Thomas English

I think maybe I am too lazy with DB. At home with Rob s weight cage I dynamically balanced every possible setup on the bottom of my sled. So I know if I am using pag lockon s my monitor needs to be out at notch 3. If I use 2 batteries my back battery neeeds to be 3cm from its furthest extension. Then on the day I simply statically balanced knowing the data in my head vis a vis the bottom of my sled to be in DB. Is this too lazy... seems to work and I never have a problem whith whips.

Alf Love Foolosophy much respect! that is awesome work! really really good.... where a lot of these promo s we are looking at here the operating is profesionally good, the work on "Love Foolosophy" really really is inspiring to me..... So no rehearsals.... was it off the cuff you did those sudden sweeps accross him to the music? I assume you blocked it to the music quite a few times or did you just go ahead and shoot? There s a couple of operating tweeks you did in that promo which I find superb... no rehearsals! so when he stands on that podium you did nt anticipate it? .... Gosh... put s me in my place a bit

does this acf 50 react with grease and gunk up the same way wd40 would?

"all I want is a ziga zig arrrr" .......... yeah! I have been meaning to post that on this forum for ages in respect to asking who did it? Who was that spice girls operator!!! thanks thomas NB Lucas with your lid off is awsome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

when flying I have one rifle pelicase for my sled and bartech and one old betaSP case for my klassen, master arm, transvideo recievers LCD screen allen keys and gaffer tape. so 2 cases in the hold and a rucksack full of batteries upstairs with me.... oh and a stand in the hold as well,

http://www.steadishots.org/media_detail.cfm?mediaID=1 that has really really made me want to get an AR !

a line of coke to get the point across as to how the shot would look better. 2 valiums so the AD stops pissing you off. a small bucket of speed for running shots and loading the van at the end of the day. chrystal meths if it s a buy out with no overtime. 3 tabs of acid so you finally understand what the hell the directors on about with his "make a little more wavy" morpine and three hot nurses for the aches and pains the next day. angle dust and a small handgun to get money off production. You would be a fool with no longevity in this industry to go on any big production without the above.

I have done many student gigs for free and gotten an awful lot out of them, I have done more which were a solid solid waste of time! The big issue that I found for me was not the money itself (although clearly that helps) but if you are not charging them an amount that hurts a little your cheap enough so your time is not important to production. Many times it was insisted on that I turn up at 7am and I did not do anything till 5pm..... solid solid solid waste of time. The best idea I heard was in an earlier post where I think Erwin mentioned charging by the hour... maybe $40/hour or so. This way you get your shots for your reel and go home early. I used to and still occasionally do charge students 200 pounds a day, but they only get a second pencil. They also have to be at a recognised film school. I stopped doing it because I started to keep cancelling them due to real work and it hurt my heart hurting the students and not being able to find anyone to cover me. But it is important not to turn down real work.......

Thanks Robin I do find the evertz to be a little more consistent though. This new miranda sometimes would not boot up, would go into superpixel image etc etc for myself who powers down the whole rig (including camera) all the time its not so good. Otherwise, is there anyone out there that could rent me a hermes NTSC and a pegasus NTSC for the month of june? cheers thomas

So the miranda box only downconverts 24p (23.92p) into an NTSC picture. Anyone know of a downconverter that can give me a PAL picture at 24p from an f900. This is probably not an issue or been noticed by most euro ops because our monitors are instantly switchable. Its just my recievers for my modulus are PAL (transvideo) and I have a big show for a month that is going to be NTSC.

I did a similar thing with the intensity dial of a gekko kisslight for a disney comercial.... but I used double sided sticky tape. putting the centre of the sld100 to the centre of the knob and setting manual ends on my bartech. Dp s get so impressed by this kind of thing. Your polar thing looks brilliant. I was thinking of trying to attach ff motors to the shifts and tils of a shift and tilt lens. I really want to get some of those litepanels if/when I get paid and manage to keep the money before debtors. I would be super interested to see how you pulled it off Eric. You can see what I did with gekko ringlight if you zoom in on this photo. I am embarrassed about the messy sled, really need to catch obsesive compulsive disorder.

Howards is well made little motor that could pull the horns out of an Ox. It seems very nice and it only weighs 230g . With the M-1 motor at 370g My quick internet search leads to the heden m28VPT being 290g so having had a little gander at a few figures I might retract my earlier thought of not using howards motor and think it might be a really good choice. To myself a 100g here or there for something as important as a follow focus motor is a minor consideration against power and reliability/usability. On a flyer the lightest possible motor is needed. What are those hedens that come with the genio ? tiny little things....... would not be nearly as strong as the FMG or M-1 but would be great on a flyer....

