Search Results for 'no'

[jeff791107]

I would like to ask, is there still a need to use a light meter when shooting with a digital camera? There are many tools available now to measure exposure, such as false color, which uses the colors displayed on a monitor to determine exposure, and it seems more accurate than using a light meter. Using a light meter on a shoot feels unnecessary to me, just a matter of ceremony. But I don’t know if I’m oversimplifying things and if there are still situations where a light meter is necessary.

Also, I have another question about using a light meter. If I only have an incident light meter and I want to shoot flames or light bulbs that emit light themselves, how do I control the exposure? I can measure the exposure of the environment around the flame, but how do I measure the exposure of the flame itself and control the brightness deference between the flame and the environment as I desire? I’m very curious about how cinematographer dealt with this situation before reflective light meters were available.

[vaughan_dop]

My brief: Four teenagers in conversation at a table in a busy high school library, daytime. Lens preference is 50mm to capture the whole group from the POV of someone sitting several tables away. We’ll appreciate it’s a busy library, soft focus bookshelves in b/g of shots, but not see too much detail of the room. Mood needs to be positive, the lighting should feel realistic and believable, and the talent must be flatteringly lit.

The location: Ground floor library at the bottom of a lightwell (some soft daylight from windows in the roof of the mezzanine above). Slim horizontal windows in the library provide almost no additional natural light, and when the fluorescents are off the room is near in darkness. Furnishings are all dark/drab. There’s an added weird softlight being provided by a retro tungsten light fitting hanging in the centre of the room.

My problem: If I were shooting a gritty drama about bullying in an urban school, I’d not change much here… but this location needs to look far more inviting and friendly! So, my challenge is how to attractively light the four teens at the table without looking like the scene is taking place in a pool of artificial film light in a room with an ugly mix of other conflicting light sources. NB: I have full access to the mezzanine level above and can clamp lighting to the railings.

My available kit: 2x Amaran 200D with softboxes, Arri M8 HMI, KinoFlo 4-Bank, 1ft flexible LED flyball and boom, pair of old Arri 300, a random 650w fresnel, Arri 2K blonde, two 4×4 skylite bounce kits, plenty of correction gels and diff etc.

Really interested to hear how anyone else might approach this one.

[dmullenasc]

Keep in mind that ENR was a print process – it involved adding b&w developer tanks to the FCP print processing line so that after the bleach step was skipped, a percentage of silver could be permanently developed and left in the print.  For ECN processing (camera negative, intermediates) your only option was skip bleach or partial skip bleach.

The result when silver was left in a print was: (1) deeper blacks than the D-Max of the print stock, (2) less shadow detail due to increased contrast in the shadows, (3) darker colors that were somewhat desaturated from the addition of black silver in the dyes, (4) increase graininess in the print due to silver grains being added to the color dye clouds.

So this is really a color-correction for display / release format issue, not a sensor issue.

Sure, you can increase the contrast of the shadows and decrease the saturation using a LUT or basic DIT adjustments using ASC-CDL values for the display, the dailies, etc. As for the increase in graininess, you either have to live with just using a higher ISO for noise as a grain substitute — or use a film grain software in post, but then it probably would be added in the final color-correction, not in dailies or seen on set.

The last item, the increase in black levels beyond what is normally possible for a 35mm release print, that’s difficult to control, your only hope is to get the movie shown using laser projection (which is becoming more commonplace) and accepting that black level as a base.

Silver retention done to camera negative stocks had a somewhat different look than ENR.  Leaving silver in a negative increases density and contrast in the highlights, not the shadows, since that’s where the silver is mostly formed. So highlights get hotter rather than shadows getting blacker. Color is desaturated from the addition of black silver. Graininess is heavier than when done to the print for the simple fact that grains in camera negative stocks are larger than on intermediate and print stocks, since those have a very low ASA.

[umbrella]

I know this is fairly common practice but there are some movies I just can’t imagine this is done for, replacing the sky with one that is in exposure, or adding clouds, etc.

Just curious what the common consensus is among actual working DPs and not YouTube professionals.

