Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[Andrew Phillip]

Hi David, how are things? My question is a bit more general, but any help on the matter would be appreciated. I'm just in pre-production for an upcoming shoot and I'm gathering pictures and examples to bring to my DP to show him the look I'm after. What I really want to know is how I could achieve a 60's film stock look using the RED. I'm just a director, so I'll be passing this info on to my DP. Anything about colour temperature, how to shoot the footage for better manipulation in post, characteristics of the period, etc. If you don't get to it, no problem. Thanks in advance.

Andrew

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

(re-posted, the original was way to general)

I know you hate judging on a computer screen David, and prefer not to put time and energy into analyzing tools that aren't yet available, so I am sorry for asking. But have you seen the HDR footage posted on Recon? I wonder if you have any thoughts on its motion blur, or any other thoughts on Red's HDR development, especially regarding lighting for naturalistic exteriors with so much DR available.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Are their certain lenses/brands known for being softer/lower-contrast? If so, which ones?

Older lenses basically, like Cooke Panchros, B&L Baltars, Panavision Ultra Speeds, etc. Also older zooms, like the Cooke 5:1. Also any lens with older coatings or the coatings removed.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

(re-posted, the original was way to general)

I know you hate judging on a computer screen David, and prefer not to put time and energy into analyzing tools that aren't yet available, so I am sorry for asking. But have you seen the HDR footage posted on Recon? I wonder if you have any thoughts on its motion blur, or any other thoughts on Red's HDR development, especially regarding lighting for naturalistic exteriors with so much DR available.

Looks impressive so far. Honestly, I'd need some frame of reference to judge them more accurately, some comparisons to other cameras or to film negative. But my own experience with shooting neon signs in Las Vegas tells me that there is a very high DR in those tests, and I didn't really catch any motion problems.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David, how are things? My question is a bit more general, but any help on the matter would be appreciated. I'm just in pre-production for an upcoming shoot and I'm gathering pictures and examples to bring to my DP to show him the look I'm after. What I really want to know is how I could achieve a 60's film stock look using the RED. I'm just a director, so I'll be passing this info on to my DP. Anything about colour temperature, how to shoot the footage for better manipulation in post, characteristics of the period, etc. If you don't get to it, no problem. Thanks in advance.
Andrew

It's both a technical issue and a stylistic issue. 1960's Kodak 35mm color negative (5250 and 5251) was 50 ASA tungsten until 1968 when Kodak introduced 5254, which was 100 ASA tungsten. So first of all, you have to imagine all the workarounds to deal with 50 ASA or 100 ASA film stock in terms of lenses, lighting, post, etc.

You also had a certain number of movies still being released in Technicolor dye transfer prints, which were more contrasty and more saturated than EastmanColor prints.

You had a certain amount of hard lighting left over from the 1950's plus as a way of dealing with slow film stock. You had zooms emerging as a popular lens.

The stocks themselves were not unusual, obviously a bit softer and grainier than a Red One MX image would be. One question is whether you want to bother with grain simulation in post. The softness is easier to create, with filters or older lenses, etc.

You sort of have to pick your role models to match to because there was a lot of stylistic changes happening in the 1960's.

 

[soren k jensen]

'Fire' with DMX controlled lighting

'Fire' with DMX controlled lighting

Dear David,
I will be shooting an interview on a small sound stage. The talent is to appear as if she is sitting close to a campfire. I have seen flicker boxes in use, controlling several gelled lights. But I am not impressed by the results. Do you know of anyone who has used DMX controlled lighting from a computer, to control the flickering of several light sources? What would you prefer to do?
Thanks, Soren

 

[Clint Lealos]

It's both a technical issue and a stylistic issue. 1960's Kodak 35mm color negative (5250 and 5251) was 50 ASA tungsten until 1968 when Kodak introduced 5254, which was 100 ASA tungsten. So first of all, you have to imagine all the workarounds to deal with 50 ASA or 100 ASA film stock in terms of lenses, lighting, post, etc.

