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I expose by eye but pull up the waveform to just see where everything is sitting. Im colorblind so fall color is pointless to me. to many hues look similar. zebras would be even faster and no need to switch to a false color lut especially if all your doing is checking skin and highlights. Most cameras allow you to set two sets for whatever IRE you need.
Zebras are very useful to check if there are clipped highlights or shadows or what is it exactly at a given IRE, but the advantage of false color is checking the contrast ratio of the entire image. I think both are useful and have their uses. (you could create a black, white and grey false color LUT if you are colorblind, if you think it could help you in your workflow).
By the way, Michael Chapman used how much the eyes hurt to rate the ASA while filming The White Dawn, while (if i am quoting the podcast correctly) Douglas Slocombe used directly his…hand? Plenty of alternatives!
The third category – inspire and suggest emotions without looking for meaning – is that not what film can do at its best? I think that understanding should be your approach to where top put the camera or how to compose the shot. It’s what you feel it should be.
Uhm, I think i’m beginning to understand why the expressionists (and similar painters) and your appreciation for Tarkovskij’s works or movies like L’Avventura . It’s not a matter of looking for inspiration for composition, palettes, etc etc in other existing images like paintings, photos or movie frames like everybody would do, it’s a matter of instinct and emotions to be created on the spot.
I was wondering if it happens to you or to other cinematographers to collaborate with the editor in the editing phase . I understand that the cinematographer thinks about how the image tells the story and the editor has to deal with the rythm of the narrative and everything connected with that, but still he or she has to pick the shots created by the cinematographer. Is there some kind of communication between you and the editor (through the movie director, for example) or do you just suggest ideas and a possible editing with the shots and cross finger that the editor won’t
ruinchange everything? (of course i suppose there’s also the opposite situation, in which the editor has to find a way to do a good job with poor material).I’m a bit skeptical about conceptual art since it’s basically up the artist to decide what is art and what is no, at a point that everything (a blank frame included) with a title on it becomes “art”. In a famous italian comedy sketch Alberto Sordi’s wife seated on a chair to rest a little in a modern art museum and turists begun taking pictures of her since they couldn’t tell her from the actual conceptual work. It sums up my consideration for it, but i guess it’s my own limit, i understand that it’s a form of art that many people actually understand and appreciate. To me it’s “art” when it somehow comunicates with the audience (something that Tarkovsky’s movies, whatever they actually mean, really do – i can feel they are art), not just because it has a title and a critic decides that it’s art.
By the way, i’m reading “Sculpting in time” by Tarkovsky and it seems he had to deal with three groups of people in his career: the ones that didn’t understand the movies and didn’t like them because of that, the ones that liked the movies but still tried to understand the meaning (and unfortunately i belong to this category) and the ones (the most appreciated by him, no surprise) were the ones that simply let the movies inspire and suggest emotions, without looking for a meaning in every image.
The result would be a hard light surrounding a softer area. I would often adjust the distance between a lamp and a large diffusion to find the placement that gave me the right (right to my eye) combination of hard and soft.
It’s an interesting discussion! I understood the idea behind this approach (mixing hard and soft light) and the look it would create, but in this lighting set up what would the (theorical) motivation of the soft light be? Would it simulate a bounce light?
Thanks a lot Roger! The black net is another great tip!
I searched around and i found various silver surfaces that create interesting reflections, from the caustic of shiny surfaces to soft bounce light of opaque silver.This trick simplified the entire scene, made the blocking way easier and gave me interesting ideas about the structure of the entire shot!
All of the shots in that film except that shot was taken with my Blackmagic Pocket 4k on Blackmagic raw
May I ask you what’s your opinion about that camera? The price dropped a bit and i’m considering it for my next short movie. I know there are way better cameras around, but still it’s a step up on my present camera and, well, i’m the kind of “one step at the time” person…
…we should certainly double check on whether it is possible to turn off a single bank of lights because in all honesty, we were scared of the school’s personnel and didn’t think to ask
I work in a school as a teacher and while I met a lot of strange people working in schools I never met someone actually scary, ah ah! Just kidding, but go and ask them when you can, for two reasons:
1) If i understood correctly, you’ve asked the permission to shoot in the school gym yet, so you did the most difficult part yet. If you will turn some light off you’ll actually do them a favour (saving on electricity bill, lights consumption, etc).
2) You won’t have a second chance to shoot there – maybe you will, but let’s pretend you will not for the sake of dramatic effect ah ah! – so you need to do that in the way you envisioned the scene. What will matter in a few years? that you have to face the school ogres to ask to turn some light off or that you couldn’t shoot as you wanted because you were scared to ask? I’m a shy person and perhaps i understand why you are scared to ask, but i learned in life that you don’t get a special medal for being shy, you just lose opportunities. If that’s the problem, forget the shyness and do whatever you need to create your movie. If you are going to direct it, you have to direct it. If turning off some lights is actually the best solution is a complete different issue, of course. But start by solving simple problems: find the switch for the ligths and see what happens.
