Digital Video - April 2008 - (Page 31) bounce was right on the edge of the frame. If I had my way, I would have tried to get about 20 percent more light than I got out of the bounce. But I think if you have beautiful light in an exterior you are better off not doing anything than doing too much. The easiest way to screw it up is to bring in a light. No matter what size movie, I always try to bounce before I bring in a light. Morris Flam, a great gaffer, taught me this: When you get fading light, never use a light because over a long take a perfectly set movie light at the beginning will become too bright by the end of the take because the ambient light will have fallen. Whereas, if you use a reflector, the ratio between the ambient light and the fill will be constant, even if it gets darker during the shot. When you time it later, you can even it out. How much tinkering in post did you do with the image? The finishing — both assembly and color correction — was done on an Avid Nitris. Simple Power Windows are more exacting on a Nitris, but they take 10 to 20 times longer than, say, a da Vinci. We added the smallest amount of grain to the image, which I thought was a smart move. We did some contrast things to try to make it look more filmic. With all the wide landscape shots, were you worried the resolution wouldn’t hold up? A lot of people shooting video think you can’t do that shot because it won’t have sufficient resolution, but I came out of the film extremely impressed with the Z1 because those shots are sharp and I’ve seen them on a giant screen. The real failure I think Aboard a Western dolly, Fierberg sets a shot. of video cameras right now is in tonality. That’s where they are inferior to film. But I’m very happy with what we got. How did you achieve some of the camera movement? We had a four-foot Western dolly on 16 feet of track, so we could only move about 10 feet or so. The hardest shot in the movie is when the main character tells his story and we dolly in. I start pretty wide and as the camera dollies in, I’m zooming in and pulling focus and I slowly stand up from a squatting position. I’m handheld. That’s like the greatest achievement in my life! Most of the handheld shots were imperceptible. How much of the movie was handheld? Almost the whole movie was handheld. Years of yoga! DV http://www.kinoflo.com http://www.kinoflo.com
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