text:
Boss of The Black Organization?
By Jodie Starling, September 21, 2010 in General
Who is the boss?
1. Who is the boss?
New Character (not yet introduced)
Minor Character (appeared once or a few times before, such as a case suspect or in a case flashback)
Other known character not specifically mentioned below (Recurring characters)
Relative of known character (not yet introduced)
Agasa Hiroshi
James Black
Miyano Atsushi
Elena Miyano
Okino Yoko
Okiya Subaru/Akai Shuuichi
Yamamura Misae
Matsumoto Kiyonaga
Kudo Yuusaku
Mouri Kogoro
Kisaki Eri
Sharon Vineyard
ALAKTORN 170
what's that about Agasa?
Maltavite 61
You see Dimi...
I don't know about Anokata but he has no fear, no conscience, no weakness."
emilyy418 0
Hi I'm a HUGE DC fan and me and my sister have been watching this since DC first came out and I just wanted to share my opinions! ^.^~!!
I believe that Mitsuhiko might be Anokata and that Professor Agasa might be the "highest ranking member' of the Black Organization.
1.) Mitsuhiko - high possibly of being the boss. although theres many holes as to how he became a kid and for what reason he took the pill to become small, because the pill was orginally meant to kill right? I was thinking a minor character that died in the hands of the BO made the Anokata take the pill on accident? such as Ai-chan's sister?
2.) As mentioned in many previous posts, Agasa is highly speculated to be Anokata. I believe he's a major member of the BO and the only reason he's housing Ai-chan is to find a solution (or rather, pill) to countereffect the APTX 4869 (shrinking pill) for Mitsuhiko.
Gosho mentioned that we would be surprised- as well as Haibara right?
That means for Agasa to be the Anokata would be too expected, therefore the possibility of him being the boss might be small- although possible.
also, I read that Gosho mentioned that even Ai-chan is comfortable around the boss, meaning her BO radar off.
therefore wouldn't Mitsuhiko be a highly possible suspect as Anokata?
Vennowsah 10
Interesting theory, but didn't Gosho mention in an interview that only the Boss's name appeared in the manga, not the actual character? If Agasa were really housing Haibara to make an antidote for Mitsuhiko, why would the Boss send his agents to track down and kill Sherry? Plus, Agasa knows Conan's secret, so I'm surprised Conan hasn't been killed yet if Agasa were really a high-ranking member of the BO.
Out of curiosity, has anyone tried making a list of all the names that appeared in the files released before Gosho's interview on the Boss's name?
Gosho left it vague whether it is just the name or the actual person who has appeared. So, the boss could have appeared in person. The interview was in the Kir arc, so no one had tried to make such a long list. the wiki has the names of many of the suspects though.
Dusty 1
I think the boss is Shiratori. I found a theory about this. "BACKSTORY: When DC first came out I had my suspicions of Shiratori being the Black Org. leader-- because in an OVA he had a huge wine collection-- and my fire was fueled, because while at the store I saw a wine called, "Shiraz" with a black raven on the label... Black Org. has ravens... and Shiratori... Shiraz? See a similarity? LOL" Also apparently "tori" means bird in some Kanji.
I found this on a yaoi pic on Deviantart, so I'm not sure if I want to post the link. It may not seem like much of a viable source, but it does seem onto something. After all, it is someone Ai wouldn't expect and was met long before that specific episode cut off
Yes I'm sure
Shiratori was a movie only character to begin with, so he was not in Gosho's original plans. Shiratori could only be the boss if Gosho changed his mind about the story. Besides, Shiratori has seen Haibara. It doesn't make sense for the boss to see Haibara and do nothing himself, but then go on ordering Gin and Co to look for her.
Wrong, The boss has has no fear, no conscience, no weakness. He's having a big dark aura
detectiveRJB 15
It's wrong!No fear and no weakness.He's fear somebody catch him or her.He's weakness himself.
Check the first post, dear readers. This thread's best theories and commentary have been sorted!
Cocoa moth 13
Miss Smiles 105
DCW's Artistic Poet
i've been here earlier but I'm not gonna to read whole thread and it's silly I agree there's certain reasons I change my mind. Whether boss show up or not I now resign to see other way because boss often make himself anonymous. Somehow it lead me thinking where he really work because I heard people like to work front line to control media or so on so he can tamper with it before it go on news. Earlier in DCTP I had a conjunction about him being surrounded by Yukkiko, Yoko, and cast, it's more like style boss might want for sake of contributing. Nobody will suspects donor. Nobody suspects nerd. Nobody suspect technician. Nobody suspect host. But usually this occupation can be find in media station? Gosho make it harder to find like finding needle in the sack in media station. Safer place is dangerous place where boss is. More dangerous for him if he's a cop. More limited power when he's teacher. More accessible moving screen of tv? Possible because the job occupation is anonymous in media station. To him it's game plan, is it??
If we can't find him in prologue of Golden Apple case, we know the story evolve around media. Kogoro became famous. Yukkiko is actress. Yusaku is famous writer. Shinichi is famous of deduction. If from start the story is about media, I can think it's possible and safe to assume Gosho is likely making boss is part of media. He's indirectly mention of him is he? Boss is more willing to be part of end of game plan is to divert news away from world, what's the best place he could be at if he choose not to be police? He can lock away the tape. He can have alibi that he has a job at media station he could say he can take a break. He'll be the one to stop high prolific person to ensure tape wasn't in for showcase.
That's boss's job do after hero go through final round.
Akazora 291
How about Edward Crow from Shinichi's first case (ep 162, ch. 204-207)? I haven't thought it through, but it's just an idea, if anyone feels like analyzing.
hopefully this isn't already brought up but here's another theory i found on tumblr.
http://diamonddetective.tumblr.com/post/42820747687/holy-shet
It seems pretty plausible.
Anyway, it's just a view I give. *shrug*
KirisatoSei 1
Anyway, I'm new here..
The primary reason I went here is.. RESEARCH.
I got this crazy-ass
theory that (*thumbs-up to the OP)
ERI KISAKI is either a member or the boss of the BLACK
Facts & Theories:
"Aoyama specified that the name of the
boss has appeared somewhere in the manga"
- It is widely known that Eri Kisaki is the counterpart of ELLERY
QUEEN, therefore:
Queen (the character) is highlighted
in volume 11 of the Case Closed manga's edition of "Gosho Aoyoma's Mystery Library, a section
of the graphic novels (usually the last page) where the author introduces a
different detective (or occasionally, a villain) from mystery literature,
television, or other media. The character Heiji Hattori also mentioned that he prefers
Ellery Queen to Arthur Conan Doyle in volume 12.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellery_Queen)
Is this it? Highly
Probable..
Gosho Aoyama's unique style is superb..
This classic literary form of "Foreshadowing" or "Red Herring"
is what makes this manga series so addictive.. Indeed, we are always misled
every time that we hardly see connections in small matters such as these…
"Nanatsu no Ko (七つの子, lit. Seven children or Child of seven), is a popular
Japanese children's song written by Ujō Noguchi (野口雨情 Noguchi Ujō). The Black Organization leader uses
this song to encode his/her phone number."
A bit
far-fetched Theory here:
The MouriFamily had a tragedy 10 years ago since the first episode that torn their life
asunder…Ran Mouri was16 years old in the 1st chapter.. so it can be concluded that she
was 6 years old(turning 7)at that
time..
It represents the Nearly Seven Years of Ran's life in their family.. I think that
this is the reason why Eri uses this phone number.. As a REMEMBRANCE
of the family she had.
Following on that, The reason Kogorou left the police force is the mystery here… Is it just because of guilt for shooting her wife? I think not. I think that, most likely, before that point, Kogorou became aware of Eri's involvement w/ theBlack Organization. Also may be Eri wanted Kogorou to shoot her during that tragedy, as atonement of her sins and also to save Ran's life. However, It didn't happen… Seeingthat they'll never be what was once they used to be, Eri left Kogorou. On the other hand, Kogorou left the police force because he can't bear the thought of
turning in his beloved wife..
"It looks like I have given you too
much freedom. Come back to my side, Vermouth."
Boss orders Vermouth to return.
One of the most intriguing quotes for me…
First, Let us establish Eri's connection to Vermouth. Eri is a friend and rival of
Yukiko Kudo, who is also a friend of Vermouth.
It's not impossible that Eri doesn't know Vermouth personally. Thus, the fact
that Vermouth is protecting Conan and Ran perfectly fits. Her friend's son and
her boss' daughter is what makes her very interested in those two.
Midori Kuriyama (Eri's assistant) maybe another
persona of Vermouth. Thus, Eri calling Vermouth (Midori) to come back her side
is very plausible…
boss is very careful. Vermouth says, "The boss is always careful to the
extreme. He's the type to ruin the plan by overthinking it."
As everyone knows, Eri is very intelligent and always
serious at important matters. Also, Ellery Queen (her counterpart) is known to
be an "over-analytical" person. Thus, once again it fits. The fact that she
never loses against her trial cases proves this quality of hers.
"If the FBI's assessment of the boss is correct, the boss is a forward
thinker. The FBI believed he ordered the assassination of Yasuteru Domon who
wasn't even part of the Diet yet because he was hard on crime and had a chance of
becoming the next Prime Minister."
Eri is a just person. Yes, being the boss of the Black Organization may
be contradicting to that aspect but it is still probable. We don't know
anything about Eri's past so we cannot simply erase her known qualities. Being
a lawyer, I really thinks she lives a double life.. And the thought of a
corrupt official being the Prime Minister is probably not an option for her.
SO WHY DID
SHE ORDERED GIN TO KILL MOURI?
The most logical thing to think is that she
knows someone will stop Gin. Vermouth is there. Conan is there. And Akai is
there. (who knows? Maybe she whistleblowed to Akai?)
But due to
Gin's nature, Mouri almost died. This shows the human aspect of the BOSS. Just
because The Boss is the Boss doesn't mean he's perfect..
Other things:
-she's a sherlockian ( shelling ford= password in pisco case)
-> makes it very possible.
- Speculated that Haibara will be
surprised when she know who the boss is… (of course, anyone will be surprised.
This maybe another misdirection by gosho aoyama. He didn't emphasized that
"Haibara will be the only one surprised")
-Haibara and Eri haven't met yet in
the whole series.
There's a bunch more that I don't
want to say coz' im not sure yet.
I'm just 17 but am really a fan of
this series. Add me as a friend. Lol..
I HOPE THIS HELPED A LOT.
ANY COMMENTS, ADD-ONS, AND VIOLENT
REACTIONS IS RECOMMENDED. THANK YOU.
ccrogers15 5
THREE characters give me a creepy vibe like they are hiding something:
3. Agasa
2. Jodie (Remember the episode she first encounters the BO, she was very creepy in this episode)
1. Eri (I have reasons. Here is my short version of this theory: Eri is the BO Boss. She is very secretive and hides things. The reason Vermouth wont touch him, is that possibly, Vermouth, Eri and Yukiko could of been friends at one time. Due to this, she, nor Vermouth, will hurt Shinichi or Ran, and protect them. Next, we have other reasons. Eri seems to treat conan oddly and more like he is older then she sees him. Shes not stupid. Ran and Shinichi always use to be friends and Eri knowns him. She likely sees conan and notices he is a replica of Shinichi when he was 7. Later, she somehow likely finds out Conan is shinichi. Through Vermouth or some other means. She keeps this secret, but probably knows.)
Eri is the one i believe who is actually the real BO member. I have more reasons, but im very tired. I will add them later.
to c@crogers15.. just read the very very long post i posted before you.. i examined them many times.. though it's all theories, it gives you the "what-the-heck?!" vibe? I also feel the "vibe" you feel about eri.. that's why i posted those theories.. what i can't believe here is that everytime eri is mentioned as a possible boss in the forums, no one takes it seriously.. even the sub-post on the "Eri-Boss of B.O." sectio here wasn't really seriously considered.. i mean... on what i gathered.. Eri has the most "points-to-consider" than anyone else in the DCW. They focus more on Agasa and Yusaku. Lol. i think that Gosho Aoyama wouldn't do something like that because it will invariably destroy the "plot". Yes, it'd would be a one-hell-of-a-twist if it's true.. but i just can't picture it..
Agasa knows Ai's involvement... ad shinichi..
Yusakau is shinichi's dad....
lol.. i cat get any weird vibes from them.. lol.. i'll gladly read your thoughts on the Eri Kisaki theories.. i am not forcing someone to believe me. All I'm saying is if you try to understand it before posting nonsense in the forums, you can see on who are those that has the highest possibilities.... lol.
What if Heiji was the BO boss and the reason Vermouth is his fave is due to her being HAWT?
Lol. that's impossible..I feel that All the main characters who knows who the real Conan is can be removed off the list.. Why? coz' it'll contradict the whole plot. Being close to Him and not using it as an advantage is certainly noth the BO's style... Besides, Heiji doesnt fit to be the BO Boss.. lol.
Agasa is not Anokata!
Without any further information it would be nearly impossible to know the true identity of the BO boss. I guess we'll just have to wait until Gosho throws out another bone for us fans to chew. Anything else is just guessing at this point.
@Chardonnay, that is that is very true and i agree that it is impossible to identify the BOSS... but i think that given the hints and personality of the BOSS provided by Gosho Aoyama, and "speculating" that he/she is already in the characters of DC, then i think that the info is enough to create a short list on possible suspects.. but what i want to point out is.. there's almost a thin line between "guessing" and "deductive reasoning".. Just what Holmes said "normally, when one is given a series of events, one would most likely give the "future" event or in this situation we're "waiting" for it.. Thus, it can be called as guessing/inference.. However, one who is able/trying to "guess" all the reasons why those events happened up to the last point to determine the future.. can be called as "analytical/deductive reasoning"...
Please don't think I'm a Holmes/Conan-wannabee.. but the mystery of who the BOSS is almost like a "puzzle to solve" for me rather than "waiting for Gosho to throw another bone".. Yes, the data is not enough.. but if one would be able to create a "convincing" list of suspects then all we need to do is use the process of elimination to find out who the Boss is..


