Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[David Mullen ASC]

Hello David

Did you try xenon with high speed photography? I am planning a slow motion scene and want to use a 5k xenon bounced instead of an 18k hmi. It is cheaper and will let me use it for sun rays on other scenes.
I am concerned about flicker though. What do you think? (I will test it of course once I get my Epic)
Thanks a lot

I would treat the xenon like an HMI in terms of flicker issues.

 

[william lan]

Do you treat digital camera as film camera without white balance but preset to Daylight or Tungsten? Which method is better?

 

[JPSendall]

David, I have just watched the new Fright Night shot by Javier Aguirresarobe. I first became aware of his lighting in 'The Others' with Nicole Kidman and loved his style. I met him in Madrid and he agreed to do my first feature before the financing fell through but I believe he would have done a great job. He seems to have an eye similar to Nestor Almendros, a very naturalistic style, no hard edged shadows in general. Fright Night was shot on Red MX and to be honest I think it's some of the best footage I've seen that doesn't shout Red and I didn't guess was Red. In Fright Night I have a couple of questions about his night lighting or magic hour shots which again I really liked. Some screen grabs.

This four way talking scene I think has been shot at magic hour but I wanted to ask what you think other types of lighting were involved? Would there have been anything important to consider considering it was shot on RedMX? Also it's been colour graded quite strongly so it's difficult to tell what the original raw files looked like or how light it really was when they shot.

These two interest me as I can't tell if the practical is really what is lighting his face in the first one, although the light I think would have reached further round his face if it was. Do you think the practical is hiding something? The second is using fluorescent practicals but is it enough or would you push something soft from the front also? Using practicals seems to be getting easier for real lighting as opposed to just providing a fake source. Have often these days are you using practicals (enhanced or not) to actually light?

Last one I promise. As the actor walked up to the door I noticed all the way through that even though this was a night shot the major source of light from the left was soft. The shadow on the door has fairly soft edges to it and as far as I remember I haven't seen many wides where the source is as soft as that. I guess he isn't replicating moonlight as that would be hard edged. What kind of light throws such a soft shadow but over a large area or is it a number of lights covering him from foreground right to background left?

Javier always manages to make his shots look as if they were unlit, if you know what I mean, and yet look superb. Any thoughts on these would be much appreciated.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The trick with shooting coverage for a magic hour scene is to figure out what angles can be shot earlier in the day and which can be shot later at night. A lot depends on the background and if any practical lamps are on in the frame. If so, usually those are the angles that have to be shot at magic hour, and then the issue is picking a soft light technique that can be quickly adjusted in brightness for each take because the light will start falling like a stone. It helps to use multiple cameras too. You can see that the master angle of the three people that the close-up of the girl was shot a few minutes later as the light dropped and the light bulb in the background began to look brighter in comparison to the twilight. The angle of Colin Farrell may have been shot during the day under a silk, and maybe helped by overcast weather. Plus heavy ND filtering.

The strip of light on Colin Farrell in the doorway suggest that he was lit by cracking the door open, not by the practical lamp in frame, which is barely lighting the wall right next to it. The hallway shot looks lit mainly with just the fluorescents -- the actor is moving from one to another so his face is just starting to pick-up light from the next fluorescent down the hall, plus the ambience bouncing back from the first tube,

I don't know how the last shot was lit, there are any number of ways to create a big soft blue-ish source.

 

[william lan]

Do you treat digital camera as film camera without white balance but preset to Daylight or Tungsten? Which method is better?

David,
A gentle reminder.. Please guide me the above. Thanks

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Which method is better just depends on which gives you the look you want. 95% of the time, I just use preset color temps, I only white balance a video camera under unusual lamps, and these days, the cameras I am using don't really need white balancing on set, you can just dial in the amount of plus or minus green you need after picking a color temperature setting.

But I don't just set the camera to either 3200K or 5600K, I often pick in between numbers. I might shoot a tungsten interior at 3700K for a warmer look, or a day exterior at 4300K for a cooler look, etc.

 

[Jesse H]

Hi David,

Why do a lot of directors/DPs like to shoot entire features at the same T stop? (eg. The Social Network shot entirely at 1.4 I believe).

Thanks,
Jesse

 

[Sam Eilertsen]

Hi David,

I realize this is kind of a large topic and a lot of it is situation-specific, but how do you go about planning shots for scenes with a large number of characters and/or complicated choreography? What are your primary considerations in figuring out how to cover it?

