the day the cactus grew on my arm

in Polish we have this saying: "cactus grows on me if this actually happens"

today i was on set where the dp did not know how to turn on his own personal camera (Canon 5d). not even knowing how to record on it.

I think i feel the itching on my arm. Is this the cactus?

shooting and interview

Shooting london bridge and Trafalgar Square today. The sun is beautiful.
Before that had the interview. Amazing team, and great day. Let's hope I will get this job, probably the best job I would do in my life so far in every terms - money, learning curve, team ;) and equipment amount.

cross fingers.
will keep you updated.

M

breaking news

I just got news from my ex-housemates that the agency does not want to pay our deposit back. Meaning I won't see any of expected 400 quid.

That means of course that I am broke. I think if I won't get any paid job by Wednesday next week I will take any coffee shop thing or cleaning or restaurant or bar tending which will come along. Will see.

about writing with light, cinematography inspirartion and being a young dude from London

I just got this mail on my CML (Cinematography Mailing List) address. It says it all.



"Yesterday we, members of "Cinematographer's Language and Style" discussion club went to see "Lebanon"...

When you see this film you do not think about how Giora Bejach, ACT (Israeli Association of Cinematographers) combined 16mm, DV and Red One material into a 35mm print. You care less it was RED or film, or what work flow was chosen.

You are mesmerized by power of images. Power of images that is gluing you to the seat for 90 minutes. No 3-D, no FX, no vistas, no "stars", no long tracking shots, no nothing - except a great work of DP in the best traditions of the fine cinematography.

Variety wrote: " Samuel Maoz's [director] pic, 99.9% of which is set within an Israeli tank, actually has the least to do with Lebanon per se. The story could be set in any tank, any country, any war -- a cinematic Kammerspiel that's as much a formal challenge for its creator as it is a claustrophobic experience for
audiences."99.9% was shot inside a tank and the result was CAMERIMAGE's The Golden Frog - remarkable!

What can we expect a DP to do inside a tank? Black hole! What can a DP like Giora Bejach do?
A lot...

First of all you can use light! Director of Photography is a Director of Writing by Light!
Light can write on film, on CMOS, on whatever, but write by light .....

Write - as Giora Bejach did - in harsh light with no diffusion, write in soft light with 3 layers of 215, light directly and light by bouncing... "Write" in ratio 1:3 or in ratio 1:8 ... "Write" in tungsten or with Lite panels, but
write!

Giora used all "letters" of cinematographer alphabet, he created great cinematic "words" from them, he created symbolic images-phrases, his visual phrases told visually the often difficult to watch story and he got the Prize for this!

Those kind of films and those kind of talented people give all us hope that someday even the most visually disadvantaged people would understand that cinematography is the talent of vision, talent of seeing, talent of expressing, talent of creating visual symbols.

And it would give all of us hope that great cinematography will continue to be with any mm, K's and sensor size.

Watch this film - a lot of food for thought!


Yuri Neyman, ASC
Director
of Photography
Founder of Gamma and Density Co.
www.gammadensity.com
Los Angeles, CA"



Looking at Yuri Neyamn's lanuage I start to think if any of my colleagues from the film school i finished would write about cinematography in this language. I have a feeling it would be not arrogant enough for most of them, not cool enough. It might be about the general trend to be uber chilled and cool and advertise yourself, or just because they are very young and techsavy and they mostly care about log lines and who is right about certain gammas choices.
The other possibility, the one that they just do not feel it, that they do not see the light in this way is rather not possible, since we are talking about ... cinematographers - writers with light.

21st of august, saturday, 2010

2 days ago I cam back from Berlin. We stayed at this DP's flat, and he was coming from a set every day with a smile. Shooting a crime series on film, he watched his rushes with 1 day delay and I could not help myself thinking how convenient compare to our student projects, where you need to wait from 5 days to 5 weeks to get your rushes back from soho and technicolor. Berlin was windy but still greeted us with open arms, streets full of bikes and colours, yellow bar light, inter-hamburger and Kastanienalle. I bought disposable camera for 3 euros. Probably will stick some picks later!
We had fruit breakfast on marble table, probably the fanciest i have ever had, and look they serve it till 17 afternoon! those people know how to use life :)
coming back i felt uncertain. the house still full of cardboard boxes, because we cannot find a shelf, the atmosphere of not knowing the future. but our window is amazing, with the leaves growing around, beautifully green, and hope cam down, when after entire day of applying for paid jobs i woke up yesterday because of the phone call. Hello this is "px". Interview soon. Interview for working in the best rental house in UK.

I am going to grab my electricity&grip book and memorize it again. refresh my knowledge about the phases. i really really want this job...