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text:
Neil Oseman
Cinematic Lighting Course
Luna 3: Photographing the Far Side of the Moon without Digital Technology
24fps or 25fps, which is best?
"Superman II" Retrospective
Finding the Positive in 2020
A Cinematographer's Guide to Looking Good on a Webcam
"A Cliché for the End of the World"
The Hardest Shot I've Ever Done
Exposure Part 4: ISO
Exposure Part 3: Shutter
Exposure Part 2: Neutral Density (ND) Filters
December 21, 2020 December 20, 2020 neilosemanblog, blogging, course, crowd funding, crowdfunding, showreel
This year hasn't been great for anyone. It certainly hasn't for me. Even as I'm writing this I'm hearing the news that, in a staggeringly foreseeable U-turn, the Christmas bubble rules have been severely restricted. So how to wrap up this stinker of a year?
I considered making this article about the pandemic's impact on the film and TV industries and speculating about which changes might be permanent. But who needs more doom and gloom? Not me.
Instead, here are six positive things that I accomplished this year:
We shot the final block of War of the Worlds: The Attack in February/March, and I was recently shown a top-secret trailer which is very exciting. There is plenty of post work still to do on this modern-day reimagining of the H.G. Wells classic, but hopefully it will see the light of day in a year or so.
After a couple of lax years, I got back to blogging regularly. This site now has a staggering 1,250 posts!
I completed and released my first online course, Cinematic Lighting, which has proven very popular. It currently has over 1,000 students and a star rating which has consistently hovered around 4.5 out of 5.
I made a zoetrope and shot several 35mm timelapses and animations for it, which was a nice lockdown project. Even though the animations didn't come out that well they were fun to do, and the zoetrope itself is just a cool object to keep on the shelf.
I wrote my first article for British Cinematographer, the official magazine of the BSC, which will be published on January 15th. In the process I got to interview (albeit by email) several DPs I've admired for a while including David Higgs BSC, Colin Watkinson ASC, BSC and Benedict Spence.
The lockdown gave me the time to update my showreel. Who knows if I'll ever work again as a DP, but if not, at least I can look back with pride at some of the images I've captured over the years.
Despite the restrictions, I hope all my readers manage to find some joy, love and comfort over the festive period. And if not, just consume a lot of mulled wine and chocolate; it's the next best thing.
In a tradition I've neglected for a few years, I'll leave you with a rundown of my ten favourite blog posts from 2020.
"The Rise of Anamorphic Lenses in TV" – a look at some of the shows embracing oval bokeh and horizontal flares
"5 Steps to Lighting a Forest at Night" – breaking down how to light a place that realistically shouldn't have any light
"Above the Clouds: The Spoiler Blogs" – including how we faked a plane scene with a tiny set-piece in the director's living room
"Working with White Walls" – analysing a couple of short films where I found ways to make the white-walled locations look more cinematic
"10 Clever Camera Tricks in Aliens" – the genius of vintage James Cameron
"The Cinematography of Chernobyl" – how DP Jakob Ihre used lighting and lensing to tell this horrifying true story
"5 Things Bob Ross Can Teach Us About Cinematography" – who knew that the soft-spoken painter had so much movie-making widsom?
"5 Ways to Fake Firelight" – a range of ways to simulate the dynamics of flames, from the low-tech to the cutting edge
"A Post-lockdown Trip to the Cinema" – an account of the projection sacrilege commited against a classic movie in my first fleapit trip of the Covid era
"Exposure" (four-part series) – in-depth explanations of aperture, ND filters, shutter angles and ISO
"Above the Clouds": The Spoiler Blogs
June 15, 2020 July 4, 2020 neilosemanAlexa, Alexa Mini, Amira, blog, gaffering, HMI, lighting, on set, set life, stage, studio, tungsten, Zeiss
During 2016-2017 I blogged about the production of Above the Clouds, a comedy road movie which I shot for director Leon Chambers. It premiered at Raindance in 2018, closely followed by Austin Film Festival, where it won the audience award for Best Narrative Feature, the first of four gongs it would collect.
In two decades of filmmaking, Above the Clouds is easily in the top five productions I'm most proud of. Since this January it has been available on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play and other platforms, and I highly recommend you give it a watch. DO NOT continue reading this blog unless you have, because what follows are two blog entries that I held back due to spoilers.
(from Week 3)
The script calls for Charlie to be seen sitting in the window seat of a plane as it rises quite literally above the clouds. This is another micro-set filmed in Leon's living room, in fact half in the living room and half in the hall, to leave enough room for the lights beyond.
Although the view out of the window will be added in post, I need to simulate the lighting effect of bursting through the clouds. My plan involves a 1.2K HMI, and a 4×4 poly board held horizontally with a triple layer of 4×4 Opal sheets hanging from one edge.
We start with the HMI pointed straight into the window and the poly board held high up so that the Opal hangs in front of the lamp. As the plane supposedly rises through the cloud layer, Colin lowers the poly until it is below the level of the lamp, while Gary tilts the HMI down so its light skips off the poly (like sun skipping off the top of clouds) and bounces back up into the window. Gary then tilts the HMI back up to point straight into the window, to suggest further banking or climbing of the aircraft. This direct light is so hot that it bounces off the armrest of Charlie's seat and gives a glow to her cheek which syncs perfectly with a smile she's doing.
(from February 2017 pick-ups)
Today's set is a dark room. A photographer's dark room, that is. Not just a random dimly-lit room.
We begin with only the red safe-light in play. The wall-mounted practical has a 15W bulb, so it needs some serious help to illuminate the room. Micky rigs a 1K pup with Medium Red gel and fires it over the top of the set, above the practical. The effect is very convincing. Pure red light can make everything look out of focus on camera, which is why I chose the slightly magenta Medium Red gel, rather than the more realistic Primary Red. The colourist will be able to add some green/yellow to correct this.
During the scene, Naomi pulls a cord and the normal lights come on. These are two hanging practicals, fitted with dimmed 100W tungsten globes. In a very similar set-up to yesterday, we use a 2K with a chimera, poking over the set wall on the camera's down-side, to enhance and soften the practicals' light.
To read all the Above the Clouds blogs from the start, click here.
"The Little Mermaid": Sun, Sea and Cinematography
September 21, 2018 September 21, 2018 neilosemanAlexa, Angenieux, blog, cinematography, Cooke, golden hour, lenses, on set, set life, splash housing, sunrise, sunset, underwater, zoom
(Spoiler alert!) The denouement of The Little Mermaid takes place in the waves on a picturesque beach, where Cam (William Moseley) has carried Elizabeth (Poppy Drayton). In true fairytale style, our hero and heroine finally share their first kiss, parting to reveal the flaring orange sun behind them, just above the horizon. By the time we got to this sequence, we had already shot some water scenes, but those were in controlled, studio-like conditions. Working with natural light and real waves was going to be a whole different ball-game.
Here are some extracts from my diary, revealing how this magical moment was ultimately captured.
Scenes at the beach today, with actors in the ocean. We've been worried about this sequence since the earliest stages of preproduction. Will the cast get too cold? Will it be too dangerous with waves and jellyfish and razor-sharp oyster beds? Will we get the magical dawn lighting the script requires? Building a partial beach set against green-screen was considered for a long time, but eventually shooting on a real beach, and this one particular beach, turned out to be our only option. (We're back on Tybee Island, the same island we did the Shirley Shoot on so very long ago, and Baywatch seems to have all the other beaches tied up.)
The weather is good, with a cloudless sky. We're cheating sunset for sunrise, and I know exactly where the sun will go down, thanks to the Helios and Sun Tracker apps.
We get ready to go into the water shortly after 6pm. The ACs put the camera in the splash bag and we bring it into the ocean. It starts to leak. Which is pretty much the last thing you want to happen. We pull it out before the camera gets damaged, but now we're wondering how to shoot the scene. Someone suggests I just put the camera on my shoulder (I'm only going in up to my waist) and a couple of the crew spot me to make sure I don't drop it. Sounds risky, doesn't it? But it works. Meanwhile Captain Dan joins us in his waders to hand-bash a polyboard bounce, and the 'B' camera team are on a pontoon trying to get alternate angles.
Perhaps the most important thing I do today is ask Will to pick Poppy up the other way around. You see, when we're about to turn over, Will picks up Poppy with her head to his right and her tail to his left. But I can see that if they play the scene with Poppy this way around, I will end up framing the two-shot with my back to the sun, losing that magical image of the low sun in the background, and probably casting camera shadows on them to boot. So I ask Will to pick Poppy up the other way around.
As the sun races towards the horizon, we get two magical takes. I'm constantly reframing to keep the setting sun in the background, and as the hero and heroine kiss, it flares out perfectly between them. Everyone is ecstatic.
'B' cam 1st AC Geran Daniels on the pontoon with the Alexa XR Studio and the hefty Angenieux 19.5-94mm Optimo
It's another beautiful day, and the first task is to go out on the pontoon and shoot Poppy's double swimming about in the mermaid tail. I use the Angenieux zoom for only the second time (it normally lives on the 'B' camera), and for the first time on my shoulder. Damn, that thing's heavy. But my shoulder has worse to come today.
As sunset approaches, we must shoot pick-ups for Saturday's water scene with the principal cast. Today the tide is much lower at sunset, and getting out to a deep enough spot (up to around waist or chest level) means walking over very squelchy mud which you sometimes sink in up to your knees, and sharp oyster beds. So instead we get into the water via the pontoon. This boat has a limited capacity, so I'm dropped off on the first trip, before it returns to the dock twice more to get the rest of the cast and crew who are needed. It's extremely pleasant to swim about in the ocean (more of an estuary really) while we wait.
In the water with 2nd AC Kane Pearson and some expensive electronics. The white patch on the splash bag is the $5 of tape!
Line producer Fabio has proudly repaired the leaky splash bag with a $2 bicycle inner tube patch. 2nd AC Kane, a big spender, added $5 of tape, and we successfully tested it before we set sail.
Because the splash-bag doesn't fit our Alexa's viewfinder, Kane has to hand-bash a 5.6" monitor in a ziplock bag (along with a Teradek receiver and battery) so that I can see what I'm shooting. This works pretty well though. The hardest thing is the mud; it's impossible to find a firm spot, so during the takes I'm always sinking and trying to keep my balance and follow the action at the same time. Kane has to prop me up on a couple of occasions.
For all the material in the ocean I stick to a (Cooke S4i) 32mm lens; the zoom won't fit in the splash housing, and lens changes take too long. (The cast can only be in the water for 30 minutes at a time, according to Screen Actors Guild rules.) Although we mostly shoot at water level, where the splash bag floats and is easy to control, one set-up requires me to put it on my shoulder. The weight is quite something, but with help I get the shot.
With the water scenes wrapped, and the tide now higher, we swim back to shore. We've been in the water at least three hours, and it was exhausting but a lot of fun too.
That concludes my blog series on The Little Mermaid. If you missed any of the earlier instalments, here are the links:
"Shooting Shirley" – the pre-shoot with Hollywood legend Shirley MacLaine
"Circus Cinematography" – lighting the huge night exteriors
"Pools of Light" – creating a watery, magical look for the mermaid's scenes
"Boats, Trains and Automobiles" – shooting in moving vehicles
"Lighting from the Back" – using cross-backlighting for cinematic dialogue scenes
Don't forget, if you're in the UK, the film is currently available from all good high-street DVD retailers and on Amazon as a DVD or download.
"The Little Mermaid": Pools of Light
August 31, 2018 September 2, 2018 neilosemanAlexa, blog, cinematography, colour, gels, lighting, on set, set life, Steadicam, underwater, water
Although The Little Mermaid takes place mostly on dry land, there were some key scenes involving tanks and pools. These include the moment which introduces the audience to the mermaid herself, played by Poppy Drayton. Here are some extracts from my diary covering the challenges of creating a magical, fairytale look while filming in and around water.
Today we're inside the big top all day – actually all NIGHT. We can't shoot during the day because too much daylight bleeds through the canvas of the tent.
We are setting up when a storm hits. The tent starts to blow about in a slightly alarming fashion, rain lashes down outside (and inside, because the tent isn't very waterproof) and lightning flashes. We are ordered out of the tent, and I run into a waiting mini-van with Joe from art and some of the camera crew. We sit watching the rain and telling stories for half an hour before we can press on.
Setting up with a stand-in next to the mermaid tank (centre, behind the monitors). In the top right you can see the 575W HMI backlight for the tank, and below that, grip Sawyer Oubre stands ready to fake watery rippling light with a par can and a blue gel frame.
Around the wall of the tent the art department have hung canvas posters; at the suggestion of gaffer Mike Horton, we uplight these with par cans and par 38s. The design of these fixtures hasn't changed since the 30s, so we can get away with seeing them in shot. The art dept have sourced four period spotlights which we use as background interest (they're not powerful enough to really illuminate anything), as well as string-lights.
Ambience comes from a Maxi Brute, with just a couple of bubbles on, firing into the tent roof. After seeing a video test of various diffusers during preproduction, I asked for Moroccan Frost to be added to our consumables list, and we use it for the first time on this Maxi Brute. It gives a lovely muted orangey-pink look to the scene.
Steadicam operator Chris Lymberis. Photo: Kane Pearson
We're shooting our mermaid for the very first time, in a tank in the circus ring. The initial plan is to fire a Source Four straight down into the water to create genuine watery rippling light, while bouncing a par can off a wobbling frame of blue gel to beef up the effect. In the end the Source Four isn't really cutting it, so instead we rig a 575W HMI, gelled with Steel Blue, to a menace arm and fire it into the tank as toppy backlight. This Steel Blue gelled daylight source, blued up slightly further by the water itself, contrasts beautifully with the Moroccan Frost tungsten ambience which the Maxi Brutes are giving us.
