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The weight of a simple fluid head is an advantage outside when moving around difficult terrain. I do prefer operating with a fluid head for long lens shots when I am panning with uncertain action, for instance.
I have very rarely used a scrim overhead and rather choose a time of day. If you have a background it always seems odd that a character is standing in a different light.
I find the gear head is a great tool when working on a set with very specific camera moves. I prefer a fluid head when I am shooting on an exterior location and, specifically, on longer lenses.
I have not used diffusion on the lens for many many years. For the shot you reference I did nothing on the lens or in terms of an additional bounce source. I did little for the opening sequence of NCFOM either. Certainly nothing in front of the lens. In both cases I wanted the light to appear as harsh as it was.
I don’t see why simple camera angles like those you describe can’t be shot in a moving car. I am pretty sure they would have been for Taste of Cherry.
I would not like to recommend one manufacturer over another. I know cinematographers swear by one lamp over the other but I really don’t have a preference. Besides cost and availability also play a role in making a choice.
I have a box of around 40 filters of various kinds; fog filters, diffusions, black and white pro mists, even a series of stockings. The last time I opened the box to use one on a film was in the 1980s and I regretted doing so later.
You could look online. There are many films pre 1960 that were shot on a single lens. Earlier filmmakers had little choice. And there are some recent films shot on one wide lens. And then there was, 1917, basically shot on a 40mm.
I think the new HDR is quite good. It is a challenge to control the extremes of HDR but it looks good when you do.
For ‘1917’ I did have double bulbs built into the two oil lamps set on the tables in the bunker, not a tent. When the camera faced in one direction the near bulb was dimmed down and the one out of sight was doing more of the lighting. When the camera switched direction we switched the intensity of the bulbs. In this case the two bulbs were almost touching – with a small piece of metal foil between – so there was no double shadow.
A double, triple or multiple shadow from two or more sources is alway there if those sources are not touching. Look at a 9 light or 12 light Maxi Brute. If you hold your hand close the lamp you see every shadow, though perhaps you should do this with an equivalent multiple bulb LED if you value your hand. At a distance the lamp becomes, in effect, a point source. On ‘True Grit’ we had a run of individual HMI lamps set at 5 feet apart. If you stood 20 feet from this ‘source’ you would not even be lit by more than a few lamps but where the action was, more than 750 feet away, the multiple shadows from 20 or 30 individual lamps were imperceptible on anything but an even flat surface. And there was no flat surface in picture.
This was not the scene I was talking about. The color of the light here is coming entirely from the screen and the playback we shot for the scene.
As I spent most of my career shooting film I usually keep the camera set to daylight or to tungsten. The lighting is the color it is relative to those settings for both the scenes you mention as they were shot on stage.
You might try crating as many different possible ‘looks’ using just one or two lights. I sometimes demonstrate this with a single Fresnel lamp, a sheet of diffusion, some silver foil and a white bounce board.
If you place a second bulb, a ‘gag’, behind one that is in camera you are in effect increasing the light of your source without that source overexposing your negative. With digital capture, and greater latitude in the image, the technique is less used as an adjustment can be made in the timing.
I’m pretty sure I shot that scene on 500T stock. I only use a meter to check the level of light at a point in the frame where I want a mid exposure. Otherwise I light by eye. I have no idea what teh contrast ratio read on the meter, for instance.
The ‘eyelight’ was coming from a soft cove of bounce light I was using to wrap Javier’s face. The practical itself was not at the right angle to reach around his face.