Also, how much does the cinematography usually influence staging decisions? Do directors usually come up with the staging for a scene and tell you how it should be covered or are scenes ever staged around what the camera is doing?

Thanks,

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David,

Why do a lot of directors/DPs like to shoot entire features at the same T stop? (eg. The Social Network shot entirely at 1.4 I believe).

Thanks,
Jesse

Well, I doubt that the day exterior shots were done at T/1.4... and of course, not every type of lens made opens up to T/1.4.

The reason is just that it creates a consistent look to the images, every close-up shot on a 50mm at T/1.4 has the same depth of field, etc. But it helps to have a consistent pattern of choosing focal lengths too. But it's near impossible to shoot at T/1.4 in sunlight, you'd be stacking ND1.2's...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David,

I realize this is kind of a large topic and a lot of it is situation-specific, but how do you go about planning shots for scenes with a large number of characters and/or complicated choreography? What are your primary considerations in figuring out how to cover it?

Also, how much does the cinematography usually influence staging decisions? Do directors usually come up with the staging for a scene and tell you how it should be covered or are scenes ever staged around what the camera is doing?

Thanks,

Depends on the style for the scene, whether you want to play most of it in some flowing, moving master shot like on a Steadicam or dolly, or if you are just shooting a wide master but plan on using mostly overs, 2-shots, etc. that break up the scene into mini-scenes. If you are going to design a master that holds your interest for a good chunk of the scene, then you have to choreograph the actors and the camera together. After a few basic rehearsals for the actors, you bring in a lens on a finder and you start to adjust their marks for the lens and discuss with the director who you need to be favoring on which lines and how to get more of those lines on camera rather than the actor having their back to camera. It all sort of starts with whose line you want to see first in the shot and then flows from there. But there are limits, sometimes a moment in the movement lands over the back of an actor and you plan on shooting a matching reverse angle for that beat, so you know you'll be making an intercut there.

 

[Jesse H]

Thanks David.

"But it's near impossible to shoot at T/1.4 in sunlight, you'd be stacking ND1.2's."

According to Fincher's DVD commentary, that's exactly what they did.

 

[James B.]

Use of 3D in Narrative Films

Use of 3D in Narrative Films

Hi David

Sure it has been suggested before, but the contents of this thread deserve to be in a book! And apologies if you have already offered your opinion(s) on the current state of 3D in this thread, I DID do a search but turned up nothing.

What is your opinion on the relatively current trend by Hollywood to either shoot or convert films to 3D?

My personal opinion is that 3D is only justified when it is integral to the story and-or significantly enhances the subject matter. 2 examples that come to mind are Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Wim Wenders Pina.

Most, if not all, narrative filmmaking, IMHO, does NOT benefit from the use of 3D. I think though there might be exceptions however, The Russian Ark might been a good candiate for use of 3D.
Would Kubrick have embraced 3D were he alive today?
Thoughts?

 

[Jon Chema]

David, have you ever used "Wagon lights" or Batton lights before? Essentially boards with light fixtures attached to them that have a wire mesh over the top so you can tape bleached muslin or diffusion onto the light. If you've used them before what has been your experience? How would you use them in a typical scene. How do they compare to say a china ball?

 

[Enrique Blein]

Heloo David: I'm trying to decide whether to go with bottom rails or top rails for a mattebox/follow focus system. So far the only advantage I can see is that with top rails I don't need a raiser, and that Red offers a DSMC 19mm Top Mount with an integrated Swat rail where I can attach the Top handle:

http://www.red.com/store/rail-compon...rod-compatible

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Maxi Claudio]

David,

I saw this very nice fashion video:

http://vimeo.com/32565008

I really liked the look of the lighting. Gives a lot of tension while still being very "pretty"

I'm usually pretty good at looking at shadows and figuring out how its lit. But I can't with this. My guess is very soft light in the background. And some overhead light. Kind of reminds me of those giant overhead soft boxes in studios over a car shoot.

Particularly the pool scene. Reminds me a bit like "Eyes Wide Shut" Lighting.

Any insight on what type of lighting and set-up I can use to get close would be appreciated.

Max

 

[David Mullen ASC]

David, have you ever used "Wagon lights" or Batton lights before? Essentially boards with light fixtures attached to them that have a wire mesh over the top so you can tape bleached muslin or diffusion onto the light. If you've used them before what has been your experience? How would you use them in a typical scene. How do they compare to say a china ball?

