<span style="font-family: monospace;"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="3">To me "plan ahead" is what I am doing for a possible feature shoot-- one that starts in August 2010.<br>
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</font><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="3">Six weeks before film is to roll is not planning ahead, it's working from your plan or being lost because it is already too lage for what you are doing. I have been stuck running numbers instead of getting to go out and hit the craft services tables, so I tend to see things differently. I'm not a camera operator, per se, I'm stuck in being the old guy on set yelling at the director and DP because the point of focus varies from take to take in the last set of footage, and that is NOT acceptable for the quality levels demanded of a feature. If "dead center" of the depth of field-- the true "point of focus" in this case-- is the front corner of the coffee table, and the two girls playing on the floor in front of it are barely in "acceptable DOF" while the woman and man talking while sitting on the sofa behind the coffee table are in acceptable focus with the old woman walking up behind them walks into and stops "barely in acceptable focus" that shot has to be that way EACH and every take, no ifs, no ands, no buts, it has to be absolutely dead on that way. </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br>
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Details of how you shoot are set up in planning ahead, and that means AHEAD, not 'soon' or fairly soon.<br>
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One fine point, which several people have pointed out, is that actually because of the post issues and set up fees for 2 perf transfer it may be cheaper "bottom line" to shoot four instead of two. The optical DI transfer of a two perf and then DI print to anamorphic projection print-- and that is where a two perf image heads-- that is NOT cheap.<br>
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Never shoot two "new" items at once.<br>
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A new camera.<br>
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A new location.<br>
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A new format.<br>
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A new post process.<br>
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A new crew.<br>
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Pick one, but never two at once.<br>
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,<br>
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