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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!
For Alexa’s I agree but especially mid and low end cinema cameras do not have such great latitude and dynamic range, or choice of (lossless) codecs.
Edamame,
I haven’t shot to codecs in years. I think it’s very different than shooting raw and also camera dependent. It might work for low key scenes I guess? In general, using ISO when shooting raw works counter intuitive as opposed to shooting codecs because the former has no internal processing and sensitivity stays the same (sensor’s sensitivity) and the latter has internal processing and dialed in ISO values change the sensitivity.
One example, on a sunny day in the desert you may raise ISO when shooting raw to protect the highlights from clipping while raising ISO when recording to a codec would accelerate clipping.
