november 2

november 1

This morning's view.

Steadicam Reel

Some of the things I've seen with my camera over the past two years learning to operate Steadicam.

Steadireel - 2013 from Man Made Wilderness on Vimeo.

return to study

The actual, captured during an evening thunderstorm, several weeks ago. Which means ALL the picture for The Plan has been completed. In fact picture edit is almost locked, and we're waiting on more sound and music.

a study

Possible location for the short film The Plan.

dark-field

during endSomewhat different than a straight dark field setup in that these were lit from the side with a pair of strobes in front of a dark background, rather than with a single strobe from behind the background. The exposure on the right has an additional small spotlight on the front of the mug in order to define the etching on the glass surface.

Interestingly, the exposure for the image on the left was an ordinary flash timing of 1/100 second @ f/14, whereas the image on the right was 13 seconds @ f/14. Because the light on the front of the mug was so insignificant in comparison to the flash, the subject is illuminated by the modelling lamps + the spot on the front of the mug.

Update on Saturday, January 19, 2013 at 05:07PM by KMW

There were several other iterations to this photograph. The one I spent the most time with was this one that uses a white reflector the exact size of the mug, which gives a consistent color to the liquid.

another during

bright-field

before afterEntirely too many How-To books around here. With enough time and dedication I'm going to become an expert at HTML, Javascript, Snow Leopard, video Color Correction/Grading, photographic lighting, motion picture lighting equipment, Cinematography, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut Pro, CSS, Microstation, Autocad, etc. etc. Pretty much all of them are hard copy print editions, overflowing the shelves, only a few of them current.

Tellingly there are no Pop Psychology titles in the lot. DIY should not be confused with Self Help. I can't find a breakdown in the categories, but the Educational Book Publishing market in North America is worth something like $4-5 billion a year, most of that in secondary and university textbooks.

DIY is probably only a small fraction of that, but it seems I'm doing my part to keep publishers busy with new titles all the time. This work with "bright-field" strobe photography is from the inappropriately titled Light: Science & Magic - An Introduction to Photographic Lighting.

lost time

There's only so much abuse one can take. I gave it a chance, really. But she hung herself. Or me.

Who would have thought someone who could write seven Potter books, full of such imagination (and many explanations of what had happened) and whimsy, generating an immense fortune in the process, would compose such a leaden work as The Casual Vacancy? Rowling no doubt knows how to tell a story, but in it's telling here, it moves at an almost glacial pace, nearly in real time, amongst a large cast that it takes some time to sort out.

But once that's done, we're left to hear them drone on and on. They're a fairly boring lot for a 503 page novel, despite all the back stabbing and sneaking around in the bushes. With not a one of real interest, other than possibly 15 year old Krystal, a truant who lives with her heroine addicted mother in a trashed public housing apartment. Several of the male characters are such extreme examples of type -one a foul mouthed, abusive father; another a bleeding heart liberal despised by his own Raskolnikov like son - that they crash into absurdity, their puppet strings all too clearly visible. The women are small minded and always loyal to their men. The teens are grubby grifters who have nothing but sex on their minds.

After a while the pretty little borough of Pagford becomes a claustrophobic caldron. As it's meant to be. The residents may not have an option to leave. But I got the hell out, and bailed before the end of the line. Not a common experience, after investing 10+ hours. I've got to cut my losses though.

New55 FILM

Alex Webb @ 2nd Street

Not sure that I will actually use this material if it becomes commercially available, but it's great to see that people are working on resurrecting - and improving - a film emulsion that's been gone for at least ten years. Best wishes to the New55 Film effort, who are developing an updated version of Polaroid 55 that fits in 4x5 film holders and can be used with view cameras. I shot a little of it when I first got my Sinar F2, but I know it was a favorite with many photographers because it would yield either an instant print or a wonderful b&w negative. The plan with the New55 is to have both.

Read more about it in a recent Washington Post article.

compair & despair

Canon 7D w/ Zeiss ZE 35mm; Red One w/ Red 35mm (no battery or viewfinder)

The Red One comes home for a visit.

The Pale King

A posthumously published (on April 14, 2011) collection of writing fragments that revolve around an assortment of characters who work at the Peoria, Illinois IRS Regional Examination Center, The Pale King is hardly a novel in any traditional sense. While there are recurring characters in multiple situations, D.F. Wallace was far from ready to release this material to the world. No doubt he would be aghast to find that we have it available in published form. Which is not to say that there is no enjoyment to be found in his writing. Far from it. Many of the pieces are astounding bits, hilarious, intense, descents into weird gibberish, maddeningly opaque, clever word pictures, but never boring. It is boredom in fact that the book is ostensibly about:

...I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy...

The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.

The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. I met, in the years 1984 and '85, two such men.

It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

 But don't be looking for a plot.

big john

too much of a good thing

I haven't fallen, but I can get up.

Having too much fun with yet another Zeiss lens - the 35mm f/2 ZE - laying about in the sun after the bloody Briggs & Stratton 5 HP pull start engine wouldn't start.

a view of northwestern

Parents Weekend 2012: who would have thunk I'd be going to a football game? Well, it was only half of one. If we had stayed for another two or three hours to see the end, the Cats might not have lost by 1 point. At least they were leading when we left.

testing...1, 2, 3

Not very rigorous, but I think this pretty effectively demonstrates the usefulness of the Mosaic Engineering Anti-Alias filter in the Canon 7D. Watch this fascinating video to see the difference between using the filter and NOT using the filter, with ordinary household objects.

another example of... oh, never mind

Last week's shoot involved some Time Travel. Much thanks to Ralph Williams for helping to construct the Machine, and Sallah Baloch for consulting on the design. See the Vimeo page for complete credits.

"A Walk"

No one cares how much effort was involved. But I'm here to report that creating moving images hasn't gotten any easier or less time consuming now that we're firmly into the digital age. It might happen on a more accelerated schedule, but the total hours haven't really changed much from the dark ages of film.

Time to kick this shit out the door. This one followed the opposite of the schedule utilized for the previous production.

oh my goodness...

oh my dayum. What a trip. I've finally joined the Darkstone Entertainment crew of rotating video workers. Here's John Johnson's latest creation, an attempt at viral video that is his take on a video that has already gone viral. We shot last night from 7 - 11pm, with me behind the camera, he edited until 6am and had it posted this morning.

cast into the wilderness

The official Deck Before & After are still languishing somewhere in the archives. In the meantime, here's the immediate aftermath of 80 mph winds blowing through the area. This would be the new after.

Russian Ark

That would be the Hermitage, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, the collection consists of nearly three million items. This astounding and revolutionary film is the first to employ no edits, as the camera - piloted by Steadicam operator extraordinaire Tilman Büttner - travels two kilometers through the complex of the museum and the Winter Palace, traversing 300 years of Russian history, observing a cast of hundreds along with thousands of extras. The point is, that this incredible institution is an ark of culture floating on a sea of turmoil and constant change.

Astounding because Mr Büttner carried 77 pounds of Steadicam and camera for about 90 minutes and traversed some 30 rooms that needed to be lit. Revolutionary because it is an entire film in a single take, but the narrative takes place over such a broad period of time. Despite these aspects, and the impressive size of the production in general, non Russians are not likely to be engaged on anything other than a visual level. Snippets of dialogue with historical characters are heard throughout, but engagement does not occur. The camera is too anxious to continue on its tour of this remarkable location.

Alexander Sokurov - dir.

Tilman Büttner - dp/Steadicam; is Steadicam op for Béla Tarr's last film The Turin Horse

primarily a Russian/German co-production