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Changing a lens versus moving the camera can be more or less fast, there are too many variables to consider but in general, swapping a prime lens to one slightly longer is not hard.
I’ve been in some situations where the OTS used a longer lens than the CU. For example, if cross-covering where A and B cameras are shooting opposite angles to get both sides of the overs at the same time, it is easier to keep the other camera out of the shot if working on longer lenses from further back. Or maybe you want the foreground shoulder to not get larger in size relative to the person facing the camera so you use a longer lens for that flatter perspective, but in the close-up you want the effect of the lens being physically closer.
The other issue is eyelines — if you shoot a close-up with wide-angle lens and want a really tight eyeline, the actor might have to look at the edge of the lens or inside the mattebox rather than the other actor. In the OTS, they can naturally look at each other. So if you push in for the CU rather than go to a longer lens, you have to consider whether the actor can still see the off-camera actor and if that eyeline is too wide now. I did a movie where the director wanted wider-angle lenses for CUs, like a 28mm or 35mm, but wanted a tight eyeline so the actor had to look at a mark in the lens. It made the scenes more intense… but after four weeks, the main actor complained “for just once on this movie, I’d like to look at the other actor in my close-ups!”
I don’t have a scientific answer but skin is a pastel color and as it gets lighter, like any color, it gets less saturated by eye.
A similar thing happens in colored lighting — 5600K light on a 3200K camera looks pale blue when overexposed and deep blue when underexposed.
As to how overexposed a face can get and still be corrected back to normal, that depends on the camera and the recording format, the skill of the colorist — and the face.
The same show LUT could be used for set monitors, dailies, and then as a starting point in the final color-correction with the likely option to start from scratch and go back to log or raw, but use the show LUT as a reference. LUTs might be loaded into some cameras or the camera sends a log image to the DIT cart and the LUT is applied there and sent out to all the other monitors, or it might be loaded into individual monitors.
But this might be separate from technical LUTs like for viewing in P3 versus Rec.709, or working within the gamut for 2383 Vision print stock for a film-out.
Not sure what the difference is between a “show” LUT versus a “look” LUT unless a look LUT refers to things in post like a Vision 2383 print LUT as a base for correction so you don’t work outside of the color gamut that print stock can create.
On many shows, the dailies colorist gets the footage, either shot raw or something like ProRes, converts it from raw if necessary, applies the LUT being used on set for the monitors, applies any shot by shot image adjustments to the LUT sent in by the DIT usually as ASC CDL values, probably applies any letterboxing needed, and outputs in the deliverables that editorial needs and whatever is used for streaming dailies. They will also back-up the data.
The softness of a light (i.e. the blurriness of the shadows created by the light) is determined by its size relative to the subject, that’s basically it.
What different bounce surfaces and diffusion materials control is the degree to which you can fill that surface evenly to maximize the size of the source, versus getting a hotter spot in the center for example, or some specular light mixed into the soft light (which is desirable sometimes to give the soft light some “texture”.)
So putting grid cloth over UltraBounce isn’t going to do much other than maybe give you a bit more of a hot spot in the center (or wherever your lamp is aimed) because grid cloth has a tiny bit more shine to it. You could try putting bleached muslin over the UltraBounce, it’s maybe slightly more matte. But it’s not additive, you’re basically swapping an UltraBounce for a bleached muslin. With the grid cloth idea, it’s a bit more additive in the sense that bouncing off grid cloth alone is less light efficient since so much passes through the cloth, so adding an UltraBounce from behind will improve the amount of light you get off of the bounce.
But it’s not going to make the UltraBounce light “softer” and less sourcey. To do that you either need a larger UltraBounce (and be able to fill the larger surface) to create a larger bounce — or have the room to “book light” the bounce by passing it through another frame closer to the actor but then basically now the closer diffusion frame is the “source” in terms of the size determining the softness. But book-lighting would make it easier to fill that diffusion frame more evenly.
Now it’s possible that the reason the UltraBounce is not soft enough for you is that you aren’t filling it evenly, so it may help to hit it with multiple smaller units rather than one larger unit.
