that will be very helpful for the AD on set. It is the Movie Magic Scheduling for Ipad. Like every software delivered by Entertainment Partners, this one is not for free. The good thing is that the price is not as much as MMS. For only 29,99 you can buy the App that will bring all your desktop breakdown to the Ipad. The amazing thing is that you can have all your info with you everywhere you go on set. I think it will look very cool for an AD to show the breakdown on an Ipad for a director or producer. Other than the show off value, this app will also minimize the amount of paper one has to carry while shooting a film. The bad part about this app is that it is not synced with the desktop application, and there is no on line version of it. Which means that every change you do on your desktop, will not sync up automatically with the Ipad version. Also if you have the Ipad version, you still need the desktop version to create the breakdown.

My suggestion for the developers of software focused on the AD field is to create a synced system like scenechronize, with an App like MMS to go, and integrate the call sheet to an online calendar like Celtx. Everybody, everywhere, will be able to see in real time what scenes are being shot, changes, and latest updates. I know that sonner or later, some of the software companies will create something like that.

This month of September 2011 I was hired to work as 2nd 2nd AD in a feature film called April Apocalypse. I can start by saying that it was one of my best production experiences since I am here in Hollywood. I work most of the time as 1st AD for gigs that I get, but usually they don’t have what this gig had: a full production department.
My experience working on low budget independent films is based on the reality that I have to do everything and a little bit more. I never had a 2nd AD, nor production coordinator, nor line producer, working with me. So my biggest challenge in this production was actually figuring out what to do, because the production department had everything pretty much figured it out (like the TV productions I worked back in Brazil).

I didn’t know what a 2nd 2nd job was. I learned that one of the responsibilities of a 2nd 2nd is  for the most part getting the first team (main actors and directors) ready to set, paperwork related to cast, and handling and placing the extras/background actors in the picture. My “doing-everything-possible” attitude during the first days of production made me take care of a bunch of stuff except what a 2nd 2nd should take care. But as the days went on, I started to get the hang of it and by the end I was doing pretty damn good.

Another big challenge was set etiquette. My do-it-all attitude sometimes put me in bad situations. There were moments where instead of facilitating the job, I was getting in the way of people. But the most difficult task was talking on walkies. I mean, it is hard for me to understand people when they speak English fast, but it is almost impossible to understand people talking fast on a walkie talkie (specially when they are screaming the walkie lingo). I was nurturing a good attitude even with stumbles, working hard and not getting caught up on little things, like ego. My tough skin, that I built during my prior working experiences, helped me endure the low and not over cheer the high moments. The fact that I am a fast learner and I can adapt rapidly to every situation, made me be an important part of this production.

There were a lot of good things that I will always remember. One of them was that in the very first day we had to separate the production in 2 units. While one was shooting with the main actors in one set, the other was shooting with the supporting actors in another set. I stayed with the main actors and I was able to do part of the 1st AD job, calling the rolls, getting everyone to their positions, and getting the shots done. Another thing that was pretty nice was that on the last day of shoot, I was relaying the messages from the director in the video village to the 1st AD inside the set, and for that reason I was able to call the picture wrap right after the director. The best thing tough, was that I was really happy with my path during this show, and to explain why, I will talk about some aspects of this production.

Production department
The person who brought me to this production was Sazzy Lee Calhoun. She was the best first AD I ever had the pleasure to work with. She saw on my resume that I worked with Damian Chapa and she knew that I could handle pressure. To me was important to see how a good 1st AD takes care of the production. Bernie Gewissler was the line producer, but in my opinion he was a magician. The way he stretched the budget in order to make this picture a reality was OFF THE HOOK. ML Wills was the second AD. He had the most accurate and well thought out call sheet I’ve ever seen. Also he had a very good spirit during the whole shoot. By his side was Trina DeMattei, our production coordinator. She is just a sweet heart. Everything they taught me left a positive mark for the rest of my life, and I will always be grateful for it. Also in the production department there were a couple of PAs who were not only good workers, but real friends. Jack Brungardt, Andrew Higgins, Sarah Burt, and Rose Luther. I love you guys.

