Ask David Mullen ANYTHING

[Mike S. M.]

Hi David,

Thanks a lot for replying even being so busy! I truly appreciate it.

If the handheld operating is smooth enough then it can be mixed fine with dolly and tripod shots -- "Blade Runner" has many handheld shots mixed into it, like the close-up of Rachel when she is watching Deckard fall asleep on his couch. It adds a feeling of uncertainty and tension, the slight movement suggesting something may happen at any moment.

But then it will probably tend to be wider lenses right? Hard to get smooth handheld with anything 50mm and over. If so, the wider lens will also convey a different feeling.

We don't do many handheld shots in "Smash" right now because it's not that kind of show, but we have occasionally and it cuts in fine. We did it for over-the-shoulder shots during an argument scene where the movement was very subtle, again, to add more tension. The other angles were on dollies.

Interesting. So the handheld was intercut with dolly shots?
On the subject of dolly and moving shots in general, what do you think is the best type of shot to cut from a dolly to? I always feel that cutting from a dolly to a locked shot sometimes is too big of a bump. But at some point you have to go to a static shot, unless all you care is about being trendy and cover a whole scene with moving shots just for the sake of "cool". So what do you think is the best type of shot to cut to?

But I've done movies where the director wanted either locked-off shots on tripods or rough moving handheld shots so that the difference between them was dramatic. It becomes a visual statement and suggests a radical turn of events.

Yes, this works well, like in locked off for calm scenes, crazy handheld for discussions. But what about intercutting them in the same scene?

Not sure I understand what's wrong with a subtle "normal" shot. It's like the people who don't like middle focal lengths because they look too "normal" -- what's wrong with being subtle? The script should drive those sorts of decisions anyway. Sometimes you want the style to be obvious and bold, and other times, you want it to disappear so that the audience just concentrates on the performances.

I think you're right. Maybe I'm just watching too many action movies.
But I agree that there seems to be a trend of skipping the middle focal lengths. It can be really distracting too. The other day I watched Taken 2 and the director pretty much goes from wide to telephoto. A minute you are very wide and then boom, jump to an extreme close up. Reading a bit about him I found that he really does that with all his films.

Where it does become a problem with editing though is when you do a lot of coverage, wide and medium, on a drifting Steadicam and then have static close-ups from a dolly, sometimes the difference it too jarring. We sometimes try to soften that by using sliders so that the close-ups have some drift to them.

I see. This is basically the question I asked above. I normally try to cut from the dolly to a medium before going to the close up if I can. Unless the dolly is a very slow creep. But like I said, at some point you need to go static.


In a change of subject a bit and going into lighting, when do you think it's fine to have blown highlights? There seem to be a trend to blow windows in day internals these days. But when does blown highlights start looking more like a mistake than artistic decision in your opinion?

Keeping with the lighting subject, although in this day and age of REDs and Alexas people don't really need to worry about the Knee anymore, there are still many cameras which this function can be useful. I had to shoot with one the other day and was not really comfortable with using the knee. Some current cameras have knee but it wont work if you use a cine type of gamma and I just feel non cine gammas look like video. So to use the knee you need to use the video gammas and I normally pass on the knee because of the video look of the gamma it is associated with. Back in the F900 days I would see a lot of DPs using Auto-Knee and just trusting it. I know you have had your share of experience with the F900 and HD in general. What is your opinion about knee? Would you trust auto-knee like some did with the F900? I always think auto will just change on you when you least expect. Have you had to choose between REC709 with knee and a cine type of gamma without knee? Which one would you choose?

Thanks a lot again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to reply David.

 

[Christopher Barrett]

David,

After a successful 20 year career as a Still Photographer, I've been working lately to push the bulk of my work into the motion field. I've done a few small films for existing clients and a handful of Indie Shorts... all of which have been thoroughly fulfilling.

Given all of that... is now a bad time to give up caffeine and alcohol?

All kidding aside, your contributions have been really helpful to my transition.

Thanks!
Chris

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Back in the F900 days I would see a lot of DPs using Auto-Knee and just trusting it. I know you have had your share of experience with the F900 and HD in general. What is your opinion about knee? Would you trust auto-knee like some did with the F900? I always think auto will just change on you when you least expect. Have you had to choose between REC709 with knee and a cine type of gamma without knee? Which one would you choose?

