Ground Rules

[IanCarleton]

Hey Dylan, Brent and gang!
I got a nice suprise earlier this week with your DVD arriving in my mailbox, way faster than the 6 weeks shipping time they were predicting!

Just wanted to let you guys know how impressed I was with the movie. The visuals were fantastic, and it was really encouraging to see what a small crew of talented people can do when they work well together and know their stuff. Congrats on the CSC nomination as well Dylan, this piece deserves all the praise it is getting.

Are there any plans on a blue ray release of the movie? It would be pretty neat to see an HD version sometime in the future. Maybe I will have to take a trip to science north sometime...

- Ian Carleton

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

Hey Dylan, Brent and gang!
I got a nice suprise earlier this week with your DVD arriving in my mailbox, way faster than the 6 weeks shipping time they were predicting!

Just wanted to let you guys know how impressed I was with the movie. The visuals were fantastic, and it was really encouraging to see what a small crew of talented people can do when they work well together and know their stuff. Congrats on the CSC nomination as well Dylan, this piece deserves all the praise it is getting.

Are there any plans on a blue ray release of the movie? It would be pretty neat to see an HD version sometime in the future. Maybe I will have to take a trip to science north sometime...

- Ian Carleton

Hey Ian

Glad you enjoyed it! Fantastic that you can get this for free!

There is talk of Blu-Ray. There was talk at one time of doing a 4K version for a 4K projector up at Science North, but they currently only have the 2K Christie projectors.

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

Dylan,

Thanks for the answers to the questions. Military pilots make all the difference! The commercial pilots I've flown with were not comfortable getting that close to the tree line- that is amazing.

If Brent has a shot of the helicopter "skid mount" I'd love to see it- those shots came out great. Did you do anything to protect the lens, or just hope and pray that nothing hit it?

Great job on the use of the Black Thunder location to help emphasize and visually reinforce what the narrator is saying- that worked great.

To bad those other aerials and exterior city shots are stock (They work well)- but that is very understandable with schedule. It sounds like things were very tight already...

I'll be posting pics with my guesses as to where you placed the lights shortly. Thanks for the opportunity.

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

There is talk of Blu-Ray.

ooo - blue-ray, now that would be awesome!

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

Pictures- My guessing game ...

Pictures- My guessing game ...

Dylan,

Thanks for letting me post these. Sorry they are screen grabs from an SD DVD ...

I'll start with the easy scene that you already described-

The Living Room:

- As you all ready stated 800w jokers through the windows. I'm going to guess that you added the vistabeam to the window that is out of frame. On the far wall in there is a circular-ish hot spot and then a square-ish fall off. So it is either the natural fall off from the window, or a supplemented 800w joker.
-The shades were drawn to help control and shape the light coming into the room.
-As you already mentioned you placed a net behind the front door to reduce brightness.
-I'm going to guess that for the close ups you did not do much re-lighting. If anything just brought in a kino for the fill side of the son on the floor. (Unless that was all bounce off of the carpet.)
-No grads were used in this scene.

The Bathroom:

I really like the lighting in this scene as you dolly back. And I'm having a tougher time figuring it out...
-She is keyed from camera right, and it is a little toppy. So although in the shot the light feels like the light is coming from the practical in the scene, I'm guessing that a kino was flown in above her.
-There is a diagonal light patch behind her that feels like it is coming from the window behind her. But because of the angle of the wall, I'm going to guess that it would not be possible for that light to hit there, so another light would have to have been added and then flagged accordingly. (Unless there is a practical off camera in the ceiling above her. There has to be some kind of light as the shower curtain is catching some of it...)
-To separate out the window in the background I'm guessing that a 800w joker was put through the window and the dappling of the window is what helps give it the nice fall off on the far wall.
-Then to help provide a little more depth to the scene, a kino is on the floor hitting the back floor / wall.
-No grads were used in this scene.

The Kitchen Part 01:

This one also has me guessing quite a bit...
-The shade is drawn to reduce brightness. Yet it feels to dark to be letting in the amount of light that is keying the woman. So..
-There is a soft grad vertically on camera right.
-The practicals on turned on in the background to help provide more depth / separation.

and one more...

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

continued ...

continued ...

The Kitchen Part 02:

It is from this scene that I noticed the difference in the darkness of the shade above the sink which lead me to the conclusion that a grad was used in the previous shot.
- Shades were drawn to reduce the brightness.
- Vistabeam was added to help with the general ambience.
- A Kino was hidden underneath the counter to help accent the cutting board / vegitables.
- Practicals were turned on to help add depth / separation.


