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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

Thanks very much for the examples and description. My background is in commercial work, but it was the 80's and we used a lot of black plexiglass....I have a friend in the business that described the look as "plastic"(not in a derogatory way).
 
Since it's quiet here, please indulge me once more. On large scale productions, what happens when you have a scene scheduled that you want to do in say, afternoon sunlight, and the weather is overcast?
 
I don't think there is any hard and fast rule, it all depends on the production, the director, the DP, the schedule, etc. A bigger production might be able to fall back to a cover set when the weather is not to their tastes, or they may not -- they might not have any choice but to deal with the overcast weather, perhaps putting some big lights on condors to provide some backlight.
 
ND tint

ND tint

Morning David,

I was shooting on set this past week and noticed a definite green tint to the ND's that I own. I noticed it in at least one of the ND's. What do you usually do about this? Avoid certain brands or just color correct in post? I was shooting on the Scarlet-Dragon and they were Tiffen filters. It was definitely the filter, as the green tint was gone as we pulled the filter.

Thanks,
- dan
 
Since I usually rent, the camera assistant doing the prep will check out the NDs for problems like that, but yes, if I got a tint from the ND, I'd color-correct it out, but it's good to avoid having to do that. Newer designs of ND have improved that problem.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
That's 70s commercial style created very strong graphics often involving smoked sets, large single source lighting, and longer lenses (or mixing very long lenses with very wide-angle lenses but little in between). And often the point was to sell a product, which was photographed with great care. And then there was the attention to detail with costumes, color choices, the emphasis on texture, etc.

These frames show some of that style, particularly the way objects are photographed to bring out their surface texture, whether metal or skin, and the single source lighting on faces:

The 70s British commercial style, with the directors who created it, became such a part of cinema in the 80s and 90s that today most people don't remember where it came from.

See Ridley Scott's Hovis bread commercial from 1973:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMdy5szUXaQ

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/20...scott-britains-ad-men-reinvented-blockbuster/
Click to expand...

love this style, . but sometimes it's hard to get a director to let you take the time and effort to really nails this
 
David, I just wanted to thank you for all of the information you've shared with us in this thread.
As someone who is just coming up in the industry, I've found it to be an invaluable resource.

Cheers.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
You shoot slow motion to give a sense of greater mass to anything that moves, but it has to be an interactive movement like bouncing along a dusty road. A spaceship gliding through space doesn't need to be shot at a high frame rate (unless it explodes) -- in fact, they are often shot at a low frame rate in order to stop down the lens more. So if your toy truck is gliding on a perfectly smooth road, maybe the high frame rate won't help much if it's not bouncing on the road, but maybe it would be nice to put some fine effect dust on the ground to create a little cloud as it passes, it which case a high frame rate would help. And any braking, wheel bouncing, axel chain swaying, etc. will be helped by a high frame rate to impart a greater sense of mass -- and yes, you'd compensate by driving the miniature faster.
Click to expand...

David, your quote reminded me of Fury Road. What made this (a masterpiece) is the gravity, the reality of the vehicles and the "sense of greater mass" in just about every shot. There's no comparison to CGI cartoon movies like the Averngers. It's like night and day.

What did you make of Fury Road? Have you written about it?
 
Great thread and thanks for volunteering your time to share experience and 'tricks'

1) Do you light set to a particular f stop? If not do you assume post will resolve any inconsistencies? how extreme?
So for example if you have set of mostly T1.5 but the wider lenses in the set are T3 Do you light for say T4 so that you have a consistent F stop throughout shotlist?
Or do you routinely overlight the master only? part b) Do you target f stop / depth of field often for story? part c) do you intentionally vary f stop between medium, closeup, etc.

2) eye light - dink on camera? always full eye illumination otherwise fatal mistake? I notice in many features that there is impossibly good lighting (or grading) of the actors eyes, but that used to be a fireable offense right? ;)

3) As an indie cinematographer I will often DP from behind the camera (operating) - your thoughts about that in general and what to watch out for (for example getting framing good but not noticing some detail you would notice if not operating) Do you leverage script assistant or similar when you are operating to keep an eye on specific details for you?

4) what would you consider minimum technical competence on camera moves / handling for a DP/operator? Not looking for encyclopedia but maybe reference or basics you see non apprenticed DP missing. For example swish pan, zolly, etc whicih should be mastered and which should be avoided - likewise for superpowers required and ways to cheat (such as camera operator never being a glasses wearer in old school italian cinema crews - I have been told). Sorry that could be a very long list ;)

5) do you tend to use filters a lot (ND to allow shallow depth of field or pearlescent / anti-'video' filters) and do you sometimes bake look into camera (and to prevent changes or for efficiency)?
 
Hey David,

Any directors you would like to work with? Alternately, any directors of the past you wish you could, out of anyone?
 
