Search Results for 'no'

[Dmitriy.Nedria]

Hi, Inaki

 

I’m not a sir Roger. But from my experience, I could say another bulb is hidden behind that table lamp to reduce contrast. You can use different techniques to minimize the flair: from masking tape to dulling spray and black spray paint. Bare bulb and frosted bulb also works differently.

 

[ThompsonDP]

Oh wow! I’ve seen a lot of DIY steadicams but a shoulder rig! I might have to try that myself.  I’m making a dolly right now out of a wooden plank on wheels that I’ll stick a pole on with a tripod screw.

Michael

[Johannes Rauscher]

As I read your text, I remembered my first setups. They were pretty bad. I only had my father’s Canon 600d/t3i at the time. That’s why I built a steadycam out of plastic tubes, hinges and heavy screws (as counterweights). Did it work? Not really, but it motivated me to keep making films and I learned what opportunities a steadycam offers. Later I also made a wooden shoulder rig which was quite acceptable.

John

[ThompsonDP]

Dear Mr. Deakins,

I hope you are well. For the majority of us on here you are our biggest inspiration when it comes to film artistic expression but I was wondering, for early in your career and now,  who was and is your biggest inspiration when it comes to visual story telling.

As well as this I was also wondering what is your favourite DIY rig/accessory you have made to help you in your filmmaking, specifically early in your career where the tools you have now weren’t as accessible. I love DIY rigs and I plan on making my own Deakiniser lens later this year.

I look forward to hopefully hearing what you have to say.
Many thanks,

Michael

[Max A.]

Thank you very very much for your detailed answer, Mr. Deakins. Means really a lot for me to read from you and know that you take your time to answer a mine question. It’s something priceless.

I think it is an incredible experience to see you at work, I would be there in a corner to watch you and study for hours..

I wish you a peaceful day.
Max.

[LucaM]

Tyler F wrote:

Turtle Base, they are the bottom or ‘feet’ of a c-stand. Essentially the lowest position you can get on a stand without a babypin nailed to a piece of plywood.

Thanks! I didn’t know they had a specific name! I learned a new thing and it’s a good day when  it happens!

[ThompsonDP]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>I can’t remember how you spell it but it’s like a cardboard set with no ceiling to it but it’s in a gallery so there’s a sort of grid yes. Not sure of exact dimensions for windows. Was put a bit more at ease today with creating a natural look from a workshop but now the challenge is gonna be hiding those lights. Also it’s easy for us to make it look like there’s natural light on a close up but for wides I’m not very confident so any advice on that would be great. I think we just want a natural look but also want to implement greens and blues to create the mood.</p>
The biggest concern for us now is making it look like the whole set is naturally lit so it doesn’t look like it’s shot on a stage because most of the last years’ projects looked like that.

[ThompsonDP]

Dear Mr Deakins,

I hope you are well. I have a university project coming up where we are using a ceiling-less vector set with a couple of windows. I was wondering how you would approach lighting it so it looked natural and not like it was shot on a set. There are TVs we can put in the windows but I’m not so keen on that and was considering just covering them. What would you do here?

Many thanks,

Michael

 

[quijotesco24]

In my experience it’s very rare to think all of this alone. Film making is a collaborative process, so people bring different ideas and there are different stages. From prep to shooting to post. You will have to coordinate, talk and share with lots of people at these stages. So yes, you can bring a head full of ideas but at the end is a collaboration between everyone.
Maybe I’m shooting my own feet but too much value is given to DPs when what is seen on screen is a global effort from the whole crew. Yes, we do have certain weight on decision making. But I would like to emphasis the certain word.

About the flow of the whole film… I don’t think you can treat a film as a sum of different scenes put together. You must consider it as a whole story, where it’s important the Flow, the rhythm, the atmosphere it has as a full big piece. So a scene it’s just a part of that. So it’s important how you arrive to that scene and where are you going after. That doesn’t mean you can’t change drastically if it’s story motivated. And that’s the whole key. Everything must be motivated by the story. Any question you have will have its answer on the script.

It’s quite easy to find big movies scripts online, my advice for you is to read those, analyze them, also watch a film at the same time you read the script. Analyze how they bring those words on paper to images on the screen, what they choose to show and how they show it. Write down your own analysis and findings. Because at the end you should trust your own thoughts not someone else’s. So put time forming your thoughts around other peoples works. We are dealing with art and feelings here. So there is no wrong or bad. Just opinions. But it’s important you have your own.

[LucaM]

Please Roger, don’t get angry, but…

Roger Deakins wrote:

… 2K Blondes set on turtles…

…I can’t take away from my mind the image of this charge of 2000 blonde girls riding turtles. That must have been a wild movie production indeed! Did you have brunettes on platypuses too?

