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I’m not sure what Ridley Scott uses but if you mean older films, chances are they used the oil based DF-50 hazer. It’s great but leaves nasty residue.
The finer the haze, the longer it hangs in the air, the easier continuation. The likes of Pea Soup Phantom Hazer and MDG Atmosphere produce ultra fine haze that leaves almost no residue.
But maybe you want to ‘see’ more of the haze. Common names like Antari, Martin/Jem, Look are more affordable and produce much bigger particles, but also continuity gets tricky – imo you’ll need a guy just to take care of the haze.
There’s also a different kind of solution to fix continuity: a fantastic software plugin called ‘Scatter’ by Video Village, reproducing physical accurate diffusion of various filters – among them the haze-emulation filter ‘Smoque’ by Tiffen. Scatter could be used to compensate continuity differences in shots within a scene.
do you think, this is good enough to keep trying, even when you are useless at networking
It’s good! Your handheld work in my opinion is the best and I could instantly tell that you have a feeling for framing, creating depth but also pacing and an understanding of what needs to be told.
The first thing that came to mind was…London. I would guess there are many, many cinematographers trying to make it besides you. So networking may be even more important in that environment.
I’m as old as you, am an introvert plus for the most part of my life I had a metabolic disfunction that made me chronically tired but also social interaction was exhausting. I did not talk much on jobs and was quite concentrated, because I always feared to run out of energy before the job was done. I also had mild but constant social anxiety – even though people always liked me – but that’s something I needed to learn: no-one is ill-willed and people like me.
For these reasons I was very bad at networking too, but was lucky to live in an area where there is lots of demand but little supply, so to speak, and the agencies I work with somehow had larger clients.
So I have no tips how to network, however, I can tell that I went through phases that felt like things are going backwards, too. I think this is rather normal in our business. And I’m afraid luck and being at the right place at the right time plays a larger part than one would like.
Which leads me to our industry’s famous saying: the most important thing (in networking) is to show up. Whatever opportunity rises, just show up. The rest will write itself and in my opinion, cannot be controlled fully. Show up. Much will lead to nothing but some things will.
You said being on the autism spectrum causes anxiety and resistance when meeting new people. Maybe this is something you can work on with a specialist? It seems to be what holds you back from creating more opportunities.
One last thing, if you feel you need more work to showcase to get better/other jobs, you may consider shooting a short film and make it as good as you can. I noticed people often are more impressed by narrative work than commercial work or music videos.
Sorry for my chaotic response and good luck!
since the camera got closer to the actor so gently and slowly that the first time i didn’t even notice it
I love the very slow and subtle push-in.
There is a great version of it, albeit more noticeable, in “Good Will Hunting”, where Will has a job interview at the NSA and he starts a long monologue, forecasting a list of consequences if he took the job. The camera slowly pushes in on him and stops at the climax of his forecast, then pulls back out again when Will summarizes what all this would mean for him personally. It goes uncut for 2 minutes and is powerful, intriguing and serves the story.
I wouldn’t agree that it’s always a bad tool. For example it helps uphold the constant stress level in “Uncut Gems” or “Good Times” by the Safdie brothers, which is an important part of their story telling and the experience. The camera always moves and often it’s handheld and shaky. There are also director’s and cinematographers who use a handheld, shaky camera only once or twice in a film, at very specific moments, and that can work very well, too.
I agree it’s often a bad option though, especially if it doesn’t serve a purpose or it’s only done for time and budget reasons (TV shows come to mind).
Max,
I find the tools in Resolve very limiting or too imprecise for these kind of tweaks and almost only use DCTLs (“DaVinci Colorspace Transform Language”) now.
You might want to look into it, I find it much easier to get pleasing (and mathematically “correct”) colors than with Resolves’ own tools.
“Film Density” and “Tetra” from Paul Dore (in the “DCTL” folder on his Github page) are two all-time classics and free.
There are also great free DCTLs from IridescentColor .com, one that’s also called “Tetra”, “Saturator” and “Split/Tone”. He also has videos on them and affordable commercial DCTLs.
More expensive but fantastic DCTL programmers are Mononodes and Kaur Hendrikson.
I recommend trying the free ones, they are already great!
I also love the color density that film stock has, it is not easy to “replicate” with digital files until I don’t work with a high-end camera and expert colorist.
Max, if you use Davinci Resolve Studio, there’s a free DCTL from Paul Dore (ACES color scientist) called “Film Density” that emulates the darker luminosity in saturated colors of film.
You can find it on his Github site.
Until he replies (hopefully)…I think simply a high color temperature in camera would swallow the blues in this particular scene as well.
I’m not Roger so I can only guess but looking at the hard shadows there doesn’t seem to have been diffusion. And I would imagine the relatively bright sand bounced the sun enough to not use any additional bounce. Obviously, I may be wrong though.
That’s a lot!
As you mention these shreds of thoughts are out of context but they do form an interesting overview on how a world class cinematographer approaches situations from small to big and film work in general.
I see few scenes covered in a wide shot when I watch a series but, maybe, that is just because directors and cinematographers have a ‘go to’ setting for TV.
I can’t help but think it has to do with courage, too. You once told about a dialogue scene (between Brolin and del Toro I believe) out on a road in ‘Sicario’. After shooting the wide shot, Denis loved it and said to you: “let’s not shoot close shots because then I will use them in the edit”.
I believe that even though with tools like “Sora” it will still take time until consistency and precision are good enough for longer formats.
Once they are, I think that:
1. If everyone can make a movie from home, stories will become even more important than today. A good thing.
2. Live-action content will never go away. The more artificial content we’re thrown at, the bigger our longing for ‘real’ will become.
I was hoping someone else would attempt to comment on this post!
I for one am pretty glad that you commented 🙂
I wouldn’t know what to improve in lighting, you seemed to use the sun at different times of day very well. It’s very natural, which I think is mandatory for this topic. Overall I personally pay more attention to mood, and this one has a fantastic mood. Also great pace and timing, deep colors and a natural sound mix. Great job!