The film shooting
The film was scheduled to shoot in 15 days, with 4 major locations: The ranch, church, mansion, and dinner. The ranch was where we stayed for most of production and at that place we could shoot at least 20 different sets. The good thing about that location was that we had everything we need in one spot, we didn’t have to keep wrapping and setting up every day, and the place was very beautiful. The bad thing is that the ranch was too far north from LA, it was remote from important facilities (groceries store, equipment stores, rental houses, etc), and it was too big making it difficult to move fast from one set to another.
After the ranch we went to a church that was farther north and then we came back to LA at a mansion in Encino. We stayed at that Encino Mansion for 4 days and our last day was at a Dinner in San Fernando.

Crew
The crew was exceptionally knowledgeable about their craft even being a very young group of people. The DP Kyle Hartman impressed me with the quality of his cinematography. He respected his crew members and he knew what he could get from every person. I asked him a few questions to figure out what was his process of creating the visual of a picture and I was impressed not only with his answer but with the fact that he took his time to talk about it. There were 5 people in his department who backed him up: Ron Wilson (Key Grip), Wesley VonTracy and Jeff Siljenberg (gaffers), Jerry Franck and Gevorg Sarkisian (camera op). All of them were young, polite, talented, patient, and creative artists. They had a group of good professionals working with them. Mario Contini and Matt Claudillo were the 1st ACs, Nick Novotny was the 2nd AC, Steve Mangurten was the DIT. Big Mike was one of the grips together with Stephen Chan. Edwin Kim and Shane Moore were the electricians. There were a lot of day players, and I wish I could remember the name of all of them, because everybody did a great work.

The art department had Susannah Lowber as the production designer. I liked that she was always in a good mood with me. We laugh together a couple of times and she made my days easier. She had the help of propmaster Jeremy Trimbach, who was one of my best friends on set. He always mentioned about the good work that I was doing. Nick Harrison and Ashley Prikryl were the set decorators and all of them were great artists. I even let them use one of my tents and sleeping bags for one of the scenes.

The wardrobe department was led by Victor Sandoval. He was a good spirit also and very easy going person. He had under his command Vaiya Simmons and Mishka Trachenberg. They worked really close to the make up department that had Adam Beesley as the commander in chief. Dan Gilbert and Brittany Dummit were also inside the most efficient make up department I’ve ever work with. Imagine had to create more than 15 zombies in one day to shoot a scene. Well they not only did that in one morning, but also were able to make themselves up and jump on front of the camera for a couple of occasions. They had always treat me nice even when I was trying to get talents out of their chairs.

There was a guy who was a department by himself. His name is John Barret. He was the script supervisor and a very interesting human being to say the least. He worked by the side of the directors Jarret Tarnol and Brent Tarnol. These two young and talented directors work very well together. Brent is the creative brain behind the script and Jarret is the one who brings the words to the screen. What I liked about their partnership is their mutual respect. I liked to see how Jarret runs the show, and how well he puts himself in every situation. Brent had a lot on his plate, because he not only wrote the film, but was one of the main characters. He was very funny and very polite. He even came one day and apologized for being rude with me, but to be honest, I didn’t remember when he was ever rude.  They have a company called Tarnol Group Pictures

Casting
April Apocalypse had heavy set of talented actors. The films stars Reece Thompson, Rebekah Brandes, and Brent Tarnol. In the supporting roles there are Stephanie Hunt, Todd Stashwick, Roger Bart, and Matt Shively. We also had a set of special guest talents like: George Lopez, Mark Rolston, Marguerite MacIntyre, and William Morgan Sheppard. The film also had a set of young upcoming talents like: Sarah Hyland, Randy Wayne, Matt Prokop, Elizabeth Small, Olivia Waldriff, and Charlie Lea.
I was amazed by how well Reece Thompson played his character Artie. Reece is an awesome guy, who loves to play ukelele, esteemed and confident of his abilities, nothing like his character Artie who starts as a fragile and unappreciated person. Reece had to dig deep into his emotional memory to come up with the exceptional acting he delivered in every take. Since the beginning I had a feeling that I knew him from somewhere and I was surprised to discover that he was in one of my top ten films: Rocket Science. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to tell him how much I loved his work in Rocket Science because I just discovered that after we wrapped the film. If you want to see the full potential of a rising star, please watch Rocket Science and April Apocalypse.
Rebekah Brandes is a sweet heart. She was always committed to her character. I even remember when I was talking to her in between takes and she was answering me as April (the character she plays). It caught me off guard and I had to adapt to her reality in order to make sense of our conversation, and most important, keep her focus. Another actress who caught my attention was Stephanie Hunt, who plays Regan. She is that kind of person who looks you in the eyes when having a conversation. Her character Regan had the obstacle of seeing her family die on front of her and had to find reasons to keep living after the fact. None of the actors were divas or had a bad attitude. I believe that one of the reasons was the fact that the production was really organized, not leaving space for complaints.