I have Don s motor, the M-1 type. It is superb, will pull anything and is supebly well made for changing gears etc. I am inordinately happy with it. I don t think it is the best motor for your setup. I think it is heavy for you and you are trying to save any last gram if you are trying to fly dsr570 s, XDcams JVCHD100 etc. I think it demands too much power for you to be able to run it directly from these cameras (although I could stand corrected, I have had probs running it from sr3 s and their onboard lithiums) and you simply don t need that much power! not with these video lenses. Get yourself a bartech and the cheapest lightest little motor you can find secondhand. Upgrade to an m-1 when u upgrade your rig. Howard mk-v has a cool new light follow focus too but again don t use his chunky motor, get a little heden or something. Genio is too heavy, forget about the preston or LCS, never rent them they ll be far too heavy. I reckon u could carry the C-Motion though. I have a bartech.

Have you ever had one of those actors that no matter how many times you tell to slow down a little when tracking/running infront of him (DJ), always seems to insist on showing off how fast he runs and catching right up on you and practically pushing you out of the way being really dangerous. I had this one guy, nightmare! "No, thats how fast I run" , in the end I scrapped the shot. He was literally trying to shove me out of the way take after take, I think he was acting to the director and chicks not the camera. tough guy can beat a tired camera op humping 25 kg in a race. It was on a panavised f900 with panavised chunky primes. A needlessly heavy setup if ever there was one.

WOW!

what the sam hill is that 2.4ghz ariel all about poking out of the arri416 !!?

I know that the problem with putting digital mags on film cameras has always been trying to get the prism s close enough to the lens to split the light correctly. Which is a thing of the past now that a single CMOS sensor replaces the three RGB chips.

don t worry Erwin, Not wanting to belittle the technological advances of tiffen or IDX which I reckon are great companies. Let s face it they all buy the same cells off the same massive factories in asia. These Lithium hi ampage cells will become available to PAG and AB soon enough. I bought off vlock a conversion plate for 200 dollars a little ago so I can use the crews lithium batteries on my PAG sled and save my batts on tape jobs. Thomas

from what I can gather so far about these diversity tuners. The cheap ones like this are diversity ariel tuners, one tuning circuit that selects the strongest signal from the strongest ariel. The avalon one is a diversity tuner tuner, 4 individual tuner to 4 ariel, then a circuit select which tuner gives the strongest signal. Off course the difference in price is tenfold.

I am incidently shooting on this setup tomorrow with a sony970. Great advice! thankyou.... Its great about the re turning the spinner on because I power down my rig all the time and thus the camera and so the the PStechniks... maybe Ill avoid that tomorrow. Planning on running everything including modulus/bartech/camera/transvideo monitor/pstechniks off their one lithium battery I am not expecting it to be that much heavier on top though.. i think it will be fine. Avoid putting a battery on the camera. Double check you have some nice newer lenses that are not too stiff for your genio/fox motor.

I never bother about moving the monitor to the other side. I think you should practise and use DJ as you would have to at a moments notice. I would consider however re jigging the monitor if I was doing lots of stairs where the extra angle makes it tricky looking backwards. In DJ I think it is important to be in good dynamic balance and quite neutrally static balance as its trickier to muscle trim the frame and DJ shots tend to be quite fast.

I don t have a problem with DJ at all. However the framing is not as tight or critical than if I am going backwards. However it is faster and safer. I feel a little bit of a plonka trying to negociate up and down stairs/obstacles/corridors backwards. I feel more of a man in DJ. I feel I need to do DJ often to not be bothered about it. Hence often if I have a tracking back shot that would be better served walking backwards, I will DJ it.

really grateful for the offer Matt, thats really kind. It s the kind of thing I just need on my kit rather than borrowing when needed. Cheers for the offer though. Shit, sprained ankle! Frozen peas for 10 minutes every hour and lots of rest. I just came out of an IT band injury so I know how you feel. Don t push it early and make sure you where proper high top boots on the job. Good luck Thomas

Really want to get my hands on dying useless L95 s or L75 s . Due to their mass and power demand in my situation they are perfect and I can t afford some new ones so any I get here will see me through the next 4 or so months until they are completely dead. Really grateful, thomas

I have drilled out a Romford Baker snap plate reciever, which I put on the steadicam and I have another that I put on the legs. This is great for super16 and lighter 35mm s (435) but not really great weight wise for ST s/535 s and the like. I worry about my dovetail staying on the bottom of the camera as the AC carry it around, put it down etc etc. I do have an older ratchet one though.