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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

Hi David,

I have a few questions, but I certainly had more than a few before I started reading this thread, it's a tremendous resource and I can't believe after 185 pages and almost two years you're still going: thank you.

I just graduated from film school and moved to New York, hoping to find some work and to take advantage of the beautiful city. I lost access to the equipment I commonly had access to at school, so I'm in the position of having to purchase many of the things I previously had (while also renting what I'd rather not purchase).

I'm going to be shooting mostly short narrative work, not only indoors but in a variety of locations (I feel like many of my peers gravitate toward indoor dialogue driven films, because of the ease of shooting and perceived lower cost), and my thesis work is a 90-minute long narrative film that I'll be working on for the next year or so, whenever I have the time.

My kit so far contains the very basic usual grip gear (gels, stands, foamcore), camera and support, sound, and some lighting. I have been trying to purchase the lighting used, whenever possible, and I've so far acquired a 1k Strand fresnel and a 500/300w Strand fresnel.

Question #1) I don't really have the budget to expand lighting too much more than that (maybe another $1000, at the very most), what would you recommend? My cinema influences are, plainly stated, Cassavetes (pretty general lighting, to make use of actor spontaneity), french new wave, and some of the classics (Ford, Hughes, Preminger, etc.). My gut tells me to fill the 650w spot with another fresnel, a ~575w ellipsoidal, and maybe buy a kino-flo (or knock-off) bank. Is there something I'm definitely going to be lacking? I'm clearly going to have trouble doing much with light outside, but I'm not sure I can avoid that without a joker bug budget. Any light suggestions, or general suggestions would be really appreciated.

Question #2) I am not really sure how to go about finding film work without the university-system network that I'm familiar with, in which we'd all work on each other's films and freely give recommendations for others to join gigs whenever we'd find them. There aren't any big indie productions that I know of right now in NYC, and the union productions that are here I don't really have any pull with, and neither do my friends working on the gigs. Is there a way to find some work that I'm missing? Should I just start contacting anyone I can related to productions that I find, and try to join on any level available?

Thanks so much, David

cheers,
Christopher
 
If this is for a single project, you may want to save some of your money to rent the more expensive lights you may need only for one shooting day, etc.

If your budget is tight, you tailor your lighting package to what the script and locations need, so I can only speak generally.

In general, you need some really bright lights and you need some small lights. When I was in film school and never had access to a generator, I was always on the lookout for whatever lights gave me the most intensity for 20 amps or under. Generally it came down to:

2K tungsten open-face or fresnel
1K tungsten PAR64 spot, narrow spot, or very narrow spot
1.2K tungsten PAR64 "firestarter" VSPN
1.2K HMI PAR
1K Xenon (rather expensive though)

You need at least one really bright light either because you need to recreate an intense sunlight effect or you need to cover a large area, or you need to create a big soft light (though in this case, you don't want a spotty light.)

You also need some daylight-balanced lights. If you can't afford an HMI, there are also Kinoflos, which have the advantages of being low in power consumption and switchable from daylight to tungsten tubes, plus Cool Whites, etc. to match a location. Now there are also LED lights. And blue-painted tungsten lightbulbs (more like 4800K or less) and daylight Compact Fluorescents (a little green in them).

But I'd look into a small HMI if you need some daylight. One of my favorites is the Source-4 converted to an HMI using a Joker 400 or 800 (I prefer the brighter Joker 800).

Now much of this is probably too expensive to buy. You could look into cheaper versions of Kinos maybe, or building your own fluorescent fixtures.

I also find Chinese Lanterns very useful on movie shoots.

As far as small tungsten lamps, anything can work -- Inkies, Peppers, Dedos. My favorite is the 150w Dedolight.
 
hi david,
can you explain better what do you mean when you talk about source 4 converted to hmi using jokerbug 400-800?
can you explain better how to do this conversion?
thanks


CANCELLED!
I HAVE SEEN ON THE WEB THAT FOR THIS CONVERSION THERE IS AN ACCESSORY NAMED "BUG A BEAM" THAT MAKE THE CONVERSION.
IS IT RIGHT?
 
shiny said:
hi david,
can you explain better what do you mean when you talk about source 4 converted to hmi using jokerbug 400-800?
can you explain better how to do this conversion?
thanks


CANCELLED!
I HAVE SEEN ON THE WEB THAT FOR THIS CONVERSION THERE IS AN ACCESSORY NAMED "BUG A BEAM" THAT MAKE THE CONVERSION.
IS IT RIGHT?
Click to expand...


