Dan's 24p News

Spring 2008

It was a busy spring and that’s a good thing! I literally shot for weeks for Hilton hotels, both on the road and here in Socal. Hilton demands the best quality available and we shoot everything with my Sony F900 HDCAM.

The shooting in town included renting an airport terminal for a week with 10 talent, 60 extras and a crew of 30. Nice! The one note from the client was they wanted the quality of episodic show and they got it. I want to thank the production company for giving me the tools and people I needed to do the job right.

The F900 is still the best single piece camera available and the post workflow is easy and straightforward. But I really see how good the Sony F900 is when we’re shooting on the road. Then it’s usually just a producer and me with the camera on my shoulder.

We do a hundred plus set-ups a day, exteriors, interiors, day and night and the camera has to make an image that looks like a million bucks. Hilton has also taken to using HDCAM frame grabs for both web and print stills. The Hilton people call the F900 the magical camera.

I was the DP/director on a reality show. While the producers took care of the talent I did the blocking and camera placement. The main unit usually consisted of my Panasonic 500 with a wide angle and a couple of Panasonic 200’s doing cross coverage.

Contractually, I can’t tell you the name of the show, who’s in it or even the name of the network but I can tell you it involved the action sports and we shot surf, snow, dirt, bike and skateboarding from Mammoth Mountain to San Diego.

A typical day might be inside a hotel, out on a city street, in a restaurant and then a bar at night. Or a dirt track in the morning, an indoor racing track in the afternoon, a sushi bar at dinner and a party inside a house at night.

Winter 2007

In December I shot new commercials and a sales video for Contour beds. Twenty years ago I shot over one hundred spots for Craftmatic (the company's old name). Those first spots were shot using an Ikegami 79 camera, a portable 1" that weighed 50 pounds and a reel of tape the size of hubcap. Now, the camera is half the weight and video is recorded to credit card sized flash memory. Nice!

Most of the spots were shot using my new Panasonic HPX 500 to shoot talent against green screen. We also used the 500 on a motion control rig to show the bed's range movement. The 2 minute crane move is speeded-up to just 6 seconds in the commercials.

We also shot on a "virtual set". The studio provided the camera, which was calibrated to hundreds of sensors in the grid. The composite is immediate and as the camera moved, so did the electronic background.

Because the sensors couldn't be blocked, we couldn't use most of the grid to hang lights. Talk about a lighting challenge! And that camera was at least 4 times as slow as my HPX 500. It's been along time since I used that many 10k's!

Originally the commercials were to be shot in HDCAM with my Sony F900 and we were going to use the Panasonic HPX 500 to shoot the sales video. Once the producer saw the quality of the HD from the 500, he decided he could save money and still maintain quality.

Is it the same quality image? In a word, no. But that's no surprise, you would expect a better picture from an $80,000 camera. The biggest difference is the Sony HDW-F900/3 handles highlights better than the 500. The /3 software opened up the top end, gave it a stop and a half more latitude which allows you to burn out highlights more like film.

I put the Fuji 10x5 lens from my F900 on my 500 and under controlled studio lighting the Panasonic HPX 500 puts out an outstanding picture... especially with a $28,000 lens on the front!

Check back next month when I talk about the reality show I'm DPing.

Fall 2007

September was a big month. First, I added the Panasonic AG-HPX500 to my arsenal of cameras. I have put this all over the website so I'll just add that shooting tapeless was an easier transition that I thought and changed the way I edit HDCAM.

I got the HPX500 a day before I began principal photography of my second feature, SHELLTER. From the title you can probably surmise this is a horror film. I shot with my Sony F900/3 and the HPX500 was used to shoot behind-the-scenes footage. I was jealous having someone else shooting with my brand new camera!

I also picked up a couple of 1X1 Lite Panels. These amazing LED lighting units are dimable from 0-100% without color shift and can be used in very tight spaces. I used them as a backlight at ten feet and a key at less than one foot. I think I got 25% more set-ups per day because of the time savings using these lights.

The HDCAM footage was converted to DVCPROHD and recorded directly onto external firewire hard drives. I hope to have SHELLTER ready for the festival circuit in the Summer of 2008.

Summer 2007

It's August, hot, everyone is going to the beach. Yes, it's that's time of year... to start thinking about Christmas!