In her mermaid tail and costume, Poppy Drayton looks stunning in the tank. We shoot steadicam angles and some slo-mo to get the most out of the set-up.
The rocky pool set with two of the side-lighting Kino Flos and the 1.2K HMI backlight (centre) in place
Back on stage, and we're shooting the rocky pool. This set was built before I even arrived in Savannah, so I've been waiting a long time to shoot it. It's built almost right up to the ceiling of the studio (a former supermarket) so it's challenging to light. The grips build four menace arms and poke two 4×4 Kinos and two 575W HMIs over the sides to cross-light the set and bring out all the texture in it. Where the set ends they put up a 20×20′ greenscreen, which we light with two Kino Flo Image 80s fitted with special chroma green tubes.
After a wide (which didn't make the final cut), the next set-up is a 2-shot of our leads in the pool itself. We consider arming the camera out over the pool using a jib, but ultimately decide that it's better for me to join the cast in the pool, with the camera on my shoulder in a splash bag. 2nd AC Kane Pearson joins the pool party as well, and ends up hand-bashing a monitor for me since the splash bag's designed for a Panaflex film camera and the viewfinder doesn't line up. I'm reminded of my frustrating splash bag experience on See Saw back in 2007, but this time at least within a few minutes I've found a comfortable and effective way to operate the camera, under-slinging it and allowing it to partially float so I don't have to support the whole weight.
For this shot we've added our par-can-bounced-off-a-wobbling-blue-gel gag for watery light ripples, and combined with the real light ripples and the reflections of a 1.2K HMI backlight, the image looks beautiful.
After lunch we shoot the singles for the rocky pool scene. The pool itself has been removed, and the actors sit on stools in a paddling pool, with the set behind them. The paddling pool serves two functions: it catches the water that make-up pours over the actors to make them look wet, and it reflects rippling light onto their faces. This light originates from a par can. At first it flattens out the look, then we figure out that we need to lay black fabric on the bottom of the pool. This stops the par can's light bouncing directly, while retaining the rippling highlights off the water's surface. (Check out my article on shooting water for more tips like this.)
The low-tech solution for the pool pick-ups
In the final edit this was all intercut with some beautiful footage by underwater DP Jordan Klein, shot both at a local diving pool in Savannah and at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park in Florida. The main unit shot another scene in the actual ocean, but I'll cover that later in this series. In the meantime, next week I'll reveal some of the tricks and techniques used in shooting The Little Mermaid's many sequences in moving vehicles.
"The Little Mermaid": Circus Cinematography
August 24, 2018 August 24, 2018 neilosemanAlexa, blog, breakdown, cinematography, lighting, night ext, on set, set life
'B' cam 2nd AC Matt Dixon preps the camera on the crane's Scorpio remote head. Photo: Tim Gill
The biggest set on The Little Mermaid was the circus, an area the size of a football pitch which was transformed into a period spectacle. The big top and many other pieces were driven across the country from LA, and during our first week of principal photography the art department were hard at work setting it all up and dressing it.
Today's post is about how I lit the night exterior scenes on this huge set. To that end I'm going to focus on the two biggest shots in the sequence: a tracking shot outside the big top, and the crane-up which first reveals the circus to the audience. Below, as well as my diary entries from the shoot, you'll find a little behind-the-scenes video I grabbed on my phone for the tracking shot, and a lighting plan for the crane shot.
The two 18K HMI fresnels rigged on the condor
A couple of daylight pick-ups today, then we start setting up for a big night scene. The camera will dolly with Cam and Elle from the exit of the big top, past candy floss and 'healing water' stalls where bits of dialogue will happen, and finally reveal a ferris wheel in the distance. We block while the sun's still up, and paint in the light as night sets in. We are trying to light most of it in a way that will also work for our big crane shot reveal of the circus later in the week, because repositioning large HMIs – especially the two 18Ks we're flying on a condor (cherry-picker) – is very time-consuming. Inevitably it doesn't quite work out that way, and one of the 18Ks has to die for now at least.
The ferris wheel is backlit by a 12K, with a little front-light from a 5K tungsten fresnel. Cross-light on the talent comes from the working 18K and a 6K on the opposite side of frame. Nine-light Maxi Brutes illuminate the tent from inside, some of that light spilling out onto the talent, while par cans uplight a row of banners outside. A 1K baby provides edge-light to the talent in their final position. A 300W fresnel inside the healing water wagon spills out, and a bare 40W globe inside the umbrella of the candy floss stall gives us a little glow there.
The final lamp to go up is another 300W fresnel, because the directors are concerned that the 'sold out' sign on the healing water wagon isn't clear enough. We end up firing it in from the front because there's no time for anything else, but as always with front-light, I deeply regret it. Ideally we would have armed it out from the roof of the wagon to rake down the side of it.
Once the supporting artists are choreographed, the shot looks great.
A post shared by Neil Oseman (@neiloseman) on Aug 22, 2018 at 8:27am PDT
A Nine-light Maxi Brute inside the big top
We start with a big crane shot revealing the whole circus at night. For this shot we have the following lamps burning: 2 x 18Ks (on a condor), 1 x 12K, 1 x 4K – all those are providing moonlight or starlight, with varying degrees of blue gel on them; 2 x Nine-light Maxi Brutes making the big top glow from inside; a 5K spilling some orange glow on the background; 2 or 3 smaller tungsten units spilling out light from inside the smaller tents; and lighting the foreground, a 4×4 Kino and a 1K baby bounced off unbleached muslin. There are also numerous practicals on, including the lights on the ferris wheel, the illuminated 'circus' sign, several par can up-lighters, and about 7KW of fairy lights. Totalling over 80KW, it is easily the biggest lighting set-up of my career. Although the grip and electrical crew is relatively small given the scale of the set-up, they handle it with aplomb.
We have rebuilt our Giraffe crane to its maximum 31ft configuration, so we can swoop up over the entrance tent, past the 'circus' sign, and reveal the twinkling string-lights of the midway leading to the big top, and the rides beyond.
Here's a retrospective lighting plan for this crane shot (not to scale); click to enlarge it. Note that additional tents were added in postproduction, as you can see in the trailer.
Ideally we would have had two condors, with an 18K on each, and put one of them way back behind the trees, to maintain a consistent direction of moonlight, but budget and the practicalities of the location made this impossible.
The 'A' camera on the dolly, with the two 18Ks on the condor in the background
One thing that was a little different to my original plan was the hard 4K edging the roofs of the midway tents on the lefthand side. This was meant to be a pair of 6Ks firing through a diffusion frame, to get a much softer, less "sourcey" look than the hard "moonlight" from the 18Ks. But unfortunately both our 6Ks were malfunctioning.
Another change was the lighting of the midway itself. We had a tungsten helium balloon on the truck, which I had planned to float above the midway to provide warm ambience. As it turned out, the practical string lights, although only 40W each, were so numerous that they provided ample illumination in the centre of the frame.
Later on in production, I was chatting to one of the ADs about this scene and he expressed surprise at how well I had handled it, given that it was so much bigger than any lighting set-up I'd previously done. Honestly it never fazed me. Lighting is entirely scaleable; the principles are identical, whether your set is a small bathroom or a football pitch. I'd done so much night exterior in my career, I'd just never had the big toys I wanted before. I'll let you in on a secret though: the only reason I knew to ask for 18Ks and a condor was from reading American Cinematographer!
In my next post I'll discuss shooting some of Poppy Drayton's key scenes as the eponymous mermaid, including her introduction inside the big top. Don't forget that The Little Mermaid is currently showing in movie theatres across the US and on Amazon in the UK.
"The Little Mermaid": Shooting Shirley
August 17, 2018 September 6, 2018 neilosemanactors, blog, career, cast, cinematography, day int, fantasy, lighting, night int, prep, preproduction, sunset
The Little Mermaid, an independent live-action take on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, is now showing in cinemas across the USA. To mark the release, over the next few weeks I'll be posting a series of articles about my cinematography of the film, using extracts from the diary I kept during production.
In this first instalment I'll focus on the "pre-shoot", two days of capturing the present-day scenes, undertaken a few weeks before principal photography began. For these scenes, we were all very excited to be working with bona fide Hollywood royalty in the form of Shirley MacLaine. Since debuting in the 1955 Hitchcock comedy The Trouble with Harry (and winning a Golden Globe), Shirley's career has taken in six Oscar nominations as well as a win for Terms of Endearment, plus an AFI Life Achievement Award, two Baftas, an Emmy and several more Golden Globes.
No pressure then….
Shirley is installed at a five-star hotel in downtown Savannah for hair, make-up and wardrobe tests. Taking it easy at the studio, I get a call from the UPM telling me that Shirley wants to meet me. Nervously I transfer my lighting reference images (including screen grabs I gathered last week from her previous movies) to my iPad and await my car.
When I get to the hotel I bump into her and the rest of the crew in the hall. Plunging straight in, I shake her hand and introduce myself as "Neil Oseman, the DP". Evidently not hearing that last bit, and presuming I'm a PA or possibly a fan, she looks me up and down and asks me who I am. I repeat that I am the director of photography. "You're so young!" she exclaims, laughing at her mistake.
"Well, I've been doing this for fifteen years," I reply, all too aware of how short my career is compared with hers.
"Which pictures? Tell me," she says.
Again acutely aware that my credits list isn't going to sound very impressive to her, I mention Heretiks, and Ren: The Girl with the Mark and mutter something about doing lots of features.
To my great relief she doesn't press the point, instead asking what I think of the wig and make-up she's wearing. I ask her to step into the daylight, and assure her that it looks good, but that I'd like to warm up her skin tone a little with the lighting, an idea she responds well to.
Satisfied, Shirley moves on to other things, and I hang out in a meeting room at the hotel drawing storyboards, until it's time for a production meeting.
The present-day scenes were shot on Arri Alexas using Zeiss Super Speed Mark I primes and an Angenieux Optimo zoom, diffused with Tiffen Soft FX filters.
I arrive on location before even the early crew call of 8am, with my gaffer Mike Horton. His and key grip Jason Batey's teams have rigged a dark box around the beach house's deck/balcony so we can shoot day-for-night interiors.
At 10am Shirley arrives, blocks the scene, then goes off to hair and makeup. We're starting with close-ups of her, so the grip and electric teams come in and build a book light. (This is a V-shaped arrangement of bounce and diffusion material, resembling an open book, which greatly softens the light fired into it.) When we start to turn over and Shirley watches playback, I'm gratified to find she is very happy with how she looks on camera. We shoot out all her close-ups, then bring in the little girls playing opposite her and block the wide shots.
In the lefthand foreground here is the 2K source for the book light. In the top right you can see the diffusion frame it's firing through, and you can just make out the poly or rag we attached to the wall to bounce the light back onto Shirley (in the white nightgown). The net in the upper centre is cutting some light off the background. The camera can just be seen on the right of the photo.
As time begins to crunch, I fall back on cross-backlighting as a quick no-brainer solution to get the wide shot looking good. It's so important to have these lighting templates up your sleeve when the pressure's on. (Later on in this blog series I'll discuss the use of cross-backlighting in several other scenes in the movie.)
For a little while it looks like we might not make the day, but I suggest a way to maximise the beautiful beach view at twilight and get the story beats covered in one two-camera set-up. The shot feels like something out of a classic old movie. Shirley MacLaine walking off into the sunset! Everyone loves how it looks, including Shirley. The praise of an actor as experienced as her is high praise indeed, and it makes my day!
At the monitors with producer Rob Molloy. Photo: Brooks Patrick Allen
We start lighting for our "sunset" scene, which involves firing a pink-gelled 6K through the window and netting the background to get some highlight detail into it. Rather than a book light, this time I use a diffused 4×4 Kino Flo as Shirley's key. I take a risk and place it further off to the side to get a bit more shape into the light.
Shirley enters, takes one glance at the lighting and remarks, "So, you like this cross-light, huh?"
We compromise by adding a little fill from a reflector which Shirley positions herself before each take. Her awareness of how she's being photographed is astounding. She knows more about lighting than some DPs I've met!
Looking at the scenes now, I realise that a large white horizontal reflector in front of Shirley would have been perfect to simulate bounce off the bed, which we moved out when we were shooting the close-ups. Hindsight is 20/20, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out.
Next week I'll break down the huge lighting set-up required for the night exterior circus scenes.
Camerimage 2017: Wednesday
December 2, 2017 neilosemanArri, blog, camera, Camerimage, cinematography, eye, festival, grading, HDR, lighting, Netflix, pipeline, Red, vision
This is the third and final part of my report from my time at Camerimage, the Polish film festival focused on cinematography. Read part one here and part two here.
Up.Grade: Human Vision & Colour Pipelines
I thought I would be one of the few people who would be bothered to get up and into town for this technical 10:15am seminar. But to the surprise of both myself and the organisers, the auditorium of the MCK Orzeł was once again packed – though I'd learnt to arrive in plenty of time to grab a ticket.
Up.grade is an international colour grading training programme. Their seminar was divided into two distinct halves: the first was a fascinating explanation of how human beings perceive colour, by Professor Andrew Stockman; the second was a basic overview of colour pipelines.
