Search Results for 'no'

[dmullenasc]

My suggestion is that before you try and get tricky by overexposing film and restoring it to normal in timing (film or digital), if you’re new to film, you really should learn what it looks like exposed and developed normally. If you want a digital camera reference image, you can match the ISO being used by the film. For example, shoot 500T film at ISO 500, in tungsten light (3200K), and set the digital camera to the same settings, same shutter speed too.

From a creative standpoint of shooting something, lighting and exposure should not be a science project. I think if you shoot some film and see the results, you’ll find that it is not as hard as you think as long as your base exposure for the subject is what you intend in terms of how bright or dark you want it to look.

[Roger Deakins]

I don’t understand the suggestion to look at the digital exposure and then add 1 or 2 stops to the film. That makes no sense. An exposure is an exposure. Of course, that will vary depending on the speed of the film verses that of the digital camera and you may prefer the look of a ‘thick negative’ but that you can only find out by personal experience.

[quijotesco24]

Before burning any film I would really try to learn how a lightmeter works, what exposure is and how expose for the desirable effect. Because at the end of the day you expose the same film or digital. So you can start practicing exposure with any digital camera.
It’s a very broad and intricate issue to explain it here in a post. So the DP that told you that was actually giving you a valid shortcut in case you don’t want to go to the long and hard way of learning all is needed to know how to expose.

 

[BlacksheepPictures]

Hi, i want to create a romantic bathtube scene for a horror movie. i do not want the audience to know that it is a horrormovie.  i thought about using candles and some ambient light or is there a better approach? maybe side light for the close ups motivated by the candles? or leave the candles ? I need a wideshot and close ups.

[jeff791107]

I would like to ask any of you who ever shot on film. I have no experience of that. Some DP suggest me put a digital camera side by side with film camera. Looking at the exposure on the digital one, and overexposed 1 to 2 stops on the film camera. That make sense but not my way of doing things. I like doing it more scientifically.

First of all, how to set the right aperture to get well-exposed image? What’s the readings that light meter told me? What will happen if I set the aperture the same as the reading on meter?

Second, different types of film perceive colors differently. Some may sensitive to blue, and some work well with red. Speaking of test, it sounds like I need to test every situation and every color to find out the characteristic of the film, which means a lot of work, and plenty of time. Is that the way how you test the film? Every time doing a movie, it takes the DP a lot of work to do. Any efficient way of doing the test?

Third, I think testing with the print is also necessary. However, is there any possible that the result will be different if I work with the same lab with same process? People said printing is a variable.

[dmullenasc]

I got the Smoque 1 and 2 filters years ago because smoke is dimensional, so when I would shoot inserts on a scene, like objects on a desk or wall, there was no smoke visible even though the room was hazed. So the filters allowed the inserts to maintain the look of the wider shots.  At some point, I had a few scenes where I couldn’t haze — one involved the windows being blown-out by an explosion — so I used the Smoque filter. It was convincing about half the time. One problem is that the filter needs a light source to hit it, like a window or a bright highlight, to really see the effect, but when someone passes between the window and the filter, the effect disappears momentarily, which is odd. So you have to think of it as an effect somewhere between using haze and using a Double Fog filter, it’s not a substitute for smoke… except to help match smoked shots with shots without smoke in a pinch.

[James]

The new LOOKING AT LIGHTING page featuring the lighting on EMPIRE OF LIGHT is now published. You can find it under the MEMBERS ONLY menu. You must be logged onto the site to view.

[James]

The new LOOKING AT LIGHTING page featuring the lighting on EMPIRE OF LIGHT is now published. You can find it under the MEMBERS ONLY menu. You must be logged onto the site to view.

[Stip]

I don’t use filters but have a tight shoot in lots of rather auster rooms on location. I’d usually add a little bit of very fine haze to at least have some atmosphere but there’s no crew/time to do it well and consistent enough, so I stumbled across Tiffen Smoque filters.

Has anyone experience with them, especially for daylight interiors?

It would guarantee consistency but I’m not sure it will behave predictable. I watched all videos online I could find and sometimes it looks surprisingly great, other times it can look really bad, especially when light sources directly hit the filter, so I’d be hesitant to use it for nighttime interiors. From what I’ve seen anything above Smoque 1 is too much anyways.