Last fall I was hired as both Director and DP on four different infomercials. The two minute spots had Christmas themes and we were rushing to have them done in time for the holiday season. The productions had a tight budgets and even tighter schedules, but it's my job to make sure they still have the production value needed.

Both Santa's Secret and Engrave each had a one day shoot. That's a lot of shots for a two minute spot!

Happy Holidays... summer style.

Spring 2007

Yes, it's a green screen world. Here I'm lighting a green screen for "The General". No, that's not the general sitting there, but Steve Hawk, audio mixer extraordinaire. You can see the shot in my new 17" Luma monitor. Looks great!

The General wasn't the only green screen I shot in the last couple of months. I also shot green screen for Di-Tech and Hilton Hotels. Hilton had the challenge of shooting two different videos, with two different talent, in two different cities. The actual locations, a lobby and a laundry room, are busy places and a nightmare for audio.

Each script also had to be shot in English and Spainish, so shooting all four scripts on a quiet sound stage would take a full day. Shooting in noisy locations would at least double the shooting schedule. Plus there was the cost to send a full crew to each city. Instead, we shot the talent portions on a stage in Glendale and then shot background plates in Louiville and Portland.

Be sure to check out the green screen tips on the About HD page.

Some people like rear screen projection better than green screen. I was lucky enough to work a couple of days on "Company Man", a pilot for 20th Century Fox Television.

The first day was shooting b.g. plates with a nine camera rig. The second 'day' I spent half the night in a Huey over San Pedro shooting HDCAMSR with a Panavision Genesis. The rest of the night was spent shooting on the ground with a Panavision G II 35mm camera. There's a difference in technology! I forgot how dark the viewfinder is at night with a G II compared to the bright color viewfinder of the Genesis. HD rules!

Winter 2006

I shot a show for Animal Planet called "Mascot Madness". The first day was at Aquarium of the Pacific, where I was both director and D.P. (Director Brian Lockwood was busy on another Animal Planet shoot). The next two days were at an animal ranch in Newbury Park. In 3 days we shot 28 segments for the show, each with a different animal, in their own natural environment. The animals ranged from penguins to spiders, camels to eagles, each with their own special challenges.

These are frame grabs from the video.

More tech school commercials, this time for paralegals. I always enjoy doing these spots.

Here we discuss the shot... or I'm telling a fishing story, I can't tell.

Disney has now decided to shoot all their DVD extras in HD. I've shot extras for "Alice In Wonderland", "True Life Adventures", "Mary Poppins" and now "The Aristocats". Richard Sherman and his brother wrote all the music you've come to love from such classics as "Mary Poppins", "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "The Aristocats" and I've had the pleasure of shooting Mr. Sherman twice now. Here's a snap of griptician Lauren Felton, Richard and myself on the last shoot.

In the camera operating department, I got talked into working on "Tease", a reality show for the Oxygen Network. The only reason I mention it is because the powers that be decided it was OK to see the hand held operators. So, if you watch the show, you can watch me work. Here's a still from the show. I'm the one on the right.

Fall 2006

A couple of Hilton projects garnered Telly awards for cinematography. Hilton was very pleased about winning the awards and were kind enough to get me the statuettes.

I shot with Roy E. Disney for DVD extras for the Real Life series that Disney did back when Roy was a cameraman. Shooting took place on the Disney lot, at the film restoration lab and the super secret Disney archives. I’ve done DVD extras for Disney before, usually shooting Digibetacam. What made this project different is that Disney has now mandated that everything be shot HD.Pictures are forthcoming.

Kevin Reem and I went back in time to shoot a show about the revolutionary war. Present day interviews with historians will be shot HDCAM, but the producer wanted to give the b-roll a different look, so we shot revolutionary war reenactments in 16mm film.

I shot with an Arri 16 BL as the “A” camera, backed up with my Arri S and Kevin’s two Bolex’s. Talk about going back in time! It was challenging for me as DP, to call out exposure for four different cameras, with four different filter packs all shooting in a different directions.

The stuff looked great, but I remember now why we don’t shoot film. Three of the cameras were running 100’ daylight loads, so it seemed that every take someone had to re-load. The cameramen were their own assistants and I forgot how long it takes to change a mag.