Prof. Stockman's presentation – similar to his TED video above – had a lot of interesting nuggets about the way we see. Here are a few:
Our eyes record very little colour information compared with luminance info. You can blur the chrominance channel of an image considerably without seeing much difference; not so with the luminance channel.
Light hitting a rod or cone (sensor cells in our retinae) straightens the twist in the carbon double bond of a molecule. It's a binary (on/off) response and it's the same response for any frequency of light. It's just that red, green and blue cones have different probabilities of absorbing different frequencies.
There are no blue cones in the centre of the fovea (the part of the retina responsible for detailed vision) because blue wavelengths would be out of focus due to the terrible chromatic aberration of our eyes' lenses.
Data from the rods and cones is compressed in the retina to fit the bandwidth which the optical nerve can handle.
Metamers are colours that look the same but are created differently. For example, light with a wavelength of 575nm is perceived as yellow, but a mixture of 670nm (red) and 540nm (green) is also perceived as yellow, because the red and green cones are triggered in the same way in both scenarios. (Isn't that weird? It's like being unable to hear the difference between the note D and a combination of the notes C and E. It just goes to show how unreliable our senses really are.)
Our perception of colour changes according to its surroundings and the apparent colour of the lighting – a phenomenon perfectly demonstrated by the infamous white-gold/blue-black dress.
All in all, very interesting and well worth getting out of bed for!
At the end of the seminar I caught up with fellow DP Laura Howie, and her friend Ben, over coffee and cake. Then I sauntered leisurely to the Opera Nova and navigated the labyrinthine route to the first-floor lecture theatre, where I registered for the imminent Arri seminar.
Arri Seminar: International Support Programme
After picking up my complementary Arri torch, which was inexplicably disguised as a pen, I bumped into Chris Bouchard. Neither of us held high hopes that the Support Programme would be relevant to us, but we thought it was worth getting the lowdown just in case.
Shooting "Kolkata"
The Arri International Support Programme (ISP) is a worldwide scheme to provide emerging filmmakers with sponsored camera/lighting/grip equipment, postproduction services, and in some cases co-production or sales deals as well. Mandy Rahn, the programme's leader, explained that it supports young people (though there is no strict age limit) making their first, second or third feature in the $500,000-$5,000,000 budget range. They support both drama and documentary, but not short-form projects, which ruled out any hopes I might have had that it could be useful for Ren: The Girl with the Mark.
Having noted these keys details, Chris and I decided to duck out and head elsewhere. While Chris checked out some cameras on the Canon stand, I had a little chat with the reps from American Cinematographer about some possible coverage of The Little Mermaid. We then popped over to the MCK and caught part of a Canon seminar, including a screening of the short documentary Kolkata. Shortly we were treading the familiar path back to the Opera Nova and the first-floor lecture theatre for a Kodak-sponsored session with Ed Lachman, ASC, only to find it had been cancelled for reasons unknown.
Red Seminar: High resolution Image Processing Pipeline
Next on our radar was a Red panel. I wasn't entirely sure if I could handle another high resolution seminar, but I suggested we return once more to the MCK anyway and relax in the bar with one eye on the live video feed. Unfortunately we got there to find that the monitors had disappeared, so we had to go into the auditorium, where it was standing room only.
"GLOW" – DP: Christian Sprenger
Light Iron colourist Ian Vertovec was talking about his experience grading the Netflix series GLOW, a highly enjoyable comedy-drama set behind the scenes of an eighties female wrestling show. Netflix wanted the series delivered in high dynamic range (HDR) and wide colour gamut (WCG), of a spec so high that no screens are yet capable of displaying it. In fact Vertovec graded in P3 (the colour space used for cinema projection) which was then mapped to Netflix's higher specs for delivery. The Rec.709 (standard gamut) version was automatically created from the P3 grade by Dolby Vision software which analysed the episodes frame by frame. Netflix streams a 4,000 NIT signal to all viewers, which is then down-converted live (using XML data also generated by the Dolby Vision software) to 100, 650 or 1,000 NITs depending on their display. In theory this should provide a consistent image across all screens.
Vertovec demonstrated his image pipeline for GLOW: multi-layer base grade, halation pass, custom film LUT, blur/sharp pass, grain pass. The aim was to get the look of telecined film. The halation pass involved making a copy of the image, keying out all but the highlights, blurring those highlights and layering them back on top of the original footage. I used to do a similar thing to soften Mini-DV footage back in the day!
An interesting point was made about practicals in HDR. If you have an actor in front of or close to a practical lamp in frame, it's a delicate balancing act to get them bright enough to look real, yet not so bright that it hurts your eyes to look at the actor with a dazzling lamp next to them. When practicals are further away from your cast they can be brighter because your eye will naturally track around them as in real life.
Next up was Dan Duran from Red, who explained a new LUT that is being rolled out across their cameras. Most of this went in one ear and out the other!
Afterwards, Chris and I returned to Kung Fusion for another delicious dinner. The final event of the day which I wanted to catch was Breaking Bad's pilot episode, screening at Bydgoszcz's Vue multiplex as part of the festival's John Toll retrospective. Having binged the entire series relatively recently, I loved seeing the very first episode again – especially on the big screen – with the fore-knowledge of where the characters would end up.
Later Chris introduced me to DP Sebastian Cort, and the three of us decided to try our luck at getting into the Panavision party. We snuck around the back of the venue and into one of the peripheral buildings, only to be immediately collared by a bouncer and sent packing!
This ignoble failure marked the end of my Camerimage experience, more or less. After another drink or two at Cheat we called it a night, and I was on an early flight back to Stansted the next morning. I met some interesting people and learnt a lot from the seminars. There were some complaints that the festival was over-subscribed, and indeed – as I have described – you had to be quick off the mark to get into certain events, but that was pretty much what I had been expecting. I certainly won't put be off attending again in the future.
To learn more about two of the key issues raised at this year's Camerimage, check out my Red Shark articles:
Why Large-format 14K is the Perfect Future
Defining the Look: How Can Cinematographers Keep Control of the Look of their Films?
Camerimage 2017: Tuesday
November 25, 2017 neilosemanblog, camera, Camerimage, cinematography, festival, ISO, large format, lenses, lighting, Netflix, Panasonic, Panavision, resolution, Varicam
This is the second part of my report from my time at Camerimage, the Polish film festival focused on cinematography. Read part one here.
Panavision: The BEauty of 8K Large Format
Bydgoszcz's town square
It was a chilly but bright morning as I strolled into Bydgoszcz and made straight for the MCK Orzeł, where I planned to spend most of the day. With only a few minutes to go until the scheduled start time, the queue for Panavision's large format seminar had spilt out onto the street. The tickets ran out before I reached the desk, but there was a live video feed in the cinema's bar. In many ways this was better than going into the auditorium – sitting in a comfy chair with the bar close at hand, and a table to make notes on.
My article for Red Shark News about the future of large format cinematography has been surprisingly popular, and it contains plenty of detail about this Panavision seminar, so I won't repeated myself here. I will say that it converted me from a high resolution sceptic to a believer, because the speakers demonstrated that footage acquired in high rez – even when downscaled – retain much of its smoothness, high bit depth and dynamic range. "More resolution evokes the imagination of the brain," was how colourist Ian Vertovec summed it up.
At the end of the session, Red Shark's David Shapton and Matt Gregory emerged from the auditorium and joined me for lunch at the bar. We had all found the seminar very interesting, and Matt was quick to get us all tickets to the Panasonic 4K seminar coming up later in the day. The pair then went off to other things, while I headed to the kiosk to get a ticket for the imminent John Toll seminar. But of course I'd left it too late, they were all gone, and so I returned to my comfy chair in the bar to watch via video feed again.
Panavision workshops: A conversation with John Toll, ASC
John Toll, ASC
John Toll, ASC was the recipient of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award at Camerimage, and this seminar was an epic journey through this career. He explained how he learnt his craft as a camera operator for the late great Conrad Hall, ASC and Jordan Cronenweth, ASC.
The talk then focused on some of Toll's biggest movies, beginning with the period drama Legends of the Fall starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. The movie was largely daylight exterior (something that was to become a theme across Toll's work) so the cinematographer insisted on twelve weeks of prep, the same as the production designer. This allowed him to be part of selecting locations and choosing orientations for the buildings to get the optimal sun path. Toll said he was lucky that the 1st AD was willing to be flexible with the schedule, observing the mood of the weather each day and shooting scenes that matched that mood.
Gaffer Jim Plannette joined Toll on the stage to discuss the huge night exterior battle sequence. This employed three Musco lights (a Musco being fifteen 6K pars on a 100ft boom arm) which three-quarter-backlit every angle. To get crisp, grain-free blacks, Toll overexposed and printed down.
Braveheart was covered next, with 1st AC Graham Hall joining the panel. Hall had a difficult time with the film's battle scenes, featuring as they did so much movement, improv and slo-mo. Toll revealed how the immersive style of the action was based on a sixties TV documentary about Culloden that coincidentally both he and director Mel Gibson had seen. A lot of colour timing was required to give consistency to the battles, which were shot over weeks, at all times of day.
The discussion then turned to Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. The Australian locations featured very difficult, uneven terrain, so Toll used an Akela Crane. The crane's arm was so long (75ft) that the arc of its movement couldn't be detected on camera. Its use had to be carefully planned though, because each time it needed to be moved it had to be disassembled and reassembled on a special platform. 80% of the film was actually handheld, and Toll operated himself so as to respond to the spontaneity and improv which Malick encourage from his cast.
The Akela Crane in use on "The Thin Red Line"
Toll told a funny story about a shot of shadows moving across long grass which was praised by critics. It was inserted to cover a continuity error, the build-up to the battle having been shot in heavy cloud, while the battle itself was shot in full sun. A happy accident!
Time was running short, so the moderator powered through Almost Famous (where parallels were drawn between the explosive battle scenes of Toll's earlier movies and the crowd scenes at the rock concerts, punctuated by flashing cameras), Vanilla Sky and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. This latter film, directed by Ang Lee, is notable for its acquisition in 120fps 4K stereo. You can read more about it on the British Cinematographer website.
Panasonic Seminar: Varicam Experience
A Panasonic Varicam LT with Fujinon zoom rigged for action on "Arrested Development"
I remained at the MCK and, meeting up with Dave and Matt again, finally got into the auditorium, for the Panasonic seminar. Moderated by British Cinematographer's Ronnie Prince, the panel brought together a trio of DPs who shoot Netflix shows on the Varicam: Bobby Shore, CSC (Anne with an E), Pepe Avila del Pino (Ozark) and Patrick Alexander Stewart (Arrested Development).
Both Shore and del Pino admitted that they were most comfortable with the Arri Alexa, but due to Netflix's strict rules on 4K acquisition (the Alexa tops out at 3.2K) they had to find another camera. They plumped for the Panasonic Varicam, a 4K camera best known for having dual native ISOs: 800, in common with the Alexa, Red and many others, and 5000, two and two-thirds stops faster. Being native, both ISOs have the same dynamic range, the same log curve and in theory are equally clean.
Panasonic, I think, were keen to push ISO 5000 in this seminar, but unfortunately Shore and del Pino shot almost exclusively at 800. Stewart did shoot Arrested Development at 5000, interiors and night scenes at least, but down-rated it to 2500. Otherwise, he said, the sets would have been too dark for the actors to feel like they were in a believable daytime environment. I think that's a fascinating, unexpected side effect of low light sensitivity! Stewart lit the stages with large Quasar softboxes and paired the Varicam with Fujinon zooms and occasional Xeen primes.
Del Pino chose Zeiss Super Speeds for night scenes and Hawk V anamorphics for day scenes on Ozark. He liked the claustrophobia of cropping the anamorphic images to 2:1, the show's delivery ratio, while the Super Speeds produced a creaminess he found appealing. He also mentioned that the Varicam's sensor handled greens very well, which was important for him, given how much of Ozark takes places in woods.
Anne with an E was lensed on vintage Panavision Standard and Super Speeds – "the oldest, craziest lenses we could find," says Bobby Shore. He liked their low resolving power, their weird flares and how they fell apart when wide open. Part of the show's signature look are ECUs of the freckled title character, which were captured on a 27mm Primo for a more detailed, tactile image.
Inspired by the work of Robbie Ryan, BSC (Wuthering Heights), Shore kept the lighting naturalistic, mixing tungsten and HMI sources on a set that was treated like a location. He also shot through a Panaflasher, a special lens filter with built-in lighting which reduces contrast and adds a colour tint of your choice, but this effect was dialled out in post. Indeed, Shore raised the issue of DPs' images being altered after the fact, an issue I explore fully in another Red Shark article.
By the way, I've been watching Anne with an E since the festival and I can thoroughly recommend it.
When the seminar was over, I went for dinner with Dave, Matt and Chris Bouchard, at a very nice (but once again cheap) Asian fusion restaurant. Then we met up for drinks with some of the reps from Red, and I got talking to a DP who had shot squid from a submarine for an episode of Blue Planet. After another drink or two with Chris at the Cheat bar, I called it a night.
Tune in next week for the final part of my Camerimage blog.
Camerimage 2017: Monday