You also had a certain number of movies still being released in Technicolor dye transfer prints, which were more contrasty and more saturated than EastmanColor prints.

You had a certain amount of hard lighting left over from the 1950's plus as a way of dealing with slow film stock. You had zooms emerging as a popular lens.

The stocks themselves were not unusual, obviously a bit softer and grainier than a Red One MX image would be. One question is whether you want to bother with grain simulation in post. The softness is easier to create, with filters or older lenses, etc.

You sort of have to pick your role models to match to because there was a lot of stylistic changes happening in the 1960's.

Wow, what a coincidence! I am shooting a 50s/60s commercial spot in Istanbul in a week and I was thinking about ways to create that look with the Red camera. You mentioned achieving the softness of the time period with filters and lenses. Can you elaborate? Thanks David.

 

[cristiano casone]

Wow, what a coincidence! I am shooting a 50s/60s commercial spot in Istanbul in a week and I was thinking about ways to create that look with the Red camera. You mentioned achieving the softness of the time period with filters and lenses. Can you elaborate? Thanks David.

Hi david,
Only one question: how can i import a look from redcineX to red cam?
I tried, but the camera says that there is nothing to import.
Please help me.

Thanks, Cristiano from Milan

 

[juliensees]

frosted windows

frosted windows

Hi David,

I'm curious about what type of solutions you would do with the following situation that I've found myself in:

I'm shooting in an apartment with frosted windows, and as shooting has begun I've had trouble with the windows being much hotter than the rest of the scene. Shooting on the Red, I have a 1.2kw HMI Par going through each window, and though the lights themselves are not as much of a punch as I would like, (actually hitting the actors) the white/frosted windows are already blowing out.

My question, is how do you deal with frosted windows or even sheer curtains or anything of that sort when you want your key light to come from those same windows and your giant source outside, without blowing out the windows?

Thanks,
-Dan

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Dear David,
I will be shooting an interview on a small sound stage. The talent is to appear as if she is sitting close to a campfire. I have seen flicker boxes in use, controlling several gelled lights. But I am not impressed by the results. Do you know of anyone who has used DMX controlled lighting from a computer, to control the flickering of several light sources? What would you prefer to do?
Thanks, Soren

It's always a stylistic cheat; I would get beyond that to some extent. But if you study a real fire, you generally have a base level of output that varies to some small extent plus momentary jumps as flames flare up & die. So basically you want a slow, minimal dimming up & down of level from your fake campire that has enough randomness to it, plus the occasional fast flicker, again random.

It also depends on how large a fire you are simulating.

My favorite technique is very low-tech: put a couple of small orange gelled lights behind a light diffusion frame (to blend them a bit) and then wave your hands, fingers, whatever, in a dancing, random pattern between the lights and the diffusion. The first time I did this was on a student film: I had a 2K zip off-camera gelled full orange and someone wiggled their fingers in front of the light to create a torchlight effect. It was totally believable. I've improved the effect by having a second person running a dimmer of some sort (like a Variac) for the slow pulsing effect as the first person does the hand dance in front of the lights. But given that some people aren't good at this, plus it can be distracting for the actors to have someone in their line of sight waving their hands all about (I once had David Arquette laughing during a scene where he was supposed to be watching a TV set, which was lighting his face: seeing me sit in front of a blue Kinoflo waving my hands around like a bad performance art piece was too amusing for him...) the other choice is to go with a flicker box. So I might have two lights through the same frame of light diffusion, one on a dimmer and one on a flicker box. Or more than two, one perhaps not dimming at all for the base exposure, or multiple ones on dimmers. It's the randomness of tempo and level that is the more important, to not get into a regular pulsing pattern.

Another technique that Conrad Hall liked was to shine an orange-gelled hard light through an actual fire with a lot of smoke: the rising smoke causes the light shining through it to flicker.

Probably the best approach (besides just using real fire) is to do what Alan Daviau did on "Empire of the Sun" which is to blend the light from a flame bar with some orange-gelled light coming through the fire.