I’d also forgotten about the dim viewfinders and having to change to a different film stock when a thunderstorm rolled through.A few flicks of the filter wheel and this would have been a non-issue with a video camera.

Finally, it was the old, did any of this turn out?You just never know with film until you get it back from the lab.

The conditions were tough (Trenton, New Jersey is hot and humid in July), especially for the Redcoats in their wool uniforms. But it was worth it when they fired their muskets, the cannon’s roared and the sfx guys blew their mortars. Fun stuff!

Unfortunately, the Redcoats were unhappy about being so hot and Kevin finally got their point!

Summer 2006

It was a busy spring. Yeah! I did a bunch of HD shooting all over the country for Hilton, and another group of spots for Di-Tech.

The most memorable shoot was not HD or Betacam but shot with a little Panasonic 100 DV camera. I went to Guanajuato, Mexico to shoot plastic surgeons who were volunteering their time to repair cleft palates.

Here, in the US, we never see cleft palates anymore because they are immediately fixed at birth. But in the rural areas in the heart of Mexico this kind of medical care may not available. Many of these children were older, some in their teens. And there were adults, one as old as 60. I was there when a 30 year-old woman was having surgery.

I've shot surgery before and it doesn't bother me. Well, maybe the burned hair smell when they cauterize a bleeder. But I'll never get used to that unipod! I wished I had my F900/3 and a Sacthler tripod!

Spring 2006

The New Year started with commercials. The first shoot of the year was January 3rd and was for a dating service. The client was extrememly pleased with the final spots.

Di-Tech was interested in moving from 35mm to HDCAM and I got the call as D.P. One commecial was all HDCAM, but the others were going to be a mix of HD and existing 35mm. You might have seen these spots on TV and they show how well HD and film can be mixed together in the same spot.

Recently, I shot 2 spots for Ultimatebet.com, a poker website. These spots featured poker master Phil Helmuth, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairly. Of the three, Amanda Amusso was the cutest, so she gets her picture in the Newsletter. I'm no dummy.

Fall 2005

I was working so much from October thru January, that I was too busy to update the Newsletter page. It's a good problem to have.

In addition to the usual projects, I was on the road again for Hilton. They're sold shooting HD with the F-900. From South Beach to Niagra Falls to Valley Forge (well, you get the idea), it seemed we criss-crossed the county five times. I flew over 25,000 air miles in two months.

Fall 2005

I had a client tell me the website should be more about me and not HD, so for one quarter I'm not going talk about HD, even though we picked up Concorde Schools as a client and tried a new approach using a steady-cam and... Well, I'm not going to talk about it.

I know it's hard to believe, but I shoot things not in HDCAM. Last month I shot two days of interviews for an aviation show with my Betacam package. I have some clients who will not give up shooting Betacam because their entire library is Betacam.

But I do go out without equipment. I spent two days out at Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond, lighting "Top Gear" for BBC America. Half the show was outside on the track and half was inside where I lit one of the garages as an old style hang out. The director called me up from the edit suite (uh-oh)...just to say how everyone said the lighting was the best part of the show (yeah!).

I'm still a Local 600 member as an operator. Once in a while I just operate on a network show for fun and a little profit. Last month I did a little second unit work for "INVASION". Fun stuff! I also spent a couple of days in Palm Springs, operating on the "Mrs. America" pageant.

I also spent 4 days in Santa Barbara as an operator on a multi-camera music show. We had four cameras for 3 days and seven cameras for 1 day. I also rented them my HDCAM as we were all shooting 24p. Using Evertz backs we were able to send picture to the "truck" and receive audio and TC down the fiber optic cable. Then we all rolled our decks as iso machines. The pictures from all the HDCAMS were absolutely fabulous... oh, wait a second, I'm talking about shooting HDCAM again.

Well, I did all that plus D.P.ed my usual HDCAM stuff all in the last 4 or 5 weeks. The moral of the story is that I do shoot Betacam, I do D.P./L.D. without my equipment and sometimes it's fun just to operate.

Summer 2005

A monster? In tennis shoes? Sometimes I think I've got to get a real job! We shot a couple of days of pick-up shots for Randy Mermell and his film "Mexican Werewolf in Texas", which just premiered at the Shriekfest Film Festival at Raleigh Studios.

