Sunday, October 30, 2011

riding east on green horse


406 miles in 6hr, 30 minutes, with 3 pit stops.


started on sunday 1020 am from : chandler, Az to reach at 1640 at Culver city , LA.

was a fine drive, spoke to pals for at least 4 30 hrs, while I had network on the phone, sure helped me stay awake, thank u to :

sajana

hilary

kool ray

maria

diana

mansie ( hope your back is doing better now )


and yes was stopped by a mobile emigration check point on the arizona - california border, saw it for the 1st time, oh well the reign of fear I guess :)

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

cinematography 1-06





We need great production design to do good lighting, what will you make images of, if there is nothing beautiful to look at? ( the above example has nature doing the production design )

Decide what mood we want? What do we want audience to see?

Then comes direction of lighting overall quality

Impact of color

There are only 2 kinds of sources:

SPEACTRAL (hard) point source

DIFFUSED (sort) large source

The properties of light as such are:

HARD

SOFT

ANGLE: it suggests the location / time/ mood

COLOR: context is important, n then what the color means in that context

INTENSITY: emphasis

FALL OFF EFFECT: inverse sq. law, if a light is 400fc at 10 feet. In 20 feet it will be not 200, but 100 fc

COVeRAGE: spread of light

Motivation: the light has a realistic origin

Then there is

1. Low key

2. High key

3. Graduated Tonality

When lighting:

Place key light 1st, it defines the direction/ source / angle/ mood

Fill light is used to control the contrast of the shadow of the key light (often times from next to camera and in between the key light and the camera position.

Set light: it lights up the set, but does not touch the actors

Eg: lady from shanghai, Laura look at these movies, double life of Veronique, the showdown,

Look at the movie: the dark corner: to study lighting of different kinds.

7 kinds of lighting we can say broadly are:

1. Rembrandt

2. Frontal

3. Side

4. Broad

5. Narrow

6. Godfather (toppish)

7. Mystery (bottom)

8.

Look for a book on lighting by miller, good reference.

Light fixtures:

Fresnel

Open face

Soft

Sealed beams- naked city was shot with this. They are like car headlights, are a bank of lights.

Special fixtures: kino flows/ led lights

Often we use Fresnel for key n soft for fill

Hmi’s are 3 ½ times more powerful then tungsten light (that’s more light is generated then heat,

Tungsten light has full color spectrum, yet they are warmer (more heat is generated) almost 80 is heat, n only 20 % is light, but a better light source till now,

LED new lights in the market, but they are more harsh light,

Other recommended movies to watch for lighting are:

The pagenflower

Hustle

Drive

The virgin spring

Mildred pierce

Revolutionary road

Saturday, October 22, 2011

more business of Telivision


the time is on to hit the road again, am off to arizona again maybe this week , but before I leave here is a bunch of info on the TV land. :)



For the TV market

Shows that are good to pitch for are:

Medical: stories around

Doctors

Nurses

ER

Doctors of children

Weird doctors

Crazy addictive nurses

Cops: Detectives

Spooky detectives

CSI

Beat cops

Real cops (the wire)

Bad cops

Serial killer cops

Lawyers:

Serious lawyers

Funny lawyersJudges

Law clerks

Reality:

Investigative

Niche (pimp my ride)

Talk show

Of these 4 categories reality is non-scripted

5 are special: like animation

Children

Golf

Cooking

Single camera – shot like feature film

Multi camera is cheaper to produce; n is pre-edited as the editing happens while shooting itself.

Buyers of program are:

Networks: ABC

Nbc

Fox

Premium cable: hbo

Showtime

Netflix

Cable: amc

Tnt

Usa

Bravo

Lifetime

In film u write a script and then pitch

In TV u pitch and then once approved u write a script

TV has more money involved

In features producer and directors are main, in TV executive producer has more power


Saturday, October 15, 2011

More on MOPS: film production.

MOPS: currently studios / producers do not want to make movies on:

Taken, i.e. abducted, and tortured, n then the father / lover comes and revenges on the bad guys - yes there are exceptions.

Teacher stalked by student or

Student stalked by teacher.

Road trip movies.

I hated high school

Quirky movies – like rain man

Movies about hometown

One last job before retiring, n getting caught

Gods seen in clouds and tealeaf

Scattering of ashes story



Avoid

Drama

Period piece

Sport

Western

African American

Parody.


Maybe's are

Thriller

Sci-fi

Action

Horror

Comedy

Rom COM

Sexy but not too much.


Excellent subjects to go for

Sequel

4 quadrants – wmn + 25 men +25 wmn under 25 men under 25

Underlying material

Book comic play TV

Based on true events

Sequel

Thursday, October 13, 2011

business of cinema -04

So have u been visiting variety.com to see how the films are doing?

% Change is how much the collection has fallen from previous week.

Above 60 % drop means it’s really bad

50 – 60 % drop is acceptable

Up to 40 % is amazing (means people are talking about the film, n they keep coming back to see the movie)

Whatever the film makes when it premiers, it is assumed that 3 times of that will be the theater collection for the movie.

If a film is average collection is less then $ 5000/ screen, it will loose the screens

Usually it’s the teenagers who go to movies the 1st week

Studios usually don’t owe Movie Theater,

If 10 million is the P and A budget, then 1st that’s recovered, then anyone else gest there money

How to write resumes as a film business

1. It should be 1 page only

Name

Address

Ph. number

Email

2. Work experience

3. Education experience

4. Languages you know

5. Sports (maybe)

a) Which ever is more put that 1st

b) Font is 12 point only

c) Do not give references

Resume should be like a magazine, easy to skim through

d) Do bullet points

imdb lists who represents a director