WE WANT YOU!!!

Hurlbut Visuals is looking for 40 forward thinking filmmakers, men and women to enlist in the pursuit of trail blazing this new technology with the few, the proud, the Elite Platoon.

Our motto is to educate and inspire one filmmaker at a time. On August 28 & 29 we are going to take that to the next level. Everything that the Elite team and I have learned over the last 17 months will be delivered to you in a two day, hands on intensive. There are only 40 slots available because this course is not for a mass education. It is intimate and personal with a 5 to 1 student to teacher ratio.

(DAY ONE)  Menus, quirks, pros, cons, building pictures styles, rigs, monitor configurations, follow focus, still glass, cinema glass and media managing.

(DAY TWO) We deliver you to the front line.  Four Teams of ten are deployed and sent down range led by one Elite Team member (LC) to shoot in two simulated set environments as well as prep, move, build, create video village, focus, expose, download, just to name a few.  At the end of the day all of the media will be shown on a 25′ screen with a 2K Christi projector for the four teams to review, color correct and discuss successes as well as mistakes.

The most unique aspect about this Bootcamp is the fact that the 40 men and women who enlist will have a custom 2 day course that meets his or her specific professional needs not a broad scope platform, but a dynamic training class that changes based on the  participants who sign up.  HOOYA!!!

Here is the link: www.hdslrbootcamp.com

JOIN THE REVOLUTION!

I have had many discussions about the different lens options other than Zeiss ZE’s and Canon’s that mount to the Canon cameras.  Zeiss took it to the next level with their Canon mount CP2’s and their new Zooms that come out this summer.  I support your creative vision; not what someone tells you is right for the camera or the fact that it has a Canon mount. Test for yourself, push the envelope, think out of the lens box.

Kowa 200mm Prim Lens 2.8

        

Kowa 100mm Prime Lens

One of Herb Ritts favorite Medium Format Lenses Mamiya z180mm

Using Lomo anamorphics, I think is very interesting. http://members.optusnet.com.au/~smort1/lomos/lomos.

Putting the Kowa’s on the camera will blow your mind with their contrast and flaring abilities. http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Kowa_lenses_for_other_cameras.  Leica’s deliver everything that the price tag dictates.  Using the medium format lenses.  I remember when I was working side by side with Herb Ritts, he loved the way Mamiya lenses delivered contrast and a creamy quality which was one of the unique qualities of Herb’s photographs.

1980 Lomo Anamorphic Round Front Lenses

Mid 70's-80's Lomo Square Front Anamorphic Lenses

Lenses are a very personal choice for both a photographer and cinematographer.  They can create a mood and give a certain style to a film that another lens would not.  So I ask all of you to experiment with your creativity, to fly and use what makes you shine.

This path requires some altering to your lens of choice which will assist you in delivering images that will work visually and also technically.  Duclos Lenses in Canoga Park, CA is doing just that. http://www.ducloslenses.com They have a very intimate, customer service oriented lens altering, cleaning and calibrating. You name it they will do it to your lens company.  Most importantly, from a  DSLR shooter’s perspective they do three very essential things.  They de-click all of your f-stop rings, which is absolutely essential with the HD platform.  Most of the still lenses that are set on 1/2 stop click increments.  By de-clicking the lenses, you can be more exact with your exposures.  A 1/3 of a stop increment could be the difference of whether you can hold that beautiful big puffy cloud in the sky and their backlit faces in the frame.

Duclos Lenses Cine-Mod//applies 32 pitch Delrin gear rings

Duclos Lenses Cine-Mod de-clicks your aperture ring

Delrin black 32 pitch gear rings

The other essential thing that they do is put black Delrin, perfectly machined standard 32 pitch gauge gear rings on your lenses that are stable and secure, yet you will have the ability to remove if needed.  Almost any lens can be outfitted with gears for the zoom, focus or iris.  Duclos rings increase the diameter of the lens to give you more of a cinematic throw of focus.

Panavision Primo Cinema Style Lens w/ footage markings on the side of the barrel, notice that the markings go around the whole barrel, this is what gives you that cinema style focus throw, not just 2 -3 inches like most still lenses

Cinema lenses have markings that are inscribed on the lens barrel from minimum focus to infinity and they are spaced out in a way that a focus puller can see them and when you rack focus from 5 feet to infinity it is not an 1/8 of an inch away on your focus wheel or remote follow focus handset.

This is great for a still photographer because the auto focus does not have to travel a long distance which makes it fast to grab focus on what you are lensing.  But when making movies you need more distance between footage marks.  This is so important when it comes to understanding motion.  Your focus is an extension of your creative vision.  It can misdirect the audience and assist in showing the viewer where the director wants them to look or  bring attention to an emotion, etc. So when you mount a larger diameter ring on a still lens you expand the distance between 5 feet and infinity, which then gives the lens more of a cinematic feel. When you rack focus from someone in the background to a object or person in the foreground it has a smooth focus throw, done with the speed that you prefer.  If it is a horror film and you want to build suspense maybe the rack to the F.G. is slow and builds tension, or if you want to use it for a scare tactic the rack can be incredibly fast to reveal.