But assuming that you can't use real flames, then I think the idea of blending a dimming light with a randomly flickering light is the best, unless you have some skills at waving your hands and fingers in front of a light in a dancing pattern.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You mentioned achieving the softness of the time period with filters and lenses. Can you elaborate? Thanks David.

Some people feel that to make something look period, you should use lenses from that period; it's a bit more organic than using diffusion filters on modern lenses. Certainly when I put a crappy old 12-120 Ang. zoom on a 16mm camera, the image feels nostalgic in a way...

The main problem with this approach is that you don't have as much control over the level of sharpness; you may want your widest shots for example to have more resolution than an old lens can provide.

The old coatings, or lack of them, in old lenses also contribute to the effect by the way bright areas in the frame will halate.

This is all a different issue than using diffusion filters from the period to simulate period filmmaking; for example, Fog Filters and Low Cons were very popular in the 1970's.

You just have to separate the idea of recreating a past technique from creating the impression people had of the past or past movies, which is not exactly the same thing. Sometimes person's idea of the past is not always accurate, like that Silent Era movies were all fuzzy, grainy, and flickery.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi david,
Only one question: how can i import a look from redcineX to red cam?
I tried, but the camera says that there is nothing to import.
Please help me.

Thanks, Cristiano from Milan

Don't know the answer to that; I don't generally do much tweaking of the monitor output look on set other than some simple gamma adjustments.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm shooting in an apartment with frosted windows, and as shooting has begun I've had trouble with the windows being much hotter than the rest of the scene. Shooting on the Red, I have a 1.2kw HMI Par going through each window, and though the lights themselves are not as much of a punch as I would like, (actually hitting the actors) the white/frosted windows are already blowing out.

My question, is how do you deal with frosted windows or even sheer curtains or anything of that sort when you want your key light to come from those same windows and your giant source outside, without blowing out the windows?

The solution is to use the new HDR function on the upcoming Epic cameras! :smilewinkgrin:

It's a common problem with no real solution other than to use a camera with maximum DR (or shoot on film) and even then, it can be a problem.

The solution tends to be what you'd think, which is to bring down the brightness of the sheers or frosted glass to a reasonable level and then simulate the light from them with an off-camera light, or to live with the clipping.

Other tricks I've done: if only part of the bright sheers or frosted window is in the background, I put some ND gel on the part of the window that I see so that the part of the window that is off-camera is left bright to allow it to provide that light onto the subject. Another trick is if those bright windows or sheers are in one half of the frame and the subject is on the other half (rather than behind the subject's head) is to use an ND grad filter on the camera to darken the bright windows.

 

[Kim Frank]

Excuse me, but I seem to missunderstand.
If you frost a window isn't the desired look a blown out window where you can't see through? I recently did the same and it worked just fine. One 2.5 HMI through each frosted window and all I needed was another 1.2HMI through a frame with full diffusion to warp the light around the faces in a few cases, but mainly just bounce cards or even no fill at all. The windows turned out white but without blowing out the window-frame.

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

If you're shining lights through your windows, if you DON'T blow them won't you just see the lights?

You can also use blown-out windows to your advantage, replacing them in post with whatever you want.

 

[Matt W.]

The windows are naturally frosted, he's not frosting them. Of course they will blow out if used as light sources so the answer is probably "live with it." Roger Deakins does this a lot. If it's good enough for him...

The other possibility is to mount kinoflos directly above the windows (better yet, silver reflectors above them angled down just slightly and then bounce hmi pars off the reflectors, carefully barn doored off) to create a separate soft source that appears to be coming from the window and which blends in with the light from outside the window. This only if the light/reflector won't appear in frame. This is also tricky; I never get the angle of the reflector/hmi set up right when attempting this kind of thing. Maybe others have a better suggestion.