One of the "days" was a night spent shooting in a residential alley in Marina del Rey until 3am.

Actually, this is the fun stuff to shoot. Not that shooting technical school commercials isn't fun...

Spring 2005

Wienerschnitzel was nice enough to ask us back and we'll be bringing Pretzel dogs and Mini Chili Dogs to a TV near you.

The agency art directors really love the WYSIWYG* aspect of shooting HD with a 20" monitor instead of a flickering video tap. There's no second guessing what you're going to get back from the lab and even mini Chili dogs look giant on the 20" HD screen.

* WYSIWYG (pronounced whiz-e-wig) or What You See Is What You Get.

Road Trip! For Hilton Hotels, that is. In two and a half weeks we shot in Santa Cruz, Cincinnati, Houston, Little Rock, Key West and Ottawa, Canada!

Was it cold in Ottawa? That's a giant ice sculpture (of Flashdance) and the locals didn't seem worried about it melting, with a high of 16F. What a difference a week makes. The high in Key West was 78F.

In the two week following the Hilton trip I directed/DP'd 12 technical school spots in six days for two different ad agencies. And more than one day was in the rain. Here Dan Kosman and Jim Brady enjoy the liquid sunshine while setting up an 'electric reflector'.

Intermixed during the two weeks was a shoot in Palm Springs for a software company, a couple more days shooting for Hilton here in L.A. and a couple of days working as a regular ol' cameraman doing the Sprit awards for IFP for IFC and Bravo. There's something about live TV that's soooo fun. Now that's a busy month!

Winter 2004

Early autumn is a great time to be shooting in New York and we were there for Hilton hotels. It came full circle for me because I was supposed to shoot for Hilton on September 13, 2001. But because of 9/11 the shoot was pushed back to November 2001. Of course, we were not able to shoot the Hilton that stood across the street from ground zero.

Fast forward 3 years and we finally shoot at that hotel. Where the twin towers once stood is between me and the Hilton.

A shoot in Montana brought the first weather of the year. Somewhere out there, someone has a picture of me standing in knee deep in a mountain stream for a half an hour, waiting for the rain to stop so we could shoot. I remember thinking two things: First, I wish we'd done this shoot in the summer, and second, what a great job I have!

It rained all morning but the sun came out in the afternoon. What a great office for a day!

The art directors at Weinerschnitzel's agency asked me what food looked like shot on HD and I told them the truth: I don't know! I'd shot food on 35mm, but shooting food on video just looks sick. So we decided to shoot a test with Mini-Corn Dogs.

I rented a set of Digi-Primes for the shoot because my zoom lenses just couldn't give me the close focus I needed. I was very impressed with the Digi-Primes. The amount of flare was negligible so I could shoot the food without protecting the lens or using a matt box, which when you're working so close becomes part of the lighting.

The agency people were enthusiastic about shooting with the HDCAM once they realized they could see exactly what they were getting on the monitor and how good the food looked on that monitor. They were also impressed we spent more time working on the food and not spending precious shoot time talking countless light meter readings.

They were also impressed on how quickly we had the downconverts to them. Once they saw the footage the big question became was the HD too sharp and good looking to cut in with 35mm? They agency edited in the footage and were very happy with the results.

The agency paid for the test, "bought" the footage and used the shots in the spots.

Fall 2004

Wizard Battle

Summer was very busy and ended with me shooting an independent feature "Wizard Battle" with writer/director John Lechago.

One of the following sheets became the back cover for the sample DVD.

The back cover pictures are still frames from HD downconverted DVCAM. This gives you an idea of what was in front of the camera.

Here's a couple of shots behind the scenes. We got to shoot this is fight scene, featuring Eva Derrek, on the Universal backlot. EP Randy Mermell (far right) looks on.

You know the light levels we're working at when I use a Mini-Mag flashlight covered with opal as an eyelight on Bill Steele. That's John in the b.g. and I think he's laughing at me...

Summer 2004

My F900 Becomes a Version 3 F900/3

10 Day Shoot for "SHADOWS"

My F900 Becomes a Version 3 F900/3

What's the difference between a HDW-F900 and a HDW-F900/3? About $6000 bucks!

Seriously, what's a Version 3? It's the third version of software for the F900. The conversion completely replaces 2 boards, has new software burned into a chip on another board and replaces the star filter with a true Wratten 85 5600K color correction filter.

