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Advice for first feature film

Advice for first feature film

Hi David,
What advice would you give to a DOP on their first feature film? Are there any pitfalls to look out for? What are the most important things to reflect upon going into your first large scale film?
Cheers Glenn
 
David,

Is there any advantage in post having the audio recorded in-camera (i.e. say sent via a Zaxcom RX200 / TRX900CL combo) over using just a field mixer (I'm using a Sound Devices MixPreD) and a Zoom H4n? Wondering if the DSMC2 brain adds metadata to RED's camera audio files that help FCXP sync audio without the chore of manually syncing like with off-camera audio.

thanks !
 
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glenn hanns said:
Hi David,
What advice would you give to a DOP on their first feature film? Are there any pitfalls to look out for? What are the most important things to reflect upon going into your first large scale film?
Cheers Glenn
Click to expand...

By coincidence, before I shot my first feature, I ran into Allen Daviau walking in Hollywood somewhere and I asked him for advice. He told me two very useful things. One, is to not settle for a location if it is problematic and going to slow production down without yielding interesting results, and two, to know my first week of work backwards and forwards.

By knowing exactly what you want set-up by set-up, to be prepared, to not waste much time figuring things out on the set, not only impresses everyone around you and makes things go faster, it sets the tone for the whole production even if in later weeks, you are having to work more on the fly (which happens, most movies and their schedules start to drift into unplanned territories as things progress so you have to be flexible.)

So be prepared.

I'd also add that you will get judged by your first day's dailies, which is not always fair if the footage is atypical. I started that movie with an extremely dark night scene where the dialogue explicitly stated that the character couldn't see anything (as she crawled into an unlit basement). The producers got worried and asked me if I was going to make the whole movie look that dark, which of course I wasn't! On another movie, we started out in a hotel bathroom that I lit green as daylight came though green plastic curtains for an unreal and disturbing effect, and again, the producers asked me if I were going to light the whole movie green! So sometimes it is better to shoot some boring day exterior stuff first on a schedule if only to get the producers to stop worrying. You find that the first few days worth of dailies will be the most scrutinized until everyone is comfortable.
 
Blair Thornton said:
David,

Is there any advantage in post having the audio recorded in-camera (i.e. say sent via a Zaxcom RX200 / TRX900CL combo) over using just a field mixer (I'm using a Sound Devices MixPreD) and a Zoom H4n? Wondering if the DSMC2 brain adds metadata to RED's camera audio files that help FCXP sync audio without the chore of manually syncing like with off-camera audio.

thanks !
Click to expand...

I'm not a sound nor post person so am hard-pressed to answer that question. Sound on camera can be useful as a back-up though most production mixers already create a back-up anyway. As for syncing dailies with external sound, usually some form of timecode lock-it box is used.
 
Thankyou David! Very sage advice, Its good to know that these challenges happen at all levels and are not necessarily to do with you as a DOP.
 
Mr. Mullen, the cinematography you did on "The Love Witch" was so beautiful. I was loosing my mind seeing a movie looking like this today. A rare gem - you are great.
 
Shame

Shame

David,

I've been extremely interested in the film Shame for a while and was wondering if you had any idea how Sean Bobbit ended up with the strong green/blues that permeate the film. Certainly for the nighttime scenes there are a lot of practical fluorescent and mercury vapor lighting, but I'm talking more about stuff like this https://filmgrab.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/594.jpg?w=1024. I love that look. Do you think it's filtration or something in the grade?

If you have no idea, don't waste your time on it, but figured I'd ask. Love how incredibly generous you are and your info is so extremely valuable.
 
An overcast day exterior like that is easy to render with a cool tint (could be uncorrected or partially corrected tungsten film stock, for example) and also easy to shift the blue cast towards the cyan in color-correction, so I'm guessing something like that was done.
 
Hi David, thank you so much for your help!!

I have been using an eye light near the camera. It really does a nice job of removing shadows from the eye sockets and making the eyes pop a bit. But a lot of times I can see the reflection of the light in the talent's eyes. I've tried repositioning the light, with varied results.