Just kidding (i try not to take myself too seriously) ! Now that i think ashamed myself enough with silliness, may i ask you what “turtles” are? I not very expert about lighting terms, but i’ve never met this one before and it seems i can’t find it anywhere!

[Roger Deakins]

There are films, such as ‘The Assassination of Jesse James…’, on which we created a ‘mood board’ of visual references for every scene, which is something a production designer will almost always do with regard to set design. When it comes to lighting and the choice of color and contrast in camera, I don’t often have specific references in mind but I will, nonetheless, have a pretty clear idea of what I will do on every scene before the first day of shooting. And yes, I am very conscious of the edit and the relationship between each scene and the overall flow of the visuals as the story develops.

You ask when the choice of lighting takes place and the answer to that differs from film to film. On ‘BR 2049’ I had lighting concepts and plans drawn out well before shooting began, whereas, on a film like ‘Empire’, there is much more of a day to day approach. That’s because of there is such a difference between a film with complex sets that demands a lot of pre-rigging and lighting and another that is often lit from the truck on the day. And, on a film such as ‘Empire’, most of the lighting balance is made on the day and when looking through the camera. Even when lighting is built into a set the final balance depends on the way the scene evolves and, as in the case of ‘Empire’ can only be done with regard to the daylight conditions.

[sadsongco]

I love the podcast, and have been going through all of them in strict chronological order. Just finished the excellent episode with Bill Pope, and wanted to ask a question it prompted. Roger mentioned he’d worked on a Genesis video with Stuart Orme, could you tell me which one it was? IMDB, the internet and this forum don’t seem to know. I know which one seems likeliest, so hopefully this will be a non-time-consuming one word answer…

[Max A.]

Hello Mr. Deakins and all the DP over this fantastic forum. I hope you Mr. Deakins and Mrs. James are well.

In the “older” forum I asked a similar question once, today I would like to expand the concept and know your way to think.
When you read a script, maybe you think about tones/contrasts/color for scenes and for the whole “world” that you want to create for the movie, but when you have to “choose” your light patterns for each scene (including contrasts/tone/colors, etc.) do you ever think about the entire flow of scenes and how they will alternate and “blend”?
For instance, do you consciously alternate cold tones scenes with warm tones scenes or maybe high-contrast scenes with low-contrast scenes that cut together in order to create a “conscious alternation” of colors and contrasts during the movie? Or it’s something that happens “by itself” as the result and sum of your considerations about the story that you want visually tell scene by scene?

If I were to think, I would be interested to find a visual strategy with a “right” alternation that helps the narrative context, but what could happen if what I thought could somewhat generate a “monotone” flow of colors and contrasts through scenes? It is something that I have to “accept” and “trust,” in order to create the whole mood of the movie, or do I have to think “photographically” and so I have to change some atmospheres in order to be more “technically right” and maybe more “captivating”?
I would like to ask you what is your thought and consideration about this maybe silly question.

To mention an example, in ‘Empire of Light’, I, as an audience, had a “slap” when there was the cut from the scene with the totally black screen after the “projectionist” closed the projection-cabin door and the next scene that starts with an establishing shot on the beach in a full sunny high-key scenario.
Is this kind of visual contrast/juxtaposition something that you consider when you break down the script and think about your narrative way to tell the story?

I hope to be clear with my question, my English is not very good and I hope I managed to make myself understood.
As usual, I want to thank you so much for your time and your availability. There is always to learn from your words.

I wish you a peaceful day.
Max

[TheFred]

Good morning Roger, thank you for taking my question.  I’m 48, late deafened (in high school) and wear a cochlear implant.  Jordan Cronenweths photography on Blade Runner  made me obsessed with movie making at the age of 8.  I never had the guts to find my way into the industry, so who knows what will happen in the future.  I think I might be happy to sweep the set if I had the chance to work on a movie.  But my question is, what kind of challenges do you see for a deaf person on a film set, beyond the obvious?  There are still a lot of hearing people who get visibly frustrated and angry when they have to deal with a deaf person who seemingly is not the perfect lipreader.  A film set seems like a very high pressure environment with the investors constantly coming down on you, and that stuff rolls downhill.

[Roger Deakins]

I am going to post something in the lighting section, although I don’t have that many specific diagrams.

All the fireworks were real. No CGI. We built a false skylight for the roof and used an array of small par bulbs to bounce light off its base, as if it were coming from the floor below.

The street outside was basically lit by the festoon we rigged along the seafront. It was frustrating that, because of a delay in getting permits and an OK on cost, the rig was only finished on the night we first shot an exterior of the Cinema and I had no time to fully balance the levels as I would have wished. The buildings beyond are lit simply with open face 2K Blondes set on turtles and aimed as a wash on the facades. Mostly, these carried a light diffusion on the barn doors. I could have used LEDs, and that would have been my preference as I was using LEDs almost everywhere else, but cost prohibited this.