Sekonic L478D and DR

The new day of light meters has come upon us. For the new age of cinematography, for the HDSLR to the Red and Alexa cameras, the Sekonic Litemaster Pro L-478DR has it all. I remember working on a shoot about a year or so ago with my Sekonic I bought over 5 years ago, saying to my camera op “ I don’t know if what I am getting on my meter is going to be accurate to what we are shooting, I guess the meter is going to be reference for me.” Ok I know what you guys are saying, “ The light meter does way more then you think,” and I totally understand. But when you are perfectionist and also a gadget geek, with using all my gadgets to be a perfectionist... then you will understand. So lets get back to the Pro L-478DR, I thought it was an iPhone attachment and app. But realizing its the new age of light meters, it got me interested. The Sekonic Lightmaster Pro L-478D and the L-478DR the most innovative and advanced  features available to any light meter today. With the touch screen interface you can navigate easily threw menu settings such as F-stop, ISO, Shutter, even selecting what light is on a gel. Just like navigating with an iPhone or Android touch screen. For the motion picture industry this is the most full featured meter today. You can choose your shutter angle and frame ratios for special effects as well the meter is designed for todays camera with selecting 23.976 f/s instead of 24 f/s and so on. The L-478D and DR has a new features that lets you get exact light levels, by going in and selecting the light and what gel it has on. The best part to this meter is that you can program the dynamic range from the camera you are using and also mimics the latitude range on the camera. With only a $300 to $400 range this is a great price for this meter. I Just ordered the Pro L-478D and will have updates on to how it really works. 

Happy Light 

Here is a great video if you don't know how a light meter works, or how helpful a light meter will improve your shots. 

Joker Alpha 1600 HMI

   K5600 has done it again. Creating two new HMI’s that are brighter, lighter and as always a cleaner light than an Arri or LTM’s 1200 HMI, which has heavier ballast even if it’s electronic.  K5600s’ Joker 1600 and Alpha 1600 both are 1600w lamp as well as having an even better ballast then the lower wattage Joker 800.  

Joker 1600 

            Starting with the Joker 1600 par, you would think it works just like any other Joker, but you would be wrong. Using the bare-bulb you will not see any hot spots, with that being said it’s ideal for space lights. The cardinal rule for HMIs and big sores is “never aim a fixture strait down." The Joker 1600 par along with the other Joker’s, you have the option of a Bug-lite, beamer, and the ZOOM Beamer. The ballasts that comes with the 1600 uses less wattage, it runs on 15amp/120 volt circuit as well as its dimmable. Along with being dimmable, the ballasts has a frequency option for high speed shooting.  

alpha 1600

            

          Now talking about K5600 Fresnel family, K5600 have added the Alpha 1600 to their family. It may not be the biggest or brightest in the family, but this should be the big competitor to the Arri and LTM HMI’s. The alpha 1600 is comparable to the 6000w used on the composite quarts reflectors. And again with the cardinal rule for lighting, especially, with a Fresnel you cant point the fixture straight down with out damaging the fixture. But not with the k5600 Alpha 1600, you can point it straight down with out damaging the fixture. The Alpha 1600 also includes a permanent piece of borosilicate that gives crisp and hard shadows. As well as it’s a compact and lightweight.

            Over all these two new revolutionary lights, it’s going to start pushing the limits for other lighting manufactures in the film and television industry.  To get more information from industry professionals for these lights check out. http://www.scribd.com/doc/73942274/k5600newslettersept2011.

Have fun with these new lights.

Film Set Lighting Apps

Straying away from my normal blog about film lighting, I am going to be talking about a useful app I found the other day called set Lighting by Enlightened Shenanigans. Set Lighting is an IPhone app that is meant for Director of photography’s, Gaffers, and anyone on the G & E teams. This app has a catalog of any and all Film lighting and electrical we use in the industry today.

        Set Lighting has it all; from looking up information on certain lighting fixtures from Kino to the new ARRI LED lights. If you thought you are intrigued just by that, you also have an area you can look up specs on a condor lift to a scissor lift.

         For all you new bees, say you see something on a truck and you don’t know what it is, simply open set Lighting on your IPhone and find what you are looking for. With pictures of the object your looking for or searching, you should have no problem finding them.

        Normally all lighting apps stop there, but not with set Lighting. You have cheat sheets for distro such as; amp chart, volt drop per 100 feet and max ampacity. It shows distro examples on how to lay out distro on a set. As well as teaching you how to tie knots. Not to mention set Lighting shows you jell swatches and tells you why you should use them.  I can go on and on about how setLighting can help you, but you would have to buy this app for your self. I feel the $9.99 price tag is a great price for this app. You will not find a better app anywhere else. All I can say is, I wish I had this app when I was a new Electric on set.    

G&E Websites

Hello Lighting people. I am going to be talking about Websites in are industry. As well more on the fact of how easy it is to navigate. 

