Rachel Bites

About two years in the making, the first three episodes of the shocking web series Rachel Bites:

Episode 1: "The Incest Bell"

Episode 2: "Hit That"

Episode 3: "Finnochio"

Lowest budget gear

We're often asked by students what kind of gear to get, in order to make movies at a very low budget level.

Here are some suggestions (which are not meant as endorsements or guarantees, of course, and we have no affiliations, bla bla, and the camera will be superseded by a better, cheaper one in about five minutes)...

• The Canon T3i (a.k.a. 600D)
• SanDisk 16GB Extreme SDHC Memory Card (to hold the video you shoot)
  
• Zoom H4N Digital Audio Recorder (because the camera's audio isn't good enough)
• Sanken CS3 Shotgun Microphone (try to get one that's used but in good condition)
• K-Tek Boom Pole (to get the mic as close to the actors as possible)
• Shock Mount (to attach the mic to the boom pole)
• XLR cable (to connect the mic the audio recorder; at least 15 feet long)

Those are the absolute basic tools for making a movie. It helps to know how to use them, but you'll figure that out.

- PH

Zsolt Bognar and Friends - Episode 3: Cosmo Buono

Another episode of the doc series, this one full of survival skills for artists!

Talks to Cosmo Buono, coauthor of The Classical Musician Today: Getting and Keeping the Career You Want.

Zsolt Bognar and Friends - Episode 2: Joe Patrych

A great new episode of this series, featuring Grammy-nominated recording producer Joe Patrych, who dishes about behind the scenes stuff in the classical world!

Zsolt Bognar and Friends

The latest from Elyria Pictures-- the 1st episode of a series of pieces about the world of young classical musicians.

I shot it, and Liz and I directed.

Please pass it along to anyone you think would enjoy it!

- PH

Color Grading "Bridge of Names" at Fini

Just finished color grading our feature, "Bridge of Names," at Fini, with Patrick Inhofer using DaVinci Resolve 8 at the helm of what looks like the Starship Enterprise...


Patrick did an incredible job. He was sweet, he was patient, and he was completely open to our suggestions, while having strong ideas of his own.

His wife and business manager, Pam, was a perfect hostess-- feeding us and giving us coffee and water and a place to smoke nervously. Why didn't we get a picture of Pam?

If you want to learn more about color grading (a.k.a., color correction) Fini has a podcast, a blog, a newsletter, and online training.

Thanks to Fini, "Bridge of Names" looks as good as it possibly can.

Since I shot it, modesty prevents me from saying more, but I think it looks pretty damn good.

If I were immodest, I'd say it looks beautiful.

- PH

P.S. The photos above, as you may have guessed, were not color graded by Fini.

A love note to the AF100

Photo by Zak Forsman

I love the waveform monitor, which you can see pictured above.

Those wavy lines aren't an x-ray of the subject. They're a scatter chart of all the pixels in the image, arranged according to brightness (luminance.)

When I've got the camera pointed at, for example, an actor in front of the sky, the "sky pixels" will most likely be at the upper end of the waveform diagram.

If they are at or above the thick line at the top, which is 100 IRE, the camera records the pixels as white.

If I wanted to see details in the clouds, I'd probably have to decrease the amount of light entering the camera by stopping down (increasing the f-stop) and putting an ND (neutral density) filter in front of the lens.

Now the clouds will look darker, with more detail than just white. Of course my actor will likely be underexposed (too dark.)

The waveform monitor gives me confidence in analyzing what the camera is recording, so that I don't have to rely only on what the camera's little LCD monitor looks like, which can be misleading.

It still comes down to taste, though. You can't be bullied by what the waveform likes, because you can wind up with bland imagery that way.

Ideally you've got a field monitor (I'm in love with our 17" Panasonic, which actually has its own waveform monitor, but that's another love note) so that you can see exactly what you're getting, and use your eye and the data to achieve beauty.

Love this feature.

- PH