[LucaM]

Not a DP and perhaps you know yet but i’ve heard in a podcast episode (not Team Deakins but i can’t remember which one) that Christopher Nolan is color blind. I guess color blindness is a bigger problem for a DP than a director but if It’s true i find amazing what he’s been able to achieve even with that limit (i admired him even before knowing that of course, ah ah!)

[LucaM]

Thanks! One could simply describe the scene as “two women talk while walking” (i think that was the description in the script, more or less, at least from a version i found online) , it’s amazing what cinema can create from such a simple starting point.

[LucaM]

You are really kind! I’m editing the trailer, i hope to be able to show it in a few days – i’m not so presumptuos to think that a 10 minutes short needs a trailer, but they ask for it in many festivals  so let’s do that.

The more i watch what i shot the more i find errors and things i could improve, but it was the very first time i put a camera (literally) in front of someone face while directing him or her and for reasons i can’t understand they trusted me. Somehow i feel that i need to take the best out of this very tiny little project to repay them for their trust, it’s not my project, it’s a team project and i need to make this little paper plane land safely because they all are counting on me. Poor people.

Yes, i’m not creating a short movie, i’m trying to avoid a disaster, ah ah ! 😀

[LucaM]

I am at the beginning of the music videos chapter and i keep on thinking that this book should  Will be turned in a movie. From a yacht trip around the world to smuggling film across the border in civil wars Africa, and everything before and after…It’s a movie yet! With, uh, Adrien Brody  playing your part. I think he has the right kind of energy. 🙂

[LucaM]

My copy arrived a couple of days ago. It looks an amazing book and i didn’t expect It to be so big. I really really love how simple and elegant the graphic style is (well, simple and elegant is my idea of Roger’s style, so It makes sense) .

Thanks for writing it. 🙂

PS: and thanks for adding the autobiographical chapters at the beginning of the book. They…well, thanks.

[LucaM]

I’m the least experienced person of the forum but in my little i noticed some decent result using a nd (cheap but variabile) filter to keep a wide aperture but avoiding overexposure of highlights, a diffusion to soften a bit highlights and some reflective diffuse surface as fill light  to reduce contrast ratio (but It depends on what effect your shoot should create). Then in post production i looked for a scene i liked in a movie and i tried to match levels of the waveform to have a good starting point. I Hope It helps somehow!

[LucaM]

I’m reading “In the Blink of an Eye” and Walter Murch describes this problem as “seeing around the edge of the frame”, in other words considering everything that was around the camera while shooting the scene (and that’s why he writes that an editor should know possibly nothing about how the scene was shot) to focus only on the narrative aspect of the editing and not on the human factor (effort, struggles, mood on the set etc etc) that lead to that shot. The idea i’ve had reading the book is that the editor is on the audience side, not on the crew one, since must see things how the audience will. Not the best thing for the DoP i guess, but in theory the best for the movie.

[LucaM]

It’s Team Deakins forum and website, of course he can. But we all have questions for Roger, posts are a lot and answering to each of them would be a full time job to be added to their jobs, the podcast, the promotion of the book, interviews, signing events, every day duties and more important priorities (as we all have). The forum It’s a great gift from Team Deakins but we need a bit of patience and common sense. 🙂

[LucaM]

I think that it has something to do with remembering that it’s actually the director’s movie, not the cinematographer’s one (i think Roger said something like that in an episode) and so accept it as an aspect of working as a professional cinematographer.

By the way, i have the very same doubt you have, but while editing my little short i noticed a thing. The more i focused on rythm and storytelling, the more i found easy to “let go” shots, even cool ones or complicated ones that required me a lot of effort. Perhaps visually interesting shots but useless in the storytelling. The script and the shot list followed a scheme, but when i begun altering it in the editing phase, taking away things, changing the order of scenes, making them shorter and more focused, forgetting that i shot them and considering them as a work of another person, then i finally found my story and everything begun working together in  a nice way. If you spend hours on a shot you are very attached to it. But you need fresh eyes and a different mind to understand if that shots really helps the story, that’s what i learned so far!

[LucaM]

Only if you activated the premium subscription.  😀

Just kidding of course! But now i can’t get out of my mind the idea that in theory i could randomly find James and Roger at my door.  😀

[LucaM]

I find comforting that even during the AI siege there still are people willing to know how real techniques work and people that still know how to teach that.

I wonder how much we’ll lose in terms of knowledge because of AI.

Sorry for this completely unrelated rant!

[LucaM]

From what i’m reading you could adapt some type of modern film to some models of camera, so It seems that It’s possible in theory.

Or you could use a different approach, a bit like what they did with The Lighthouse to create a vintage look.

[LucaM]

What i find interesting it’s why are we so charmed by that look, the one digital images miss and we try to recreate in post production. Perhaps is it because it’s linked to childhood memories? I think that there’s some kind of imprinting that creates that “film look” idea. I was a child in the eighties and the first movie i remember at a cinema was The Last Crusade, so to me reading the words “film look” makes me think to Indiana Jones instinctively.

PS:

Welcome!
I don’t know if  the bug still exist but if you need to edit a post uncheck the “keep log” under the form before submitting the editing or it could block the post and stuck you account for a while.  It solved the problem for me at least!

[LucaM]

I’m not an expert but i suppose that, even if you could find a real camera from that era still working (and, quoting Indiana Jones, it should be in a museum, ah ah!) ,  the problem would be finding a film stock for it.

[LucaM]

Thanks a lot, you are very kind!

To be honest I actually hope that post production will finish, i’ve been stuck with it for months and i can’t get out of the it, ah ah! Jokes apart, i’m doing everything alone and it’s a bit complicated to follow an entire production (even a micro one, like mine) alone. But i’m having fun, i’m learning a lot about everything (editing, color correction, vfx, sound mixing, etc etc) and that’s fine.

Let’s hope that the result won’t be a complete disaster, ah ah! 🙂

 

[Author]

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