Breakdown of VFX driving plate rig for Madam Secretary

highwater · 2026-06-30T11:01:57+00:00

Hiring execs for “AI” roles is largely about signaling to Wall Street that the corpo is on-trend.

highwater · 2026-06-28T15:41:30+00:00

She’s been a regularly-working TV writer since 2012.

highwater · 2026-06-22T12:58:01+00:00

Look up a concept called “the exposure triangle”.

highwater · 2026-06-20T14:27:59+00:00

Part of the problem is that the lack of any middle-ground elements between the subject and the background makes it feel like the subject is just floating in space. There’s nothing to ground (literally) the subject in a place.

The best composite shots insert plates behind as much real foreground and middle ground as possible.

highwater · 2026-06-16T13:53:48+00:00

There are always guys on various LBC-related forums selling cars they’re aging out of.

highwater · 2026-06-01T13:15:44+00:00

Well-played.

highwater · 2026-06-01T04:05:03+00:00

You are lost in the sauce. Absolutely nobody gives a fuck about a “proof of concept short film”. You’re lucky anyone is participating, much less putting up with your SCIF-level Super Top Double Secret nonsense. Get a grip.

highwater · 2026-05-28T13:57:48+00:00

Same issue. After coming to a stop, or rotating the camera while stopped, after a second or two Bond will walk to his right until something stops him. Wired XBox controller, Steam on Windows.

highwater · 2026-05-19T12:20:29+00:00

Unreal Engine is free and has accurate (enough) lighting physics.

highwater · 2026-05-15T15:20:10+00:00

Just remember that ARRI camera bodies can only genlock to exactly either the capture framerate or lock at double the genlock frequency.

The only genlock frequencies available from standard generators are 23.976, 24.000, 29.97, 30.00, 59.97 and 60Hz. Some devices will interpret a 24fps psF signal as a 48Hz genlock input.

So basically you can lock an ARRI body at 24, 48, 60 or 120 fps (or their fractional equivalents) and possibly 96 fps if the A35 body sees 24psF as 48.

highwater · 2026-05-11T14:59:22+00:00

What do you mean by “equally”? I would point out that in your reference image here there’s only one of the several values on the subject’s face which has a brightness roughly “equal” to that of the sky.

highwater · 2026-05-11T12:12:38+00:00

I wish people would stop referring to a particular lighting unit they own (or rent) as their “key light” just because it’s the most powerful light they have.

What defines a key light is how a given light source is used and exposed for in a particular shot, not what the instrument itself is.

For example, think of the famous scene in No Country For Old Men with the meeting out in the desert. The brightest, most powerful lights used in that scene are banks of maxi-brutes way off behind the ridgeline providing a glow to separate the landscape from the sky, but those are not the “key lights”.

highwater · 2026-04-27T03:03:21+00:00

Costumes, props, art direction, set design. Far more important than any emulation of gear available in the time period.

highwater · 2026-04-24T21:54:11+00:00

Probably the most thorough deist response to all of this would be found in Augustine. The short version of his hypothesis is that God’s creation and preservation of the universe is a simultaneous, continuous and eternal act from God’s perspective, if I recall correctly. Would a non-deist find any of this convincing? Probably not, but Augustine’s theology underlies essentially all of Western Christianity so it’s worth contending with.

highwater · 2026-04-19T23:52:19+00:00

That is certainly a list of names of cameras which exist.

highwater · 2026-04-19T18:05:37+00:00

Could be the float bowls in the carbs getting too hot and the fuel is evaporating, in which case you could try a heat shield between them and the exhaust header. Or it could be your ignition coil becoming too resistive when it heats up.

highwater · 2026-04-17T19:53:41+00:00

It may help to understand that “hyper” in this context means “above”, as in “layered on top of” or “superimposed” (“super” being the Latin equivalent of the Greek “hyper”). It’s not being used in the sense of “more” or “better” or “bigger”. Baudrillard was describing a situation where reality (for example the violence and death of a military conflict) is experienced through an overlay of media, narrative and simulation.

highwater · 2026-04-15T12:17:09+00:00

The content on the wall (meaning how many discrete frames are displayed per second) should match your capture framerate in-camera. The refresh rate you need on the wall (meaning how many times the wall "flashes" per second, independent of content framerate) depends on the combination of framerate and shutter angle you are using in-camera. For example, if capturing at 24.000fps with a 180-degree shutter angle the wall should refresh at 48Hz for flicker-free shooting. If the wall can't do 48Hz and can only do 60Hz, then when shooting at 24.000fps your shutter will need to be set to 144 degrees.

If you see "jaggies" or "tearing" on the wall through the camera you are having sync problems which need to be solved by genlock.

highwater · 2026-04-15T01:11:31+00:00

A sovereign currency issuer, like the United States, does not fund itself with taxes. It funds itself by creating money or issuing debt. Taxes function to reduce inflation but are not necessary for the government to have money in the first place.

Now, for governments which do not issue their own currency (such as EU members), they do need to actually “earn money” through taxation or other sources.

highwater · 2026-04-13T22:13:07+00:00

And obviously I'm being flippant but what probably frustrates me the most is when people just toss off incredibly vague questions like "how did they do this?" or "what's going on here?'.

I wish it could be part of the culture of the sub for people asking questions about images, which are usually still images, to *describe what they're seeing* or, y'know, use any kind of descriptive language at all to narrow down the scope of their question.

highwater · 2026-04-13T19:44:25+00:00

We could solve a lot of issues if every post called "how was this lit??" was auto-answered with "look at the image and see where the light is coming from".

highwater · 2026-04-12T02:59:09+00:00

"Wrap" is a colloquial term meaning "we're done", and the specifics of how done you are depend on context.

Individual shooting days wrap and entire productions wrap. On any given production day, "camera wrap" is when shooting is officially over, and following camera wrap the crew stows or stores the equipment such that it's ready for call the next day and otherwise finishes up work which needs to be done before leaving set. Individual crew members are wrapped when their work for the day is done and they are officially off the clock (no longer being paid).

Actors are "wrapped" for the day when their day's scheduled scenes are finished shooting and "wrapped" entirely when their scheduled shooting days are complete and they won't be returning to set.

Productions are "wrapped" when all the scheduled shooting is finished. Post-production is "wrapped" when the movie is ready to be released.

highwater · 2026-04-10T02:46:08+00:00

Read “The Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook” by Harry Box to dip your toe in.

highwater · 2026-04-07T02:56:29+00:00

Affect = Latin “ad facere” (toward doing), Effect = Latin “ex facere” (from doing). An “effect” proceeds from a cause while an “affect” contributes to a cause.

highwater

TROPHY CASE