Duclos 80mm Rings that they affix to the front of your lens which will except 77mm screw-in filters

The third thing that Duclos does is to install a 80mm front ring, which will accept an inside 77mm thread.  Now all lenses have the same front size ring. This is a must for speed when you are shooting.  With still lenses, you have all diameters and sizes, this keeps it all one size.  Which means you only have to buy one ND filtration size.  This saves money, and time.

Paul at Duclos has put these 3 essential modifications to your lens in a pkg., called the Cine Mod for a discounted price.

Dream, create and think out of the box.  Take lenses that no one would think of using and experiment.  What about plastic lenses? I want to see that!

Gauging exposure so that you have the necessary depth of field to give your focus puller a chance is as much your job as it is to light the scene, block it and compose it.  I have found that a 4.0/5.6 is the lowest you want to go with the 5D.

Techcom "Terminator:Salvation" Webisode

For example, when looking at a face, I prefer to have the nose, mouth and especially the eyes in focus, the ears can gradually fall out of focus, but the nose and mouth being out of focus is very distracting.  The photo above is a close-up of a face that I shot for the Terminator Webisodes. It was shot on a 28mm Nikon Prime at a 5.6 which is about a 19mm equivalent on a 35mm motion picture camera.  Look at his ears and the fur on his jacket, they are completely blown out of focus, the nose and mouth are slightly soft and this was at a 5.6.  I might have 1.5 inches of depth of field here.  With a Canon 85mm lens, at a 1.4 t-stop you have a 1/32” of focus.  At a 4.0/5.6 you have 3/4-1” inch.  So you can see how shallow it is.

These cameras are so compact and light, you can move a camera in new ways.  You are not moving the mass that we used to have prior to the invention of the HDSLR technology.  In the movie business it was all about figuring out how to move the camera mass, whether it is with a crane, Steadicam, dolly, helicopter, cable cam, hand held, etc.

Moving an HDSLR camera wide open following action, pulling or pushing someone, or just shooting a scene that has simple blocking is a recipe for disaster.  I can only speak from my experience shooting the beginning of the Navy SEALS film at a F-stop 2.0 and nothing looks sharp.  There are bits that are sharp but because it is such a shallow plane of focus, it seems all out of focus.  The 7D is a different animal because of the smaller sensor.  You can shoot at a F-stop 2.8 and get the same focus feel as the 5D.  So, you can roll with 2 times less light and have good odds that it will be in focus.  Be careful about giving this camera too much focus.  It will start to look like video quickly and you will have many more moiré’ and aliasing issues because of the increased depth of field.  The background lines do not fall off like the 5D.  The 1D camera has an anamorphic sized sensor and this will deliver a focus footprint like the 5D at a F-stop 2.8/4.0 split.

The people that I have assembled on the Elite team have motion picture experience and have had to relearn the still platform. They have been so inspired by all of the still photographers and have immense respect for your contribution. The Elite Team members have pulled focus for years and understand how to Zen gauge distances and the mechanics for what it takes.  My advice to all still photographers that are diving into motion would be to seek out these talented people.   If you need help I can provide you with names of top-notch personnel in many cities across the United States, Mexico, South America, Europe, and Asia.

Manual follow focus is not an option at all unless you are on a fluid head of some sort.  Anything that touches this camera while operating will throw you off because of its minimal weight.  There are several remote follow focus systems available that are affordable.

Bartech remote follow focus will cost around $3,500.00 to buy.  Their system uses 900 MHz data transmissions and with 8 channels.  It comes with a MDR, remote follow focus handset, cables, and Heden focus motor as well as the now M-one motor.  It is a unit that has been tested in the film industry under extreme conditions and works well for single channel focus control. www.bartechengineering.com/

Bartech Remote Follow Focus System

View factor remote follow focus costs around $2,600.00 for the Indie model and about $9,500.00 for the Pro.  Their system has Blue-tooth technology.  It comes with a MDR, cables, follow focus handset, and a focus motor.  I have tested this system and it works very well.  The people at View Factor are very accommodating and will custom build equipment if need be.  This kit is available now, with upgrades that are worth waiting for that should be ready in late February, early March. www.viewfactor.net/

View Factor Remote Follow Focus System

Preston III Remote Follow focus system is the premiere industry follow focus.  It costs anywhere between $25,000.00-$30,000.00.  It is a 3 channel system so that you can do focus, zoom and exposure. They are all hand-made have been battled tested on features since the 1980’s.  It also has a cine-link function where you can get wireless focal distances sent from a cine-tape sonar focus device that shows up on that screen at the top of the handset.  The hand grip is very important for your focus puller.  It gives them the ability to do very precise racks.  It comes with rings that you can calibrate to every lens in your kit.  So, put your lens on, hit calibrate and the motor goes through its rotations.  Once that is complete you set infinity and all your focus marks on your handset sync with the lens.  It is genius. www.prestoncinema.com/

Preston Follow Focus

Cinematography Electronics Cine-tape Sonar focus system will run about $8,000.00.  It is a device that rides in the hot shoe or on the matte box that helps gauge focus through sonar waves.  It is an essential tool to roll fast.  It gives the focus puller a digital readout of what the distance of an object is in front of your lens.  It does not move the focus on the lens. The focus pullers job is to interpret what the devise is saying, determine the distance and whether we want that in focus or something else in the frame in focus. www.cinematographyelectronics.com/

Cine-Tape Box With Sonar Focus Horns

IR Laser range finder costs about $150.00-$250.00 for a good one.  It is an IR device that allows you to aim at an object from where you are standing and get the distance.  Leica makes one, but it does not work well in daylight. The Hilti Laser Range meter is the best and it works in the blazing sun. Head to your local Home Depot and pick one up.