April Apocalypse
This film will be going places for sure because it has everything on it. It is a romantic/action picture, where the main character is chasing after the love of his life in the middle of a zombie outbreak. It has astonishing cinematography (we shot with two red ones, and one epic), A list casting, lots of blood, gore, drama, romance, and the most important fact of all, it was made by true filmmakers. It is set to release in 2012.

Zombies in my Van

Camera Crew

Kyle Hartman - Director of Photography

Aqui nos Estados Unidos eu estou trabalhando a maioria do tempo como Assistente de Direção. Teve uma amiga minha do Brasil que me perguntou se o meu trabalho é ajudar o motorista. Eu respondi que de uma certa forma é exatamente esse o meu trabalho.

O Assistente de direção tem o papel de comunicar para a equipe exatamente o que está acontecendo a todo momento dentro de um set de filmagem. Ele é responsável pela a agenda do filme e também pela organização da produção. É responsabilidade do AD extrair do roteiro todas os detalhes importantes necessários para a filmagem e distribuir para os devidos departamentos essa informação.

As desvantagens de ser um AD são as horas trabalhadas mais extensas, o excesso de stress, e condições físicas e mentais intensas de trabalho. As vantagens são o salário mais alto de toda a equipe (sem contar elenco, produtor e diretor), a carga de responsabilidade, e acesso a tudo e todos.

Quando eu não estou trabalhando, eu estou procurando emprego, e nesse momento que eu me dedico ao meu website, minhas pesquisas, meus projetos. Um dos meus projetos é a integração do Movie Magic Scheduling com o Google Calendar. Durante esse processo eu tive que conectar uma serie de computadores em rede para poder acessar diferentes informações em cada um deles. Eu percebi que eu estava rodeado de computadores, e dai eu resolvi tirar uma foto do meu laboratório.

Meu Laboratorio

Para resumir, o meu trabalho é focado muito em pequenos detalhes. Nesse processo, eu tenho que ter certeza que todos saibam o que está acontecendo, inclusive o motorista.

This summer of 2011 I worked as first AD for a TV pilot called Hacienda Heights, directed by Desmond Gumbs and produced by Sam Sapp.

This TV show will be picked up by a distributor and for that reason I can’t tell a lot about the details of the show. What I can say is that we had major challenges during the shoot due to very hard to solve production logistics. Even with this logistical problems, we managed to finish everything with the resources we had.

In the beginning of the show, I was working with Jorday Paley as 2nd AD. We worked pretty well the first week, but then on the second week he had to go for another gig that he had scheduled before signing with us. So after he left, I worked by myself with the producer and 3 PAs. The PAs did an amazing job at everything that they had to do. We were overloaded with managing a crew of 30 people and getting all the pieces together for the shoot. After 12 days of shooting and 8 days of office work, we finished 52 pages of material.

For this gig I had the pleasure to work with a very talented set of actors (which I am not allowed yet to reveal names) and an awesome crew. I also had the satisfaction to shoot at the LA river with a helicopter camera, drive expensive 300K cars, act in one of the scenes, and travel to Malibu to shoot a scene on a mansion overlooking the ocean.

I am hopeful that the show will be signed and we will be working more. When I get more information about the show, I will definitely post here.

So I receive a couple of messages asking how I created this integration between Movie Magic Scheduling and Google Calendar. Instead of answering one by one, I decided to create this tutorial that teaches how to do the integration.

The process is pretty simple. We have to create a CSV file using Movie Magic Schedule. To do that we need to run a REPORT that will transfer all the database info into a pdf file and save this pdf to a CSV file.

In order to do that you need the following software:

• EXCEL
• WORD
• ACROBAT READER
• MOVIE MAGIC SCHEDULING

PART 1 – CREATING THE PDF FILE

Download and import the following report that I created.

CALENDAR EXPORT – BY MARIO AMADEU.