1) I often aim to light a set for around f/2.8 to f/4 depending on whether it is a day or a night interior scene. Usually my zooms are T/2.8 so I'm safe if I aim for that. If my wide-angle lenses were all T/3 I'd light for that because I can't really relight for those lenses (plus I'm more likely to start out with the wider-angle lenses anyway). Sometimes when I'm on a set that naturally has a lot of light, like big windows in daytime, and I find myself more in the T/4-5.6 range, I might use an ND.3 for shots where I want less depth of field but then pull it when I'm using longer lenses for close-ups because it will all end up actually matching better in terms of how the depth looks. When I'm shooting outdoors in sunlight I'm more likely to play with the ND so that the telephoto shots have more depth of field to match the wide-angle shots. But often for an interior scene, if I lit the master to T/2.8 then I'd shoot everything at that level because it is easier to match contrast / fill level if the key level is consistent in every set-up.

2) When I can sneak in an eye light when I can but very dimmed down so it is just a reflection in the eyeball, not adding much fill. Plus that little bit of extra light has saved me in color-correction later. However, sometimes I feel that I play it too safe in that regards even though I use very low levels of fill -- I actually like it when the shadow side goes completely black on other people's stuff! I just feel that what I do is secondary to the acting in the scene, so I'm am loathe to make it too hard for the viewer to see the emotions in an actor's face, plus the problem with letting a lot of the face go black is that if the actor turns their head more than planned or rehearsed, you can lose the eyes. The times when I really do play it dark and contrasty with a face half-lit I find myself having to remind the actor to look a certain direction to catch the light in their eyes, and I hate doing that to them. So I don't know what the happy balance is, you have to play it by ear, it's a judgement call.

3) I've mostly operated on 35mm film cameras where the operator is getting the best view of the scene, so I catch more details when I'm operating on a film camera, but catch more details when I'm sitting at an HD monitor when shooting digitally with someone else operating. IF I have to operate a digital camera, then I designate someone to watch out for certain things on the monitors, whether that's a DIT or a Gaffer (usually what I'm often worried about technically are exposure or lighting issues during the take.)

4) Don't know if anyone can get away with minimal competence in any department so I'm not sure how to answer that. When I was an operator, I was better at composing than I was at doing complex moves, though I was good at handheld, just not so much at stepping over the dolly while booming up quickly, etc. I always wore glasses -- with film cameras, I used to wrap a piece of black wrap around the eyepiece cup so I can operate with my eyeglasses on and wrap the black wrap around the side of my face and glasses to cut out light leaks. Not comfortable but it worked. I just found that diopters in viewfinders weren't enough to deal with my extreme near-sightedness.

5) I believe in creating most of the look in camera, so yes, I bake in the look. However, I tend to use milder diffusion filters knowing that it isn't hard to increase the effect in post later, so you could say that sometimes I bake in half or three-quarters of the look and finish the rest in post. Some effects though are better to save until post. We've had many discussions here already on the pros and cons of using filters.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
2) When I can sneak in an eye light when I can but very dimmed down so it is just a reflection in the eyeball, not adding much fill. Plus that little bit of extra light has saved me in color-correction later.
Click to expand...
That is always appreciated in post. I particularly hate dealing with really dark, dense, moody scenes where the characters are just sinking into the mud and we don't have nearly enough of a "glint" in the eyelight. (Or worse, just nothing there at all.)

When you add the eyelight, are you doing it with a bounce card or a small instrument, like a 250W or something?
 
My go-to method of late has been a 1x1 Litepanel under the lens, with ND gel on it so I can dim it way down without getting near the point where it goes off on the dial. On moving shots, I use some sort of onboard LED over or under the lens.

But I don't fight to get an eyelight in there on every shot, not when it's more bother than it is worth. Sometimes you get reflection problems on sets with a lot of glass in them.
 
Hi David, I'm trying to set up the perfect setup to mix film and audio - so I'm shooting on Red, but recording with 2 portable Stellavox Analogue tape recorders. [Reel to reels]. What is the best way to sync the result for stereo and 5 channel? warm rgds, Kostas Metaxas www.metaxas.com [http://metaxas.com/recordings.html ]
 
Hi David,

Thanks so much for doing this for us.

I'm a Colorist by trade but am doing a lot more video production these days, both for clients and for myself. I'm currently shooting with a DSLR but am ready to take the next step into a proper cinema camera. I have about $30K to spend and am looking seriously at picking up a used Alexa Classic. I simply like the image quality of the Alev III sensor combined with Arri's image processing pipeline far more than anything else on the market. I'm totally fine with 2.8K as I have yet to have a client demand that I shoot or deliver in 4K. I realize that I could take my $30K and rent enough equipment to spnsor several projects, but I prefer to own my own gear and be free to shoot and practice when I like. That said, I'm nervous about buying a used, 6-7 year old, camera, and am wondering if you might have any advice in this regard.

thanks very much.

-- Pat Taylor
 
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