November 18, 2017 November 18, 2017 neilosemananamorphic, blog, camera, Camerimage, cinematography, festival, ISO, large format, lenses, lighting, resolution, spherical, testing
This week I attended Camerimage for the first time. Centred around the Opera Nova theatre beside the river Brda in Bydgoszcz, Poland, Camerimage is an international film festival celebrating the art of cinematography. It's a bit like Cannes for DPs, but colder. This is the first part of my account of my three days at the annual hub of motion picture imaging.
The Ryanair flight was dirt cheap but trouble free, and at 9:50am I found myself on the tarmac of Bydgoszcz airport. There I met David Shapton and Matt Gregory, founders of Red Shark News, for the first time. I've been contributing articles to Red Shark for a few months so it was nice to finally meet these gentlemen in person.
A taxi (also dirt cheap) dropped me at the Opera Nova – only about three miles from the airport – where I picked up my pass and goodie bag. Bizarrely, said goodies included an Ikea catalogue. How did they know that us DPs love flat-pack furniture so much?
Canon Workshop: Stephen Goldblatt
From the Opera Nova I hurried to a college across the river, where the sports hall formed the venue for a Canon workshop run by Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC, the man behind the lens for the likes of Lethal Weapon 2 and Batman Forever. The blurb for this workshop described Goldblatt as "a master of low light shooting", and it was certainly pitch black when I walked in a few minutes late, and gingerly picked my way around to the far side of the hall to find a seat.
Lighting through lace
On a purpose-built bedroom set, Goldblatt was recreating lighting from the Robert Redford / Jane Fonda romantic drama Our Souls at Night, shot on the Sony F55 and Canon C300 Mark II. To practical lamps on either side of the bed he added egg-crated tungsten soft-boxes to beef up each one. He simulated moonlight through an imagined off-camera window by placing a lace curtain in front of a blue-gelled lamp and blowing it gently with a fan. An additional egg-crated soft-box provided a low level of blue toplight.
As he worked, Goldblatt revealed how he doesn't miss ceulloid, loving how relatively easy it is now to light night exteriors or moving car scenes. "But just because you don't need much light," he cautioned, "it doesn't mean you don't want to control it." Other developments coming down the pipe do not inspire him so much; he feels that high resolutions and HDR are unnecessary, pushed by marketing people rather than creatives.
He placed great emphasis on the importance of the eyes. "A common failing of newer DPs is that they worry more about the set than the eyes," he said, before explaining how he will often walk beside the handheld camera with a torch, providing eye-light. He also stressed the importance of eye-lines. Although in any one shot it's not that important how wide or tight the eye-line is, or how high or low, across the two hours of a feature film the decisions have a cumulative effect.
Trying out a Xeen lens in the exhibition hall
Goldblatt no longer uses a light meter. "Trust your eye, develop your eye," he advised, adding that you must have a strong voice to remain in control of the images through postproduction.
After grabbing lunch, I returned to the Opera Nova to browse the exhibition hall. This closely resembled a mini BSC Expo or Media Production Show, with all the major camera and lens manufacturers displaying their wares, along with several lighting companies. I had a play with some of the cameras, including the actual Alexa 65 used on Rogue One.
Then I met up with Chris Bouchard, one of The Little Mermaid's two directors, who had arrived in Poland the previous day. We sauntered over to another venue, the MCK Orzeł, an independent cinema with a nice, chilled, film-buff-friendly atmosphere. The auditorium itself was packed though as we settled in for a seminar on "The Future of Digital Formats".
Red Seminar: The Future of Digital Formats
Promoting Red's Monstro sensor, the session was mostly about the benefits of shooting in high resolutions, and giving yourself the maximum flexibility in post. You can read my thoughts on both of those topics in upcoming Red Shark articles.
One of the speakers, Christopher Probst, ASC (DP of Mindhunter and technical editor of American Cinematographer magazine) made some interesting points about ISO. "Traditionally, low ISOs were used for bright scenes like day exteriors, and high ISOs were used for darker scenes like night exteriors," he explained. "That was based on reducing the grain, getting the cleanest possible image on film." He advised the opposite for digital capture. "Use a low ISO for nights to get more shadow detail, and a high ISO for days to get more highlight detail [in the sky, for example]."
"Independence Day: Resurgence" – DP: Markus Forderer, BVK
Another interesting nugget came from Markus Förderer, BVK. On Independence Day: Resurgence he switched between spherical, 1.3x anamorphic and 2x anamorphic lenses depending on the situation. For example, flatter lenses were better for wide shots – where anamorphics would distort straight lines – and for VFX work.
Hawk Vantage Seminar: Top cinematographers tell their Hawk stories
I ducked out of the Red session early so that I could pop back to the Opera Nova for the Hawk Vantage seminar, bumping into my Perplexed Music gaffer Sam Meyer on the way. Hawk were launching three new sets of lenses: MiniHawk (T1.7 hybrid anamorphics), Hawk Class-X (T2.2 2x anamorphics) and Hawk65 (T2.2).
A Hawk T1 in the exhibition hall
The MiniHawks in particular seem very exciting. Daniel Pearl, ASC showed us some stunning frame grabs from the upcoming Dennis Quaid vehicle Motivated Seller, shot using these lenses on Alexa Mini. Whilst having key advantages of spherical lenses (speed, small size, low weight, extremely close focus) the MiniHawks have a unique and beautiful cigar-shaped bokeh.
While Pearl had used the latest Hawks, Magdalena Górka, PSC had shot with some old ones, the C series, for Brad Silberling's drama An Ordinary Man. "I had to frame everything centrally because that's the only place that was sharp!" she laughed. Also addressing focus fall-off, Andrzej Bartkowiak, ASC (Speed, The Devil's Advocate) stated, "I like anamorphic because the shallow depth of field allows you to direct the viewer's eye more."
Stuart Dryburgh, ASC (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Bridget Jones's Diary) talked about shooting 1.3x anamorphic. He has done this on three-perf 35mm (to achieve a Scope aspect ratio), on an Alexa in 16:9 mode (again for 2.39:1) and on an Alexa in 4:3 mode (to get 1.85:1). He also recommended shooting on Super-16 with 1.3x glass, citing the example of Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" video, which Pearl shot.
Peter Flinckenberg, FCK (Upswing, Concrete Night) noted that, with the shift to digital acquisition, the DP is no longer a magician, "but you can bring back that magic with lighting and glass that has character."
CW Sonderoptic: Exploring Large format cinematography & Leica lenses
I took my leave, dashing back to the MCK Orzeł for another lens-themed seminar, this time by CWSonderoptic, the makers of Leica. The first half of this panel revolved around a short film shot by Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC (Seven, Delicatessen) on an Alexa 65 with the new Leica Thalias.
The second half was all about Tod Campbell, DP of Stranger Things and Mr. Robot, focusing on the latter show. The second season of Mr. Robot was shot on Leica Summicrons after Campbell found that the Cookes used on season one distorted the many straight lines which became such a key part of the show's unique look. "I look at season two as kind of the birth of the photography for the show," he said. With a laugh he added: "Sorry that the lighting looks like shit in season one. I was learning!" (See my spherical lens tests for my own thoughts on Cookes and Leicas.)
One of my favourite shots from "Mr. Robot"
Campbell revealed that season three of Mr. Robot has a different look again, using much more camera movement and "twice as much atmos". For this season he paired Canon K35 glass with an 8K camera, but due to the Canons' low resolution he employed Leica Summiluxes for the wide shots.
He also shared some interesting information about his testing process, admitting that he doesn't really know how other DPs test. He doesn't use charts, he just makes it up. He always includes a candle, a practical lamp, some kind of highlight in the background, and random foreground objects (as background bokeh can differ from foreground bokeh).
Christopher Doyle Seminar
When the Leica seminar ended I went back to the Opera Nova, where Chris and I had dinner at the nice (and once again cheap – are you detecting a theme?) restaurant. Despite having got up at 4am (3am local time) I wasn't feeling too tired, so we headed upstairs to the 10pm seminar by Christopher Doyle, HKSC (Hero, Lady in the Water). Many people were nursing beers, including Doyle himself, and the lecture theatre was dimly illuminated by mood lighting. Clearly this session was not going to be like the daytime ones.
"We're going to fuck things up," Doyle began, dispelling all doubts. He proceeded to talk disjointedly but entertainingly about his work on The White Girl and what I think was a separate film about a camera obscura. His oratory was liberally sprinkled with great one-liners, a few of which I reproduce here for your edification:
There are only three people in filmmaking: the actor, the audience and the cinematographer in between them.
If actors don't feel loved, the performance will not come across on camera.
Give the idea the image it deserves.
[Vittorio] Storaro [legendary DP of Apocalypse Now amongst others] can't tell you how to do it. You have to find it for yourself.
People in space – that's what cinematography's about.
The location is very important. It gives the energy, it imposes the style.
The lens doesn't matter; it's what it shows that's important.
You never sleep because you care too much – that's what filmmaking is.
With Chris Bouchard in front of the Opera Nova
Doyle also picked up on a piece of dialogue from a clip he screened: "What is it?" / "I don't know yet." It was a great summation of finding the essence of a shot, he said.
Having had our fill of aphorisms, Chris Bouchard and I slipped out to get a drink. The Cheat, the pop-up bar across the road, was absolutely packed, and my early morning was finally catching up with me, so I called it a night. The highstreet of Bydgoszcz was quiet and chilly as I walked briskly to my hotel, curiously located down a service road behind the city's football stadium, reflecting on all that I had learnt that day.
Tune in next week for tales from my second day at Camerimage.
"Above the Clouds": Summer 2017 Pick-ups
July 14, 2017 September 11, 2017 neilosemanBlackmagic, blog, Canon, cinematography, DSLR, lighting, miniatures, on set, Pentax
This time last year, principal photography had just wrapped on Above the Clouds, a comedy road movie directed by Leon Chambers. We always knew that there would be additional photography, and several days of this have been scattered over the past year.
In May I spent a few odd days with Leon and the Yellow Peril, primarily capturing car-to-car tracking shots. Leon had already shot some of these without me up in Cumbria, so he had the technique down. He attached his Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera to his roof rack with clamps and suction cups – three points of contact in all, to eliminate vibrations.
The focus was left fixed at the approximate distance the cars would be apart, and I could reach out of the passenger window and tweak it, along with the variable ND filter, if necessary. Recording was triggered from the custom remote which Leon had made for the camera last year when we used it for the autumn pick-ups. I monitored on a 5″ Blackmagic Video Assist which – thanks to a firmware update – now has a false colour display, which was very useful for keeping an eye on the exposure.
We had no means of panning or tilting the camera during takes, so we would frame the car centrally, allowing the maximum space to each side for when we went around the bends. This had the nice effect of making the Peril look small in the landscape, surrounded by it on all sides.
And speaking of the Peril looking small, it had shrunk considerably when I next saw it. But so had the landscape.
To keep the audience informed of the characters' progress across Great Britain, Leon planned to cut to a map at a few strategic moments. At some point the original plan of shooting an Ordnance Survey map on a wall turned into something much more elaborate, a work of art featuring found objects, such as the lead character Charlie might have made herself.
Leon knew he wanted to use his jib to drift the camera over the map. But what camera? We both agreed that these shots needed to have a noticeably different look to the rest of the movie. Both Super-8 and Super-16 were discussed, but ultimately neither were viable. Then I suggested shooting on a full-frame DSLR to get a tiny depth of field. I imagined the camera having fixed focus as it skimmed over the map, with features coming in and out of focus as they passed through the field. We didn't end up doing that, but Leon did like the DSLR idea.
Asahi Pentax-M 50mm/f1.4
So the decision was made to shoot on a Canon 5D Mk III belonging to focus puller Max Quinton. We ended up shooting everything on a single lens, my Asahi Pentax-M 50mm/f1.4. This is a vintage K-mount stills lens which is beautifully sharp, and we mounted it with a passive EF adapter. 50mm on full-frame is equivalent to 35mm on Super 35, very close to the 32mm which was our most used lens length during principal photography.
I added a half Soft FX filter as I usually do. I had briefly considered omitting it, to further differentiate the map shots from the rest of the film, but undiffused shots in a mostly diffused movie draw attention to the filtration and can be quite jarring.
I offered Leon two options for the lighting. One was to simulate the natural light you would see if shooting the British Isles from a high altitude, i.e. a hard sun source and ambient toplight. The other, which he went for, was to carry on the suggestion of Charlie making the map herself, and make it look like she had lit it herself too, with an eclectic mix of practicals around the edge. A couple of tungsten Chinese lanterns were hung overhead as well for soft fill. To help the camera's limited dynamic range, I put tough-spun diffuser inside some of the practicals' shades, on the camera side.
The Blackmagic 5″ Video Assist can be seen here mounted on the back of the camera.
There were a couple of "night" scenes on the shot list. For these we turned off the Chinese lanterns and turned on a desk-lamp practical with a blue-ish LED bulb to suggest moonlight. We also used a string of LED fairy lights to represent a road with streetlights.
For the smallest possible depth of field, everything was shot at f1.4. Even at ISO 320, in the daylight scenes it was necessary to add a 0.45 ND filter to bring the exposure down to f1.4. We shot on a neutral picture profile, piping the images via HDMI to the Blackmagic Video Assist, where they were recorded in ProRes 422 HQ.
After a few years shooting on Blackmagics, FS7s and Alexas, the 5D's colour saturation and contrast seemed very pronounced to me, but that really suited the toy-like nature of the map. And the tiny depth of field made everything look even smaller and cuter than it already was.
So, that's a wrap on Above the Clouds finally and forever. Apparently.
See all my Above the Clouds posts here, or visit the official website..

