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A tip would be to shoot and then edit it yourself.
One thing you’ll learn about for example is (in-) consistency between shots of a scene. How much of it is still fine for post (minor exposure shifts to glue a scene together are common), how much is too much and where the devil is hidden (e.g. color temperature or tint changes).
It’s a good idea to always try to get it as close as possible in-camera, but it’s hard to do perfectly and there is a certain wiggle room, and to know that wiggle room can give you more confidence on set.
I meant to say lighting takes place during pre-production and production as in, you can already scout locations for favorable practicals, windows ect. You can also block towards natural light and/or rearrange practicals accordingly. I highly recommend hiring a set designer / art director even if you only have a micro budget (at these budgets crew members usually wear several hats).
You may also want to look into the later films of Jean-Marc Vallée. On ‘Dallas Buyer’s Club’ he started to shoot with available light only, as he wanted to be able to shoot 360° on set. Afterwards he fell in love with this style of shooting ( how fast he could get things done and how freeing it was for his collaboration with the actors) and other movies followed. “Demolition” is another very nice example.
I’m a huge fan of available light and it works great on drama, where authenticity is often more important than a nice looking image, but can also work for other genres. “Children of Men” used available light to a large portion (or all?), also Emmanuel Lubezki’s work on “Birdman” or “The Revenant” (only the camp fire scene is lit).
Keep in mind though that on these set’s, the lighting basically takes place in pre-production and is within the set design. If you’re going to shoot on a micro budget, you may want to spend some time on changing/relocationg/adding practicals to your locations wherever you can.
Ultimately the director has the last say so what you describe is possible and ‘technically’ ok. Of course it’s not fulfilling as you’re more of a camera operator. So other factors decide whether to take the job (pay, gather experience, make connections ect). But even a job like this should present situations where you can bring yourself in.
It seems like 50mm was – and still is – the easiest (and cheapest) to design and build to achieve good image quality at fast apertures.
The ‘Double Gauss’ design was invented in 1817 by Carl Friedrich Gauss as a telescope lens and later refined by many others like Taylor Hobson in the 1920’s (later resulting in the Speed Panchros). The current design, presently found in inexpensive but high quality fast lenses like Canon EF 50mm 1.8 or Nikon AD 50mm 1.8, can be traced back to 1895 to Paul Rudolph and Carl Zeiss (the first Zeiss Planar lens).
From Wikipedia:
“The design forms the basis for many camera lenses in use today, especially the wide-aperture standard lenses used on 35 mm and other small-format cameras. It can offer good results up to f/1.4 with a wide field of view, and has sometimes been made at f/1.0. The design appears in other applications where a simple fast normal lens is required (~53° diagonal) such as in projectors.”
So the projection thing would make sense not just for the viewer experience but also on a technical level!
“Maybe it’s me getting too into the weeds with so much information out there on filmmaking, which gets me overthinking everything to the point of over-analysis often hahaha.”
Clint Eastwood often says: “Let’s not overthink things”.
On the other hand I think pondering over such things and looking at how other people do it is part of learning and finding your own voice.
I think in the situations you describe, key is what you said, to discuss more dramatic changes in exposure with the director and/or DP. Because sometimes things are really intended not to be seen. I had this issue a few times, where the colorist pushed the (low-key) image so that the viewer could better see what’s happening. But the intended purpose was to force the viewer to guess, not see, which was much more powerful.
He answers most (or maybe all?) of these questions in the latest Q&A video on their YouTube channel, e.g. he does not visualize much of a script before having talked to the director about his/her vision.
In-camera action with no (or very little) editing is the only kind of action that I like. The corridor fight scene in ‘Oldboy’ is my favorite.
Hey Andy, do you have a website or reel ect?
