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The distance the bounce source is from the subject controls the ‘softness’ of the light but also the fall off. If you want the wall behind your subject to seem as brightly lit as they are then you have the bounce at some distance away but if you want to isolate a face you then move it close.
The curve I might put into an array of small bounce boards or muslins is to ‘funnel the light when I need to. It doesn’t affect the subject as much as it does the background.
The height of the bounce is a choice made when looking at the natural source you are adding to or emulating. You might also change the height depending on how the light falls on your subject, whether that is an object or a face.
I always control color temperature on set and definitely NOT in post. How to handle color temperature? Maybe that is all about observation of how natural light can change color during the progress of a day or how it varies from one artificial source to another.
A long lens can infer a point of view or can be used to isolate a subject from a background. So much of the why depends on the subject and the specific moment in the story or it may just be the way a foreshortened landscape looks more interesting than a wide shot. Some decisions are that simple.
I don’t think ‘unmotivated’ camera movement suits any story. But, camera movement can be motivated by something that is not necessarily to do with movement within a frame but emotion.
I had a Par blasting through that window and a very light diffusion, I think it was a Hampshire frost, on the glass. There was no particular ‘view’ and I thought it more interesting to blow out the window. It made the contrast between the brightness outside and the shadowed interior more intense.
I wanted to feel express the bleakness of the sea front at night and in winter. The cold light is less ‘comfortable’ and contrasts with the apartment building towards which Hilary is walking. From a naturalistic point, these kinds of practical lights often emit different colors depending on the life of the bulbs and the type of bulbs used. Not so much with LEDs but in the 1980s, for sure.
I did use the same range of lenses for both Benicio’s character and Emily’s, yes. Ialso used similar length lenses for ‘TMWWT’, if a little wider.
I don’t remember saying that. I like using wide’ish lenses when I want to be close to a character and if the story is primarily from one character’s point of view, but by wide I am not generally talking about anything as wide as used in ‘Touch of Evil’, for example. Which was a great use of wide lenses BTW.
You could say ‘Sicario’ used two perspectives. I’m not sure why one character would see any differently than another but the movement of the camera and the lighting might differ.
As to using a wide lens in a story with only one character. Is that true? Some directors like to use wide lenses, as do some cinematographers but for a character point of view? I can’t see that.
Those are a lot of question and a full answer would make a book.
The reason using the bounce light for the Omori Restaurant scene in ‘Unbroken’ was to do with the restricted space I had outside the windows. A large bounce source with my lamps on stands below was a far more efficient alternative to using a grid of small lamps, which would create a similar soft source, and raising them up to the right angle.
Quality of light, aperture and cost – in that order.
I think the quote from Conrad was in reference to a specific use of a lamp at full spot.
The LEDs I used on ‘Empire’ were multi color so I could dim them and warm them up to get the same effect as I would do with a tungsten source.
A clear bulb gives a cleaner shadow. In a practical that might look ‘right’ or it might be ‘better’ with a frosted bulb.
I do very little in the DI, other than for ‘O Brother’ that is. And I don’t look at a histogram. The white is the white but, of course, looking at a dvd is not like looking at a cinema screen and, even if I have overseen the transfer, its not ever the same. I don’t remember my approach to ‘Elah’ being that different. Obviously, every story is different so it does not look like ‘No Country’ or ‘Prisoners’, two films that look diametrically different.
I would only use the 500 stock when I really needed to. I much preferred the lower speed stocks and used both the 100 and 200 Tungsten balanced emulsions. I rarely used the daylight emulsions as I felt they were a little saturated.
I would only set my meter to the rating suggested by Kodak. I would then under or overexpose depending on what effect I was after and where I wanted my exposure to lie relative to the range within the frame. But, either changing the rating or adjusting your exposure after taking a normal reading is basically doing the same thing. Overdeveloping is different. You can change the contrast by doing this, shift the colors and also add grain.
