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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

Depends on the scanner, amount of footage, HD, 2K, or 4K, and whatever deal you can get. I really don't know. Four years ago I got a bid for a Spirit HD transfer for a D.I. and the charge for the transfer alone was around $10,000 out of an overall D.I. bid of about $100,000.
 
Hi David I'm trying to get this look in my shooting.could you please tell me a little
about these shots? did you got them by lighting or in post?if lighting what kind of light did you use & how?
 
The shot of the car was mostly luck -- we had just arrived and a storm was coming in, so I set-up the camera as fast as I could to get this wide shot with the dark clouds, enhanced by an ND.6 grad filter (I used that filter all the time in Montana to hold sky detail). After two takes, it socked in and became a flat grey sky for the next few hours (and it rained on us...)

The close-up was basically soft backlit by a Kinoflo behind her (an 8-tube Image80). There was a little Kinoflo fill but the extra touch was a Dedolight with a blackwrap snoot on the end to create a little strip of light on her eyes.

The shot of Nick Nolte and the boy -- I had a 12'x12' white griflon outside the window to hide the view of a busy city street. I didn't light the griflon though so it just has ambient daylight on it. Over the top of the griflon, with the stand behind it, I had a 6K HMI PAR shining through as a backlight. To the right side of frame I had a Kinoflo sidelighting the face (a 10-tube Wall-O-Lite but diffused down.) Probably some Kinoflo fill overall.

The interiors were smoked generally. And some form of ProMist diffusion was on the lens.

I also flashed the negative but did a skip-bleach process to the prints, to reduce color saturation. But the video transfer was from a normal I.P. (with the flashed image on it) so I had to digitally simulate the skip-bleach effect by adding contrast and lowering color saturation.

I shot most of the movie in daylight temp lighting but on tungsten stocks with no correction filter, then timed most (but not all) of the blueness out in post.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
T But the video transfer was from a normal I.P. (with the flashed image on it) so I had to digitally simulate the skip-bleach effect by adding contrast and lowering color saturation.
Click to expand...

Great shots David. I have a question. When you do digital bleach simulation do you raise contrast first and then lower saturation, or do you lower saturation first and then raise contrast? Thanks for any help.
 
It was done on a DaVinci for the home video transfer; I don't know which order the colorist twisted the knobs. It's a real-time color-corrector so you aren't rendering your effects. Plus the whole movie had this look so once you do the first few images you are just tweaking from that basic look.

I'd probably do the gamma and black setting change first because they affect chroma (saturation), so if you did saturation first, you'd probably end up adjusting it again after you changed the gamma and black levels.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
It was done on a DaVinci for the home video transfer; I don't know which order the colorist twisted the knobs. It's a real-time color-corrector so you aren't rendering your effects. Plus the whole movie had this look so once you do the first few images you are just tweaking from that basic look.

I'd probably do the gamma and black setting change first because they affect chroma (saturation), so if you did saturation first, you'd probably end up adjusting it again after you changed the gamma and black levels.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much. It was very informative.
 
How do you find the results of the digital skip bleach? Do you think that it adequately represents the look that you set on the film prints?
 
Well, watching a movie on a TV set is such a different experience than a projected 35mm print that notions of exactly matching the look sort of go out the window. Keeping that in mind, yes, for the most part, I felt I kept the same look.

Skip-bleach leaves silver grain in the film, which a digital simulation doesn't do. That type of grain adds a texture to the print but it's hard to see in standard def resolution TV because there isn't enough resolution, so even if I transferred a skip-bleach print, I'm not sure it would show up.

The contrast difference between an I.P. and a skip-bleach print is pretty extreme, causing you to crush the blacks in the transfer off of the I.P. Some of those Spielberg movies shot by Kaminski that used a silver retention print process (A.I., Saving Private Ryan, War of the Worlds, etc.) were transferred from a low-con print rather than an I.P. -- a low-con print is a little softer, grainier, and higher in contrast (despite the name "low-con print") compared to an I.P. which is more like original negative. You can see in the DVD's of those movies a rougher looking transfer. I didn't want that sort of softness and roughness though in the transfer of "Northfork". You go too far in a transfer of an indie movie and there are TV markets that won't want to show it, unlike a Spielberg movie where they will show any transfer done no matter how it looks.
 
joofa I've seen a colorist who was doing the skip bleach(bleach B/pass)in this way:
1.make a copy of the original clips
2.de saturate it
3.add some contrast to it
4.mix it with the original clips on the time line
BTW..As DAvid said you should adjust the contrast at first.
 
David you did a nice job in montana.great look nice shooting I really appreciate that.....please let me tell you my good teacher.

I shot most of the movie in daylight temp lighting but on tungsten stocks with no correction filter, then timed most (but not all) of the blueness out in post.
Click to expand...
Well David you did it in this way , but what if i want to get this look digitally bay shooting with red one ,do you have any technical notes to mention?
Regards,:)
 
Esmaile said:
joofa I've seen a colorist who was doing the skip bleach(bleach B/pass)in this way:
1.make a copy of the original clips
2.de saturate it
3.add some contrast to it
4.mix it with the original clips on the time line
BTW..As DAvid said you should adjust the contrast at first.
Click to expand...