[josephwise]

Hey Roger,

I’ve been looking at this still for quite some time as I am hoping to recreate this quality and fall off in a similar setting for a project I am shooting. I know that you have in depth overheads in the lighting section of the website however to what I understand, it seems to break down how you lit the space, the gorge, and the background. However, I am curious to know how you lit the closeup here. It looks like a cove but not sure? Did you place negative if any? What source was used for your back light? Were your units going through any gels besides your CTB?

 

Hope to hear from you soon!

 

Best,

 

Joseph Wise

[cruz1]

First off I hope everyone is having a great day, and to the Deakins team I ask how do you keep a consistent feel and look to a film? I can see a still frame from any of your movies and I know where it’s from. I know if it’s from Prisoners, Sicario, 1917, etc. I’m just curious on how you do it especially with all the different lighting setups you use. I have a hard time getting a consistent look. Especially in different locations for the same project.  I use the same colors schemes with wardrobe set design and things of that nature, however I can hardly ever get consistent lighting and most importably feel from location to location.

 

Thank you for your time.

[Stip]

Clint Eastwood often says “Let’s not overthink things” on set.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves trying to do it perfect.  Reading your text, I think you already ask the right questions and that’s all you really need in my opinion. Keep asking about content, keep questioning and talk to the director. You’ll develop your own intuition over time. But try not to put too much pressure on yourself. You are not the only one responsible for a scene’s emotion and as David said, sometimes you shouldn’t even attempt to insert some.

” Sometimes the visuals can be a counterpoint to the emotions of a scene, like when a character gets bad news on a perfect spring day surrounded by nature.”

‘Funny Games’ (like basically any Michael Haneke film) is a good example.

‘Se7en’ is another great example. For the first 3/4 of the movie, it always rains (even in interior scenes, you always hear rain). From the moment Kevin Spacey steps out of the cab to turn himself in, the sun starts to come out, and by the time of the barbarous finale in the desert, the nicest, most romantic sundown hits Pitt, Freeman and Spacey.

[dmullenasc]

You develop your own personal language based on your own emotional responses to light and color. I recall interviews with both John Boorman and Ingmar Bergman stating that they found the bright sunshine of California to be “oppressive” (of course they were also probably channeling their feelings towards Hollywood studios). Boorman said he found cold colors like blue to be “relaxing”. So there are limits to ascribing universal values to things like light and color.
Also keep in mind that even if your guide is the script, it’s not always necessary to mimic the emotions of a scene visually, what in literature is called “pathetic fallacy.” Sometimes the visuals can be a counterpoint to the emotions of a scene, like when a character gets bad news on a perfect spring day surrounded by nature.

[bcortesl]

I hope you can understand this message without any problem since my English is limited and I have to use translators.

In order to become a better DOP, I have been carrying around questions that I ask myself about the material I am reading and studying.

I can’t recall if I read or saw one of your interviews, Roger, but you made a lot of mention of the need to educate oneself on the emotional effects of light and the sensitivity of it.

This simple sentence made my head explode. I start from the place of how to give an emotion to light. Is it already a known fact in some way? Or is the DP the one that gives it to the scene to work on as requested?

As I write these words, this example that is more culturally internalized comes to mind, that blue gives the sensation of cold and orange warm. It seems somewhat indisputable given that it is replicated in nature.

A filtered light, a bounced light, or a light that has been bounced and filtered three times already has a fall and a certain weight, but does that in and of itself carry an emotional charge? Would it be worthwhile to inquire where in nature we would find this type of light with that fall and that density to give it a sensation or emotion, using the prior example of a warm-cold light as an example? Should we resignify light or stick with a universal or cultural connotation? Or maybe a little of both?

Should I make a MEANING of quality light by asking myself “what happens in this scene”?

Luego de preguntarme “qué sucede en la escena”, eso determina una cualidad en la luz? Should I add a MEANING of quality light

I’m thinking, a SENSE should be built to any light that is worked by asking “what happens in this scene”? If, for example, in a scene we must see “a character who enters his house and is really tired, overwhelmed by the conflicts he is experiencing” it will be worth using a large light, bounced and filtered 3 times to give the scene the same charge and emotional sensation that the character is going through emotionally and whether the public perceives it consciously or unconsciously?
It is that in this last case it is we as DP who are signifying the light with the scene. It could be a way of enhancing, emphasizing, underlining the background of the scene so that the public can perceive it.