I've had the electrics build a "covered wagon", which traditional is a bat strip with chicken wire and diffusion, but in my case, I have them use the outer fixture of a 4' 2-bank Kino as a base (the bendable barndoors with the plate on back) and put a row of lightbulbs in it, then put 216 on the barndoors.

The reason to use a bat strip or a covered wagon compared to a Kinoflo of the same shape is that it is tungsten and dimmable. The reason to use one instead of a paper lantern ball is that shape... a small, long rectangular shape can be tucked at the top of a wall just above frame and create a soft backlight or key, etc. - it's not always easy to hide a ball shape.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Heloo David: I'm trying to decide whether to go with bottom rails or top rails for a mattebox/follow focus system. So far the only advantage I can see is that with top rails I don't need a raiser, and that Red offers a DSMC 19mm Top Mount with an integrated Swat rail where I can attach the Top handle:

Any thoughts on this?

I don't have an opinion on that, not being a camera owner nor a camera assistant, so it's not something I usually have to think about.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

David,

I saw this very nice fashion video:

http://vimeo.com/32565008

I really liked the look of the lighting. Gives a lot of tension while still being very "pretty"

I'm usually pretty good at looking at shadows and figuring out how its lit. But I can't with this. My guess is very soft light in the background. And some overhead light. Kind of reminds me of those giant overhead soft boxes in studios over a car shoot.

Particularly the pool scene. Reminds me a bit like "Eyes Wide Shut" Lighting.

Any insight on what type of lighting and set-up I can use to get close would be appreciated.

Max

To me, it looks like a lot of overhead fluorescent light, maybe already on location, was used.... perhaps to get that flicker, they were shooting off-speed on magnetic ballasts. It was mixed with lights of different color temperatures, perhaps some bounced light.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David
My personal opinion is that 3D is only justified when it is integral to the story and-or significantly enhances the subject matter.
Thoughts?

Well, the trouble with that guideline -- though nice, and applies to any technique in general to filmmaking -- to using 3D is that everyone will interpret it differently. I'm sure everyone who has made a 3D film thought it was enhancing the subject matter. And how do you define "integral to the story"? Don't most stories take place in a world with more than two dimensions?

The same arguments were made about color by 1930's-1940's moviemakers, back when most movies were b&w, that it should be justified by the story and that it should enhance the subject matter. But now every movie is color and no one feels a need to justify shooting a movie in color (but they do if shooting in b&w). So part of this issue with 3D is that it exists outside the norm of filmmaking still and therefore you generally need to come up with a reason for going outside the norm. But if 99% of all movies were made in 3D, then it would become the norm and you'd be coming up with reasons to shoot in 2D.

So keep that in mind, it is possible to think of 3D as the next color and sound, and arguments against it may seem silly 30 years from now.

Having said that, my own personal opinion, being somewhat old-fashioned perhaps, is that I don't find 3D entertaining enough as a moviegoing experience to want to see every movie made in 3D. I sometimes find the 3D aspect to be a layer of distraction away from the story and performance rather than enhancing those elements. It can make the moviewatching experience "work" for me and therefore less "immersive" emotionally even while being more immersive visually.

But there are exceptions, "Avatar" and "Hugo" being good examples of movies that work well as 3D experiences, though I would have enjoyed them in 2D as well.

I agree that 3D should be chosen wisely, but I question the conventional wisdom that says that cartoony action movies as best for 3D and not dramas. Truth is that I loved seeing Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" in 3D (perhaps still one of the best-directed 3D) and I'm looking forward to "Great Gatsby" in 3D. I'm more interested in eccentric choices I guess, like shooting a small intimate movie in IMAX or anamorphic 35mm. Maybe Polanski could have made "Repulsion" in 3D and it would have been interesting, a psycho-drama with small claustrophobic spaces may be enhanced by 3D, who knows.

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

I couldn't agree more with your post about 3D.

(...) I sometimes find the 3D aspect to be a layer of distraction away from the story and performance rather than enhancing those elements. It can make the moviewatching experience "work" for me and therefore less "immersive" emotionally even while being more immersive visually. (...)

About this in particular, I would say that it comes down to the craft of shooting 3D. Any layer of a filmmaking can be made distracting if not wielded by someone who understands it and is actively utilizing it to tell the story; like a novice musician in world-class orchestra. With 3D being a 'new' instrument, it makes sense many haven't wrapped their heads around it yet, like color and sound when they first appeared.