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[Roger Deakins]

It is a shame that there is no longer the softer 20o0ASA stock. My past experience led me to shoot on a tungsten balanced stock with an 85 correction rather than a daylight stock. I felt the daylight stocks a little over-saturated and had that bit more contrast, but I am talking of my experience a while ago now.

Hard to give advice as to exposure as it would depend a lot on whether you are shooting on a beach or amongst dense foliage! I have overexposed and underdeveloped in the past but I would not recommend doing it today unless you have great confidence in your lab! Besides, it seems like complicating your task without a vast amount of reward.

I think you should run a test to be sure which you yourself prefer and to give yourself a little more confidence.

[Roger Deakins]

I used hexagonal soft boxes that were supplied with the Fiilex lamps and come with a variety of diffusion. I had a total of 5 lamps with these soft attachments and either use a line of 3 or of 5. I would usually dim the outside units more than the center of the line and I might add warmth to these as well. In this way I was, to some degree, replicating bounced light as if off a series of 4′ x 4′ cloths. As I said before, using the Fiilex with the soft boxes attached was a much more efficient way to light and served its purpose on ‘Empire of Light’.

The easy color adjustment on the lamps was a big bonus as our key set, the theater lobby, was built on location and facing out across the seafront. Therefore I was balancing my lighting to the ever changing temperature of the daylight. I wouldn’t say this use of LEDs is now my preferred way to light but it certainly suited the conditions on this particular project.

[Max A.]

Hello Mr. Deakins, I hope everything goes well for you and Mrs. James.
I found interesting this topic from Simon and a lot of interesting about your thought on the LED “new” workflow that you used on ‘EoL’.

Since in the past, you felt that even if you use light through a thick diffusion you always prefer to bounce light in order to avoid (in some cases) the “projected” effect, in this case, was it a balanced choice between time consuming and final result?

Did you use square shape softboxes in order to match the shape of the 4X4 reflectors? And last question (always keeping in mind the relationship of the size of the light source to the subject for what kind of softness you wanted to achieve) did you use 4-foot size softboxes (always to match the size to what you used usually for bounce)?

Fillex LED’s are really great in terms of spectrum and solidity, of course, those are not cheap but the quality has its price.

Can’t wait to see ‘EOL’! Here in Italy will be in the theatre on the 23 Feb. But I see your interview on ‘BSC’ with some schemes and I already have something like 1000 questions LOL.

I wish you a peaceful day and thank you always for your kindness and availability.
Max.

[ClairePie]

Hello Roger, James and people on this forum,

Thank you for offering a second season to the Team Deakins podcast! This is a real pleasure to listen!

I am shooting in a few weeks a project in 16mm and I am seeking for advice when shooting in direct sunlight. This project will be happening on a Caribbean beach, an environment I know little about. I will shoot either on 200T or 250D. I won’t have the means to control / diffuse the sun light (only for close ups). I also don’t know in which measure I will be able to choose the best time of day to shoot so I want to prepare for the worst.

I was wondering if there is any advice you can provide notably with shooting on film in such environment: maybe by pushing or pulling process and, in this case, is 200T better? What are the things to be particularly attentive to in order to protect highlight but also, and perhaps more, shadows? I have shot a few time with 250D and know how well it handle the highlight but I never shot in this environment. 🙂

Thanks in advance!

[simoncarlkoeber]

Thank you, Roger, that is very useful information. I read the AC article about Empire of Light and I was curious about exactly those kind of things.
In the AC article it is mentioned that you used 5-6 of those Fiilex LEDs with softboxes but that u dimmed them down on the edges to create a soft wrap. With edges, do you mean the side that is facing away from the key side, as you do with your famous “cove lighting”? And I was wondering, did you also change the color temperature when you dimmed the Fiilex down, to mimic the effect of dimming a Tweenie maybe? So that the fill side gets a very nice warmer “shadow”/fill, ofc when talking about 3200K scenes?

And it is very good to know that you used the Astera Bulbs for the ring light because I was already wondering how you created a ring light out of the Tubes. 😉 I didn’t even know that there exist bulbs as well.

I wish you a nice day!

[Roger Deakins]

It was the Fiilex LED light that I found came close to a conventional 1K. There was only the one wattage available in the UK at the time we shot ‘Empire’ but the same light now comes in a series of three. Of course, the advantage of this lamp is that it provides a full color range without a need for gels but I found it particularly useful as an open face with a soft box attached to the front. Using a series of lamps with soft boxes attached I found I did bounce less than I might have done in similar situations on previous films. I felt this technique produced a similar effect to bouncing off a series of 4′ x 4′ reflectors while being more adaptable for the spaces and situations I was working in.