Just wondering if you could riff on this topic a bit. Thank you so very MUCH again!
 
I thought the very definition of an eye light was to see the light reflected in the talent's eyes... Otherwise it's just a fill light.

The eyes are like mirrorballs that reflect a huge area of what's in front of them, so reflections are a given. You could fill a face with extremely large and soft lights dimmed down for a dull sheen in the eyes instead of a hard glint or you could brightly light the furniture, floors, etc. so that real world objects act as fill and are reflected in the eyes, or the opposite would be to use a very small hard light where the reflection is a tiny dot.
 
Thank you David very much!!
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I thought the very definition of an eye light was to see the light reflected in the talent's eyes... Otherwise it's just a fill light.

The eyes are like mirrorballs that reflect a huge area of what's in front of them, so reflections are a given. You could fill a face with extremely large and soft lights dimmed down for a dull sheen in the eyes instead of a hard glint or you could brightly light the furniture, floors, etc. so that real world objects act as fill and are reflected in the eyes, or the opposite would be to use a very small hard light where the reflection is a tiny dot.
Click to expand...

Great idea David, thanks.
 
Hi again David,

I'm going to be shooting a scene between a couple in a bedroom at night. While I realize cameras like the A7SII have very impressive low light ability, I'm probably going to be using either two Sony a6300's or two hacked Nikon D5200 DSLR's (the hack increases the H.264 data rate to 64Mbps).

I was wondering if you'd be willing to comment on my plan of action. I've been shooting some test, but I'd still love any advice you have to offer.

My plan is to shoot at night, but to over light the scene by a fair amout. This way I can decide how much shadow detail to keep or leave in post (and I stay away from the worst part of the noise floor of the camera).

But there seems to be some natural ratio of shadows to highlights in nighttime that can get tricky to emulate with a combination of on set lighting and color correction.

Also, I realize that a bluish tint, esp. in the highlights, helps sell nighttime. I've seen this accomplished in post and by white balancing the camera closer to tungsten.

But I was thinking about using CTB over 5600K lights. With a full CTB, the color temp goes up to about 10K. The thinking behind adding the blue with actual blue light instead of using WB or solely in post is that digital sensors are less sensitive to blue light.

That said, I would still add more blue in post, because the blue tone that we accept for nighttime is much bluer than actual moonlight, and I don't want to overpower the other spectrums too much while shooting.

Let me know what you think? Thank you so much!
 
That's certainly being conservative, maybe a bit too much. I assume the scene is all moonlit without any tungsten room lights on.

If you're lighting with 5600K lights, I think Full CTB gel on them is probably overkill, I'd go with 1/2 CTB with the camera set to 5600K. If on the day you think it doesn't look blue enough, you can always drop the color temp of the camera a little bit or add a little more blue gel.

In terms of exposure and lighting contrast, it all depends on the look you want. The main problem with not underexposing is only if you've got any clipping because it will look worse once you darken everything in post because then there would be even less reason to see something clipped. In terms of fill light, it just depends on whether you want a lot of contrast once you darken down, or want to see some dim shadow detail.
 
Hello David. I recently bought a used Arri MMB-1 mattebox which only allows for 2 trays. One takes 4x4 AND 4x5.65 filters and the other only takes 4x5.65.
I also bought a used set of Zeiss Compact Primes that came with a set of 4x4 NDs (.6 and 1.2), a polarizer, 2 ND degrads (.6 and 1.2). I use minimal filtration in general, which I can only use in the first bay of the MMB-1.

My question is: if I want to make use of the second tray, I need to buy a 4x5.65 filter. Which filter would you recommend ? an IR ? or another ND ? I'm trying to keep this investment at a minimum for the time being, until I can make some money out of it. Thanks in advance!
 
If your camera has IR sensitivity with heavy ND's, then yes, a IR filter. Otherwise, I don't know, you sound covered. Maybe an optical flat (clear filter) for scenes where you don't need a filter but something might splash onto the lens? You might need diopters someday unless you own a close-focusing lens but those usually fit into a round ring in back of a matte box. I'm just surprised that a 4x4 filter covers all your lenses without vignetting.
 
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