Thanks Esmaile. I appreciate your advice. The reason I asked David this question was that because I wanted to know how professionals grade. I am not a professional colorist and I wanted to know how they do things. Though, I have my own take on that and it is below:

The oder that you mention is what I also think should be the order of steps for various reasons. But, before I go into that, a comment about what David mentioned as increasing Gamma changed saturation (chroma signal). I don't know about the internal implementation of each software, however, many times the Gamma curves are applied to each of red, green and blue color values, which I think is not right. The right step would be to convert chroma/luma to linear space (relative) luminance /chrominance and then apply gamma on (relative) luminance only, leaving (relative) chrominance as it is and then convert (relative) luminance / chrominance into luma/chroma. This way the apparent saturation should not change.

Now coming back to order of steps. I would first set the black point. Now afterwards there are so many combinations in how the software is internally implemented -- is it setting contrast the "right" way on only linear space (relative) luminance, or the "standard" way of applying to both luma and chroma and hence having effects every where; is it applying the curves and levels operation to (relative) luminance only or to both luma and chroma, etc.

To me it appears that in some combinations if I do de-saturation first, then it will give me more head room for contrast increase before clipping starts happening vs. contrast first and then de-saturation. Though, I am not entirely sure about this. Hence, I personally, may have a preference for de-saturation first and then contrast change.

Though, at the end of the day, as David mentioned you just derive a look that you like in whatever way, and then just remember the steps to get that look on each frame -- at that level its just about seeing the image the way DP/Director wanted it to look like, and not whether we took the right / wrong steps (according to color theory) to get there.
 
Esmaile said:
Well David you did it in this way , but what if i want to get this look digitally bay shooting with red one ,do you have any technical notes to mention?
Regards,:)
Click to expand...

It's mostly about art direction & lighting, getting that look. Desaturating the image, giving it a cold bias, adding contrast, crushing the blacks, etc. are simple to do in post color-correction but you should be working with footage that is closer to the final look. Trouble with taking normal footage with a lot of saturated color in the frame and trying to remove it is that you start messing with your fleshtones more than if the art direction, costumes, and lighting were closer to the look you want.

I will say that any process that involves adding more contrast in post and crushing the blacks... that you may want to test to determine if extra fill light is needed, or more eye lights, or if the wardrobe color needs to be adjusted, etc. to compensate, so you don't lose too much important shadow detail.
 
Hi,

I'm sorry if the question sounds stupid (just an amateur here): do ISO numbers on DSLRs correspond to ASA numbers on standard 35mm film stock?

If I am not mistaken, the width of most DSLR's sensors is 22-24mm, the same as the width of Super35, so for a given focal length the framing (at least horizontally) would be the same on a DSLR and on Super35. If in addition I choose ISO 200 and shutter speed 1/50s on the DSLR, would the resulting photo be a more or less accurate approximation of what a 200 ASA film stock with a 180 degree shutter angle would give, with the same f-stop and focal length?

Thank you.
 
Yes, more or less.

ISO (International Organization of Standards) was just the international version of ASA (American Standards Association), which is now actually ANSI (American National Standards Institute). But Kodak film uses EI (Exposure Index) numbers instead, but it's all the same numbering system. EI 100, 100 ISO, 100 ASA, all mean the same thing.

You should test to see if any compensation is needed (for one thing, not all lenses are really the same in terms of exposure despite the T-stop or f-stop markings) but more or less it's the same on both a DSLR and a film camera. Just that digital favors a little underexposure and color negative film favors a little overexposure. Just keep that in mind if you are using the DSLR as a light meter.
 
Okay, thank you.

I am about to buy a DSLR. I was thinking about the Canon EOS 40D + lens EF-S 17-85mm IS kit, plus the inexpensive Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens.

1) Are there DSLR models which are in some way specifically adapted to cinematography, models that DPs use on or off the set?

2) In particular, is there a way crop the optical viewfinder to the 1.85 or 2.39 ratios?
 
No, there aren't DSLR's specifically modified for cinematography. I think the Kodak Look Management System software supports some high-end DSLR's but not others though (haven't used it myself.)

Since most DSLR shots by a cinematographers are for lighting references, getting a perfect 1.85 or 2.39 composition has not been much of an issue. I don't know what the issues are in marking up the groundglass but I assume it's possible.
 
I think that the 40D has interchangeable focus screens. So though 1.85 or 2.39 markings aren't standard, I'm sure that you could have someone mark or etch those guides for you.
 
Consider a Tamron 28-75mm for your 40d if you're jsut using it for previs. Obviously not as sharp as the comparable Canon L lens, but a nice zoom range (imo) and a constant 2:8 aperture. That's what I use - very handy setup for checking back to previous days work, matching shots, etc. Also a rough and ready light meter (if you're careful).
 
Check out Fortunato Procopio's website:
http://www.fortunatoprocopio.com/ff/ffmain.html
Fortune is an old friend and a mentor to me. He designed a really simple way to use a film SLR as a finder, fitted with a custom groundglass and matching 4-mil clear filter over the aperture.
You can do location scouting and see what "a 50mm looks like right here", for whatever format you are shooting. We did a couple of indie movies that I operated and he and the director made a complete photo board for every scene. It really helped us keep a tight schedule with a small budget. Of course we made changes "on the day" but at least everyone knew where we were staring from.
I don't know that he's tried to update the system for DSLRs, but you might contact him and ask.
BTW, David, your kind demeanor and rational though process reminds me of Fortune very much.
Cheers,
Harry
 
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