To import a calendar you have to open a Movie Magic Schedule, click on DESIGN, a list of Report Layouts will appear, click on the IMPORT ICON, select the downloaded file and voilà.

A report called Calendar Export by Mario Amadeu will show up. Run the report by double clicking on it and then click on Print Preview. The content generated will be barely readable, don’t worry about that because I did this way so the whole information stays in one page for exporting purposes. Print the file as PDF so you can transfer to excel. The first part is done.

PART 2 – CREATING THE CSV FILE

Open the generated PDF file, rotate 90 degrees clockwise, and save. Select all, copy and paste to a word Document.

Every line should have a set of information. For some reason the line breaks messes up sometimes when copying and pasting to word. Because of that, I created one more step on word just to make sure everything will be smooth. With the text copied to word, go to EDIT->REPLACE. In the field “Find what:” type “}”, and in the field “Replace with:” type “^p”. Hit REPLACE ALL button.

Note: if the line breaks are fine, then replace “}” with a “blank space”

Save the file as txt. Open Excel and click on DATA->GET EXTERNAL DATA->IMPORT TEXT FILE. Open the text file created on word and a Text Import Wizard will open.

On step one choose Delimited;
On step two select Semicolon;
On step three select the second column and change the data format to DATE MDY
Hit finish.

The excel file will be created. Select the column B, START DATE, and format the column as a DATE with format MM/DD/YYYY. Save the file as CSV. DONE.

PART 3 – IMPORTING TO GOOGLE CALENDAR

This is the last step. To import to Google calendar, you have to open Google Calendar and under OTHER CALENDARS click on ADD->IMPORT CALENDAR. Browse for the csv file you just created, select the calendar to export to, and hit IMPORT.

If for some reason you get an error message, open the CSV file on Excel and break the table down in less records. Save 2 or 3 CSV files, each one containing 30 lines maximum. Repeat the first line with the header and save it for each one. Import the files into Google Calendar. DONE.

CONCLUSION

The good part of this integration is the fact that you can add cast and crew to the calendar, they can see details like maps, description, synopses, page count, estimated time and comments. I am pretty sure that more features will be created in the future, and maybe in a next version of Movie Magic Scheduling we will have this integration built in.

What I am working now is creating fields for call time and more detailed information like inserting day breaks and so on.If anyone figures new things, please comment here and share with the world. Thanks.

To check how it will look like, please click here

During the month of June I did two projects as first AD. The first one was for a company based on New York. They hired me to arrange the schedule and  budget before start of production.  After this project, I was hired again to work for a friend. His film is called Forever Yours.

My friend Parlav Chaudhary invited me to work on his project. It was a short film with students from the New York Film Academy. We shot this film in one day at an amazing location in Reseda. When I say amazing I don’t mean that it was a fancy mansion or something like that. The place was almost like a farm house in the middle of the city.

I always get to the location 30 minutes to one hour before call time just because I am the First AD, and usually I work a lot. So when I got there, there was at least 15 dogs inside of the location. I entered the place and I thought: “okay, cool. All these dogs are going to mess the shoot. Awesome!” I thought of that because at first the house seemed pretty small for that amount of dogs, but I started to find my way to the back of the house and I was amazed by how big that place was. The house in the front was big enough to keep all the dogs inside, then the backyard, where  we set up the stage area and the shooting location, was triple the size of the front house.

Two things that were unbelievable in the backyard: first an artist called Alex Atman, lived there in a cabin kind of house where his atelier, his jawbreaking 3d metal artwork, were exposed to everyone to see. This guy was also pretty cool with us, because he let us use his place for the actors change clothes, and he pretty much cleaned the only bathroom before everyone started using it. The second unbelievable part of the backyard was the animals. There was at least 4 hogs there in the backyard. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. They were the most cute thing I could ever imagine seeing on a set. People have the tendency to think that hogs and pigs are filthy, disgusting animals, and they are kind of filthy and disgusting. But at the same time they are very funny and cute. The noises they make, they way they walk, and how sneaky they are.

There was a moment that one of the hogs were getting close to the craft table to eat what was in the trash can, and I had to scare him off. The hog literally complained with me making noises similar to a man growling. And then slowly he backed away. Everybody laughed at that scene.

