Manure

[Jarred Land]

David definitely amazes me every day...

[Bob Torrance]

David definitely amazes me every day...

no kidding. To the cinematography students out there, I hope you're reading this.

[Marc Berger]

David,
once your diary comes to an end, it would be fantastic to collect it in a PDF and give it also to AC and other magazines for download. This is so great, it should go over the borders of the Red forum. I´m sure, not only students, also professionals would be happy to get this input! IMO you´re the first one who explore the digital cinema according to its own pure possible aesthetic (and not in comparison to film).
Thank you so much!
Marc

[Rudi Herbert]

Great info David! And wow, June 26th is also my birthday, though I wish I had celebrated mine in as creative an evironment as you did yours!

[Shawn Booth]

David,
once your diary comes to an end, it would be fantastic to collect it in a PDF and give it also to AC and other magazines for download. This is so great, it should go over the borders of the Red forum. I´m sure, not only students, also professionals would be happy to get this input! IMO you´re the first one who explore the digital cinema according to its own pure possible aesthetic (and not in comparison to film).
Thank you so much!
Marc

I've been doing this - the .pdf is over 50 pages so far. I've included almost all of David's posts and the photos as well - so if you want it David, let me know. I'll send it right over.

[SF Geek]

David, are the backdrops all front lit? I also noticed that you had talked about blanket lights for overhead ambient and HMI balloons for the backdrops, but then I saw you talking about lumapanels and HMI goyas. Were these different stages or did you change your setups due to budget or preference?

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, the cycs are all front-lit canvas paintings, they are not translights.

In the main Stage C, where the landscapes and farms are, I have Kino blanket lights, some HMI balloons along two sides, and some 12-lights (tungsten) and 18K HMI's hung from ropes near the top. I also hit the backing with HMI's (18K's, 6K's, whatever is left) from stands on the off-camera sides, flagged off of the ground.

In the smaller Stage B, where we built hotels, diners, etc. we have Lumapanels hung, plus some Goya HMI lights as cyc lights. I took two Goyas though and at some point, added one for each corner of Stage C, plus a 4K HMI in between, to light the far stretch of wall that I constantly was pointing at. So when I moved to Stage B, I often had to take down those Goyas and move them, re-rig them.

[Alexander Nikishin]

Great work David, the re-shot master definitely has more depth and ambience to it, the haze is really the icing on the cake as well.

Looks like you switched out backdrop too.

[David Mullen ASC]

No, it's the same backdrop (you can see some of the same clouds if you look), just that once a week or so, a painter came in and made some changes.

I only posted the photos not to say that there was something wrong with the more stylized early version compared to the more realistic later version, just that when you shoot a movie quickly, basically shooting five minutes of scenes every day, some aspects of the look get established right away while other aspects change as you learn more and more everyday -- the learning curve is steeper than on a long shoot with a long preproduction period where the look is locked in early through elaborate testing.

This movie was a bit of an experiment, most indie films of this budget level do not attempt this degree of stylization through art direction and lighting (maybe for an obvious reason, because it's really hard work!) But it's been fun to get this challenge and opportunity and I think the movie has turned out to be really unique and special.

[Douglas Underdahl]

It's wonderful, David.

I like the reshot frame better. It does look more "real", and I think that a big reason for this is that you punched up the sky considerably, to the point that the clouds are not as defined. One might say that this mimics the blown out look one would get by shooting in a real field, as the contrast range would be much more extreme there. So it's interesting to me that you have achieved a greater sense of "realness" by pushing the look into something that so many on this site have worried about: the so called limited range of the camera! Of course, 35mm color negative reacts this way as well.

Thanks so much for your openness and please know that I am quite stunned by your work.