Okay- so how far off am I? Also, what other shots did you use the grad on?

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

Hey Ryan

What can I say.

You have pretty much nailed it.

I did use a Kino Flo inside the room as we dolly over to meet the guy at the counter. There was also a Kino hidden around the corner at frame right to put that little glow on the door there. I also put a 2' foot kino on the floor behind the blue chair center frame to simulate the "bounce" of the hard light coming in through the window.

The bathroom was keyed with a Diva Light rigged on a pole cat. I used the black egg crate to keep it zoned in on her. The shadow on the wall should have been cleaned up... :-(

In the woman's shot in the kitchen - yes grad vertical on the right to control window brightness, but allow enough light on her.

I also had a kino inside on the camera left side.

For the guy - Kino flo key from camera left - and yes - tube on the counter.

The frame grabs are pretty dark - but hey...

Good guessing game.

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

Hey Ryan

The "illegal" helicopter rig in Australia...

 

[Brent J. Craig]

The "illegal" helicopter rig in Australia...

As you can see we thought we would try using two of the gyros from the Aerial Exposures rig to see if they would do anything on a rigid mount. I feel that they probably absorbed some of the high-frequency vibration but we have no way of know how the shots would have looked without them. What can I say - we had lots of time to build the rig so we kept adding to it.

We protected the lens by taping an ND, Pola or both over it. If I remember a 4 1/2 inch round is the exact size of the front of the 14.5-50 Master zoom.

I thought using the microforce motor to ride the iris was a clever idea. I'm pretty sure Dylan thought that one up.

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

Thanks again Dylan- you have been an invaluable resource! I like to try and figure out how people lit scenes - and being able to guess and then get corrected by the actual cinematographer is a great experience- as I do not have to wonder how close or far off I was - not an opportunity I get much.

Great solution for the helicopter mount! Very creative!

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

As you can see we thought we would try using two of the gyros from the Aerial Exposures rig to see if they would do anything on a rigid mount. I feel that they probably absorbed some of the high-frequency vibration but we have no way of know how the shots would have looked without them. What can I say - we had lots of time to build the rig so we kept adding to it.

We protected the lens by taping an ND, Pola or both over it. If I remember a 4 1/2 inch round is the exact size of the front of the 14.5-50 Master zoom.

I thought using the microforce motor to ride the iris was a clever idea. I'm pretty sure Dylan thought that one up.

Definitely a creative and effective solution. The microforce motor is a great touch.

Since you were taping the filters to the lens, I assume you were not using the round filters- is that correct? Did you end up using a lot of tape to make sure that would not come off mid flight?

 

[Ryan E. Walters]

I just thought of another question-

When you were flying around- did you carry on the camera, or did you check it? with your mention of having the filters "lost" during flying to Africa, I was wondering how you handled the camera- was that something that you worried about? (Getting to the location and having the camera end up on a flight in another country?)

 

[Brent J. Craig]

When you were flying around- did you carry on the camera, or did you check it?

We checked it. No matter what other people say, you really can't carry on a camera in any convenient way. Just the body in a Pelican case maxes out the legal weight limit for most airlines. We could have used something like a Portabrace bag I guess, but remember we had to carry on ALL of our batteries because of the flying with lithium laws. We also hand carried the hard drives with our footage.

As you can imagine, we also had personal carry on - computers, still cameras, etc.

How did we handle possibly losing a case? Well, first of all we had good insurance and a rental house with locations around the world who could Fedex gear if we needed it. Second, we had 2 bodies in separate cases. We broke down the other cases in such a way that we would still be able to shoot if one or two cases were lost or delayed (unless it was the 2 camera bodies!).

 

[Zac C]

Just watched it, Beautiful stuff... felt like it shouldn't be something on a few hundred/thousand people should see.... beautiful enough to be in theatres... lol

 

[Dylan Macleod CSC]

Just watched it, Beautiful stuff... felt like it shouldn't be something on a few hundred/thousand people should see.... beautiful enough to be in theatres... lol

It will be in theaters!

That's the distribution plan Science North has. It will play in their theater (projected 2K) and will then be licensed to Science Centers around the world.

Glad you enjoyed it!

 

[Patrick Thompson]

Nice work Dylan!

It's great to see a passion for gathering footage, especially with the huge logistical issues as you've described(30 cases? Impromptu-Tyler mounts?Holy Crap!!).
Congratulations on a brilliant project, and much respect to Brent & Derrick for some fierce rigs and incredible data management.

Now come on out to the Grand Banks and do the same for the oil industry!!!

Regards,

Patrick
patrick.thompson@huskyenergy.com