cinematography Continuous shot 10 min short - Best camera and grip set up?

M

mrpeech

Hi,

I'm making a single shot/long take film. Approx 9-10 minutes of continuous action. I will follow the talent from interior to exterior and some light running too will be required.

I have access to a glidecam but can't seem to get any joy with the device at all. Was thinking of having a wide angle lens on a 7d or 5d mk2 but am unsure about the image stability. Has anyone had any experience in doing these long stedicam shots. Any advice?

Kenan
 
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FrankLad said:
The nice thing about those variable neutral density filters is they rotate freely, very much like a circular polarizer.
(At least the ones I've used. Can't really comment on the more expensive Singh-Ray variety.)
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Cool! Now I want one (and you're right -- this could be exactly what the OP needs, and could negate my point about keeping it all-inside or all-outside).

Any suggestions for particular models?
 
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Cracker Funk said:
Any suggestions for particular models?
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I went with the Light Craft Workshop FADER ND. It stays on the front of my 30mm f/1.4. Super handy for shooting slower shutter speeds in bright situations.

** Be careful when shopping. Some are selling knock-offs where, according to reviews, people wind up with weird purple or green color shifts during use. **

Look for eBay seller "lightcraftworkshop-official-store".
 
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The nice ones (ND Faders) are way expensive, like $350 expensive, but a lot of people swear by them. That might indeed be an option for this.

I really want to de-click my lenses, but I've had lenses apart, and not something you do without being ready for it. At least not me, and I'm fairly mechanical.
 
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FrankLad said:
There's always the possibility of doing a "rope"/masked cut at a strategic location, so you can treat the two exposure scenarios separately. But in some cases pulling that off could wind up being more challenging than the one-take. Just a thought.

As mentioned, a wide lens is definitely the way to go here. The appearance of jitter is minimized and you'll get a wider depth-of-field.

I imagine you'd want a fair amount of light on the interior as you may find it necessary to stop the lens down a bit to allow more wiggle room for focusing. (Even on a wide, I'd still take it a couple stops down. Particularly on a "fast" wide.)

If you've got the budget for it, or have access to one... the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 is a great lens for this kind of stuff.
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That was the exact lens I had in mind!
 
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Gonzo_Entertainment said:
Well yeah, there is that little problem (making it interesting).

I think I made it about a half hour into Russian Ark.
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I think I gave up around the same point (one of the few films I didn't bother to finish). Technically brilliant, but essentially a hard to follow propoganda film. Pretty, but putting me to sleep.

Children of Men was a much better example of a long-take being used right. I've always been fond of the shot near the beginning of Serenity as well (actually two shots and all interior, so not as technically impressive, but equally narratively so).
 
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The film will be more along the lines of 10 Minutes by Ahmed Imamovic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppAn0LNU_V8

Look closely at the interior, it's very dark. I think a big concern we have in the west is that we want to see everything. Leaving something dark and gloomy for a time can add mystery like a lot of the eastern filmmakers do. Of course some western films have done it to great effect too. D

Re a technical point. Does anyone have a ballpark figure for minimum focus distance to infinity with a tokina 11-16 at it's widest setting? Aperture in the 5-8 range.
 
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mrpeech said:
2.8 ft sounds about right. Ken Rockwell's page has a closest focus range of 1ft. Hard to say under what circumstances that's in.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tokina/11-16mm.htm
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Close focus is the minimum distance from an object at which a lens can create a sharp image - it's nothing to with the hyperfocal distance, which is (if I may quote Wikipedia) "a distance beyond which all objects can be brought into an "acceptable" focus". Close focus is not affected by aperture and varies amongst lenses of the same focal length, whereas hyperfocal and depth of field calculations apply to all lenses of the same focal length at the same aperture on a given sensor/film format.
 
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And you can change the minimum focal distance with extension tubes which move the lens further from the sensor/film. You can change the MFD to as little as a few inches. The price is several stops of light and loss of infinity focus.

I actually just got a set of NOS metal extension tubes for my M42 lenses on ebay for about $40.
 
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