The shoot went fine. We were using the RED Camera with a set of very beautiful PL prime lenses as the first camera and we had a rigged 7D as well as the second. The DP was Sanket Dolas and he is one of the most talented DPs I had the pleasure to work lately. We had a crew that were very efficient and everybody was really laid back. I mean, there was no people bitching about anything, and no complains. Even with a 19 hours shoot day. It took us 19 hours to start and wrap the whole thing. By the fact that it was only one day, the overall mood of the crew was good even with the long hours.

I took some pictures of this day and also the still photographer Fred Tapia gave me some frames. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.

where people see a filthy pig, I see a beautiful animal that I don't like to eat.

]]> http://marioamadeu.com/2011/ad/feed/ 0 http://marioamadeu.com/2011/rosa-morena/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rosa-morena http://marioamadeu.com/2011/rosa-morena/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2011 23:20:21 +0000 marioamadeu http://marioamadeu.com/?p=258

Neste Domingo dia 5 de junho fui assistir ao filme Rosa Morena que estava sendo exibido no Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival. A minha irmã Miriam Amadeu participou deste filme com uma personagem fantástica.

O filme trata-se da história de um Dinamarquês, Thomas (Anders W. Berthelsen), que vai para o Brasil tentar adotar uma criança. Pelo fato de ser homossexual, Thomas enfrenta grandes obstáculos que o impedem de adotar uma criança na Dinamarca. A personagem que a minha irmã faz é a primeira tentativa real de Thomas na busca de seu sonho.

O filme é muito bem feito com atuações verdadeiras e com um roteiro real e denso. Os personagens tem muita profundidade e os diálogos são sinceros. O que mais marca no filme é a perfeita combinação de humor e drama. Homossexualismo é um tema que para ser tratado precisa-se muita coragem e sutileza. O filme lida com o drama dos personagem de forma humana, e não levanta bandeiras que possam gerar polêmica. Eu acredito que que a audiência vai se identificar com a história independentemente  da opção sexual ou da opinião sobre o assunto. Esse é o motivo que mostra o brilhantismo dessa produção.

O filme foi produzido com capital Dinamarquês e Brasileiro. Um dos produtores do filme é o Ivan Teixeira. Conversamos um pouco ao final da apresentação e fiquei muito contente de conhecer um profissional brasileiro tão talentoso e simpático.

O video acima é uma das cenas que a minha irmã faz. As fotos abaixo são do Grauman’s Chinese Theatre em Hollywood lotado durante a apresentação do filme.

Bob Primes, ASC produced a documentary that evaluates the new wave of single large chip cameras.

This documentary was showed at the Paramount theaters during the Cine Gear Expo of 2011.

I was there for the screening and also could watch a Q&A with the producer Bob, cinematographer Stephen Lighthill, and post supervisor of the documentary Mike Curtis.

This documentary is a carefully Single Chip Camera Evaluation, shot on 12 cameras . There was an extensive battery of tests that evaluate the following:

• sharpness,
• sensitivity,
• over and underexposure latitude,
• low light performance,
• compression artifacts,
• color reproduction,
• skin tones,
• shutter artifact

The cameras being evaluated were:

• Arri Alexa,
• Sony F35,
• Red One MX,
• Panasonic AF100,
• Sony F3,
• Phantom Flex,
• Weisscam HS-2,
• Canon 1D MkIV,
• Canon 7D,
• Canon 5D Mk II,
• Nikon D7000
• and two film stocks: Kodak 5219 and 5213

Before we go over the details of this evaluation, let me explain how they did the evaluation which I think is very relevant. All cameras were recorded in their best output formats, which means that if a camera had as its best output a 4:4:4 12 bit to a external device, that was the way they shot this particular camera in all tests. Also each and every camera had a person called “camera master” that would be responsible for tweaking the camera for optimum quality. There was no color correction on the footage that would disregard the evaluation. The editing was soundless, so we could focus on the image. Last but not least, they had total control over the whole process from conception to final cut, with no interference from any of the cameras manufactures.

With that being said, lets show some graphics taken from the documentary that explain in details the camera performances.

Maximum Resolution

Maximum resolution is the amount of data in one pixel. As you can see in the graphic below, the camera that performs better is the film camera. Surprisingly enough, the Red camera is as good as the film cameras in this category. The worst cameras are the DSLRs, which is expected because they have the worst compression, huge aliasing/moire and terrible recording outputs (they record only on internal cards).