Hilti IR Range Finder

Focus Magnifier on the Canon Cameras is a very powerful focus tool.  It provides accurate focus checking by zooming in 5x and then another push of the button will get you 10x magnification. You cannot use this while you are recording but it is great to check focus before you start rolling.  Make sure your focus box is in the center of your LCD screen, aim the box at what you want to check and hit the magnifier.  That little box bugs me, so once I use the magnifier I move the box down to the lower right hand side of the screen.

All these are amazing tools to assist with focus during shooting and for you to move the camera in ways that we have only seen on a computer.  Even with all of the tools, there is still a very talented technician, co-collaborator delivering your images in searing sharpness.

Coming from the world of film, I am used a lot of latitude and uncompressed 16 BIT color space. I want whatever will give me the most range so I have options when I get to the point of color correction. I like to bend it, shape it, stretch it, push it to have maximum flexibility and creativity.

So, I downloaded a RAW picture style from the Internet.  It claimed to increase latitude in the highlights as well as digging into the shadow areas.  I shot 9 shorts, 2 commercials and 25% of the Navy Seal movie on this.  What a BIG, HUGE MISTAKE!  It was fine for the controlled lighting set-ups that I had on the short films and the 2 commercials, but when it came to the big yacht take down in Key West it buried me.

Picture Style Menu

The Elite Team and I quickly learned that while shooting day exteriors, the downloaded RAW picture style made it impossible to gauge a correct exposure on the back LCD screen due to the light contamination.  You could not tell whether it was overexposed or underexposed because it was so stretched to give you both ends. Consequently, we underexposed 25 or so shots trying to gain contrast. I will never repeat that mistake again!

After this error, we needed to rethink our approach.  The Elite Team and I had a think tank session and came up with a new strategy. We designed a RAW file that I liked with the Canon computer software, that we called SEAL RAW.  Our approach was to start with a neutral picture style with -1 saturation to expose our day exteriors and to light our day interiors, night interiors and night exteriors. Once the exposure was set on the day exteriors and the lighting was dialed in just before rolling, we switched from the neutral setting to SEAL RAW and then recorded on that picture style to give us the ultimate latitude. Our neutral picture style was equivalent to the final look of the film. In theory, it is similiar to a DIT superimposing a final picture look up table on the raw files of a RED One, Sony F35, Sony F23, Panavision Genesis, Arri D21 etc.

Neutral Picture Style

-1 Saturation to Desaturate the Reds

This is what works for my lighting and visual style.  Which picture style fits your vision?

Bandito Brothers "Living in the Lights"

The creative genius of mixing 5K still car shots and the Canon 5D car chase sequences make this groundbreaking visual imagery. From start to finish the all digital project and workflow takes advantage of where technology has gone. What was a “hot babe in front of a hot car” poster for Mouse as a teen has become a download on YouTube.

Photo from my travels

One day I took my banana bike and pretended to be Evil Knieval by trying to jump over a large number of kids with a special ramp that I designed. The contest was to see if I could top my record with each jump. Quickly, I discovered that six kids was the maximum without killing myself with that banana seat or destroying them.

I value creativity because I understand that it is the vital force behind great art. It is critical to find time to nurture your creative spirit. We can all find excuses that get in our way and my biggest one is guilt at spending more time away from my family. However, if I skimp and cheat myself out of creative time just for me, everything suffers.

Travel is my favorite way to boost creativity because I am stimulated and amazed by the visual landscapes around the world. Each year, I take a few weeks just to reconnect with myself and my creative drive.  It is time that is non-negotiable and is the commitment that I make to decompress and fuel my creative reserves.  I also take time to dream and visualize in my head every evening for 15-20 minutes.  I unplug, go in the sauna and practice dreaming.

What do you do to nurture your creativity? What tricks have you developed that help you to be a better director of photography or still photographer? I would love to share your ideas with others, so please post comments!

It is nimble and inexpensive so you can have multiple camera bodies working in different configurations simultaneously. Not being stuck with a traditional shoulder mount allows you to create a new visual language.

The 5D Mark II Goes Anywhere

We used the 5D Mark II to shoot the fight sequences in my current feature project for the Navy Seals directed by Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy and produced by Bandito Brothers, Legendary Pictures and Warner Brothers. The versatility to get into places that were previously impossible to reach with a camera of this quality is exciting. Capturing  incredibly low angles is now easy.  Overhead shots that usually required a crane or jib arm, now need a speed rail menu arm or a c-stand.  You have to keep on thinking out of the box, break free from traditional thinking and embrace the size and weight of this little movie maker.