The Astera range is very useful and we used a large number of both the tubes and bulbs. For one interior we created a series of large rings of bulbs, just as I have done in the past for films like ‘A Serious Man’ for instance, but the advantage here was that I could adjust the color from one scene to another.

The panel lights are useful, especially when creating a large soft source to project through a window either on stage or on location. The technique of using multiple sources to create one large soft source is something I have always used but the latest LED lights make things easier and definitely a little more flexible.

[Radski]

I’d love to know which light you felt came closet to a 1K conventional light Roger?

I also wonder if using LEDs has affected how you shoot interiors, with panels and Asteras being softer than conventional lights, do you find yourself bouncing light less? I imagine size and portability influence these choices too.

Thank you

[Stip]

● Yes, although it’s a bit different than experiencing an ‘established’ set.

● Depends on the role. For any creative position I’d exclusively look at their work. Other than that, enthusiasms and a good personality. A good personality has much more influence on your career than you might think.

● I don’t know but the majority of people I work with didn’t attend film school.

[bscofano88]

Hello Team Deakins and forum members,

I have recently listened to Monaya Abel’s episode of the podcast and it caught my attention how – apparently – being in film school is a great way to gain expertise, by both building a network and working on your colleagues shorts.

Not being to film school, I feel a bit “stuck” on this aspect. I would deeply appreciate having more set experience, getting my hands dirty, but I am usually disregard for the position I apply for being inexperienced. Tricky, right? I need experience to have more experience…

I would appreciate any inputs from the community, mostly thinking about:

• Is self producing a great way to get this much needed expertise?
• When hiring a young professional, what do you usually look for?
• Is it necessary to be in film school to get trainee/apprentice positions in the US and Europe?

Thanks in advance for all replies, I honestly appreciate it.

[Stip]

Thanks for the book tips Quadra, very interested in the first one!

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen ‘Stalingrad’ but I remember that I liked it.

To me the best German production until today is ‘Das Boot’ (1981) – of course another WW2 film, but genuine in it’s approach and realization, as they shot it in an actual submarine. (Recently an epsisodic remake was done and it lacked any and all of what made Das Boot so good)

[Stip]

Oh, I agree! I think the consequences you refer to are why George F. Kennan called WW1 “the great seminal catastrophe of this century”. I recently started refreshing my limited school knowledge about that complex, incredibly smoldering time from  Versaille to WW2 and there’s so much substance and stories for films to be found.

[Roger Deakins]

In the case of ‘The Company Men’, I would say the intended ‘look’ would have been between the two versions posted. The Blue Ray looks more natural but that may only be in comparison to the other, which looks lifeless. There may be a master of a film, whether from a DI or a tape transfer, but we all know every monitor is slightly different and every eye also.

[Stip]

Good to know.

As a German, I have a difficult relationship with my country’s film industry (decade long nepotism of public film funds and a lack of identity outside WW2 and Stasi/GDR themes are parts of the problem).

“All Quite On The Western Front” is one of the better films but I can’t help but remain critical. I didn’t like the changes in story compared to the original, as they added nothing and didn’t work for me. And the cinematography was inspired a little too much by others for my taste (a typical treat of German productions that try to do “Hollywood”); some night/fire/silhouette scenes were basically copied from “1917” in my opinion.

I may react too harsh though given my personal stance.

[dmullenasc]

Yes, but “Shawshank Redemption” was 1994 so there wasn’t a D.I. done originally. What I’m saying is that if “The Company Men” (2010) went through a D.I., there already exists a color-corrected digital master… so why would anyone retime it again for new video masters?  Even if it was a 2K D.I. master from 2010 and now had to be uprezzed to UHD/4K, there’s no reason to change the colors. The only reason I can think of to spend the time re-coloring the whole movie would be if an HDR version was requested.

[James]

We’ve seen this before on several of our movies. For instance, one night we decided to watch Shawshank Redemption and could not watch the version on Amazon. I made many phone calls in the following weeks and happily, they remastered the title. Hopefully, that’s what is showing now on Amazon – but we’re too scared to check! 🙂  It’s really hard when you realize your work is being shown without the timing that you did. There are so many different versions of deliverables that are coming out these days and sometimes they don’t go back to the director or DP for reference. It’s heartbreaking.