 

[Stip]

There are also affordable but great alternatives to the Astera Titans (Godox, Nanlite ect). You might also consider flex-LEDs (e.g. Falcon Eyes) as they are lightweight, larger/soft sources and great for travel or mounting at ceilings ect and come in Bi-color and/or full RGB.

A word in general, Chinese / Korean brands (e.g. Aputure, Nanlite, Godox, Falcon Eyes) have come a long way the past 10 years, the LED light emitter quality is already there and built quality finally also catches up with “western” quality, but at much lower prices, so if your budget is low it might not be a bad idea to look there.

[quijotesco24]

As a DP to own or not equipment… it’s the million dollar question.

My take is it depends greatly what are you offering. Are you a DP? Or a production company? As a DP all you really need are a lightmeter and maybe a set monitor or maybe not even those things. But as a production company you may need all the tools to do your job or some tools and you will rent the rest.
All of this is quite related to which level you are working. At higher (more budget) production level people/production companies don’t tend to own stuff. Everything comes from rentals. Why? One answer could be The simple fact of the maintenance of the tools is a high cost that very few production companies wants to deal with. Don’t underestimate how much cost to fix and keep in working order a set of lenses or a camera or even a set of lights.
The lower you go on budgets the more normal is for production companies and DPs to own stuff.
Being that said if you want to own stuff just make a list of the items you need and compare with your rental. If the tools you need pay for themselves in a short period and can keep generating revenue for you at every shoot then it make sense to buy/own.
If you are starting and you need to practice and bring as much stuff as possible for a shoot then I would say for a basic lighting package the basics would be few “soft” lights, few hard lights everything LED for simplicity. Lots of black material, lots of bounce material. Few 4x4s, 6x6s frames. Few stands. Basically look at your car/van and see what can you fit in there.
My personal opinion is that at lower budgets (no money, no crew) what you really want is to substract light not to add light. So to me I would prefer as much Molton black material as you can carry rather than start putting lights. Also the price of renting Molton is absurd compared to what it cost to buy and there is no maintenance cost associated. Same could be said about bounce material, fabrics are really a good investment. I could also start talking about all the LED technology and how fast it changes, so putting lots of money on fancy lights don’t makes sense in the actual market neither. But that’s my personal opinion.
Some of the Dps you mentioned have shot movies without a single film set light.

[Davinki]

Hi Roger, Im at a conundrum of what lights and gaffer equipment to own as i have inspirations that are all over the place I like to work off existing natural light but at the like Emmanuel Lubezki, Robby Müeller and Joshua James Richards, but at the same time be heavily stylized like Vittorio Storaro and Benoit Debie, and moody like Bradford Young and Rina Yang. What I’m trying to say is that practically, I want a lighting kit that would grant me full control but I want a small, minimal lighting package that would work with how mobile I like to be, so my thought was that I would defer the biggest bulk of the lighting to whatever rental house Im near and just rent the bigger units, but I would like to have lights with me in case that is impossible, but I don’t want to bear the brunt of carrying around large light sources with the little van space I would have. So I ask, what is a piece(s) of lighting equipment you would recommend a cinematographer to own themselves?

[Limbo]

Thank you for the reply!

If it were not for the fire balancing, do you think the shot is doable during the day time(with DI)?

I watched the river part again. The night-to-day transition was done when there is no sky involved(in the beginning part). Do you think the sky is crucial for the “magic ” of magic hour?

[Roger Deakins]

We shot most of the film under cloud cover but you have it wrong regarding this sequence. This was shot at magic hour as I needed not only the feeling of first light but I was balancing to the firelight sources. To have tried that balance during the day would not have worked. The particular shot pictured was rehearsed extensively during the day and that is no doubt where the lower image comes from.

When Scofield is in the river we did shoot that during the day and I remember the day distinctly, constantly studying the Dark Skies App and our long wait for the cloud cover it promised to arrive.

I should add that this was a shot that required very little adjustment in the DI. In fact, there were very few shots in the film that needed much adjustment in the DI.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Roger Deakins.

[Roger Deakins]

The filters I used on ‘BR 2049’ were purely to adjust color and not effecting the image in any other way and I do sometimes use an ND grad. The last time I used a filter such as a Pro Mist or a similar kind of diffusion was for a film in 1985 and, yes, I did regret doing so.