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Thanks a lot Stip!
I noticed that too, looking at scenes with fresh eyes, after some days, helps me a lot with editing. I really love that kind of shots, like Ozu’s pillow shots (like the famous vase one) , the ones in the original Ghost in the Shell or, as you said, in Miyazaki’s works. Surely they are way more common than i remember (for some obscure reason your post made me think of a misterious tree full of symbolism…) but i associate them mostly with japanese movies, it seems. They are like visual haikus, to me. I didn’t know they have a word for that, thanks for teaching me that! 🙂
And yes, it’s almost a “one man show”, i’m doing everything but acting : luckily i’ve some friends with years of experience as theatre actors that helped me, they really did a great job even with my poor directing skills (but it seems that they had a good time working with me and they offered to work again with me on the next short). So i had to learn everything from scratch in every area of a (very small) cinematographic production: from script to sound mixing, from production coordination as a producer to lights wiring as a gaffer.
It’s an horror short and i think these “pillow shots” really add something to the mood (and, jokes apart, i really love that famous shot in Prisoners, it creates tension in an abstract but powerful way). My problem is that – even if i did my best – some of the shots have a poorer “visual quality” (camera movement not so smooth, no enough head room, a boring point of view, contrast ratio on the face too even to suit the story, etc etc etc) and i’m not sure about using them, even if they could add something to the narrative element.
Thanks a lot Roger! I really love the elegance and simplicity of the cinematography of that movie, i think it’s perfect for the story without being too evident and attention demanding. As an exercise i’m storyboarding the dialogue between Meryl Streep and Viola Davis, one can learn a lot from that scene in terms of…well, everything, it’s perfect.
I wonder if Amazon will sell copies intended for sale in the States. It is a mystery!
Searching on Amazon (i checked on italian, french and german versions) there are two different versions: one from Cassell Publishing (actually Octopus Publishing) to be published on february 12th and one from Grand Central Publishing to be published on november 11th, both properties of Hachette. On US Amazon there’s only the one from GCP. So it seems that the GCP one is the american version (a bit cheaper) and the Cassell one is the european version (a bit more expensive).
My wild guess is that in Europe we’ll be able to order the GCP version on november but it will be shipped from US .
But the strangest part is that italian amazon says it could be delivered on november 19th and in general they are quite timely on delivery here. A week to deliver it in Italy from US ? The mistery deepens! Stay tuned on november to discover the shocking finale of the series! Ah ah!
No shame, cinema Is so full of great works that it’s impossible to know everything. I am in your same situation and i discovered great movies thanks to the forum and the podcast. For example thanks to Roger i discovered one of the best movie i’ve seen, The Silence of The Sea (the original clandestine movie by Melville). 3 people closed in a room and only one talks. I would’ve never watched it on these premises, but Roger quoted it, i trusted his knowledge and i discovered an absolute masterpiece.
November in the US and January in Europe.
I don’t know if it’s of any relevance but italian Amazon page says it will available in November here, i hope they didn’t mistake publishing date and european availability date, ah ah! The excerpt of the book are great, looking forward to read and re-read it!I bet it will become the Bible of the present and future generations of cinematographers!
Thanks a lot Stip! I apologize if i misunderstood, i was referring to the LUTs that are used in post. Your example helped me understand, but unfortunately i can’t use this approach with my camera since it can’t show LUTs (this made me misunderstand), so i am forced to more or less guess what the final look could be After grading. I am planning to update my gear for the next short and i’ll keep in mind the show LUT technique.
Thanks a lot Stip!
I am using Resolve but i don’t like LUTs, i feel i have little control on them and i learn nothing from them , since for me this short it’s mainly a learning experience, not only a creative one. I tend to learn through “backward engineering”, so i try to begin with Roger’s shots in the movies going backward to (try to) understand how he shot them (and this forum and upcoming Roger’s book are like treasure for me for that). I think Roger’s style is created by every aspect of cinematography (camera movement and placement, lens choice, lights, etc etc) and how he uses them to tell the story (and each story has its own different way to be told), something a LUT can’t create on the spot. I undersand that it’s a tempting shortcut, but i’m one of those persons that prefer the longest and hardest road to get to the peak of the mountain, ah ah ! 😀
This said, i need to take something usable out of my shots, so after some testing this workflow seems to work:1) i shot the scenes (and in the AI era it’s not that obvious that the images were created with a camera with real actors, ah ah!) trying to create with light and production desing the palette i wanted. Given my limitation i couldn’t create “the look” in camera for all the shots, just something vaguely close.
2) i looked for some shots that had a similar composition, mood and lights to grade my shots. I understand a professional wouldn’t work that way but i’m not and i need some kind of guide to know the path to follow. I grade my shot until my waveform, parade and vectorscope are close to the reference. Of course there’s an enormous difference in the quality of referencing shot and my own, but somehow my humble shots are turning decent in this way. By dissecting the waveforms and the vectorscopes I’m slowly beginning to understand the work behind the shots, something impossible with a LUT (at least for the way i learn).
3) I know how i want the scene to look and i find that look working on palette , temperature, saturation, etc. In this phase i move from the reference point and i use my instinct and creativity. And this is the phase that i’m struggling with : the shots are not that bad, the scenes look more or less as planned, but i feel i need to do a step further to make them look like part of the same movie, with more harmony and coherence among the shots. So far, this made me learn that i can’t work backward (first the shots and then the look of the entire work), i need to plan how the entire work should look and then create the shots according to that. Next time i’ll improve on that : better late than never!
