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Congratulations for completing it, it’s not easy! It looks interesting, good luck for the festivals!
Partly for a technical problem: i created a little set in my garage but it has no window. And i have a room with a big window. I would like to show the characters against the window but the only other option i have Is using a green screen and faking It in 3D, as i did for other set extension, but it gets more complicated than matching 2 locations shot. And above all, i was looking at the (so called) set with the garage door wide opened and just the natural light. It was beautiful, calm and (of course) natural. No point in trying to fake what nature gave me yet. So i tried to figure what Roger would do in such a situation, and my answer was that i needed to find a window somewhere to use that natural light. Perhaps i’m completely wrong but it’s not easy to try to think like Roger, ah ah! (But it’s the best way to try to learn from him, to me, not just copying what he did but trying to guess what he would do) .
If you want to do it yourself you can use the Studio Version of Davinci Resolve. It automatically creates subtitles from your audio tracks. If you have the English subtitles created, you can use ChatGPT to translate them to French and replace the original. I can’t include YouTube links, otherwise it won’t let me post this comment, so I’ll try to add them in a second post.
I don’t know how good are translations from ChatGPT but in general i try to avoid automatic translations, sometimes i checked languages i know and translations were a bit odd at best (but they are improving everyday of course). To quickly understand what a website talks about they are fine, but i wouldn’t trust them for subtitles. Just my opinion of course!
I’m not an expert but i’m a similar situation (mine it’s in italian but i need english subtitles to join some festivals) . Wheat kind of problems would you like to solve?
As far as the technical aspect is concerned, it’s not a difficult process actually, you need to create a written file in which the words corrispond to the timestamps. A bit tedious and time consuming but not that complicated. You attach that file in the software you are using for post production (i’m doing it in Da Vinci Resolve, for example, and it offers a tool to create subtitles automatically – but i prefer creating them manually). Usually it’s the same file you have to submit to festivals, when they request subtitles.
To translate the dialogue i’d suggest you to see how movies create subtitles, sometimes i see differences between the subtitle and the dialogue when they are in different languages: the global meaning is respected but not the actual dialogue. I find it a bit annoying, i don’t see the point in changing the script, when the phrase still makes sense in the other language. I hope that helps a little!
Thanks to everybody for your tips!
To clarify, as Roger guessed i’m perhaps overthinking about that, since while the two walls are in two different rooms, they actually are rotated of 90° and they belong to the same building, so it shouldn’t be a great issue to match the two shots and make them look two sides of the same room (summin up, in one room i have a library i’d like to use as a background but i can’t use its window, while in the other room i have a nice window but no library…) . I’m a bit sorry i won’t be free to move the camera from a side to the other but as long as i can use natural light i’m happy. And i think a static camera could be useful to create a bit of tension, given it’s an horror story.
Thanks for the tip about the audio, Stip! i was not thinking about that, but you are right, audio will help in creating the matching!
And now let’s go and find that shot in Hail Caesar, ah ah!
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.
