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What a great news! Looking forward to read It! I just hope shipping to Italy won’t be too expensive (as usually Is, go figure now).
May i ask on what set the photo of the cover has been taken (if It was shot on set of course) ? To see if i guessed It, ah ah!
Yes, it’s a dialogue scene but the main problem is that i can’t combine shot and reverse shot in the same location. And, above all, in the first one i don’t have a window i can use to give a motivation to the light, while in the second one i don’t have the element of the set i need to tell the story. I thought about creating the second part of the scene (the window one) with a 3D background and a green screen, but i’d like to use a real window and a real set, i’m afraid to achieve a fake looking effect with the green screen (apart from the complication of using that).
As always, since i’m just an amateur working on a little project i don’t think that my opinion is particularly relevant, but even in my little i try to take inspiration from Roger’s masterpieces. But i came to the conclusion (and it happened many times, in other completely different contextes) that, while it’s highly interesting and informative to know how Roger (or other great cinematographers) created a given scene, the point is not doing the same thing , but thinking in the same way. At least it works for me, i can’t speak for anyone else. But if i just try to copy something i can obtain, at best, a decent copy. If i try to think in the same way of someone that created something i really like, in that moment i understand and learn. Of course there’s some subjectivity in it, but an educated guess is better than no guess.
So, my humble advice : study that scene from Skyfall and try to guess why Roger did this or that, not just what he did. If your goal is creating an exact copy of that scene do it, but perhaps i think it would make an even better impression to show that you can create a scene – even a different one – in the same way Roger would. Just my opinion!
Hello David, thanks very much for your reply. This really helps and as you suggested, I will schedule the wide shots / the ones with windows in frame around dusk.
As always, i’m unexperienced and i’m afraid i’m writing just a bunch of stupid stuff, but take in consideration that you’ll have the natural light from the windows even in close ups (if you plan to shoot them previously), so it’s possible you’ll need to match the colors of close ups and wide shots to keep them coherent (you’ll get probably cold/greyish diffused light from the windows). Perhaps a warm diffusion on the windows for the close up, together with artificial lights placed inside, could help controlling the natural light also in close ups?
On the one side you can calculate how many foot candles you need to get to middle grey based. A rule of thumb is that you need 100fc for a T2.8 at 100 ISO and 24fps. Double or halve the values for each stop, so T4 at 400 ASA/ISO requires ≈50 fc if you want to light at key.
Let me see if i got the math right. You lose 1 stop from T2.8 to T4 but you gain 2 stops from 100 ISO to 400, so at the end you obtained 1 stop more and need half the light (50 fc instead of 100) to have the same exposure. But when keeping the ISO at 100 and going from 2.8 to 4 you’d need 200 fc, is it correct?
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!