------- the 2nd unit stories

well since i was recently on the wedding in poland, coming back through berlin, we did not met with Se, 2nd unit director, to shoot, for 1 week. But there are already dozens of stories about us - how I decided to ride on his scooter, and closed my eyes on every turn (mileage 20-30 per hour ;). How we talked with the guys from Alperton and they posed for us and gave us cheesy tasting corn. How I woke up at 4 on the morning to come on top of Primrose hill for the sunrise shot, but trying to get a short cut to Old Street I ended up near Bethnal Green, and arrived after 2:30 minutes, just to miss the sunrise, looking at Se freezing on a bench doing time lapse of moving clouds and panorama of London, trying not to care about some drunk couple on a bench next to hours, which was more than funny with the Brazilian guy who did not speak much English and the Irish girl who spoke more than anyone I know, apart from my one Polish auntie.

Today we are on Brick Lane. Graffiti, White Chapel market and the Wimbledon's location later on. I am waiting for a phone call.

In a meantime I imagine myself going through the interview and explaining why do I enjoy working with cables so much, without looking as a psycho. :)

the day before the shoot

It is this day before the shoot, when everything is on standby, when you are meeting every department for the first time, and this big guy talking loudly about not making mess on the set turns up to be a line producer. They show you the accountant in a yellow t-shirt, and point out runners and people who are on a set for the first time.
It is still sunny and quiet, everybody smiling polite, with the anticipation. Tomorrow we will say first jokes, somebody will loose patience, the actors will arrive, the camera boxes will arrive and sound constantly will have boom in shots. Soon enough I will become friends with everybody, grips, gaffers and camera assistants, but now we are all in this circle, still, waiting, to roll.

On my way I home the lack of stills camera with me is nearly painful, and the first thing is to take the air and clean the old canon eos. London is so full of greatest pictures you could ever seen and I solely promise myself to for the first earned money buy a polaroid land camera with the extra expensive film freshly produced in Holland...

Writing job applications again I am looking at 2nd unit shot list for the upcoming week, and see full days till thursday. We should be finished by next thursday. And then? (it will be 19th of August).
For some reason I am listening to humbug by Arctic Monkeys. It just feels right, in here, right now, just like washed out job offers hanging from brick lane's bars and old music videos by Adam Smith, if you know what I mean.

Job Offer

So I was in Brick Lane's big vintage clothing shop (just about to buy this hat which was maybe not perfect but quite fancy like one of those big black) and speakers were going crazy with one of those bands which you cannot remember the name but has something to do with cold mountains and cheap cassettes when my phone rang and I heard some foreign voice asking me if I can focus pull for them from friday to sunday - just when i am in berlin. and the tickets are bought and everybody is waiting so i said, no I am sorry i am in berlin (you know this beautiful city with art on the streets with graffiti made by painters and the cinema where Frank Griebe used to be a projectionist, where he met Tom Tykwer for the first time. And yes it is in Kreuzberg), but listen if you will have something else keep me in mind.

Focus pulling makes me so focused. It is one of those things I am very good at, turning the wheel and holding my breath, looking at the actors, checking the stops, lenses (the depth of field table after India focus pulling are practically written in my head). I know the tricks I am learning the marks. It is just your eyes and the distances the actors the predictions the strategy. It makes me quiet calm and very very focused. Soft when I press the buttons without a movement just to keep the camera ideally stable. It is just me the tape measure the small LCD screen the white ring a pencil (i prefer using a pencil, very sharp, for the marks, it is very easy to remove with a bit of cleaning liquid).
I love it.

But I said no, I am sorry, and came back to the store, just when the speakers were dying and wind blew away the hat.

----------------------------------
It made me feel it is possible again, two phone calls after one week in London only, to do the most beautiful job in the world, and I backed up from putting bar applications, not yet, I said to myself, wait till next Tuesday, and do not give up. I can save money on the food and be hungry but I will make it.

The bright sight

I live in London and have all the chances in my pocket. I am young, have some friends who just start working in the industry and love films. I know my dream and I know what I want to do. I can make it. I speak fluently in 2 languages and know other 2. I want to change the world.
All those opportunities are open and it is only 5th day of me being in London..
And I do have this Nepal High Elevation tea. With a bit of milk it makes me feeling so strong.