Thanks a lot again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to reply David.

Auto Knee on the F900 was just a fast way of shooting and not dealing with adjusting the knee manually on a shot by shot basis -- of course, you could set it once and leave it there, which is something I did as well.

Truth is that on an indie movie, you don't have time to finesse every shot, so Auto Knee was just a short cut -- if you were lucky, you'd catch it if it did something funky and distracting during a rehearsal or on the first take and turn it off on the second take (the difference between shooting docs and reality shows versus narrative -- you can do another take!) I tried to take the time before we rolled on a shot to check for odd artifacts that would pop up due to Auto Knee or too much knee compression or use of Knee Saturation, etc. and then turn off the offending setting. I eventually tended to use the Panavision approach with the F900, which was to turn most everything off, including the Rec709 matrix -- color matrix off, sharpness off, etc. -- you would get the fewest artifacts that way. But that was for features with a final color-correction, not for shooting footage that would be shown more or less straight out of the camera.

But the F900's Auto Knee setting seemed to work fine 90% of the time without doing something distracting but you did need to keep an eye on it.

 

[Naim Sutherland]

Hi David,

Not sure if you remember me. We had donairs for lunch here in Vancouver on one of your days off from Jennifer's Body. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time and vast knowledge that day, and here online.

Big Sur is looking amazing. I love the diffusion in the blacks you're playing with... I can't wait to see what Light Iron did with it.

I am shooting a short this weekend, and we got sponsorship from Sim Digital. I asked them for Smoque, but they do not have any. I want to keep as sharp as possible in the in focus areas (and to that end I'll likely go with the Super Speeds from Sim), but I want to bloom on camera sources.

I saw in the past you said Double Fog or a heavy Ultracon would work for those goals. I just wanted to double check that's what you'd suggest instead of Smoque, and see if you had any other thoughts on the subject when Smoque isn't available.

Thanks!

Naim

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I saw in the past you said Double Fog or a heavy Ultracon would work for those goals. I just wanted to double check that's what you'd suggest instead of Smoque, and see if you had any other thoughts on the subject when Smoque isn't available.

UltraCons don't really cause highlights to bloom, they just lower contrast overall like flashing might. I might try the lightest Schneider White Frost, like the 1/8, or the lightest Double Fog.

 

[Naim Sutherland]

Thanks David, I'll give those a shot!

 

[Jon Chema]

David, I'm shooting a food spot and wanted to get your take on my approach. The shoot involves product shots of burgers on a table. Due to the fact that I'm shooting on the Epic, I plan on utilizing daylight balanced light to get the most out of the sensor. I originally was going to create a soft book light directly overhead w/ 6by and a 1200 or M18, and then keying with softlight from a more 3/4 position. Finally, edging with a kino. Have you ever shot food before and do you have an approach or tips/suggestions that you can recommend?

Best,

J

 

[David Mullen ASC]

David, I'm shooting a food spot and wanted to get your take on my approach. The shoot involves product shots of burgers on a table. Due to the fact that I'm shooting on the Epic, I plan on utilizing daylight balanced light to get the most out of the sensor. I originally was going to create a soft book light directly overhead w/ 6by and a 1200 or M18, and then keying with softlight from a more 3/4 position. Finally, edging with a kino. Have you ever shot food before and do you have an approach or tips/suggestions that you can recommend?

Best,

J

I've done very little product photography but I have found Dedolights useful, with blackwrap snoots or projector attachments, to put tiny spots on areas of the product you want to highlight. If your main package is daylight-balanced, you could use CTB gel on the Dedolight.

 

[Jon Chema]

I've done very little product photography but I have found Dedolights useful, with blackwrap snoots or projector attachments, to put tiny spots on areas of the product you want to highlight. If your main package is daylight-balanced, you could use CTB gel on the Dedolight.

Thanks! Never even thought of using Dedo's but that makes perfect sense.

 

[Bob Gundu]

Food looks great with a strong backlight.
http://crewofone.com/2011/foolproof-food-photography-3/

Thanks! Never even thought of using Dedo's but that makes perfect sense.

 

[Jon Chema]

Makes sense. Great shots.

 

[Mike S. M.]

Auto Knee on the F900 was just a fast way of shooting and not dealing with adjusting the knee manually on a shot by shot basis -- of course, you could set it once and leave it there, which is something I did as well.