Sensitivity

Sensitivity is how well the camera (sensor/film) will capture light. In this regard the film cameras were the worst ones, but I did some research and I saw that these 2 film stocks (Kodak 5213/5219) were actually pretty slow. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that they are 200 and 500 ISO. Which means that it is expected the low sensitivity results. The best camera, or the most sensitive, was the Canon 1D, that also has the biggest sensor. Of course that everything comes at a price, and in this case is the amount of noise that the Canon 1D has.

The Sony F35 was the one that I was amazed by the sensitivity performance. It is not bad, but the low light performance resembles what the film cameras capture. I would even dare to say that the F35 would be similar to a 1000 ISO Kodak film stock (if that’s even a possible consideration).

The Arri Alexa is a very good camera overall, and I also like the Sony F3 and the Red One.

Latitude

Latitude measures the amount of light a camera/film can process and still creates an acceptable image. For example: a good camera has a greater latitude and it will be able to capture in one frame the highlights and the shadows without any lost of information/detail.

Of course that the film cameras would perform better in this category because they are film, and there is no digital sensor capable of capturing so much information than a film. What I was amazed is how close the Arri Alexa is from the latitude of the film stocks. In the latitude category, we could divide it in three groups. First is film and Alexa, then is Red and F35, and then is the rest.

Over and Under Exposure Latitude

This category evaluates the latitude but having a middle point where the image is properly exposed and then the exposure is stretched over and under.

We can see now that the sensitivity evaluation meets with the latitude evaluation at this point. The film cameras perform better at over exposure and lack at under exposure. The Arri Alexa is again a very reliable camera, and the rest is pretty much the same.

A good visual comparison would be the following video from Nick Paton, ACS comparing both 7D and Alexa. Check it out!

Rolling Shutter and Compression Artifacts

In my opinion, for the evaluation in this set of test, we can divide the cameras into 3 categories. The good ones, the not so bad ones, and the ones that are terrible.

In the good ones category there are:

• Arri Alexa
• Sony F35
• Kodak 5213/5219

in the not so bad ones there are:

• Phantom Flex
• Weisscam
• F3
• Red One
• AF100

In the terrible ones there are:

• 5d
• 1d
• 7d
• nikon

Color

This was a very subjective evaluation and in my opinion there is no way I can even give my impression. I think that for this evaluation, everyone has to look at the image and decide by themselves.

Conclusion

Well, lets get to the bottom of the discussion. There is simply no better camera that does everything. It all depends on questions that are not related to technology but external factors like:

• budget or “how much is being reserved for the camera and/or camera department?”
• aesthetic or “what is the feeling being sought by the cinematographer?”
• final medium delivery or “where this video/film will be seen?”
• expertise or “how well the cinematographer uses this tool?”
• personal taste or “I don’t care what other say, I love the camera I use!”

What makes a good picture is definitely not the camera itself, but the good use of  objective and subjective visual components.

In this post I will go over all the great features that I have on my new website, as well how I built it, explaining the step by step, so anyone could build their own WORDPRESS site.

I had a BLOGSPOT website where the design limitations were upsetting. Changing to WORDPRESS not only gave me better design features, but also interaction and control features that are simply um comparable with BLOGSPOT. The bad side though is that I had to learn how to build a WordPress site from scratch. I didn’t want to use any available WordPress.com templates because I didn’t like them. So I ended up building my own.

Prior to this experience I didn’t have ANY knowledge of PHP, CSS, MYSQL, and DREAMWEAVER. I had to learn everything from the beginning. At first I thought it would be impossible, but it is not as hard as it seems. Of course that I have some knowledge of computer programming. If I didn’t have it, then I couldn’t do it. I don’t suggest for a person that is computer illiterate to jump in here thinking that they can just do it. It will be frustrating trying to figure and managing the gigantic amount of new information. I am definitely not the best teacher, but I will go over how I did it and maybe, just maybe, help someone who is trying to create their self-hosted WordPress site. Please, don’t expect to get all the pieces here. If you are trying to go over this route, you will have to do a lot of research and testing on your end.

It took me one week and a half to build this website. There are many steps in order to create a website totally customized as this one. The steps are: 1- DESIGN, 2 – LOCAL SETUP, 3 – PROGRAMMING, 4 – HOSTING, 5 – EXPORTING.