This new version actually came out last year, but I waited to see if I really wanted the upgrade. I liked the way my Version 1 looked (Version 2 was basically a software upgrade for people who shot multiple camera), but I succumbed to peer pressure. It is a different camera!

The main advantage of the Version 3 is it's ability to hold detail in the highlights. The camera can now hold detail in picture areas 2 stops brighter than the Version 1 camera. It really does work! The entire gamma has changed, especially at the shoulder, while the blacks remain dark, rich and noiseless.

There has been one change I wasn't expecting: The DCC. Now, there have been DCC switches on Betacams for years and there was very little difference, if any, having the DCC on or off. Now, there's a big difference.

Flip on the DCC and the camera tries it's best to hold detail in everything overexposed. The down side is there is very little contrast in the upper end, there is nothing pure white and everything looks grey. You have to be very careful where that switch is set!

The truly amazing thing is whether the switch is off or on, the mid-tones and blacks remain unchanged.

Some people say the F900/3 is definitely more "filmish". As a shooter, it's like having a different film stock with a little more lattitude. You can work a little more on the edge and know you have options you didn't have before. Shooting becomes even faster with the F900/3.

10 Day Shoot for "SHADOWS"

If you've been following the "Indie Films" and "Film Project" tabs, you know I have been working on my own no-budget horror feature entitled "SHADOWS". I was so impressed with the producers of Azira, I was inspired to shoot my own.

The cast did a great job! Even the crew remarked how lucky I was to have such a great group of actors. My crew were friends that were kind enough to come out and work hard for me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The shoot was an outstanding opportunity to experiment with the new Version 3 software in the camera. The location was all french doors in every room, so when shooting daylight interiors, we were always shooting out a window. There just wasn't time to ND or even put a 12x12 net out the windows.

We had to rely on the software to hold detail. That extra 2 stops in the highlights really made the difference. I can't remember a scene where we couldn't see some detail outside although there was a 4-5 stop difference.

There was good news and bad news at night. The biggest lights we had were 1200 watt HMI PARs. Luckily, the F900/3 is pretty fast, so a 1200 lighting the deep background was perfect. In fact, it looked a little bright so we were "branch-alorising" to make the light a little more spooky. The bad news came when we tried to do lightening effects. The camera kept compensating for the brightness of the light and it was very difficult to over expose!

When we start post-production, I'll post some pictures to show the range of the F900/3.

Spring 2004

Wagon Wheel Productions Lights Up the "Folks"

Wagon Wheel Productions Lights Up the Folks

For the last couple of years, Todd Nielsen has been my primary Gaffer. Todd's got a great little 3-ton grip trailer, with a tungsten package, kino-flos and a couple of HMI's and he calls his company Wagon Wheel Productions.

My go-to-guy used to be Eric Sears, before he got so busy doing his own projects. One of Eric's recent projects was doing the lighting for our mutual friend Chris Donovan on "Meet The Folks". Eric added his own Diva lights into the mix and was able to light the show with this small, but complete package.

The shows looked great and once again it was proved that it's not the size of the package but how you use it. Kudos to both Eric and Todd!

$300 a day gets the grip and tungsten packages (Kino-Flos and HMI's are per head). Todd will even negotiate multiple day discounts. Give Todd a call at 909.214.3225.

Winter 2003

Working with My Favorite Child Actress

Fun on Low-Budget Feature Films

Working with My Favorite Child Actress

One of my gigs is directing/D.P.ing commercials for technical schools. Last month I shot a spot that called for a medical assistant with a young patient. I used the Brand agency to cast Michelle Drobeck as the medical assistant. For the young patient I searched all over my house...and finally cast my daughter, Ariel.

It was fun working with someone who was acting in their first commercial...and I don't mean Ariel. It was Michelle's first commercial and she did great. Ariel is an old pro and as appeared in both commercial and industrial projects for me.

We shot out Ariel early, but she wanted to stay the entire 10 hour day. Ariel hung out with the girls in make-up, assisted craft services and even helped me direct. Oh, boy! Actually, I'm very lucky to be able to have my daughter work with me for a day during her summer vacation.

Copyright 2002-2006 Donley Films, Newport Beach California. All rights reserved.
Dan Donley