Don't cancell,

I'm curious too.

Gregory
 
There is a conversion kit, as mentioned, for putting a Joker 400 or 800 into a Source-4. ETC, who makes the Source-4, knows everyone is doing this but they can't really promote it themselves because the heat build-up, especially when you use the Joker 800 inside the Source-4, is sort of out of specs for the Joker and shortens the life of the bulb.

But it's so darn useful...

It's important that the conversion be done right because misalignment of the Joker bulb in the Source-4 reflector will reduce the light output.
 
Thanks David. A few source-4's are barely in my budget, so tossing a joker inside is probably something I'll have to wait on. What was available to purchase actually made my choices easier for me, I found a Mole-Richardson tweenie for $200, so I bought that immediately. I don't have a lot of punch with 1k, 650w, and 500/300w fresnels, but I think it gives me room to grow in the future. My last purchase will be a cheaper version of the kino, a 55w x 4 bank. I think at this point I'll just keep my eyes open for cheap HMI upgrades, and purchase them as frequently as I can and use the sun.

My price range might be out of your expertise (sub $1200), but would you recommend any tripods as an upgrade to the Bogan 503HDV? It's a fluid-like head, runs for around $600, but in testing it out I don't think it's capable of the moves I'd like to make (panning is especially hard, and it suffers from backlash and trouble with starting and stopping pans/tilts). Thanks again for this fantastic resource.
 
I'd really look into getting a 1K PAR64 spot or narrow spot, or a 1.2K PAR64 firestarter, maybe as PARCAN's. It would have limited applications in a small room unless you are trying to create a hot sunlight spot effect or a nuclear downlight ala Robert Richardson, but it's a lot of punch for only 1K and has a long throw across a space. And they are fairly cheap lights.

Don't know much about small tripod heads. Stopping a fast pan is always hard on any fluid head due to inertia -- it's one of the reasons that people still use geared heads, which can stop on a dime.

But in terms of fluid heads, you're basically looking for something beefier than what you've already got.

I saw at NAB that Lowel Lights has found some even bigger and brighter daylight Compact Flos to put in their small Rifa lights and whatnot -- they could be used to make a daylight Chinese Lantern too.
 
Pete Wallington said:
Going back, briefly, to the talk on reflections...
In a recent night scene I had to shoot an over-the-shoulder of a guy looking into a deserted shop, with his reaction shown on his face in the reflection.
I was in a major rush at the time (sun was coming up), so had to hurry through, but it came out OK. The main problem is that in order to get the reflection at a decent exposure to actually see it, I had to shine a lot of light onto the guy's face, which then made the side of his face/shoulder area really too hot.
(Does that make sense?)
How would you go about dealing with this? I guess I could've used an ND grad filter with the gradient running left to right, that would have taken down his shirt and face, but not the reflection.
Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
A polarizing filter can help. Turned one way, it will eliminate the reflection. Turned 90 degrees from there, it will make the reflection brighter (relative to the rest of the scene) by 1 stop.

This is also good for pretty sunset reflections off of a lake.
 
hi david,
i have a question about the use and material of curtains.i'm searching a curtain that will give a directional and punched light with some diffusion and that not destroy the diretion of light.
which material you can suggest me?i can use a 1200 or 2500 hmi par outside.
for what i need and if i have a curtain do you think that is better to bounce it to gryfolin back to curtains or through the curtains without bounce?

do you think that this ikea style white traslucent 100%polyester(http://www.ikea.com/it/it/catalog/products/10070262)
could be ok?
 
Well, if you want a directional light shining through a curtain, why would you soften it by bouncing it?

You'd want a curtain with a large/loose enough weave pattern that it transmitted more specular light and less diffused light -- for example, a lace curtain rather than curtain sheers would do this. That IKEA curtain looks kinda lacy so it might work.
 
A theoretical question: I am developing a series of dreams (three short films for a director in Poland) and I was talking to him about the use of the Tilt Shift technique to give the film a Lilliputian/miniture obscurity to it. Now due to the nature of the actual film we will be shooting with a few HV20s which have proven to work quite well for the project.

Rather than put on an adaptor onto the camera, and then try out some Perspective Control Lenses, I am going to some experiments in post before hand. The whole idea of using the HV20s was the compact nature so throwing adaptors etc... onto the camera defeats the object.