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Hiroshima Asks: Toward the 70th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing: Obama's vow to pursue nuclear abolition lacks substance
Accelerate modernization of nuclear capability In December 2008, about one month before Barack Obama's inauguration as president of the United States, I visited a soybean field covered with snow on the outskirts of Kansas City, Missouri. Visiting the same site last year, I found that the scene had changed dramatically.
There was a brand-new building, with a modern design. "It's a factory for nuclear warheads," said Ann Sullentrop, 63, a local peace activist. Expressing her anger, she said, "I kept my faint hopes alive that President Obama might stop the construction of the plant." She served as my guide around the area in 2008 and again last year.
The plant is tasked with the maintenance and management of a portion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. At a cost of 687 million dollars to build, the plant procures the components used in these weapons. Naturally, it is expected to be in operation for several decades to come.
But this plant is only the tip of the iceberg. The Obama administration's true nuclear policy can be seen in many other developments, including the fact that the United States has been pouring massive amounts of money into accelerating the modernization of its nuclear arsenal and nuclear infrastructure. Civilians and experts who are concerned about nuclear disarmament have been voicing criticism and disappointment.
Six years ago, President Obama delivered a speech to a large crowd in Prague, the Czech Republic, and vowed to seek a world without nuclear weapons. But the nuclear superpower has turned its back on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the international community, and has not changed its basic attitude toward nuclear arms.


