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[dilljib]

I apologize if any offense was taken. This was not my intention. I do not mean to suggest that your craft could or should be reduced to an instagram filter that I can download and magically create images that take a career of dedication to create.

I do think there is a common denominator across those three projects, which is that they all successfully support the story, themes, and characters with their individual looks. However, I would not dare say that they look the same. As I said before, I think the consistent descriptor across all your images is “full” and my intention was to dig deep into this one element of the many that contribute.

I did not preface my question with everything else I spend my time researching, learning, and practicing like composition, exposure, lighting, design, and color; but I am focused on those things in proportion to their significance for sure: garbage in, garbage out. Someone described the color grade as a spit shine – which I appreciate as a car guy. A spit shine on a rusted car is useless. I’m not suggesting it’s the most important or even a large component of the end product, but it (LUTs and color grading generally) does have an effect on the final product, and therefore I would like to understand it to its fullest. Perhaps I can restate my question as: Do you have foundational elements that you carry with you to every DI for every project or is every element reconsidered from zero per project? If you do carry tenants from project to project, what are your guiding principals regarding contrast, shadows, mid tones, highlights, and saturation?

Thank you very much for your time and sharing your wisdom.

[gabj3]

Hello!

I believe your question is rather open-ended and would be better answered by browsing the forums, maybe reading cinematography theory and practice, reading the looking at lighting page, and then practising!

 

In terms of your BMD micro-studio, the early BMD cameras had quite a strong noise pattern at any significant digital gain, so I would recommend rating low!

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Gabriel Devereux - Engineer

[dmullenasc]

Sure, there are differences in color rendition from using bi-color, RGB, RGBW, etc. LEDs and tungsten light — you can see that by looking at spectrum chart, the cheaper LEDs have a “spikey” RGB plot.  As they add more color LEDs outside of RGB, they fill in some of the gaps and create a smoother range.  On skin tones, you may see the effect of less saturation from LEDs or too much saturation in some wavelength range (some lean towards adding too much magenta to skin for example).  When a source light is not continuous-spectrum enough, you lose some color complexity and richness — that can lead to a somewhat blander “band-aid tan/pink” rendition in Caucasian skin for example. But as I said, LEDs are getting better all the time in addressing this.

Practically-speaking, sure, LEDs are far too useful to be ignored and most of the time, the effect on skin tones is not noticed unless one does a side-by-side comparison with tungsten.

Tim Kang does a lot of research into this:

[satin]

Also, this is not a question just for Mr. Deakins I would like to know the opinion of a lot of people from this forum please. Thank you, very much

[satin]

<p style=”text-align: center;”>Is there really any differences between lighting things with tungsten than LED? I’ve been said that tungsten is better for lighting skin, but is it truly a great advantage over LED? Also tungsten could get very hot in some interiors. Probably I will sound ignorant, but wouldn’t it be better to always use LED? Due to it’s practicallity</p>

[Roger Deakins]

I don’t remember using a LUT on Jesse James or No Country for Old Men. Of course, I didn’t because I was shooting on film. Was the look of 1917 any different? Did the LUT make it look like it did?

[ben_r_05]

Hello,

I am a university student currently studying Film production in the UK; I was wondering if anyone would be able to help. I am trying to recreate the lighting for the opening corridor shot of Skyfall for an assignment. Recreating the lighting effect is the focus of the assignment so I thought I’d drop a message in here asking about what equipment was used for the sequence and if it would be at all possible to look at a floor plan. If not I of course understand. I have a range of hard/soft lights which can be booked out so I’m hoping with some more information about what was on-set I’ll be able to make an informed decision on which lights to use.

Any help at all would be appreciated,

Thanks,

Ben

[dmullenasc]

The show LUT is a personal choice. You need a basic conversion from log gamma to a display gamma (Rec.709 or P3) just to view the material with something close to a normal contrast.

But how far you tweak that from the standard is up to you, your taste, and the look desired for the project. Ultimately the LUT is just for monitoring on set and for generating dailies — you’re going to have total freedom to change things in the final grade if necessary.

Lighting should be a creative act more than a technical one. If you’re worried about working too close to the noise floor, then select a lower base ISO. If you want to light for more contrast, darker shadows, or a deeper stop, etc. then light for that because that’s the look you want, not because of some technical reason like wanting to stay above the noise floor. Your base ISO should keep you from getting too much noise unless you try lifting the shadows for more detail in post. So don’t do that, light for the amount of shadow detail you want.