EDIT: sorry for the long reply, i hope it was not too boring. I think the problem with my backward approach is that i am referencing to too different works to grade my shots. I need to study just one movie to make this approach usable, i suppose.
Thanks for your answer!
You are right as always, in effect I’m more looking for the right look for the scenes than refining the shots. It means that i didn’t really create the scenes in the way I wanted them to look, I simply exposed them correctly (well, kind of). I didn’t reflect on that.
In my defence I have to admit that, apart from one scene that was created with a precise look in mind that more or less i obtained in camera (and all the knowledge the forum gave me helped me a lot in creating that shot, so i am extremely grateful to you all for that) , for the other scenes i had to do my best to overcome lack of knowledge, lack of time, lack of decent lights, lack of budget, lack of everything but problems, ah ah! So now I am forced to rely on the sinful and dreadful “fixing that in post” to get what i figured in my mind. I hope to be able to do more in camera in my next short, but for now i’m afraid i’ve to find not only the right look for each scene, but also make them all look part of the same thing.
Since i suppose you’ll have little control on the exterior lights, you could create a similar artificial lighting in the studio for Key light (intensity, temperature, diffusion, direction, etc). Consider that you’ll need separate light on the green screen to make the Chroma Key step easier. Study how light behaves in real scene to mimick It in studio (what types of shadows, reflexes, etc).
EDIT: I am not an expert and i apologize if i am saying something not correct, but i suppose that for camera movement in theory you have two options: shooting in the studio and match the movement in the exterior or, even more simply, shooting in exterior and match it in the studio. Perhaps you’ll need some camera tracking in both cases, so in studio remember the tracking points!
I used green screen for my short movie and, if it may reassure you a little, even if the lights were completely off (in my defence, it was a shot made for another scene but i had to use in emergency in a different one by altering the lighting in post production) by grading it in post production i managed to match the shots in an acceptable way, so i’d say it’s not impossible with modern softwares
I think it depends on a lot of elements: family (both as time and as financial support), job opportunities in you area, links in the industry and so on . Roger, David and the others here may advice you better than me, but my opinion is that your (and mine and everybody else’s) problem is not actually the age, it is the AI. The real question is for how long cinema (and tv) will still need cinematographers, VFX artists, etc etc, no matter the age. No doubt that established professionals will keep on working (perhaps re-inventing themselves as some kind of AI cinematographers coordinators, like in animation, or i don’t know what their job will become) . But for people starting now i think there will be fewer and fewer opportunities. This doesn’t mean that people won’t do movies in the traditional way (oil painting and clay sculpture still exist today, after all), but i am afraid there will be an ongoing reduction of jobs (and it’s happening yet) . Interesting times for watching, sad times for creating.
Hi! While i’ve got no professional experience – so i can be of little help – i’m in your same situation (shooting a short with a flashlight scene) and from what i tested you could consider these details :
– some lights could cause flickering and bands in the camera (a frequency problem, if i am not wrong), so do a test if possible before buying or shooting the real scene. This said you can obtain good results even with cheap flashlights from DIY stores, as long as they are strong enough
– you could use a reflecting surface to lighten a bit the actor face (when i asked a similar question Roger wrote that he did something like that in the cave scene of Prisoners) in close ups, since actually the flashlight points forward, not on actor face
– i am altering the WB to mimick a night scene and i’m setting the other ligths color temperature to create some kind of color contrast or armony with the flashlight color, according to what suits better the scene
– to actually see the light beam you need thickness in the atmosphere, and it’s complicated to create it in a forest without hazing machines
– good luck and have fun!
I could try that. I mean establishing shots. What do you think about static shots? For example, I imagine someone sitting in a chair in front of the camera, trying to convey feelings through lighting.
I suppose that would be a nice excercise about creating mood through lighting and framing a subject. To take the most out of it, you could choose a given zoom of the camera and keep it for all the shot and see how different camera movements and different framing of the subject create different effect (in other words, using the phone as a simulation of a prime lens: Roger often says that since prime lens have not zoom, when you use them you are forced to make decisions on how to shoot the scene, instead of simply zooming it). I did something similar but since i didn’t want to bother family and friends in my experiments i used a teddy bear as model. For ridiculous it may sound, it helped me since i focused only on the framing and the lights. When i found the light and composition i wanted, i put the camera on the tripod , i took the teddy bear place and experimented on camera angle, movement of the actor, etc. With a little creativity you can learn a lot even alone.
I have to admit that the teddy bear was a better actor than me, but that’s another story.
From “Team Deakins Podcast – SEASON 2 – EPISODE 139 – Camera Movement”
- Trial of Joan of Arc
- Diary of a Country Priest
- A Man Escaped
(note: Roger mentions these three Robert Bresson’s movies as good examples of movies that manage to tell a story even with quite static shots and little camera movement)
Thanks for your reply, Roger!
The Jesse James scene inspired me for the blocking of a scene in one of the shorts i’m working on (this in particular is a little school project, actually). I loved the crossing movements of Jesse and Robert and it suggested me how to make my scene a bit more interesting, moving the characters in two different diagonals across the room. A great plan, with a nice storyboard, a shot list, etc etc.
Too bad that everything went downhill because of a series of unexpected problems and so goodbye to my great planned shot. I found an alternative on the spot but i hope to use that crossing movement somewhere else, it’s simple but beautiful and effective.
