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There are no rules for exposing since that is a creative choice but when you are doing a sequence, sometimes it helps to imagine a 360 degree circular camera move around the actor in sunlight, then imagine what it would look like if you only set one f-stop for the whole move, then imagine opening up a little for the shadows, etc. then closing down again in frontal sunlight, etc.
My general rule is that the shadow side of a face should feel like it is the shadow side, so I wouldn’t normally expose a face in backlight at full exposure, I’d decide how many stops under key would look natural.
I find myself often leaning towards a face in bright frontal sunlight being a 1/2-stop over or more and in backlight, the face being 1-stop to 1 1/2-stops under, sometimes 2-stops under. But it depends on the face — I’ve worked with very pale actors who look overexposed even at normal exposure!
I recall an interview with Douglas Slocombe about filming “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and he said he overexposed the desert scenes in general to retain the feeling of heat, but it had the benefit of opening up the shadow detail. But I also remember that the sand dune scenes in “Four Feathers” shot by Robert Richardson were often shot with the exposure set to silhouette the actors, enhanced by using large frames of negative fill. So it all depends on the look you are going for.
You’re talking about two separate things. Whether you get the key-to-fill ratio the way you want it by increasing the key versus lowering the fill is a separate issue from the overall exposure.
If you want to use more light in order to work at a lower ISO to reduce noise, or effectively do something similar by darkening an overexposed shot, that is up to you. If you are recording raw, then ISO is just metadata anyway but as you use more light and process it darker to compensate, you are exchanging overexposure headroom for better shadow detail with less noise.
At some point, especially if you aren’t recording raw, you have to factor in that as you overexpose skin tones on a digital camera, you may get some artifacts on some cameras if you go too far that will look odd once corrected down to normal. Highlights can pick up a color shift or clip unnaturally.
The camera is shifted to the right, just outside of the right edge of the mirror to be out of the reflection. It swings open and close fast enough to not see the camera, which is looking through a camera port hole cut into the set, so it’s a black square that passes through the mirror.
Vittorio Storaro has told this story that after film school and even his first feature, he couldn’t find work for two years and felt like a failure. So he hung out in art museums during that time. He said that later he realized that this time of studying art on his own were the most important two years of his career.
I photographed over 20 short films at CalArts, all in 16mm. They were mostly masters degree thesis films.
A year after graduation I shot a 35mm feature as a DP for a fellow CalArts graduate, a non-paying job. I paid the bills by working part-time at a sound effects company as a data entry person; the owner liked to give jobs to CalArts students.
A year after my first feature that I shot another feature because a fellow graduate introduced me to the director.
Another year passed and I shot another feature because the same fellow graduate introduced me to the director for a short film and then this feature that followed.
Another year later and I was introduced to the director of my fourth feature by the editor of the second feature.
The producer of that fourth feature hired me for six more features.
These were all very low-budget non-union jobs in Los Angeles. I shot 23 features before I joined the union. For a decade I barely earned enough money to pay my bills.
At 24/25 fps at ISO 100:
100 fc = f/2.8
200 fc = f/4
400 fc = f/5.6
800 fc = f/8
So with ISO 800:
100 fc = f/8
200 fc = f/11
400 fc = f/16
You lose 5-stops going from 25 fps to 800 fps, so to shoot at f/2.8, you need to light for f/16 so that once you lose 5-stops by going from 25 fps to 800 fps, you’re down to f/2.8.
That’s about a 5-stop light loss so you look at the photometric data for the light and figure out how many foot-candles you need to shoot at, let’s say f/2.8 at 800 fps or think of it as shooting at f/16 at 25 fps.
The old rule of thumb is that you need 100 fc to shoot at f/2.8 / 24 fps / 180 degree shutter / 100 ASA. So that’s like f/8 at 800 ASA if you have 100 fc. So to get 2 more stops of exposure for f/16 at 800 ASA, you’d need 400 fc. Then you’d be shooting near an f/2.8 at 800 fps at 400 fc. I think.
Mainly you shoot tests in advance for any technique that you want to try. Otherwise (or as well) you contact people who have tried that technique or you hire crew people with some experience in that technique. If you only do things you’ve done before, you never learn. You take calculated risks based on research.
If you get the look in camera, then why do you need the flexibility to enhance the look in post? You already have the look. There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of post tools to create a look… but one would hope the primary reason isn’t that you want to be able to change your mind later. Hedging your bets like that isn’t the most effective way to learn and grow as an artist because you never risk failure.
Every technique has its limits so you just have to learn what they are.
Now of course most cinematographers want some post flexibility to deal with sub-optimal things that happen on sets, which is why one shoots raw or log. For example, outdoors changes in weather can shift colors and contrast around, sometimes shot to shot. It’s one reason (of many) in the past that most filmmakers would rather shoot color negative than color reversal. Having almost no margin for error can be a bit too challenging on some projects. But on the flip side, a cinematographer is hesitant to hand in footage with no look at all — with maximum flexibility to create any look — and hope that control over that image will be given to them throughout the post chain.
I think a lot of cinematographers opt for a hybrid approach, creating the look in terms of light and shadow, mood, composition, etc. in camera knowing that it will go through a post color-correction step so recording raw or log to make adjustments easier. Some looks can only be created in post (or by live-grading on set perhaps but you run into time issues then) — like adding film grain, or selectively correcting portions of the frame or halating the blacks, etc. You just have to pick the best methods to create your look — but the hope is that you know that look in advance, not that you’ll figure it out later.
Usually when a movie used a silver retention process for the release prints, the transfers for home video use the camera negative (or a timed color interpositive made off of the negative) that is “normal” and the look of the silver retention print process is created digitally in the color-correction — mainly by increasing contrast in the shadows, making the blacks deeper, and lowering saturation.
If the skip bleach process had been done to the camera negative, then it would be baked in but some of the effect is a little different than when done to the release print. The silver grains in camera negative are larger than in print stock (since print stock has a very low ISO), and the increase in density from leaving silver in the negative causes the highlights to get hotter rather than the shadows to get darker.
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.