Test, test, test is all I can say…
Check out “Lost Highway” for some of the very dark scenes in the apartment — it’s quite underexposed with lifted blacks, so has somewhat of a foggy “head cold” sort of feeling. Perhaps a hazed set would help create some of this nebulous quality. To me it sounds like you want very dim underexposed detail under soft light, at least in some areas, so you can still see some movement through space. Pure black or milky blacks (grey) with no detail (i.e. no real image detail) would make it hard to sense motion.
I’m all for poetic language to get at the feeling desired but at some point, you have to get into specifics. Do you see anything of the scene, the action, the set, etc.? Is it very dim with low-contrast or shadowy with large areas of blackness but a few highlights? Do you want noise? Do you want true blacks? There are no right or wrong answers.
The problem with very dim underexposed imagery is that it plays differently on a large theater screen where it commands attention and is still the biggest & brightest thing in your field of view, versus a TV monitor where it is smaller in your field of vision and competing with the rest of the room lights.
Generally what they mean when they say they don’t use negative stock is that they don’t use camera negative stock, which is much higher in ISO (and grainier) than lab intermediate and print stocks.
Intermediate dupe stock is a “negative” stock in the sense that it creates the opposite density of what it is copying, unlike a reversal (aka slide) stock. So one can create a positive or negative intermediate depending on what you record from digitally. So it’s not really accurate to call it a “positive” stock, it’s either. It can create a positive image if it’s a copy of a negative image. Same goes for print stock — the image is positive only because it’s a copy of a negative so naturally the densities get reversed.
Any lighting package should always contain some CTO, CTB, Plus-Green, and Minus-Green gels even if just in scraps.
Whether you used HMIs or tungsten with gels, or Kinos, with or without gels, just depended on the situation, the scale of the shot, your lighting package, etc. Keep in mind that you generally lose more output shifting tungsten towards daylight with blue gels than you do shifting HMIs towards tungsten with orange gels, plus HMIs are already more energy-efficient. So for a larger space where you are aiming for balancing to a Cool White fluorescent color (more like 4700K with some green), you would be more likely to use HMIs than tungsten. However in a small space, you might try tungsten with gels (the color tends to be “richer” from gelled tungsten in some ways but that is subjective.)
If you have to get closer to 3200K, then tungsten makes more sense (and HMIs gelled to 3200K never look quite right to my eyes compared to tungsten.)
There are too many variables to give you a definitive answer. My only caveat is that I tend to avoid mixing techniques for whatever the key light is on the face, I wouldn’t use gelled HMIs in one spot and then gelled tungsten in another for a key (fill or backlight is less critical.)
Not Roger, but I think muslin is slightly more “matte” (definitely a rougher surface) so the bounce off of it might be a bit softer; otherwise the difference might be that unbleached muslin has a warmth to it compared to UltraBounce.
A “perfect” theoretical mirror allows you to increase the distance the light travels and thus get a slower fall-off near the subject.
But nothing in life is perfect, if the mirror is dusty and some light is bounced off of the dust, then that light in essence “originates” from that point and the fall-off rate is calculated from there. So what results is a mix of light, some from the original source reflected off of the clean parts of the mirror, and other light reflected off of the dust of the mirror. I suspect that the resulting fall-off rate is also a mix.
It’s a similar issue to the sun shining through a dusty window, some rays have long fall-off rate while others have a faster rate starting from the window as the source, not the sun as the source, so it’s sort of a mix. At least, that’s my theory…
Each lab calibrates their printers to whatever range between 1 and 50 for each color they want, 25-25-25 will not be the same at another lab. And film stocks rarely are printed at the same number value for each color to get to neutral, so having one color at 29 and another at 31 is not significant.
Plus there are some day to day variations from the processing despite what the lab tells you. And there are some roll variations despite what Kodak tells you. And DPs themselves often expose within a 1/3-stop variation because we’re not perfect.
Some DPs just printed everything at the same set of numbers mainly to show them their exposure variations, the processing variations, the stock variations… which to some degree is educational but would also drive you nuts, plus the director and editor would be cutting dailies with these variations visible.
But even if there were zero variations on everyone’s part, it still doesn’t mean that to get to neutral that the film would print at the same number for each color.
