Shooting first indie film soon: Any advice?

[Cole McDonald]

A boom works great in static shots...especially closeups, you can set the mic right out of frame and pick up great sound with it.

It's easier and more cose effective to gel lights than the window (I've even heard of DP's going smaller and gelling the lens hood - BTS, Dead Poet's Society special edition, Target, cinematography master class).

Check out my thread on lighting by example:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=66451

Contribute as you get footage! We don't learn unless we share information.

oh yeah, and with flourescent bulbs, you don't have to worry about melting gels and starting fires.

[Brandon Savoie]

Originally Posted by Carlos E. Martinez

In order to make your windows look blue you will have to put gels on the outside. Actual pro gels are very expensive. Cheap and second best is blue celophane paper. They come in large sizes, but not as large as a window, so you may have to join two or more sheets to get to your size.

Blue celophane is easy to find, as it's used for wrapping presents. Look for different shades of blue: light, medium and dark. It's cheap, so get them all and try them on the window with your camera.

The window should also be balanced, in brightness, with the indoors room. To balance your camera, first cover the window, switch on your indoor light, do the white balance, then uncover the window. The room light will be white with a shade of blue coming from the window. Check that the WB is in manual mode, of course, or the camera will try the balance the color mixed light.

I like your cellophane idea, I'll try it out later today. I will also try to balance the light as you described and post my results.

[Brandon Savoie]

Originally Posted by Cole McDonald

A boom works great in static shots...especially closeups, you can set the mic right out of frame and pick up great sound with it.

It's easier and more cose effective to gel lights than the window (I've even heard of DP's going smaller and gelling the lens hood - BTS, Dead Poet's Society special edition, Target, cinematography master class).

Check out my thread on lighting by example:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=66451

Contribute as you get footage! We don't learn unless we share information.

oh yeah, and with flourescent bulbs, you don't have to worry about melting gels and starting fires.

I'll be sure to post the movie after it is complete and give a few people here special thanks (with their permission) in the credits. I'll post my lighting results (great idea, btw) in your thread after the shooting is complete.

Also, I wanted to use floursescents but I had to go with tungstens because they fit my budget; $8 for clamp-ons, $25-30 for doubles on tripods. But yeah, I'll have a fire extinguisher close by during our shoots :)

[Cole McDonald]

if you're not using flourescents, make sure you bring leather gloves, they'll get really hot...turn them off between takes and put a little extra air conditioner time in your budget (don't run it during takes though, it can ruin sound). My actors hated being in close proximity to all that heat. That's the main reason I switched to flourescent, but by all means, use what you have, then upgrade a bit at a time. I've been looking at some LED solutions (like lite panels...only cheaper). They're still scads more expensive than my flourescents, but not too far out of reach to pick up one at a time or so.

[Brandon Savoie]

Hello again, everyone. The shooting went pretty well yesterday. I ran into a few problems here and there but most of my footage has turned out nicely. Unfortunately, I couldn't find blue cellophane before the shoot so I had to settle without it for now. The shooting is not finished so I'll probably have some in time for our next shoot. Anyway, I uploaded a few stills, feel free to leave feedback:

http://www.bjsproductions.com/greys1.jpg
http://www.bjsproductions.com/greys2.jpg
http://www.bjsproductions.com/greys3.jpg
http://www.bjsproductions.com/greys4.jpg

[Cole McDonald]

Looks nice so far. You may want to be careful about over exposing on the pic with the smokes on the table (unless you intended to). Pure white is hard to deal with in the frame when shooting DV. I like to avoid bright white objects and bright reds as well (compression issues)...any clips at all for us to see?