"THE GHOST OF MICKEY BULLOCK" SPECS Prod Dates:   06/01 - 06/21/02 High Definition (24p)  Feature Film SonyAlta F900 HD Camera with Canon zoom lens - Provided by Jeff Blauvelt at HD Cinema Filmstocks:  Uh  .  .  .  . no. Lab:  I messed with the matrix a lot! Telecine: Downconversions done by the Director. UNIQUE ATTRIBUTES: Interesting 'character-driven' script. High Definition. Shooting in Phoenix - I can go home on the weekends.
	Introducing Michael Bulinski, a socially impaired musician with extraordinary talent, and uncommon hidden aspirations. Discovered and launched by a small record label, Michael is swept under the wing of its rising promoter, Britt Peterson and is transformed into "rock icon" Mickey Bullock! Thus begins his misguided and tragic journey into the tumultous center of the music industry. This feature marked Roderick's first venture into High Definition, with the Sony CineAlta F900 24p camera.
"I must admit" comments Roderick. "as I came on board the project, I had a hard time envisioning the film, largely due to my lack of experience with HD. I kept having these 'flat' video pictures in my head. I knew we wanted to go with a somewhat 'heightened realism' look and I knew how I would do that on film, but I was lost with HD. Finally, I thought about the first day's scenes and what I would do if I were shooting them on film and determined that there must be a way of accomplishing something similar with this very expensive camera."
	"I made some phone calls and got a crash course in adjusting the matrix. From that day on, I felt total creative freedom.! Every day became a fun exercise in starting with flat white and then seeing where we wanted to go for each scene."
An interesting test for the camera came when they spent a day out in the desert outside Phoenix. Roderick remembers the day as 'definitely in the triple digits'. "I had received many warnings about drifting back focus with the F900, but never once was that an issue - even when we spent the entire day out in the hot sun. We kept the camera shaded and the fan on maximum and never had a problem." The scenes on that day's schedule took place in three different seasons (see 3 pictures on the right), which became a fun test of the camera's versatility, recalls Roderick. "We started with blaring sun, saturated warmth and punchy contrast (in the matrix), then flew a double net over the actors and reducing the warmth and contrast a bit to go from Summer to Fall. Then we swapped out the double for a silk, cooled off the color brought the contrast down even more, and dressed the actors up for Winter. I'm really happy with how it sells!"
	Asked about some of his favorite shots and he'll come back to an oft repeated observation. "Once again, some of my favorite footage was 'lit' by nothing more than a 4'x4' floppy for negative fill!" (left)