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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

If the sensor is what it is, then how is the rating debatable? Maybe the exact "set sensitivity" isn't known yet? Wouldn't graeme know? When I know the film stock and rating, let's say, 400 asa film, isn't middle grey, middle grey? I can set my light meter and zone everything. I know when I'll lose details in the highlights, etc. If the sensor light sensitivity is set, could I figure out the exact amount of light energy needed to blow my highlights, etc.? I'm just musing here...
 
Okay.

Actually I wasn't trying to add any lyrical mood, but just to avoid the kind of abrupt transitions that, for some reason, I associate with short films: an interior scene ends, and suddenly we are jolted to the loud sound of the street over some scene happening there.

I find this kind of transition somewhat distracting. The jolt may be partly due to the drama of the two scenes being unconnected (I suppose it would be less of a jolt if we cut from "We have to find Jack" to Jack in the street), but I am trying to see what purely audio/visual elements contribute to the jolt.

I get the impression that our perception of low-budget or high-budget is a lot related to sound quality, so maybe the jolt only comes from low quality sound. Assuming my question makes some sense, is that the main factor, or would starting tight on something avoid it somehow -- how would you avoid the jolt in this case?

Thanks.
 
jing said:
If the sensor is what it is, then how is the rating debatable?
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The parameters that determine the equations for calculating ASA are open to interpretation by companies that develop the cameras and people unconnected with those companies. It is not always known and clear what methodology was used by a certain manufacturer, and not always possible to have a consensus, and the manufacturer's choice of the way such parameters are calculated to derive certain ratings might have marketing reasons behind them.

jing said:
If the sensor light sensitivity is set, could I figure out the exact amount of light energy needed to blow my highlights, etc.? I'm just musing here...
Click to expand...

Need to know the spectral power distribution of light you are using and also the camera's spectral response curves (which could be reverse engineered though).
 
more to it then i thought, then. i guess trial and error will be my best tool when i get my red. :)
 
Even with film, an ASA rating is only a recommendation -- in fact, it's now called an Exposure Index because it is not exactly based only on the sensitivity, but also how the manufacturer prefers the film be exposed for an optimal image.

You have "x" number of stops of dynamic range and how you expose depends on the scene content and what information you want to bias the exposure for, which is one reason why ASA ratings are not firm numbers with digital cameras.
 
benfilm said:
I get the impression that our perception of low-budget or high-budget is a lot related to sound quality, so maybe the jolt only comes from low quality sound. Assuming my question makes some sense, is that the main factor, or would starting tight on something avoid it somehow -- how would you avoid the jolt in this case?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

How many times in the course of a movie can you begin the scene the same way? You have to vary the approach, plus the way a scene is shot and cut needs to be based on the dramatic content and the script. Some scripts have abrupt transitions written into them, and other times, an editor creates an abrupt transition. The cut from the ECU of Lawrence of Arabia blowing out the match to the orange desert sunrise was originally written in the script as a dissolve but the editor felt it would be more powerful as a hard cut. You don't always want to avoid a jolt. The point of making a movie isn't necessarily about making every cut and transition as invisible as possible.

Other times you can use audio transitions as well as image ones. For example, the sound of the next scene beginning over the last shot of the previous scene before the cut.

The main thing is to plan your coverage with some idea of your in and out points so you have some variation in size and movement. Sometimes you design particular transitions around key elements and / or sounds. For example, a subtle one is in "Doctor Zhivago" where at the end of a scene in a medical lab, the doctor drops a glass microscope slide on the table and the squeak it makes leads you into a shot of a trolley car stopping in the street with a similar squeak. And subtle visual one is in "Lawrence of Arabia" where a man hands a business card to someone on the streets and the movie cuts to a tight insert of the card, but it turns out it is not the last insert of the scene but the first insert of the next scene when you cut wide again and reveal that now someone else (Prince Faisal) is holding the card.

Another cool transition is at the end of the well scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" -- Omar Sheriff through the whole scene has been sitting on a camel with blue sky behind his head, in a low-angle shot looking up to him. At the end of the scene, he says "God be with you!" and rides out of the shot, leaving a blue sky filling the frame... after a beat, the camera tilts down from the blue sky to reveal an extreme wide shot of Lawrence crossing the desert, which makes you wonder if all of Omar Sheriff's close-ups were shot not at the well, but at this other location for the next scene so they could do this tilt down, or if there is a hidden cut in there while the camera is looking at blue sky.
 
Okay, thanks. On a more general note, what directors/films have shooting styles that an inexperienced director would benefit from drawing inspiration from? (is that correct English?!)

Maybe it's ADD but I especially like directors who move the camera a lot, like Spielberg and Cameron. Spielberg's short lens style where he composes several relevant elements into a shot and then moves the camera into another similar composition seems elegant and efficient to my inexperienced eyes: any other suggestions?

Thank you.
 
I’d like your opinion on daylight vs tungsten for Red.

There has been a lot of discussion about Red performing better under higher temperature lights. I don’t have the budget to buy new lights at the time but have a great set of tungstens.

My question is… is there any advantage to color correcting tungsten to daylight in the studio. I know it would cut the light, but in most cases I have more light than I need.

Not having a camera yet, I’m just trying to plan ahead.

BTW, this thread is now into its 100th page. How cool is that? Thanks again for your time and your willingness to share your knowledge.