I consider this so that not everything is merely aesthetic and to the taste of each one. Or like today that one sees LED tubes in each shot, since it is what is in fashion commercially… I want to be able to reflect on this with you and see that it has a function of enhancing the story, what is the story asking for? .

Well, we can also take this to color, although there are more adventurous authors who have already given meaning to each color, which would be interesting to see if conventions can be challenged.

All teh best!

[Max A.]

Hello Mr. Deakins and all the people over this fantastic forum.
I hope you Mr. Deakins and Mrs. James are well. I know you are very busy with the ‘By Ways’ tour, and I’m so happy for you because your photographs are traveling around the world and you totally deserve this acknowledgment for your art and career.

I would like to ask you, if it is possible and if you have time to answer me, a question about the famous scene of the courtroom in ‘True Grit’.
I know the scene was often discussed in the past, and I saved a lot of info about your choice of lighting for the scene. Just yesterday searching around Google, I found an article of that scene with a scheme of yours, so I saw that you had also a ceiling rig with some blondes above the court area arranged separately and not in a row, this “detail” had escaped me during these years of forums and I want to ask you the technical function of that rig. Did you use the rig to bounce lamps from the ceiling into bounce cards on the floor, or did you use those lamps “directly” to highlight some parts of the room or some character in particular?
Knowing the scene, I don’t see any highlight on a specific spot so I would think that you used the rig and the lamps to bounce.
If so, my (maybe silly) question is, why you didn’t use stands for the lamps to bounce?
I ask you this question to learn, and maybe improve a sort of my workflow because maybe my initial idea would be to use stands on the floor for the lamps, but maybe I would create a messy set with a lot of stands.

As always I want to thank you for your time and your availability. I apologize if the question was already discussed but I’ve missed the post, and apologize for my bad English.

I wish you a peaceful Sunday,
Max.

 

[Jacob W.]

Is anyone familiar with the process of ‘Film Tinting’ – shooting Black and White film stock and then dying the film after developing it – most notably seen in the 60’s Czech western ‘Lemonade Joe’.

I’m planning on recreating this with 16mm B/W film – I’ve been told by one of the only B/W developing labs in the US (ColorLab) that a company in Prague still does this process (funny the secret must have been kept in lock and key in Czech)

Just curious. I’ve tried to travel down the rabbit hole to reach out to this company but wanted to query the forum for all of it’s depth and knowledge on this process.

[Gustavo Perez]

I hadn’t yet thought of that for some reason (reading user manuals). I’ve done that with cameras but in my [not so] infinite wisdom didn’t think to read the manuals for other systems.

[Davinki]

Reading your answer made me realize that I wasn’t following my own ethos of having a versatile light as the reason I was looking at using a light was that I wanted something to double as a key when not in sun, but that’s limited and now I found a 1.6kw hmi better in my price range that claims to be the equivalent of 6kw of tungsten light but can also outright use 2kw tungsten bulbs, now could either of these work for augmenting daylight as a key light just off camera in a wide shot?

[Roger Deakins]

As I said, it depends on the width of your shot. In full sunlight, a red head held a few feet away from a face would fill in shadows in the same way as a sun gun but why would you not use a bounce in that situation? I am sure that both Chivo and Josh Richards would prefer to use a large soft reflector than a small bright light however powerful that might be. I would also think it rare for either cinematographer to regularly use any additional light when shooting exteriors.

[Ganesh Venkatesh]

Hi Master Roger,

while shooting long takes, we are so carefully about the time of each composition in that shot. we can’t change that in editing.
if the time is less, the audience got confused & not going to get those information in the shot.
if the time is more, the audience got bored.

I recently shot a short film. I don’t know the audience got it or not.

how to overcome this?

link to my short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX9aJ1VL14M

thank you