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Something like Half Soft Frost or Silent Frost should work but it will have a seam in a 12×12 I think. You can rent a rear projection screen from some video projector companies.
I don’t think it exists in the way you describe in the original post – lighting today is more based on emulating a source so if the men and women are lit by the same source then they get the same lighting more or less. The differences I was referring to is more subtle in terms of adjusting the light in a close-up for cosmetic reasons.
It’s a bit of an outdated view on lighting. Back in the 1940s-60s, you read interviews with some cinematographers who sometimes suggested that “realism” in lighting meant lighting men to look rugged and tough (more use of sculptural hard cross-lighting, no diffusion on the lens) and women to look beautiful (more use of a soft frontal key light and diffusion on the lens) — which is not how we define realism today.
Practically speaking, beyond lighting a space naturally with the impression of using only practical sources (whether true or not), we sometimes do “cosmetic” lighting adjustments for an actor if they need to be flattered visually in the scene, but that might hold true for a male or female character depending on the scene.
It’s true that more often, we are asked to light the female actor in the scene a bit more flatteringly, more glamorously, than the male actor, sometimes for a good story reason… but other times there are other external pressures to do so, or it is just expectation on the part of someone in charge. One could complain that it relates to the “male gaze” and the objectification of women in media, and that’s true sometimes, but there are other factors too.
Cinematographers often repeat certain tools and techniques to achieve the intended look of the project. And of course, they apply their personal taste on their work.
But personal style, outside of the project’s style itself, is not something one should try and develop self-consciously. That tends to look inorganic. Just tell the story visually in the way you think is most appropriate and effective.
Same thing could be said about frontal shots versus shots on the character’s back — sometimes it is more effective emotionally to play the scene with the character’s back to camera or have the character be in darkness and hard to see. Or shot size, tighter is not always better.
There is no formula that you can apply, this is where understanding the text and the actor’s performance informs you as to the approach based on your taste and experience, and there is no single “correct” decision (of course, it is possible to make some bad decisions as well.)
Like I said, Gordon Willis movies — look at “The Parallax View” or “Godfather Part 2” or “Klute”. They are observational and yet have emotional weight.
Kurosawa’s 1960s movies like “Red Beard”, “The Bad Sleep Well”, and “High and Low” use longer anamorphic lenses stopped down for deeper focus.
The problem is that “emotional weight” is context-oriented more than technique-oriented. If the scene is about a lonely person getting bad news like the death of a loved one, perhaps the most effective shot emotionally is a wide observational one where the character is seen sitting alone in the next room framed by a doorway. It could even be longer-lensed, if there is room to back up the camera, in order to create flatter planes of depth. Yes, being up close and wide-angle might give the feeling of experiencing the moment with the character and yet the wider, farther shot might suggest their isolation and could be the more emotionally “weighty” shot.
You could say the having the camera closer with a shorter lens gives the character more “presence” or makes the shot feel more “intimate” compared to shooting from farther back, but whether that always adds more emotional weight is not clear. A lot of Gordon Willis “weighty” shots in “The Godfather Part 2” involved a 40mm lens, which is not particularly wide-angle, but the lighting/exposure and framing create a certain heavy mood that matches the content.
There’s no formula for this. You can’t say that, for example, “25mm at 3’ has more emotional weight than 50mm at 6’.”
You have to watch movies (or look at art & photography) and see what moves you. I think Gordon Willis’ 1970s work often has emotional weight though often shot in wider frames due partially to the somber light and how the framing works with that — but really, ultimately the weight of the scene comes from the content.
If you’re shooting under full sun, you’ll need to use ND filters anyway on 200 ASA stock so you have the stop for using 85ND combo filters.
The “Sunny 16” rule is that the f/stop is f/16 when shooting in direct sunlight at midday using an ASA stock that is the same number as the shutter time under 1/–. In other words, 50 ASA at 1/50th (which is close to shooting 24 fps with a 180 degree shutter.) Since 200 ASA is two-stops faster than 50 ASA, that means you’d need an ND.6 just to get down to f/16 at 50 ASA, and you might prefer not shooting at f/16. Of course, you might want to overexpose a stop for more open shadows and you might shoot in backlight or in overcast weather, etc. But you should plan on carrying ND filters (or 85ND combo filters plus a straight 85.)
