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It doesn't take much time to right down a new list of shots for a day -- after all, if the list is over 30, then it's probably too long anyway. It's OK to lay out for the DP your plan of attack - that's your job as a director. Just give the DP a few moments to let it sink in and offer...

How much fill you need is partly dependent on how bright the shafts are, because the more you overexpose them, the more you expose for the shadows and the ambience. So you might not need fill, or only a very small amount, like from a big bounce. Yes, the light hitting the subject should be at...

Sort of goes against the nature of a white limbo space to have contrasty lighting, because that creates shadows generally. Sure, you could, for example, light the space with one giant soft sidelight and have a soft shadow going the opposite way on the floor.

Basically you want the amount of light hitting the cyc to be the same hitting the floor if you want an even amount of luminance. Now sometimes I've had to turn off knee compression in some video cameras to actually let me burn out the white to get rid of the dirt marks, etc. So given that it...

Just depends on what balance you decide is "white" (5500K, 3200K, or inbetween, etc.) and how much color saturation you want. If you decide to white balance for an inbetween color temp, like from the half-corrected Kinos, then tungsten would only read as half-orange, the daylight only...

I usually use a Source-4 or Leko for a spotlight. If you need more intensity and want that blue-ish daylight balance, try an HMI Joker Source-4.

Generally I use 500T stock for magic hour scenes because often you are asked to shoot until there is no more usable light, so you may start out at an f/5.6 but end up wide open by the last take. But if you weren't going to be shooting until the last dregs of light, and wanted a warmer tone, not...

This site has some filter examples under FILTERS --> DIFFUSION http://www.camerafilters.co.uk/

There are two common types of diffusion -- one involves suspended "mist" particles that cause bright areas to fog, like Fog, Low-Con, ProMist, GlimmerGlass, etc. do. But real diffusion involves throwing an out-of-focus image over a sharp image. To do this, you need a pattern in the filter that...

Things like 35mm formats, perfs, etc. are covered in most cinematography textbooks -- I co-wrote "Cinematography" with Kris Malkiewicz, which emphasizes 16mm shooting. But there is also Blain Brown's "Cinematography", Ascher's "Filmmakers Handbook", and a number of old textbooks that have that...

You want some hot spots to be as hot as possible, i.e. off the scale. To see halation well, it's best to frame something dark behind the area that is glowing. You can get a little outdoors, but generally the sun is only four-stops different from the shade out in the open, not a huge difference...

It's not a question of ASA, it's a matter of exposure. But the truth is, you rarely take a spot meter and read a bright kick off of a car or a wet street (especially if it is a momentary glare), you meter the subject and judge the hot spots around the subject by eye. You may adjust the...

Most of "Minority Report" was shot with a black net diffusion (basically a fine ultra-sheer black pantyhose stretched either over the back of a lens or on a filter frame in front of the lens). Kaminski has also used other filters like Classic Softs and ProMists on other Spielberg films...

Yes, you want the pattern maker -- the blinds -- as close as possible and the source as far as possible to be as sharp as possible. But it also depends on how sharp the source is -- a PAR often doesn't make great shadow patterns but if it is far enough away, the shadows patterns would be fairly...

Generally fill should be very soft so it doesn't produce its own shadow, and it should be very frontal since it's not meant to be another source. And it also should be weak, you don't want to wash-out the contrast and mood. Now if you are talking about fill on a close-up, you have more leeway...

Yes, that probably was a good way to expose that shot. At worst, if it looks a bit too bright, it's easy to print it down. But if you didn't have enough exposure, then printing it up could just look like mud. You certainly don't want to expose a dark-skinned actor's face so that they looked...

When you're talking about a 150 million dollar movie, the cost of shooting it on 35mm film is not a huge percentage of the budget. Like I said, shooting digitally mainly made it easier for their efx work plus shooting large numbers of takes without cutting. But obviously such a movie could...

Yes, but are you convinced that they couldn't have gotten as good a look shooting on film, or is it simply an accomplishment that their HD looked as good as film would? Their advantages in shooting HD were mainly for all the post-production visual effects, which not every movie has to deal...

Sort of depends a lot on the look you want to achieve, and what the "freebies" there are in the background in terms of lighting. Obviously there is no point in shooting at an airport at night if you don't have a lit background with planes in the shot. So perhaps given that you've found a spot...

It's the effect of a shortened shutter speed, increasing the strobing effect from shooting fast motion at 24 fps. You can try an extreme setting at first just to see the effect, like going outside in the sunlight and using a 1/1000th setting, if that's possible, or 1/500th.