text:
Q: Conditional length of a binary data series in Pandas Having a DataFrame with the following column:
df['A'] = [1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,0,1]

What would be the best vectorized way to control the length of "1"-series by some limiting value? Let's say the limit is 2, then the resulting column 'B' must look like:
   A  B
0  1  1
1  1  1
2  1  0
3  0  0
4  1  1
5  1  1
6  1  0
7  1  0
8  0  0
9  1  1

A: One fully-vectorized solution is to use the shift-groupby-cumsum-cumcount combination1 to indicate where consecutive runs are shorter than 2 (or whatever limiting value you like). Then, & this new boolean Series with the original column:
df['B'] = ((df.groupby((df.A != df.A.shift()).cumsum()).cumcount() <= 1) & df.A)\
          .astype(int) # cast the boolean Series back to integers

This produces the new column in the DataFrame:
   A  B
0  1  1
1  1  1
2  1  0
3  0  0
4  1  1
5  1  1
6  1  0
7  1  0
8  0  0
9  1  1

1 See the pandas cookbook; the section on grouping, "Grouping like Python's itertools.groupby"

A: Another way (checking if previous two are 1):
In [443]: df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,0,1]})

In [444]: limit = 2

In [445]: df['B'] = map(lambda x: df['A'][x] if x < limit else int(not all(y == 1 for y in df['A'][x - limit:x])), range(len(df)))

In [446]: df
Out[446]:
   A  B
0  1  1
1  1  1
2  1  0
3  0  0
4  1  1
5  1  1
6  1  0
7  1  0
8  0  0
9  1  1

A: If you know that the values in the series will all be either 0 or 1, I think you can use a little trick involving convolution. Make a copy of your column (which need not be a Pandas object, it can just be a normal Numpy array)
a = df['A'].as_matrix()

and convolve it with a sequence of 1's that is one longer than the cutoff you want, then chop off the last cutoff elements. E.g. for a cutoff of 2, you would do
long_run_count = numpy.convolve(a, [1, 1, 1])[:-2]

The resulting array, in this case, gives the number of 1's that occur in the 3 elements prior to and including that element. If that number is 3, then you are in a run that has exceeded length 2. So just set those elements to zero.
a[long_run_count > 2] = 0

You can now assign the resulting array to a new column in your DataFrame.
df['B'] = a

To turn this into a more general method:
def trim_runs(array, cutoff):
    a = numpy.asarray(array)
    a[numpy.convolve(a, numpy.ones(cutoff + 1))[:-cutoff] > cutoff] = 0
    return a

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Canadiens trade Rychel to Flames for Shinkaruk in swap of AHL forwards
Rychel has three goals and 11 assists in 41 career NHL games with Columbus and Montreal.
Aug 20, 2018 • Last Updated August 20, 2018 • 1 minute read
Montreal Canadiens left wing Kerby Rychel knocks Winnipeg Jets defenceman Sami Niku to the ice during NHL action in Montreal on Tuesday April 3, 2018. Photo by Allen McInnis /Montreal Gazette
CALGARY — The Calgary Flames have acquired forward Kerby Rychel from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for left-wing Hunter Shinkaruk.
Rychel, born in Torrance, Calif., and raised in Tecumseh, Ont., was drafted by Columbus in the first round (19th overall) in the 2013 NHL Draft.
The 23-year-old had 18 goals and 24 assists last season in 71 American Hockey League games split between Toronto Marlies and the Laval Rocket. He had a goal and an assist in four games with the Canadiens.
Shinkaruk had 17 goals and 15 assists in 63 games with the AHL's Stockton Heat last season.
The Calgary native, who was also drafted in the first round in 2013 (24th overall), has two goals and two assists in 15 career NHL games with the Vancouver Canucks and the Flames.