[dilljib]

I can’t speak for the other user who commented, but I definitely appreciate what you’re saying David. I asked the question as I did, because I’m curious what the direction to a colorist is for creating a show LUT. There must be value in creating one, otherwise everyone would use the standard 709 LUT, so I’m curious what are the details of those conversations and how it pushes the image in a different direction from 709. And, regarding my lighting question, I’m deeply interested in light levels and exposing to get the image out of the noise floor – especially because I feel like there are trends these days of shooting with “only existing light” and it just doesn’t seem to me that that is actually how the masters of our craft operate.

[dilljib]

Hi Roger,

Across your films if I had to describe your images, I would consistently use the word “full”. You appear to use the entire capacity of the sensor from darks to lights, and fill out every crevice it has to offer. No one else seems capable of creating images quite like this. This of course comes from your years of expertise and wonderful taste, but I wonder if you could go into detail about your approach in two specific areas: general light level and show LUT. I find that at certain times in ones journey they internally decide what is right and what is wrong regarding certain techniques and these become the pillars of their decision making and ultimately produce their unique aesthetics.

1. After reviewing many of your in depth summaries (Look at Lighting), it does seem that you like to work with a general light level that is higher than what would be there naturally – but of course shaping it to look appropriate for the subject matter. I’m curious if [that’s true and, if so] you adhere to a general principal around this, and what that might be?

2. What are your guiding principals for developing a show LUT? What are you looking for in contrast, darks, lights, saturation? I would find it incredibly fascinating to see an image of yours with your show LUT (and no further grading) next to the same image with a standard LogC to REC709 LUT.

Thank you

[satin]

Hello! I am a 17 year old highschool student living in Mexico. Even though I have a lot of interests in movies, and I by myself want to study cinematography on film school, I don’t know a lot about lighting. Thanks to god my fathers were able to give me a blackmagic micro studio, super lucky. And I would like to use it to learn cinematography, also experiment a lot with it.

Lighting is very important in this process of cinematography, so I would like to ask about ways of lighting faces and spaces with high contrast and depth. With basic lighting equipment. Also books about film lighting or sources.

Thank you very much for having read this message!!

[Vasu]

Thanks Master.  I recently shot a scene where i lit my wides with lights through diffusion may be double diffused for soft light & shadows. For close ups & mid shots i did bounce through muslin. The softness & wrapping of light is very smooth in bounce but while cutting through wides i can clearly the variation in lighting & contrast. I Was not happy with my work. Can You share some insights for lighting up the wide shots through bounce lighting & still not losing the over all contrast.

Thanks master.

[Roger Deakins]

HMIs are an alternative solution. And there are now plenty of Fresnel style LED lights that can run at a daylight setting, a tungsten setting or anywhere in between. Yes, you can gel a tungsten source but, if you mix it with other sources, the color never seems quite right to me.

[benja]

 

Hi Roger,

I’ve seen a lot of behind-the-scenes footage of your cove lighting on medium shots but I did’t quite understand how you achieve the same effect on wide shots on the same scene. Do you simply put the light further and add bottomers and toppers? And wouldnt that make the foreground look overly illuminated?

I also have a second question nowadays, with LED lights, would you consider using two LED fixtures in a cove shape without egg crates to achieve the same result?

 

[ravikantrai]

It’s hard to say anything but AI for now feels like we find ourselves in the year 1998 or something like that. Half the stuff being talked about is blown out of proportion and the other half has some kernel of truth to it. And then the 90s are over, the dot com bubble bursts. That part’s yet to happen with AI, but as of now, most of what we’ve been seeing even in the last two full years, is what they call “AI slop”. Just horrendous examples of even the best AI video generation examples.

For example, there was a footage that you can find online on youtube, where someone tried to create a full “scene” of someone running away after a heist, in a car. From start to end, other than the visuals being just plain bad and all over the place, it failed to get anything right in terms of continuity of location and even the “actor’s” face. I know, they say “don’t worry, this is the worst it will ever be”. But…even if it got ALL of it right in the future. It still lacks something very unique to you and I. Sentience/consciousness. And as long as that’s missing, it’ll always fall short somewhere.