Klyment.com - Journal

Between car trouble, locking my keys in my car, running out of all of my favourite matte pigment inkjet canvases, fulfilling a series of emergency print orders, leaving my phone at home, and then locking my studio and home keys in my car at the repair shop and having to call my girlfriend on a payphone to pick me up so that I stay at her place for the night until I could get my keys from my car at the shop, the day was still reasonably satisfying in its yield of photos and what I learned. [Note to self: Add links to some names]

A roll of ropelight overheats and melts . . . I had this happen on one of my shoots once with an extension cord which someone decided to roll back onto its spool. Unroll your high current cords!

Pat says hi to Bill through the Arriflex SR3. Pat is our continuity person; she makes sure that people cross their legs the same way in different takes and are wearing their clothes consistently. It sounds like a trivial task but if she weren't as good as she is at what she does, there could be a lot of embarrasing continuity issues once the film has been assembled. She was also the continuity person on the Mixed Blessings TV show shoot.

Bill getting his makeup done before he appears in his own film.

That makeup doesn't make you look weird at all.

Having a little fun time on stage.

Alan who plays one of the male strippers . . . I'm going to assuming he doesn't look like HomoCrow most days but the makeup and costume looks awesome.

Alan, I think some of your ass is showing through your underwear . . .

Lyle helps out Andrea with some of her makeup after Andrea finishes with Lyle's. Andrea could well be the most recommend makeup artist in Edmonton.

Crystal making her grand entrance. Trevor decided against using a Steadycam for the shot and had Wes handhold the camera through the entire sequece which is about 100' of brisk walking through a narrow corridor and around a corner with a lot of extras. I can't wait to see the footage for this scene.

Julie busy posing and not camera assisting. And Klyment shooting the crew instead of what I'm supposed to be shooting.

Producer and writer/director, united after two decades. Pat produced a commercial for AADAC written by Trevor when he was in junior high for a contest. Apparently Trevor won. By a ridiculous margin.

Trevor and Dean, the guy that makes a lot of the more complex light design work as he is the grip guy. Dean gave me a ride home to the studio since I didn't have my car and was dropped off at the shoot location.

So Bill Minsky commissioned me to do some stills for one of his productions being filmed August 21 to 24, 2007. He neglected to send me a call sheet or tell me what his short film was going to be about but I figured it out soon enough when I arrived on set and saw a bunch of dudes wearing nothing but shiny underpants. I'll just post some photos . . . you can make your own conclusions.

Director: Trevor Anderson

1st Camera Assist: Julie Phillips Julie also happens to be a model and we'll hopefully be shooting together sometime soon. There are more flattering photos of Julie but I was going to create a poll to allow you to vote for the cutest camera assist but there is no poll function in my blog (so far we have Bill and Julie). I'd vote Bill.

Producer (left): William Minsky, Assistant Director (centre): Mark, and Writer/Director

Crystal (Centre)

Bubbles . . . and other somewhat homosexual stuff. Heheh.

Director of Photography: Wes Doyle

Camera: Arriflex SR3. From what I can tell, this camera shoots onto Super16 film, is equipped with timecode, and has provisions for realtime digital remote monitoring of what is being filmed. I believe that this remote monitoring is made possible by transferring every alternating frame digitally to another screen when the camera is rolling which would explain why the external monitor flickers only when it is recording but I could be wrong.

Edit: "Sort of. Any current film cameras (as in, ones with true reflex viewfinders) work a lot like SLR's. Except they do what SLR's do 48 (or 24, I guess it depends on how you look at it) times a second. It's a rotating mirror (that is 180 degrees). When the mirror is down, it relfects the light that goes through the lens to the film. When the mirror is up, it reflects it to the operator. If there is a "video tap" installed, half of that (or 30 percent, or less or more, depending on the tap) goes to a video camera, that then displays it on a video monitor.

So it's not really every second frame, it's the half of the 48th of a second (because a film camera running at 24 frames has a shutter speed of 48th of a second) that the film doesn't see." - Felix of Burnaby, BC

The script called for a few shots of the stage with three actors playing male strippers.

I posted this photo to show how some light is being distributed in the background of the shot. Wes equipped with a Source Four SR ellipsoidal spot lamp with a Joker HMI (halide metal induction, daylight balanced) light source in lieu of the typical 500-1000W tungsten halogen lamp. This ellipsoidal spot lamp allowed for precise control of the area of illumination by the way of focusing, zooming (in some models) and shutters. Metal gobos could also be used to cast shadows as was done in a shoot that I used such a lamp for. In this case, a relatively large light source could be created with a small profile by projecting a beam of light from a different part of the set into the scene where a stand with a reflector or diffuser may be placed. This photo also shows a bunch of Arri tungsten Fresnel lamps which were used.

Our Protagonist: Farren Timoteo (Right) . . . and that's not jizz on his red shorts . . . just light from an interesting gobo in a leko.

This photo gives you an idea of the big picture . . . lighting on stage provided mostly by stage lights, series of Fresnel's and light bounced from the Joker-equipped Source 4 as a colder rim light. Photos were contrasted and curves were distorted significantly to cut through the haze. Hahah . . . no one lights a night club quite like a director of photography can.