BTS // The Avengers

The Avengers made $200.3 million this weekend, defying all odds and officially besting the weekend numbers for Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. For all you film and tv professionals out there, here's a look at some behind the scenes footage from the Avengers.


The website Trailer Addict does a great job compiling all the on set footage used for EPKs, saving me from having to actually watch Billy Bush on Access Hollywood interview Chris Evans about the moment he realized all his wardrobe came from the Gap.

---


Shot on:
- Arri Alexa w/ Panavision Primo and PCZ Lenses
- Arri 435 w/ Panavision Primo Lenses
- Canon 5D MkII (AS CRASH CAMS, PEOPLE, CRASH CAMS)

Also, what was Robin Sherbatsky doing in the Avengers? You stop that Robin, and just marry Ted already. 

DIY // Not-Quite-Ring Lights

I recently assisted on a music video for artist Cindy Shaoul directed by Illium Pictures director (and fellow Tim Horton's addict) Natasha Kermani. In pre-production talks while we were in Canada, she had mentioned the idea of a custom shaped ring light over lunch.

"FOR TOO LONG HAS MANKIND BEEN RESTRICTED TO CIRCULAR SHAPES OF LIGHTS," she yelled in my face while I was trying to eat my steak salad. "VERY TRUE, WHAT AN ASTUTE OBSERVATION." I yelled back. "HOW IS YOUR SALAD?" she asked. "IT'S NOT BAD." I whispered, "I MEAN, IT'S A STEAK. ON TOP OF SALAD. YOU CAN'T REALLY MESS THAT UP. OOH, A SPECIAL ON MARGARITAS!!" 

Eighteen $5 strawberry and kiwi margaritas later, I found myself with the task of building a ring-light. 

---

One of my favorite contraptions in the world are the flexible LED strips that you can get at any of those Chinese lighting stores all over Manhattan (don't even try to deny that they're not all Chinese. SHOW ME A SINGLE ONE THAT ISN'T.) They're decently inexpensive at $11/foot and come in all sorts of colors. Best part is you can run 'em off a 9volt battery.

The back of the strip already has adhesive, so all you have to do is peel and stick. Here I've attached it to a strip of Velcro, and use it as a light for the inside of my Arri bag~

The end of the strip has a positive and negative wire that you can wire to what have you. LIKE A POTATO. But in this case, it's wired to a basic rocker switch, and then to a 9v battery clip, all available at yer friendly neighborhood RadioShack. 

The strip has open positive and negative contacts every three LEDs, so you can cut the strip at any of these points and just wire the contacts back together. So for this project, when asked if I could make a triangle, I had myself a hearty laugh and replied, "MAYBE!" (because I hadn't actually done this before)

But HEY. Turns out it worked:

Each 9 LED strip is simply connected together by soldering a wire to each contact to bridge the circuit, with the last strip leading out the bottom to the same rocker switch and 9V battery clip set up I have in my Arri bag. And why yes, that is just a frisbee with a hole cut in it. IT'S A PROTOTYPE OKAY? THE PRODUCTION MODEL WILL BE MILDLY PRETTIER.  

To attach to rods, I screwed on a 15mm riser that I had lying around, which allowed me to adjust the height to match different lenses. 

Here it is fired up. The three lights on the corners are individual battery powered LEDs. They helped accentuate the corners in the reflection. Here you can see the wires that connect each LED strip.

Here's the main shot we used it for, a macro shot of Cindy's eye. This is on a Canon FD 50mm w/ 2x Extender on a Sony FS100. I'll post a still from the final result when they get into post, but you can get an idea of the effect in the monitor above. That's Travis Tips, the DP, grabbing focus because I was taking the above photo for this blog, which was obviously far more important. 


On the bottom left corner, you can also see a gobo arm that Cindy is leaning against. For shots like these where the focus is super shallow, this helps the actor keep their position. This technique is also useful for shots where an actor's hand or other body part needs to land in a particular spot, like an XCU of giving someone the finger.


And speaking of tricks o' the trade, Sachtler tripods make good monitor stands as well when you don't have a free hand but you really really want a cookie. 

 I had a lot of cookies that day. 

NAB '12 - K5600, Litepanels, Kino-Flo

They say when covering events on blogs, "it's important to get your information up as early as possible so that it remains relevant to your readers." Well to that I say, "DAMN, I shouldn't have taken so many photos then."