Frank
 
A director's meat & potatoes work is staging actors to camera for a dialogue scene and covering it for editing, even though it is always more exciting to watch a big action scene, etc.

Spielberg is a master at staging and blocking actors to the lens, so I'd watch some of his more dialogue heavy dramas to see how he does it, like in "Schindler's List".

I also learned a lot by reading the Hitchcock-Truffaut book and then watching a lot of Hitchcock movies. "Rope" is a great film to study for blocking dialogue; so is another talky (based on a stage play) movie like "Dial M For Murder" (Scorsese says that he's looked at that movie many times for the staging of conversation scenes.)

A more modern example would be something like "Glengarry Glen Ross", or the 1960's Lumet film "12 Angry Men."

I learned a lot from Alexander Mackendrick, the English director who taught at CalArts -- take a look at the book on filmmaking that Paul Cronin wrote based on Mackendrick's lectures. Also look at Mackendrick's movies like "Sweet Smell of Success" or "The Ladykillers".
 
I may be doing a RED feature in the summer and the whole tungsten thing concerns me, especially since I may be lighting a soundstage with hundreds of spacelights, which are tungsten.

I've been thinking that when I have a high enough light level to use a pale blue filter that either has a 1/2-stop loss (which is a 1/4 correction) or a 1-stop loss (which is a 1/2 correction) to at least shift the color temp of the image partly towards daylight.

When I can, I'll use HMI's for day interior work like on location, even if in a soundstage. But I'm sure I'll have a few tungsten-lit scenes in low light levels and have to live with a little blue channel noise.

One advantage though that I'll have on that shoot is that we want a brownish desaturated Chocolate/Sepia look, and one way to get that is to light a scene very warm and pull down the chroma in post, so it may work out to light for 3200K but open up the files as if they are 5500K shots and then take the very orange-ish image and pull down the color to get brown, so I may not have any blue channel noise problems since I'm not trying to correct-out an orange cast to a neutral balance.
 
Arigato gozaimasu. I already have Mackendrick's book, as well as the Hitchcock Truffaut book but I've only skimmed through it yet.

When I mentioned moving the camera I did not mean in action scenes, I meant in scenes where dialogue is integrated into some meaningful stage business which gives opportunities to move the camera and the actors.

The stage business must obviously serve the content of the scene but it is also somewhat of an end in itself because moving things on screen gives the scene a more dynamic feeling: even non-ADD people are sensitive to that, humans are not purely intellectual creatures only sensitive to content -- form does count to some extent.

I am trying to learn the basic grammar in that department: things like an actor in a medium shot walking to the camera when his dialogue is getting to an emotional high. This is used in the scene in Schindler's List where the Jewish construction girl is explaining to Goeth (who ends up shooting her) that the foundations will collapse (it works very well in this case, her expression is very touching), and also in the scene in Minority Report where Colin Farrell visits Tom Cruise's wife at her house.

Or the different ways to arrange the stage business to have the two faces in the same shot and how they differently affect the emotions of the scene, instead of shooting the pedestrian over the shoulders. I just want to see a lot of that well done (not only from Spielberg) in order to get some practice and make informed choices.

Thanks for the suggestions. If you have more advice I'll be glad to hear it.
 
hey Ben, generally I take it from my acting experience first a.k.a. what is this scene about, who is the dominant in the scene, what clues do you want to show within the frame for the audience, and a biggie is also what is in and OUT of the frame that will activate your actors and thier need to move in the scene. How do you want a audience to feel ? This really goes into an action scene as well as a dramatic scene. I think that is why even though someone doing a action scene just for action's sake never fully takes advantage of the meat of it. take a look at michael mann and how he moves camera within the entire film action/dramatic scenes all interplay. i want to re-watch those two scenes you were talking about know!! peACe, Jason
 
Great posts everyone !

The subject of staging and blocking is one that interests me in great detail. (My blog seems to be finding a niche in that area)

The visual language of film; changing the frame and composition within the same shot is super dynamic. We're working essentially in a 2D plane (z and y coordinates) and the combination of moving the talent and the camera while creating depth using the shades of light and dark is imperative.

De Palma, Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino (my personal favorites) are masters at this technique. I see too many young / new filmmakers not at all showing an interest or aptitude for this approach. Shaky cam / snap zoom / as much coverage as possible and then editing in post; many films are becoming more montage visual than actual visual storytelling.

That scene from Schindler's ... powerful.
 
What about Sergio Leones' Once upon a time in the West?

There are small movements but very effective ones.
 
I cannot remember who said it (either Spielberg or Hitch) but they made it a point to say that every shot should be bookended compositionally.

You're not framing for just the start of the scene, but as the blocking and staging engages, you're framing for the end of that same scene. What happens in between the bookends isn't as important (comparitively speaking).
 
Yes, Leone is worth studying for staging of actors. I remember one simple cutaway shot in "Once Upon a Time in the West" of a bad guy stepping out of a door at the train station, and behind his head, Leone had a thousand head of cattle being herded through the streets of the town, with hundreds of extras.
 
J.R. Hud said:
I cannot remember who said it (either Spielberg or Hitch) but they made it a point to say that every shot should be bookended compositionally.
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Interesting. It would be great if you could post the source, so we could have Hitchcock's or Spielberg's complete discussion.
 
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