As for replacing things in post, buyer beware. Frosted windows spill, they do not blow out cleanly and anything you composite that's not nearly clipping will look extremely fake. In a static shot maybe you could take a bracketed exposure to get some frosted texture (similar in essence to the nd grad technique) and then paste that on, but it's of limited utility. A simple luma key will generally look bad.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

There are different degrees of blown out. And go too far and you also start to have lens flare issues. Often when a light hits curtain sheers, they blow out / clip when you'd rather hold detail / texture in them. Sometimes you want to retain texture in a pebbled or frosted glass too, which makes it hard if they are strongly backlit.

Sure, there are off-angles on frosted windows for the light where you won't get the hot spot of the globe, but it's still a problem.

Just the other day on a stage, I had a strong backlight coming through a window with a 5K PAR but because the art department had frosted the windows lightly to "age" them (a sort of spray-on dirt), the glass got all blown out and flarey, which wasn't what I wanted, I just wanted a strong backlight on the person but also to be able to see a bit of the greenery outside the window. Next time I got onto the set, I had the art department scrape off all of that frosting.

It's the same problem with lampshades when you want them to be the actual source of light in the scene but not have them burn-out to an unnatural-looking degree.

It's a legitimate question, perhaps one of the most common problems a DP deals with, when the source of light for the actor is in the shot but you don't want it to be burned-out but you don't want to fake it with an off-camera light either. I'm always amazed in movies when the camera does this big move in a circle / arc, like a 360 degree Steadicam move, and where I should have seen the large soft source lighting the actor, I don't see it (when it was clearly lit from above or below the frame, it's not hard to figure out.) That 360 degree shot that moves around Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind" when he's staring at the wall of projected codes is a good example of making you scratch your head to figure out how Crowe's face is being lit by the glow of the wall and yet the wall of numbers is not blown-out as you rotate around him. I suspect that some dimming of the lights might have been involved, but maybe not... having light sources in the frame is one reason why Deakins is so careful to use lenses that flare the least, like ARRI Master Primes.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

If you're shining lights through your windows, if you DON'T blow them won't you just see the lights?

You can also use blown-out windows to your advantage, replacing them in post with whatever you want.

The light behind the frosted window isn't always at an angle where the head is lined up with the camera lens, sometimes it's just out of frame.

Hey, if you want blown-out windows, that's the easy part, just cover them with frost / diffusion and then use a strong light behind them.

I've never worked on any project with the money to routinely add new backgrounds outside of blown-out windows.

 

[Matt W.]

Sorry, I didn't mean any disrespect toward you or Mr. Deakins, I have a ton of respect for you both. I'm just saying if you're shining lights through frosted windows with the intention of using them as a light source, they will blow out to some extent, and if they don't blow out a little it will look unnatural. Of course there are techniques to mitigate that and balance the exposure, and I mentioned a few of them.

It's just a pet peeve of mine. A lot of people in video act like once you hit 100IRE anywhere in the frame the shot's gone bad and you have to go and "fix" it. Assassination of Jesse James has a lot of great looking scenes with blown out windows. So does There Will be Blood. Tons of the best looking movies do. If you can frame the window mostly out of frame, put it on the opposite far edge of the frame to balance out the offside key on the face, whatever, I just think that's a more elegant solution than rotoscoping a fake background into every shot, which no one does. Another option, if you have a very large window and only part of it is in frame, is to focus your hmi or whatever through a portion of the window that's out of frame and then flag off or use a net on the part in frame, balancing it to match. China lanterns with 4800K 500w photofloods and garbage bags flagging off the side hitting the wall, while insane and almost certainly illegal for some reason fire hazards, are helpful for this kind of situation, too imo, and great for no budget shoots because they're almost as bright as their 3400K brethren and so very cheap, affordable daylight instruments.

I have no idea how Deakins does it and if you can't figure it out I'm not going to try. I know he rigs reflectors to walls, but I also sort of assume he gets a kick out of crafting "impossible" shots.

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

I worked on a project with almost no budget that did a bunch of window replacements. Not exactly sure how our director did it, I think a combination of keying and masking. He replaced all the skies too.