THE ACTUAL QUESTION: I have brought the technque to the attention of the director and he loves the idea but wants to use it a lot throughout the film even in closer shots. Now I have told him if we were to use it in a higher proportion of the films to refrain from POV shots and to just storyboard for shots above the eye-line to sell the point (God looking down on us type feel). Now by doing this in closer shots would it really have a similar effect (ie. look like minitures up close) or would it look like someone gone a bit wild with a DOF adaptor.

Would it distort the image?

Many thanks for your time. So very much appreciated.
 
If you are faking the super shallow focus of miniature photography but shooting normal-sized objects instead, then you can shoot close-ups, etc., they should just be very shallow-focus, which may be hard with the HV20 without a 35mm adaptor.

On wide shots, yes, blurring part of the frame in post may create that feeling of only a sliver of the subject coming into focus, but that won't work for close-ups where what would happen in real-life macro photography would just be super shallow focus.
 
For the close-ups, in the absence of actual super shallow focus, you might try motion-tracking the blur so it is only sharp in three points where their eyes and mouth are, and the magnitude of the blur ramps out from there. (Ears, nose, and background are blurry).
 
David, am I wrong in building a 3-Ton electric package out of 70% HMIs? The rest being Kinos and some tungsten? I ask because we will have a relatively small crew and I just thought of all those ballasts and wondered if they would slow us down too much?

We have a long schedule, but I wondered if you could comment briefly on "speed" and HMIs.
 
The ballasts are just an extra piece of gear, they don't add much more time or need more crew, not if you have carts for things. HMI's are more finicky than tungstens though, and that may slow you down when they act up, switching themselves off if the ballasts overheat, refusing to hot restrike, etc.

If you need HMI's, then there isn't much of a substitute for them, not if the equivalent of a 1200w HMI plugged into a wall is a 5K tungsten with Full Blue gel on it plugged into a generator and making the set twice as hot, not to mention being a much bigger lamp to set up.
 
Thank you.

We shouldn't have heat issues in Minnesota and I think power won't be an issue since I also added a 60,000w genny.

The winter weather and exteriors making up ~40% of the script has me a bit concerned. Good planning and a flexible schedule are certainly in my mind, as well as a good 1st AD and a good UPM.

I am far from done with the budget, but I am currently looking at a G&E crew including: Gaffer, Key Grip, BB Grip, BB Elec, two Electricians and two grips. So I guess that as long as we don't waste time or get too complicated we should be fine.

The script isn't officially locked so I haven't done a shooting script, but my guess is that we will be able to finish the whole thing in 32 good days of organized work. We have 40 days in there right now.

I feel like I've asked you for your thoughts on this same thing about a thousand different ways already. :blush:
 
hi david .
i have three windows and i can lighting from outside at a distance of about 25 feets.i would like to use three acl light but on the set will be only one gaffer.the producer says me that is too complicate to use it with this small crew but i think different.what is your opinion about the use of this light.it is difficult to set it?
the producer is more happy if i use a hmi par(my second alternative) but maybe only 1200 or 2500.what is your opinion and your suggestion as cinematographer?this is my first approach with a producer
 
I don't see why setting up three lights is beyond the ability of even a tiny crew.

Not sure which ACL light you are referring to. A single tungsten Aircraft Landing Light? A multi-bank version like the Jumbos that Storaro uses?

Do you need tungsten or daylight? Is this to create a big soft light? A beam of hard light?

Three windows, three lights, seems reasonable to me.
 
Hi David,

At what resolution will you shoot for a film feature now that the 4K 16:9 is more stable and offer better resolution than 4K 2:1.

I presume you shot "Manure" with 4K 2:1 for the 2.35:1 ratio for film out.

Lim
 
If you are framing for 2.40, there is no difference in resolution between 4K 16:9 and 2:1 modes because the horizontal resolution is 4096 pixels either way. 16:9 just has more vertical info/resolution, but that extra area would not be used for the theatrical 2.40 version, just any full-frame HDTV version, and in that case, I'm not sure you'll see a big difference once you downrez from 4K to HD (compared to cropping a 2:1 4K master down to 16:9 HD).

If I were shooting a 1.85 movie, I'd definitely shoot 4K 16:9 mode. For a 2.40 movie, I'd probably still shoot 16:9 mode now just to have more info in case I need to reframe a shot, or to make the full-frame HD version easier to make.
 
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