Of course, you can shoot without the 85 filter and correct in post. Depends on whether you want a cool bias on the negative or more warmth built into the image.
I think by “softer 200 ASA” stock Roger is referring to EXR 200T 5293, which was replaced by Vision-1 200T 5274 in the late 1990s. There was also briefly a low-con 200T stock from 1994-1996 (5287). Peter Jackson and Andrew Lesnie preferred 5293 over new 5274 and used it for much of “The Lord of the Rings”.
A “ton” is relative… In 1938, Kodak came out with Plus-X (80 ASA) and Super-XX (160 ASA). Super-XX was used on “Citizen Kane”, sometimes pushed one-stop (so 320 ASA), and a few rare shots, pushed 2-stops (so 640 ASA).
“Casablanca” would have been shot on Plus-X and probably lit and shot at an f/2.8 to f/4 as was common back then. But after “Citizen Kane” the interest in using more light and stopping down for more depth of field began in earnest for b&w films, though usually not to f/16 like “Citizen Kane” did on some scenes. Also, Super-XX was not commonly used despite the extra speed (it probably cost more to buy too.) It was replaced by Tri-X negative (1954, 320 ASA) and then Double-X negative (1959, 250 ASA). Stanley Cortez used Tri-X on films like “Shock Corridor” and “Night of the Hunter”. Plus-X was by far the most common b&w film stock used back then, though in the 1960s, Double-X started to be used more and more.
Keep in mind that if the lighting is mostly hard and direct, you can get an f/2.8 on smaller units using Plus-X — you can key a close-up on a direct 650w or 1K tungsten fresnel at f/2.8 on 64/80 ASA film. Wider shots you’d get into 2Ks and 5Ks, maybe 10Ks outside windows.
What I’ve never understood is how Red managed to patent compressed raw when before the Red One, there was the Silicon Imaging SI-2K camera, used on “Slumdog Millionaire”, which recorded in Cineform RAW, which is compressed.
The color palette of “Blade Runner 2049” is not really due to the LUT, that’s lighting and design mostly. If it were due to the LUT, then all of Roger’s movies shot on the Alexa would have the same color palette!
I wouldn’t over-emphasize the importance of the LUT in terms of cinematography. It is a relatively minor thing compared to lighting, composition, exposure, lenses, etc.
Most LUTs exist to transform a log image into a display gamma so that the contrast and saturation can be correctly evaluated. They may have some personal adjustments in terms of gamma in the shadows, midtones, and highlights, and in saturation.
My method for creating the shooting LUT on the Alexa is to shoot a face and some charts, record them in Log-C (or Arriraw converted later to Log-C), and then take them to a post house to color-correct them and then have the colorist generate a LUT.
I shoot a face and some charts (grey scales, etc.) separately and color-correct both and toggle back and forth to see how my corrections for the face affect the charts and vice-versa. That way I end up with a LUT that works both for a real face and for a grey scale.
As a reference on the testing day, I also record a baked-in Rec.709 version (since I’m shooting for broadcast HD) so I can compare my LUT to what ARRI thinks is a basic conversion LUT for Log-C to Rec.709. I guess one could do the same thing in P3 for a theatrical project but you’d have to think about whether dailies will be in Rec.709 and whether your main set monitors are P3.
Keep in mind that the LUT is mainly just for on-set displays and for dailies creation. The final color-correction might start from scratch from the log image or use the LUT as a starting point.
I have a DIT on my crew so I can make adjustments on the day (like to match two lenses that don’t quite match in color, or add contrast in flat weather or reduce contrast in harsh light) — these are sent as ASC-CDL files to the dailies colorist to apply to the LUT. If I didn’t have a DIT, I might be tempted to create three LUTs (basic look, a slightly low-contrast version, and slightly high-contrast version) but you’d have to think about whether you’d just be making life too complicated for your ACs and your dailies colorist.
I once wrote my own list of personal favorites of cinematography and there were dozens of titles per decade of the history of cinema. Anyone can recommend five movies with great cinematography… but as soon as you watched them, there would be five more to watch, and so on! I think what movies you want to learn for depends more on what specifically would you like to learn.
It’s similar to when someone asks what five books they should read on filmmaking. In my mind, if someone is a fan of a subject, they will read everything they can find, good or bad. Imagine someone saying they were a huge fan of U.S. Civil War history but then saying they want to only read a couple of books on the topic.
I would just start watching good movies.