Truth is that on an indie movie, you don't have time to finesse every shot, so Auto Knee was just a short cut -- if you were lucky, you'd catch it if it did something funky and distracting during a rehearsal or on the first take and turn it off on the second take (the difference between shooting docs and reality shows versus narrative -- you can do another take!) I tried to take the time before we rolled on a shot to check for odd artifacts that would pop up due to Auto Knee or too much knee compression or use of Knee Saturation, etc. and then turn off the offending setting. I eventually tended to use the Panavision approach with the F900, which was to turn most everything off, including the Rec709 matrix -- color matrix off, sharpness off, etc. -- you would get the fewest artifacts that way. But that was for features with a final color-correction, not for shooting footage that would be shown more or less straight out of the camera.

But the F900's Auto Knee setting seemed to work fine 90% of the time without doing something distracting but you did need to keep an eye on it.

Thanks David!

 

[Lorenzo Levrini]

Hi David or whoever might be able to help.

Another diopter question.

Lately I've come up against several situations where I want to calculate what diopter strength I need to get the certain close focus of a lens down to a certain distance, or what a +1 diopter will do to a known close focus etc. I also want to calculate what the infinity mark becomes under a certain strength diopter.

Who knows how to calculate this?

Thanks

 

[Paul E. McCarthy]

Hi David,

I have a shoot coming up where I am shooting talent in front of a projection. Its a Barco Projector. Can I pull this off with a 24-290 Optimo 2.8 or do you think I should go with primes

or

perhaps an easier question what is the reflective stop of a projection/movie screen.

thanks.


Paul

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David or whoever might be able to help.

Another diopter question.

Lately I've come up against several situations where I want to calculate what diopter strength I need to get the certain close focus of a lens down to a certain distance, or what a +1 diopter will do to a known close focus etc. I also want to calculate what the infinity mark becomes under a certain strength diopter.

Who knows how to calculate this?

Thanks

I just get the +1, +2, and +3 diopters are try them out by eye until I get the strength right, but maybe this article will help you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-up_filter

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David,

I have a shoot coming up where I am shooting talent in front of a projection. Its a Barco Projector. Can I pull this off with a 24-290 Optimo 2.8 or do you think I should go with primes

or

perhaps an easier question what is the reflective stop of a projection/movie screen.

thanks.


Paul

Depends on your working ASA and shutter speed, as well as the unit's brightness... generally the best thing is to test, or take a spot meter reading of some sort of demo unit that is working.

 

[Paul E. McCarthy]

I would test if I could but its a bit of a scramble, no prelight, EpicX, 800 ASA 180 shutter. Maybe I'll go see Django Unchained tomorrow and take my spot meter.

 

[tobyheslop]

Hi David,

Lately I'm noticing some of my shots have chromatic abberations using an epic and Canon L series lenses in high con situations

I do understand that stopping down the lens will help avoid this situation and mostly try to shoot open scenes at F4. If I frame up an interview subject in an outdoors location and backlight them to the sun, I end up with a high con image and is where I'm seeing this most.

Could this be a problem with my lenses?, Could it be that I have not adjusted the sensor for best backfocus of the canon lenses since changing to the EF mount? Does RedcineX provide a slider to help out with CA fixing?

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I would test if I could but its a bit of a scramble, no prelight, EpicX, 800 ASA 180 shutter. Maybe I'll go see Django Unchained tomorrow and take my spot meter.

How do you know if your unit has the same lamp house and brightness as the one in the theater? I'm sure Barco makes more than one model of projector.

Truth is that I'm sure you can use the lens but you may be working at a higher ASA rating than you wanted to.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hi David,

Lately I'm noticing some of my shots have chromatic abberations using an epic and Canon L series lenses in high con situations

I do understand that stopping down the lens will help avoid this situation and mostly try to shoot open scenes at F4. If I frame up an interview subject in an outdoors location and backlight them to the sun, I end up with a high con image and is where I'm seeing this most.

Could this be a problem with my lenses?, Could it be that I have not adjusted the sensor for best backfocus of the canon lenses since changing to the EF mount? Does RedcineX provide a slider to help out with CA fixing?

I assume it's just the way the lenses look but I haven't used those on an Epic. Try to get a different lens and compare?