(Disclaimer), The preference in gear i say or use does not mean I feel its the best, I grew up with the gear and I have my own take on it. 

As a Gaffer / Director of Photography, I am always faced with picking the right gear for the job. When I work or hire a truck for a shoot, I love to see ARRI tungsten lights, LTM HMI’s and American Grip. I am starting to switch to ARRI HMI’s after seeing the M18s do the job. 

After going on websites and searching for gear, I find that many grip and lighting websites fall short of the advertising of there gear. Example, American Grip. I love American Grip, but the website is so old and needs to be updated. I need to see pictures and not just stats. American Grip is a house name in the industry for Warner Brothers, Disney, and Universal. When I talk with smaller owner operators of grip trucks, they mainly go with Matthews Grip or Norms. Why do you ask? Because they said they can order online and see what they are buying. Don’t get me wrong, Mathews Grip is a great company and I trust the stands and rigging. Norms has started to come back with force.

Living in todays age, I feel a company needs a website that represents who they are. As well be on the brink of technology for the company. A web site represents the company of who they are and what they stand for. Looking at American Grips web site opposed to Matthew grip and Norms website, I feel American Grip is losing out on potential costumers. 

In todays lesson, I just wan’t to make a point to say, if you have your own company or your a freelancer, It does not hurt to have your self a website for people to go to and research you. With having a website, you have to remember to keep up with the times and always update your site or you may be losing out on potential work. 

Happy Lighting. 

condor or scissor lifts for film sets

Hello film people. I am coming at you with something that is a G&E’s best toy, or I say my favorite toy is the condor or scissor lifts. Its so versatile and can get your big sources high in the sky. I use it most of all to place my shadows where I want them. Especially for my night shots, or if the seen is shooting on a second or third floor and the list can go on. 

There are different Lifts for different projects. The first lift is the scissor lifts witch can can get you high in the sky vertically, and you can add a lot more wait to them like two 12k’s or 18k’s. and still have room to spare. one thing that gets me all woozy in the stomach is a nice gust of wind when you are full stick, or if you decide to walk from one end to the another end of the lift. The second lift is the condor lift. I like this because you could order a 40ft to a 100ft plus lifts. The versatility of the condor lift is quite amazing. Rigging 20x rags to putting up an 18k in the basket and extending the arm out over the trees to create that amazing night seen is amazing. 

I do say, when I first started my first experience working on the lifts, I was supper excited to be the one picked to go up on a lift. Until I was told I was going to be in the scissor lift until lunch. So my suggestion, if you are picked to go in one, is go to the craft service table, stack up on snacks and bring a big bottle up with you, and I don’t need to tell you why. 

But of course rigging these types of lights and rags over talent is not a job of an amateur G&E crew member. In fact most in major injuries on sets are do to Poor rigging for amateur G&E crew. You defiantly need someone that knows what they are doing to avoid injury. 

Hope you guys have or will enjoy playing with these type of toys on set.

Happy lighting. 

Entertainment law Videos and podcasts

Hello Lighting people. I am going to be talking about some information about entertainment law. I found 2 videos and 1 podcast that talks about anything from fair use, to what an entertainment lawyer does, to copyright ownership vs right of publicity. Just the little things you will discover in the videos will help you understand more about the industry you are working in. If you like learning about entertainment law there are hundreds of video and podcasts talking about entertainment law. 

The first video I reviewed whats from a Video series called BYOD (Bring Your Own Doc). In the series, interviewers are interviewing an Entertainment Law Attorney, Michael C. Donaldson. Donaldson is an advocate in the independent film documentary world on fair use. Defined by Centerforsocialmedia.com Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyright material without asking permission or paying for it. It keeps current copyright holders from being private censors. I am not saying go out at start taking everyones stuff and steeling it. Donaldson tell’s us there are three questions when making a documentary and or non fiction films. 

1. Does this item well illustrate your point? So if the audio clip says “Michael Bay’s explosions in his movies are intense,” and you show a small clip of something that exploded in the movie Transformers, then yes.
2. Did you only use as much as needed to illustrate the point? So in the example of Michael Bay. We see the explosion, then it cuts to the cars transforming into robots then yes thats a little much. 
3.  Is the connection between the item you are using and the point you are making obvious to the average viewer? Basically does the clip of Michael Bay’s explosion clip pare with the line that says, “Michael Bay’s explosions in his movies are intense.” Then yes. If a 5 year old can see the point connection then you are fine. 

Donaldson talks for 55min about fair use to errors and omissions, Donaldson has great insight on entertainment law issues. I suggest you watch the hole thing if you are an Indie or documentary film maker, that wants to understand how not to get sued and save money on buying copyrights when you actually don’t need one, if you are using the clips in fair use in the right way. 