I think it requires a bit of experience and skill to give the idea of a nightmare by only working on lights in black and white (unless the scene is so horrorific that it’s obvious that it’s a nightmare). If the flashback is actually a nightmare you could think also to other solutions: for example you could go “full Suspiria” and alter the colors instead of the lights, using unnatural colors and palette to create a dreamy sequence – even if a scary one. Or you could use some visual effect to give the idea of a sort of allucination. It has nothing to do with nighmares but think for example to the Deakinizer that Roger used for The Assassination of Jesse James : the scenes shot with that effect could be easily adapted to a dream sequence, together with some other work on the palette for example. Or some other type of distortion of the image, it’s actually quite easy to create them in post production even with some basic software (you may need to create some turnaround to obtain that effects, working on modification and keyframes for example, but it’s not that difficult) .
Both solutions (an odd palette or some strange visual effect) are not very original to create the idea of a nightmare, but they are easy to do. It’s up to you to see what it’s the best solution to obtain the effect you desire.
And don’t be scared by school personnel. They don’t eat people. Not usually, at least.
I did some tests and it works perfectly! It’s a bit too strong as reflection in the way i used but i think i’m close to the solution! Thanks for the tip, it simplified the entire scene!
Thanks a lot! I was planning to use a wider shiny-ish white surface for the same purpose, but this seems a better solution to control where exactly the bounce goes!
You could grab a screenshot of the scene in which the lamps are clearly visible, make an image research with Google Lens, or similar tools, of only the lamp part (the entire screenshot will probably link you to pages talking about the movie, you need Google to focus on just the detail of the lamp). Perhaps you’ll need to scroll a bit within the results but usually you find what you are looking for, sooner or later.
(again, sorry for posting it twice but the previous post got cancelled)
As always, my lack of experience makes my opinion of limited help, but if i understood you’ve got too much light and there’s no way to turn part of them off, is it correct?
As Roger and gx42 wrote, i was wondering too what kind of scene are you going to shoot, or better what kind of effect you want your scene create on the audience.
If the problem is that the light of the gym is too even and can’t create a dramatic effect or make the talents stand out , besides the negative fill (but i guess it’s not easy to use them in such a great space, and i suppose you’ll need to consider also the bounce from the field on the walls too, not only the lights from above) you could use an ND filter to make everything darker, adding some other lights just on the talents to make them stand out. The ND filter should avoid to overexpose them and you’ll obtain a wider contrast between them and the background and more control on what you are actually lighting. It won’t look very naturalistic but, again, it depends on what kind of story you are telling and in what kind of shot.
Perhaps it’s a stupid idea but in theory it should work, at least i think so (i’m not experienced enought to judge how well it could work, i leave the judgment to Roger, David and the others). You could do a test and see what happens. I’d limit the ND to one stop or two, or it will look a theatre stage more than a basketball field.
Another possibility could be the secondary color correction in post production of the areas you want to be darker, but you’ll need somebody good with masking and rotoscoping if the shot is very dynamic.
I completely understand where you’re coming from Luca. I used to be the same way but I managed to make myself think differently about these things. I suppose its harder to stop thinking like that depending on how technically minded you are but I’m not sure.
It seems one of those commercials for people that need help about some struggle in life. Once i was like you, then i changed my life! You can too! Ah ah, just kidding, but it made me smile! 🙂
Thanks again David, as always your tips are very useful! I’m planning to use a bit of haze to make visible the beam of light of a torchlight a characters will use at one point, so your tip could be a very interesting idea!
The scene won’t be actually very dark (at least not in camera) since i am trying to use a bit more light than necessary to reduce the noise (not overexposing but still brighter than how it will look after grading) , but above all i’m afraid that with my lack of experience i could mess everything up with a very dark scene, without the freedom to modify things in post.
This short it’s actually just a global test (and, i hope, a showreel for fund rising) for a more complex project. But even the test needed a story, i rewrote it almost 20 times (i always say that if you must do something, you must do it well, ah ah!) and now i care about the characters i created, i’m trying to tell their story in a decent way. And many people are helping me, i am responsible for the result, so for this first time playing safe seems the best idea. If i will able to manage to create something vaguely acceptable – i hope so! – it will be in large part thanks to the tips and teachings by Roger, you and the people here on the forum! : )
“If you look for meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens” – Andrei Tarkovsky
I understand your point, but i have a tendency to analyze thing to understand their “true” meaning, no matter how mundane the thing (it may be a Tarkovsky’s frame or something written on a wall or just a scribble by my son), that’s just how my brain works. Perhaps i’m a bit too rational, but to me it’s more important to understand the meaning of something for its author than my feeling of it. I teach maths and science, i can’t avoid that! ah ah!