Welona is the mother to some very successful race horses: El Waldo 3/34(13-10-4-3-1, El Wodkine 56(25-13-5) with a win in UAE. Born 10. march 1985, Died 23. march 2007 Bred by Cimbrio Arabstuteri, Carl-Henric Ingerwall. Staffanstorp, Sweden. 15.625% Crabbet.


text:
Q: Looping through files in R and applying a function I'm not a very experienced R user. I need to loop through a folder of csv files and apply a function to each one. Then I would like to take the value I get for each one and have R dump them into a new column called "stratindex", which will be in one new csv file.
Here's the function applied to a single file
ctd=read.csv(file.choose(), header=T)

stratindex=function(x){
x=ctd$Density..sigma.t..kg.m.3..
(x[30]-x[1])/29
}

Then I can spit out one value with
stratindex(Density..sigma.t..kg.m.3..)

I tried formatting another file loop someone made on this board. That link is here:
Looping through files in R
Here's my go at putting it together
out.file <- 'strat.csv'
for (i in list.files()) {
tmp.file <- read.table(i, header=TRUE)
tmp.strat <- function(x)
x=tmp.file(Density..sigma.t..kg.m.3..)
(x[30]-x[1])/29
write(paste0(i, "," tmp.strat), out.file, append=TRUE)
}

What have I done wrong/what is a better approach?

A: It's easier if you read the file in the function
stratindex <- function(file){
    ctd <- read.csv(file)
    x <- ctd$Density..sigma.t..kg.m.3..
    (x[30] - x[1]) / 29
}

Then apply the function to a vector of filenames
the.files <- list.files()
index <- sapply(the.files, stratindex)
output <- data.frame(File = the.files, StratIndex = index)
write.csv(output)


There's a group of kids scattered on the floor at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale on a Friday afternoon. They're moving around figurines and trees and cannons, and, to a casual observer, it just looks like kids playing around with toys.
But no, these are young artists, using the museum's iPads to take close-up shots of the toys. The idea is to take inspiration from the exhibit hanging nearby from photographer David Levinthal, who used children's toys to create lifelike scenes.
For many of these kids, laughing as they delete through blurry photos and search for their masterpiece, this is their first visit to a museum. It might also be their first time considering art as a career path.
That's the idea behind Museum on the Move, a project the museum has begun to bring in sixth-graders from Broward schools, hoping that exposing them to the art world will open their eyes to what's possible.
The idea came from Bonnie Clearwater, the museum's director and chief curator, who had a similar project back when she was head of the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. There, she had seen how students exposed to art could have dramatic responses.
This year, about 3,000 kids from Broward schools will visit the museum during weekly field trips. They'll tour the museum and take part in talks and hands-on projects. During one recent trip, students listened to London artist Samson Kambalu describe life in the African village where he was born and how he has used the things around him over time to inspire his work.
When Clearwater came to NSU's museum, she sought out corporate sponsors to help underwrite the costs of bringing in Broward students. She found it right away from The Related Group, the Miami builder currently constructing projects including the Auberge Beach Residences & Spa and Icon Las Olas. Supporting the arts is fundamental to the company's philosophy of improving the community around its projects, says Patricia Hanna, Related Group's art director.
As docents led the sixth-graders through the museum's exhibits, a group of museum officials and educators followed behind, including Broward public schools Superintendent Robert Runcie. He says field trips like this can help kids think more critically and expose them to ideas they might not get elsewhere. "Arts are fundamental to the human spirit and human condition," Runcie says.
As he speaks, the final group of sixth-graders zooms in on their iPads to the toys below them. They move the devices around in quick movements, trying to duplicate the blurry motion Levinthal uses in his work.
And who knows? Maybe one of those shots will hang in a museum some day, the early work of an artist from Broward.
NSU Art Museum is looking for donors to join the Community Foundation of Broward, The Joseph & Winifred Amaturo Education Foundation, and The Related Group. They're also in need of small sponsorships; for $200, a sponsor can pay for the cost of the bus used to bring sixth-graders to the museum. For more information, contact Bonnie Clearwater at bclearwater@moafl.org or 954-262-0228.


text:
'use strict';

const assert = require('./../../assert');
const common = require('./../../common');

let battle;

describe('Unaware', function () {
	afterEach(function () {
		battle.destroy();
	});

	it('should ignore attack stage changes when Pokemon with it are attacked', function () {
		battle = common.createBattle();
		battle.setPlayer('p1', {team: [{species: 'Clefable', ability: 'unaware', moves: ['softboiled']}]});
		battle.setPlayer('p2', {team: [{species: 'Hariyama', ability: 'thickfat', moves: ['vitalthrow', 'bellydrum']}]});
		battle.resetRNG();
		battle.makeChoices('move softboiled', 'move vitalthrow');
		let pokemon = battle.p1.active[0];
		let damage = pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp;
		battle.makeChoices('move softboiled', 'move bellydrum');
		battle.resetRNG();
		battle.makeChoices('move softboiled', 'move vitalthrow');
		assert.strictEqual(pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp, damage);
	});

	it('should not ignore attack stage changes when Pokemon with it attack', function () {
		battle = common.createBattle();
		battle.setPlayer('p1', {team: [{species: 'Clefable', ability: 'unaware', moves: ['moonblast', 'nastyplot']}]});
		battle.setPlayer('p2', {team: [{species: 'Registeel', ability: 'prankster', moves: ['splash']}]});
		battle.makeChoices('move moonblast', 'move splash');
		let pokemon = battle.p2.active[0];
		let damage = pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp;
		battle.makeChoices('move nastyplot', 'move splash');
		pokemon.hp = pokemon.maxhp;
		battle.resetRNG();
		battle.makeChoices('move moonblast', 'move splash');
		assert.notStrictEqual(pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp, damage);
	});

	it('should ignore defense stage changes when Pokemon with it attack', function () {
		battle = common.createBattle();
		battle.setPlayer('p1', {team: [{species: 'Clefable', ability: 'unaware', moves: ['moonblast']}]});
		battle.setPlayer('p2', {team: [{species: 'Hariyama', ability: 'thickfat', item: 'laggingtail', moves: ['amnesia']}]});
		battle.resetRNG();
		battle.makeChoices('move moonblast', 'move amnesia');
		let pokemon = battle.p2.active[0];
		let damage = pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp;
		pokemon.hp = pokemon.maxhp;
		battle.resetRNG();
		battle.makeChoices('move moonblast', 'move amnesia');
		assert.strictEqual(pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp, damage);
	});

	it('should not ignore defense stage changes when Pokemon with it are attacked', function () {
		battle = common.createBattle();
		battle.setPlayer('p1', {team: [{species: 'Clefable', ability: 'unaware', moves: ['irondefense']}]});
		battle.setPlayer('p2', {team: [{species: 'Registeel', ability: 'clearbody', moves: ['shadowsneak']}]});
		battle.makeChoices('move irondefense', 'move shadowsneak');
		let pokemon = battle.p1.active[0];
		let damage = pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp;
		pokemon.hp = pokemon.maxhp;
		battle.resetRNG();
		battle.makeChoices('move irondefense', 'move shadowsneak');
		assert.notStrictEqual(pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp, damage);
	});

	it('should be suppressed by Mold Breaker', function () {
		battle = common.createBattle();
		battle.setPlayer('p1', {team: [{species: 'Clefable', ability: 'unaware', moves: ['splash']}]});
		battle.setPlayer('p2', {team: [{species: 'Haxorus', ability: 'moldbreaker', moves: ['shadowsneak']}]});
		battle.makeChoices('move splash', 'move shadowsneak');
		let pokemon = battle.p1.active[0];
		let damage = pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp;
		battle.boost({atk: 2}, battle.p2.active[0]);
		pokemon.hp = pokemon.maxhp;
		battle.resetRNG();
		battle.makeChoices('move splash', 'move shadowsneak');
		assert.notStrictEqual(pokemon.maxhp - pokemon.hp, damage);
	});
});

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


John Forbes Nash Jr. was born in 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia.
His father was a chemical engineer from Texas and his mother, Virginia, was a native of Bluefield. Nash is famous for his pioneering contributions to Games Theory.
He originally developed his theory for his doctoral dissertation at Princeton when he was 21 years old. In 1994 he won the Nobel Prize in economics. John Forbes Nash Jr. is also remarkable for the fact that he made many math discoveries and taught brilliantly at MIT for eight years before being diagnosed with debilitating mental illness. His twenty-five year struggle with his condition has led to increased understanding of mental diseases by medical practitioners.


The diamond is well cut for sparkle. This is a dazzling bucket of crushed lemon ice. If I had to make one criticism of the diamond, it would be that it does not look large for it's weight. By no means does it look small- but its not a "spready" stone. This is reflected in the price. Stones of the same grade and size can go for up to $2000 more in our store.


1) The most common definition is used for any metal with a specific gravity greater than 5.0. This includes nickel, lead, zinc, mercury, arsenic, manganese, chromium, etc. These metals form water-insoluble salts that can accumulate in the environment. Of particular concern are the highly poisonous metals, such as lead, arsenic, and mercury.
2) Any metal with an atomic weight greater than sodium. This less common definition adds to the list some non-toxic metals such as aluminum, barium, strontium, titanium, etc.