My second video I reviewed is an interview with Cliff Lovette. Lovette is an Entertainment Lawyer in Georgia. The video is a short 8 min video that hits on subjects like, what does an entertainment lawyer do? He explains that entertainment lawyer’s where different hats, like networking matchmaker that takes talent and match them up with production talent and resources ect... Another hat is dealmaking services and draft contracts and so on. Lovette also hits on tax incentive and talks about how you can build credit on an incentive and sell it to another production. Other subjects include copyright law and new technologies. If you just want a brief background what an entertainment attorney does and some information about the topics then watch this video. 

On to copyright ownership vs right of publicity I found a Podcast from ARC Law Group. ARC Law Group has a lot of informative information on copyright to trademark basics threw short 10min pod casts. The pod cast I like the most was copyright ownership vs right of publicity. In this podcast Mark Pearson from Pearson Law Group talks to the prosumer photographer and also to prosumer videographers. He talks about if you take a picture of some one you own the right to it, but if you want to distribute you will need a written agreement from the “model” saying I give you permission to use my image and likeness. As well goes for video. So the bottom line is get a release of any person or art you shoot. 

Click here to listen to the pod cast

Hope you guys enjoyed the blog 

Happy Lighting!!!

A little about Film Law

Hey readers, once again I am stepping aside my lighting blog to talk about a couple of legal issues at are coming up on the radar. First of which is the lawsuit with Internships with Black Swan and Fox Searchlight Productions. As working in the film industry for a wile now, I have had various opportunities to do internships in L A. I started as an office intern on movies sets and some of my jobs included getting coffee, making copies of scripts to picking up camera gear from Panivision. Even being an office intern, I learned a couple of things or two from producers and other office staff. As most of you all know, working for free or being an “intern” is a right of passage into the entertainment industry. Film and Broadcast is a different world then the “real world.” Internships figure out if you are cut out to work in this industry or not, as well its a great way to meet people and learn how the entertainment world works. The next step to the industry after being an intern would be paid positions as a PA, Grip & Electric or Camera PA. In the legal case of Black Swan and Fox Searchlight, Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman were both interns working on the blockbuster film. Glatt an accounting intern and Footman an office intern for Fox Searchlight’s Black Swan. Glatt said to the Huff Post “As the internship wore on I continued to feel like fox was taking advantage of me after the film made 300 million.” Footman was taking out the trash, taking lunch orders and making sure the coffee pot was full at all times. Glatt and Footman both filed a lawsuit for unpaid labor in film. Glatt and Footman are hoping to get money for them selfs and over  100 Searchlight inters. On August 8th 2012 Judge William H. Pauley III allowed them to file a motion to amend their suit to expand the plaintiff class to include everyone who has worked as an unpaid intern at Fox Entertainment Group for the past several years.

I understand where Glatt and Footman are coming from and wish I was paid as well on blockbusters I was interning on. In my opinion I feel like the film industry is earned not given, as well putting your time in. 

According to Huff Post in 2010 Fox will start paying all interns in the internship program $10 per Hour.

Here is a question. If most PA’s where making $10 per hour and now interns are making $10 per hour, doesn't that make Interns PA’s now?

I know when I open my company, I will have Interns working with me and hopefully asking questions and learning like I did. I feel picking my crew from interns is a great way to find the trust and drive to see if they are willing to succeed in my company.

Another legal issue that was on the radar is about Intellectual property disputes, and my case comes from the movie Hangover 2. Stu Price, one of the characters on hangover 2 had an identical Mike Tyson tattoo that was painted on his face for the movie. Victor Whitmill Tyson’s tattoo artiest filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Entertainment on April 28, 2011. Because Whitmill obtained a copyright for the 8 year old artwork and claimed that the use of his design in the movie and in advertisement with out consent was copyright infringement. Later Whitmill and Warner Bros agreed on an undisclosed amount. 

knowing about IP issues like this, is definitely something to look out for wile producing projects. I know for my company this is going to be something to look out for. Coming from someone that does not have any tattoos, this is something I need to look at designs in tattoos so that I am not having any IP issues before I go into production.

         Talking about IP and copyright artwork lawsuit case, comes from the Syfy reality show Dream Machines and a Louisiana Artist Preston Asevedo that clams the show has been infringing on copyright on his artwork. The problem comes from the comedy tragedy skulls that is used on the parker brothers establishment sign on each episode, and uses it in other ways like stamping it in 50 Cent’s car. Asevedo is suing for copyright infringement, unfair competition and unjust enrichment. No compensation or ruling has been reached. 

Again I feel the producers need to do a better job on spotting out little things like artwork, that can turn around and bite them down the road. Copyright in art is a very hard thing to miss wile in production. After looking at case after case of copyright in art I  can see something going wrong in the future if I don't pay enough attention. Like I have said before, I will be watching out for the little things before I go into Production.