Here's a quick round up of all the fun new swag from the G&E side of things at NAB this year~

// K5600 - Joker 1600

K5600's newest Joker has twice the output of it's predecessor, the Joker 800, and can still run off a household outlet, HUZZAH. This means you can throw this baby up into the ceiling of your kitchen to justify eating an entire box of Lucky Charms at 11pm because it'll look like MORNING.

The Joker 1600 comes in the two flavors users of the Joker 400 and 800 are all familiar with, the Bug-lite bare bulb version which adapts to lanterns and softboxes, and the Beamer swappable lens version.


But exclusive to the Joker 1600 is a new version called the Zoom Beamer, which uses no lenses because its housing is focusable like a typical fresnel unit. A Joker without lenses?! BUT NOW WHAT WILL I USE AS MY NOVELTY SIZED MONACLES??


// Litepanels - SOLA & INCA Fresnels

On the tails of Arri, Litepanels just debuted a line of LED fresnel units as well. They come in either tungsten (INCA) or daylight (SOLA) flavors, but there's no bi-color option. Litepanels says it's not possible based on their LED technology (BUT ARRI DID IT, SO FAIL, LITEPANELS, FAIL).


I will say though where these units excel over the Arri units is in how the unit focuses. On the Arris, when you spot and flood, instead of the lamp moving within the housing, the fresnel lens in front moves in and out, changing the actual length of the unit. So if you have gels or nets or flags set up close to the unit, spotting or flooding may become an issue in cramped situations, such as porto-potty confessionals. 


The Litepanels fresnels on the other hand spot and flood entirely within the unit like traditional fresnels.

Litepanels also debuted a kit for their popular Sola ENG lights, which are mini on board fresnel LED lights. They're fully dimmable and focusable with an equivalent output of 250W unit while drawing only 30W.

The kit comes with three daylight units, gels, power cables, a softbox, and three Manfrotto nano stands, which are just like regular light stands... ONLY REALLY TINY.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE. Here you can see the p-tap power cable that lets you power them off battery plates. Because of their low draw, you'd have no problem running the camera and light off the same brick if need be. 

The softbox folds flat and just slots around the head of the unit, just like a regular chimera... ONLY REALLY REALLY TINY :D The whole three light kit 'n kaboodle is $2995~ At that price point, can't say it's an incredible buy. Certainly not as versatile as some of the Arri softbank kits at the same/lower price, but it's a hell of a lot more portable. They'd really be ideal for on location interview and event work, especially when you need more output than those dinky on-board panel LEDs.


// Kino-Flo - Celeb 200

Kino-flo also debuted an LED unit at NAB this year, forever disregarding the fact the word "fluorescent" is in their name.

With an output of a Diva 400 and drawing only 1 amp, the celeb 200 is dimmable DOWN TO THE DECIMAL. Finally I can tell my gaffer to give me .3% more output and he can't sass me. 

It's color temperature is also full controllable, and not only from tungsten to daylight, but green to magenta. And when you find a color you like, you can save it to a preset, the same way we all have 90s on 9 preset on our XM radios.

It ships with a gel frame, and two louvers which narrow the beam to different degrees. YOU CAN'T FOOL ME KINO-FLO, I know these things are just a rectangle frames filled with cut up boba tea straws...

How Canada does Chips

Whenever I go to Japan or Taiwan, there's only one thing I look more forward to experiencing again than the incomparable awkwardness of otaku maid cafes: FOREIGN CHIP FLAVORS.

Foreign countries always have flavors of chips that are 8000 times more exciting than American flavors for some reason. Like these CLAM CHOWDER FLAVORED DORITOS.

So during this past shoot in Canada, in between my extreme Tim Horton's binges, I sought me out some foreign Lays (IF YA KNOW WHAT I MEAN).

Here are two in particular that caught my eye. And by "caught my eye," I mean "was closest to me when I remembered I was in a foreign country and that foreign countries have crazy potato chip flavors." 

Ruffles - "All Dressed"

OH CANADA, you're so vague. Turns out bring flavored with all of the dressing in Canada amounts to tasting like french dressing, which I suppose is historically accurate. Rating: NOT BAD, CANADA.


Lay's - "Ketchup"

There's a reason nobody dips potato chips in ketchup. KETCHUP POTATO CHIPS ARE THE MOST HORRENDOUS FLAVOR IN THE WORLD. I've literally never tasted anything as horrible as Lay's Ketchup chips. It's not that I don't like ketchup. Ketchup is delicious. It's a great source of lycopene, which can help fight osteoporosis, diabetes, and reduce your cholesterol. Plus it makes my sweet potato fries super tasty.