1- DESIGN

Instead of designing  a site from scratch I started by selecting a custom design from a library of designs that I have. The one that I liked is called Video Flick, from Press 75. I liked the feel of it and the fact that it has a lot of visual links. I started the design by changing the width of the posts and also changing the background. I changed the header for the home page to be different than the header of the post pages. I also changed a lot of little other minor things.

Most of the changes happen in the STYLE.CSS file. The best way to edit the stylesheet file is to integrate your WordPress theme with Dreamweaver.

2- LOCAL SETUP

To work your site locally and create a unique custom design, the best way is to integrate WordPress with Dreamweaver. There is a tutorial that teaches how to do this integration. I followed the steps of Lynda.com. This tutorial got me from the noob level to better than noob, but still noob level. If you want to try the tutorial before buying it, you can always look around for alternative ways of getting it.

3- PROGRAMMING

That’s the hardest part. As soon as I got the hang of it, it became easier. The best way to learn is by trial and error. By the fact that I was working on a local site, I didn’t worry about messing up my page. I made as many mistakes as I could. I just made sure that I had a back up so, if needed, I could reset everything. The only two files that I messed with were CSS files and PHP files.

CSS files contain the styles of each element in your page divided by category. Which in noob terms means that to center a “post content” I would have to set the category responsible for Post Content on a specific CSS file.

PHP files are like HTML files. They contain the  programming of each part of the page. The way WordPress handles pages is by calling a bunch of different php files for each part or function of the page. The header of a WordPress page is inside of the header.php for example. The post content of a WordPress site is inside of the single.php page.

The files that I changed most of the time were style.css (responsible for all the major styles of everything inside the site), header.php, single.php, footer.php, and functions.php. During this process, I did a lot of Googling and I messed up a bunch of times. As soon as I started to make mistakes, and fixing theses mistakes, I became more knowledgeable to a point of knowing exactly where to find my answers when I needed to change something.

4- HOSTING

As soon as I was done with my LOCAL DESIGN, it was time to transfer everything to a web host. There are a lot of good places to find a host for WordPress. The one that I selected was GoDaddy because my domain is register there and because they have a very easy to install platform. I know that you NEED a server that handles PHP5 and you also NEED a MYSQL database. It cost me 100 dollars for 3 years. For this money Godaddy gave me 10 Mysql databases, 10TB worth of space and unlimited bandwidth. Which is a lot for my small personal website.

5- EXPORTING

To transfer everything to the web host was easy. At this point I already knew what folders to copy, what files to change, and how to troubleshoot. A key to this transfer is to keep the folder structure the way it is. WordPress has a unique way of handling the files. I didn’t mess with the structure since the beginning and that helped me to have the site without any code problems.

I am doing the pre-production of a new feature film based in New York.

The director called me from over there and hired me to work for him at a distance. I couldn’t physically travel to New York because I am doing physical therapy and my doctor didn’t allow me to work yet. So we agreed that I would do the scheduling, budgeting, and breakdown before the principal photography starts.

For this production I am using the Movie Magic screenwriter, Movie Magic Scheduling, and Movie Magic Budgeting. These software are really good. They are very helpful with the whole process of pre-production.

The advantages of these software over other software, like Celtx for example, is the industry standard interface. Pre-production of films in Hollywood is made the same way for a long time. Scheduling a feature film is a three-part process: 1 – breakdown the script, 2 – preparing a production strip board, and 3 – determining the final shooting schedule. The movie magic package helps a lot with this process. Little things like the color coding, break down categories, and full integration between script, schedule and budget are key to the creation of a well structured pre-production. Then we have more advanced tolls like Report Design, Day out of Days control, Red Flags features, Calendar Management, and Element linking that makes the scheduling process way more precise.

Another good aspect of the Movie Magic package is that the company who creates the software gives a couple of courses for free. Right now I don’t have time to do them, but as soon as I finish this schedule I might take some courses. I might be able to catch little and more advanced things that I wouldn’t otherwise.

The main production of the film is scheduled to start in July. I am having a lot of work to put everything together as fast and accurate as possible. So far I am doing fantastic. My job is to manage everybody schedule, solve this jigsaw puzzle, and deliver the schedule and budget in two weeks.