(OH YEAH)

My first week in London

So we packed everything into a really big van and moved down to Shoreditch. Apparently it is quite fashionable to live here, although we were simply forced by a lack of looking for flats skills. My boyfriend got a paid job at the very third day of his stay in here. He is a spark* on a short independent thing and gets 100 quid per day. Apparently he is late everyday (transport for London website - told him to not trust that thing) and misses breakfast everyday (about him: he is (or rather was known) for never being late on any call time, always prepared and checking his emails every 10 minutes, also he uses sony ericsson but wants an iphone (to get it synchronised together with his macbook i suppose). He used to be a professional production assistant before cinematography studies and worked on commercials for bmw, nestle, audi and other things like this. Apart from that he is emotional, sad and dreamy when he thinks nobody looks at him, and he loves french films, joy division and miranda july. and me i suppose. Let's call him Ted.). I got an unpaid job in the middle of nowhere (nowhere is called Harrow with trees forests and stuff) as a spark from 11pm till 2am everyday pretty much (that is all about working hours and uk film industry strict union rules). Carrying 2.5 kW HMI* on my own I was more than up in sky, and could possibly only be happier if they would give me that 50 quid per day. Or whatever. I loved the cold heavy headers* around my sleeves, 32 amp cables to batch through dark forests, the 6kW ballast* and Panalux's* system of putting sandbag*s in extra difficult to pull drawer on the bottom of all other ones, so you need to pull all of them to get one (amazing!). One would think that a girl like me could not do it - but hey, you would be so wrong! There are people who are not created for sparks or lighting team but still love cinematography - they usually stick around camera making jokes about you underneath their stuff trying to peak to know how to flicker (i agree, the "is it ok if I will pop in between your legs on a take" might not be the best thing to say surrounded by 6 men) but actually i dont mind lighting, as well as camera assisting. The disastrous situation is normally appearing when one of them decides to take sparking job, and sits bored out of this world on a chair, presumably because there is nothing to do (i just dont feel like carrying all this stuff you see) but of course the "unpaid" might makes him more lazy than the job character. at the end it is just all about you having to do more even than normally but it is ok since you love it anyways, and later on you will be having a ride home with this unfortunate other sparking friend who will turn up to be a good camera assistant, just not that interested in lighting, he is afraid.

So after this there comes the real life. No paid job. Mandy.com, Flimcrewpro, talent circle* they all look for unpaid people who will want to carry stuff. All your friends suddenly are working so there is nobody to talk to (like Ann for the new Scorsese film which is being currently shot in Pinewood studios) and there it is - the harsh truth of life, the dark shadow of upcoming homeless life on the streets of london, the bitter taste of lonesome, the hyper-magnified unknown future...

Moreover your boy is coming back home later on (when you just spent last 2 pounds on a tub of ben&jerrys cookie dough) and with a knowing smile he announces "i met this focus puller who worked on a zombie feature sequel, you know, and he said there is no job on mandy and filmcrewpro etc, but the only way to get is to know people, you know, generally" and you nearly choke on this extremely big chunk of cookie dough muffling "well but i don't know any people, so what should i do, kill myself?" and with this very happy accent you cannot even eat dinner worrying about 380 pounds rent due to pay on the 1st of september 2010. 

the only good thing is to watch batman begins again, and look at this beautiful close up with no fill light, when christian bale is in mountains, remembering inception, and crossing fingers for a really smart and funny guy who you just met and who had an interview with Double Negative* just two days ago, because for some reason you are only happy to people who made it, since they show you that it is actually possible.

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*HMI - the daylight balanced light, normally comes with the ballast* and the header* which in film looks like a typical sunlight coloured light, opposite of tungsten balanced. H stands for Latin Hydrargyrum which means mercury - the substance used in a daylight bulb.

*ballast - they are produced to power HMI. Currently there are two types of those - electronic and magnetic ballasts. The electronic ones are generally silent and make the light not flicker if the framer rate of the camera is changed. Or simpler - these are those square boxes witch needs to stand besides the light, and you plug the cables to them and then press buttons on them to power the lights. ;)

*headers - common name for cables which run from the light to ballasts/plugs. They can get very heavy with bigger lighting units so never underestimate their weight when putting a light on a high stand or 55m platform. 

The whole k-ey thing (ex. 6kW, 2.5 kW etc) - the power of lighting unit is commonly described by the electric power it takes to work. Bigger and brighter lights normally take more power than smaller units (logical) so when you hear something like bring me 4 k-e-y HMI you know that normally you will need somebody else to carry it with because it is going to weigh at least 30 kg with header, extension and ballast

*sandbags - are exactly what they sound like. Textile bags filled with sand to be used as weight on stands and equipment to make it more stable. as a trivia it is worth mentioning that biggest Indian film school do not own any sandbags at all. 

*Panalux - is this big rental lighting (and grip) company connected with Panavision. They come with big tracks and bring equipment you booked before to light the scenes. Probably it is worth mentioning they provided equipment for most of biggest films made in Great Britain during last years. 

*Double Negative - a company which make special effects for films, computer generated. With the more complicated language - they are responsible for compositing, matte painting, 3d objects etc. Their most recent famous achievement is probably "Inception". They have two offices in Soho London and Singapore.