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“For me, an interesting tool, that would be a mix of false color and spot meter, is the EL Zone, by Mr. Ed Larchman, but if I remember it is only for Panavision.”
Panasonic VariCam LT and 35 and the small Sigma FP have it. Also SmallHD external monitors I believe. It should be featured in more and more cams going forward.
I haven’t used EL Zone yet but love the intuitive color palette and distribution opposed to the confusing False Color (which also varies from company to company).
It seems to be great to evaluate contrast ratios around middle grey and thus replace a light meter. But it does not do a good job at showing sensor clipping or noise floor (depending how many stops you distribute above or below middle grey), so it needs to be combined with another tool that does this.
Good overview:
EL Zone Exposure System- how does it work and how do you use it
Clint Eastwood often says “Let’s not overthink things” on set.
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves trying to do it perfect. Reading your text, I think you already ask the right questions and that’s all you really need in my opinion. Keep asking about content, keep questioning and talk to the director. You’ll develop your own intuition over time. But try not to put too much pressure on yourself. You are not the only one responsible for a scene’s emotion and as David said, sometimes you shouldn’t even attempt to insert some.
” Sometimes the visuals can be a counterpoint to the emotions of a scene, like when a character gets bad news on a perfect spring day surrounded by nature.”
‘Funny Games’ (like basically any Michael Haneke film) is a good example.
‘Se7en’ is another great example. For the first 3/4 of the movie, it always rains (even in interior scenes, you always hear rain). From the moment Kevin Spacey steps out of the cab to turn himself in, the sun starts to come out, and by the time of the barbarous finale in the desert, the nicest, most romantic sundown hits Pitt, Freeman and Spacey.
Whenever I can, I prepare – you can find overviews and tutorials just about everything on the internet. That at least eases my mind.
Then, when testing or on set, I usually find that those things turn out to be much less of a mystery than I had feared (there’s also almost always someone who is already familiar and can help).
I like “Nocturnal Animals” from Tom Ford (fashion designer/filmmaker). From casting (he seems to love to arrange colors around Amy Adams hair) over location to set design and costume, there’s always a delicate combination of colors within a scene/shot. Neither distracting nor driving the story, just great taste in colors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOsEU5oYpTA
Just watched “One Cut Of The Dead” and absolutely loved it!
Actually, “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” is of the very same kind of japanese playful, choreographic wizardry, so you might enjoy that too.
Sounds great, too! The Japanese have such a pronounced love for creativity, it’s quite different to Europe. Something that’s considered mind bending here seems to only cause a weary smile in Japan. I believe their manga culture is a major driver of constantly moving cerebral goal posts 🙂
That sounds wonderful, I love Japanese cinema but don’t know that one!
This reminds me of “Beyond the infinite two minutes”, also a Japanese movie, Shot in one location. It’s Shot in one take but with marvolous, typicall Japanese twist. During the end credits you see how they pulled many of the Shops off – with sheer and hilarious creativity.
Thanks, I will check it out!
I just watched ‘Primer’. Made on a budget of $7.000 and a crew of 6, including the lead actors. They cleverly used what they had, embracing restrictions. It just works. It won the 2004 Sundance Great Jury Prize, being refreshingly different and smart.
When shooting raw I like to lower ISO just a tad bit to get a “thicker” negative, especially in low light scenes, but am generally an advocate of getting it as close as possible to the final look in camera. For example I like Alexa’s noise and night exteriors shot at ISO 1600.
“I’m wary about my work being judged as not up to snuff if that room for tinkering isn’t there. Perhaps this is a consequence of the level I’m working at currently, and it’s something one has to learn to navigate with collaborators.”
I know what you mean. I often didn’t have a say in post and it happened a lot that the colorists changed exposure – and thus mood – distinctly. I think it definitely depends on the scale of the production – the smaller, the more tinkering in post in my experience.
I did a similar quick test once with a blue filter in order to see if it’d help with day-to-night conversion. Shoot raw to be able to visually losslessly change white balance in post.
I couldn’t see a difference between using the blue filter and using no filter but turning WB to a higher Kelvin in post.
Modern cine cams are so good at balancing temperature, would be interesting to know if you’ll see a difference at all with that test.
Thank you David!
“It was convincing about half the time. One problem is that the filter needs a light source to hit it, like a window or a bright highlight, to really see the effect, but when someone passes between the window and the filter, the effect disappears momentarily, which is odd.”
I think that confirms my concerns. Having to take extra care so it doesn’t behave odd isn’t efficient or worth it.
I’ll still look into Smoque though because the way you use it on inserts makes a lot of sense, thanks for the tip!
There are also affordable but great alternatives to the Astera Titans (Godox, Nanlite ect). You might also consider flex-LEDs (e.g. Falcon Eyes) as they are lightweight, larger/soft sources and great for travel or mounting at ceilings ect and come in Bi-color and/or full RGB.
A word in general, Chinese / Korean brands (e.g. Aputure, Nanlite, Godox, Falcon Eyes) have come a long way the past 10 years, the LED light emitter quality is already there and built quality finally also catches up with “western” quality, but at much lower prices, so if your budget is low it might not be a bad idea to look there.