But these chips do not taste like ketchup. These chips taste like that watery residue that floats at the top of ketchup after it settles for a while. These chips taste like that... but mixed with the poop of lemons if lemons could poop. 


On top of that, the sourness leaves an aftertaste that is as if all 6000 of my tastebuds just marathoned Human Centipede 1 and 2, then Fever Pitch, then Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill.


Rating: BAD CANADA, BAD. You're lucky your Honey Dipped Tim Bits are so delicious...

NAB '12 - Blame Canada D:

I'm on a shoot right now in Canada, and the internet here is crazy slow because everyone's too busy being all nice and hospitable or something stupid like that. 

It took me an hour just to upload this photo of Tim Horton's instead of more NAB swag D: More NAB stuff to come though at the end of this week when I get back to the cold, brute, and mildly racist internet of Manhattan... 


On the plus side, Hasidic Jewish Liev Schreiber was on my flight!

NAB '12 - Things that Slide and Things that go Boing

SLIDERS. I remember the first time I heard about these things becoming available on a consumer level. Someone in Europe slapped a camera on an industrial IGUS carriage rail and went, "Oh... a... mygod...

And thus the company Glidetrack was born. Of course, it didn't take long for people to realize, "wait a minute... that's just a slab of metal with a rail carriage on it." I can buy that straight from IGUS and make it myself! And then it didn't take long for people to try that and realize, "ugh, fuck, this is hard." 

The select few who weren't too lazy though did go on to start selling their own. Then more people started making sliders. AND NOW EVERYONE MAKES SLIDERS. Even Glidecam is releasing their own slider:

And not gonna lie, it's pretty damn solid. It has a good amount of drag and doesn't bend under the weight when you push the carriage to either end like most lighter-weight sliders do. At the end of the day though, it's a piece of metal with a thing on it that goes left and right. And that's...about...it. 


"WELL FUCK THAT," says Indie-Dolly Systems, who demoed their new slider prototype at NAB this year. 

They're sliders work more like mini-dollies, with 3 foot lengths of track that can be connected to one another. The carriage, while a roller wheel system, has a nice weight to it and good amount of drag. When you have carriages that just roll freely left and right, the operator has to do more to make it smooth. (UGH, I don't have to hone skills, c'mon) Having drag lets you feather in the start and stop. Imagine pushing an empty shopping cart vs pushing a shopping cart with an Asian man in it. 

The Indie-Dolly Systems slider will ship with 9 feet of track and the carriage with the option of 75mm, 100mm, or flat mount for around $800 and a target release date of July. It's a novel concept that at least gives you a little more flexibility considering its length isn't fixed. I think Asian Bike Cart Man will be a much more effective dolly though, but it's still in the prototype phase unfortunately...


And on the topic of Asian things by Asian people, the folks over at Nori in Toronto were showcasing this little doo-dad.

Oh that's right, it's a bounce board...

...AND AN UMBRELLA. Calm down Toronto, really. There's only so much innovation I can handle today after finally watching the highly anticipated video to Pitbull's "Back in Time," the official theme song to MIB3.


For $189, you get one silver BOUNCEBRELLA (my official new name forever because Square Bounce is not nearly as cool), one white bouncebrella, and a shoulder sling. So you can re-enact all your favorite katana-drawing scenes from movies where katanas or other similarly lengthy objects are produced from one's backside.


And none of this "expected release date" shit, YOU CAN BUY 'EM NOW. 

Blackmagic Cinema Camera Available Now for Pre-orderrrr - $2,995

ZOMG. Blackmagic's doo-dad movie-making box is now available for pre-order from B&H! Personally, I say hold off until the next iteration, which I imagine will be pretty damn soon given how often these things are coming out. It's a neat camera that produces impressive results, but if you're looking at it as an investment as a production camera, there are just too many design irks in my opinion. Until there's a confirmed non-touchscreen way to operate the thing, I'm gonna pass. Or as Jim Cramer would say, BUYSELLBUYSELLBRAWWWWWWWWR.


But hey, if you've got $3,000 in singles lying around that you need to hide because you've secretly been moonlighting as a stripper and you don't want anyone to know, then knock yourself out.