Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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

David Mullen ASC said:
In a real plane with real daylight, you should use a lot of the natural window light and just add fill if necessary, like with Kinoflos or bouncing a small HMI off of some white cards.
Click to expand...

You can put daylight tubes in Kinoflos and HMI is daylight temperature too. So I think David is saying if you use natural window light, the fill will match if you use kinos and hmi w/ white cards. So there isn't any mixed lighting in this case.

Are you using the plane's actual lighting? Will they be in the shot?
 
David Mullen's Crystall Ball?

David Mullen's Crystall Ball?

g'day,

with all of your experience, i was wondering what and where you feel cinematography will be in the next 5-10 years? not the usual film vs digital but the craft.

thanks
 
Obviously digital technologies introduce a whole new layer of information to learn and craft to master. When I was in film school in 1988-1991, I learned video technology as well as film, but I did not have to know about data rates, compression schemes, etc.

So computer issues become a factor in filmmaking, which is more or less new.

Other than that, there may be stylistic shifts over the next decade to keep an eye on. It's always hard to predict those. We've been more or less on a trend towards greater naturalism in lighting & photography for thirty years now and it's sort of peaking since you can't get much more natural than doing nothing and using just available light, which is becoming more and more possible to do.

So I wonder if there will be a major change away from that into something more graphic, along the lines of "300" maybe, that semi-CGI approach. Trouble is that it is a rather expensive way of making movies since it involves so many post people, particularly CGI animators.

Of course, 3D is again the hot new topic.

But I don't see either of these trends, 3D and CGI, affecting a typical drama or comedy like a "Juno" let's say.

Going back to technology, digital cine cameras are moving away from their video roots and becoming more or less a sensor with a lens in front and a computer in back. But as the technology becomes more mature, it also becomes more user friendly and thus should be less of a factor in artistic trends because the cinematographer will have to think less about the technical aspect of the camera.
 
Hi David.

Have you any opinion on Shneider's Digicon filter?

Yours

Emmanuel
 
Cesare,

Took a look at your stills. The lighting looks spot on for me, enough light where you need it while still keeping the feel of a plane cabin, so that's not your problem. I think the soft focus and somewhat pixelated or blocky look on some parts is more of a problem (don't know if this is due to JPEG compression) but the lighting, again, to my eye, looks right on the money.
 
thanks rudi, the blocky look is probably because i was on the edge of exposure as it was set full open on both brevis and camera and that isn't at all ideal but good enough under the circumstances. hope that if the "tv pilot" takes off we'll get a hanger and control exposure and other things better.
 
Question: In the context of Red with canon lenses and birger mount, is it possible that a mattebox is not necessary? If most filters aren't going to be used unless absolutely necessary (such as nd filters, which your can screw one on a hooded slr lens), is there anything else that a mattebox is needed for? Can the follow focus setup still be used without it? I hope this makes sense. Thanks.
 
I don't know the physical lay-out of the Birger mount and how it deals with matteboxes, but the main difference between using matteboxes versus a screw-on filter and a sunshade is that it is faster to switch filters in a mattebox since they just slide in and out, plus it is easier to stack filters and switch one but not the other, plus one set of filters may work with lenses of different front diameters.
 
David,

Let me ask you this- It seems like all video cameras and film cameras have their issues and ways to work around them.

How do you feel about the strobe issue and skew issue with this camera? Of course whip pans are not going to work well unless fixed and adjusted in post. The strobe issue is a problem, and will have to be avoided.

Overall, do you think this is really an issue with this camera? Or do you feel that this issue matches similar issues in other film cameras?

I think the picture is amazing, however, this does concern me a little.
 
Hiya David,

Let me first say thanks for taking time to answer questions for us. Its really appreciated.

My question may be a bit general, but here goes. Im no cinematographer, we make low budget shorts and we light them ourselves. Mostly we're working in very small confined spaces/real world locations with basic kit (800W tungstens, a few soft flos, a few 575 HMI's, and some 150W spots)

Firstly I'd ask what is the thought process you go through to light a scene? Do you look at the layout and first think where the main source of light is coming from? or do you assess the room for practical places to put the lights you have in your kit in relation to the actors? How do you sequentially build up the lighting until you're happy with what you see?

We are quite limited in shooting small rooms with hardly any places to mount lights. This means we have to be careful on where we put light stands. This can result in a rather bland look of bouncing lights for ease and simplicity, or inconcistency if you have to move all the lights round when you switch camera angles (to a wide for example).

I just thought you might have some tips,tricks, or a process which you use to establish what you can do with a scene (particularly confined spaces) to give it more punch.

Secondly I would ask if you knew of any good reference material which showed practical lighting on set? Most of the cinematography books I have are more theoretical and perhaps only give a few real world examples of where they put the lights and what type of lights they were. This would be helpful particularly in the context of indie film-making where space is a minimum.

Thanks very much

Karl
 
As for the skew and strobe issue from the rolling shutter, I'm not too worried about the skew yet because it seems hard to recreate the phenomenon. The strobe lighting creating a split frame is more worrisome (and more distracting than skewed motion) and I'd have to test before a production where strobes will be involved to see if there is going to be a problem.

--

Malkiewicz' "Film Lighting" is a good book. I mostly learned to light by studying movies and real life, etc. and then recreating the effects I liked.

You first have to determine the style of the project. For most people, that would be the naturalism that is popular today, but there are times when you want an old-fashioned glamour look, let's say, or a certain Expressionism.

If you are going for naturalism, or what some people call Romantic Realism (reality at its most photogenic), then you have to work around the real sources of light in a room, or create some believable off-camera ones (if you never look a certain direction, who's to know whether there was really a window or lamp there?) So you try to stage the action for that the sources produce the effect on the actors that you like rather than fight the location. And it's nice to get the sources in the frame so the viewer knows what's creating the light in the scene. For this reason, it's important to get the art department to add enough practical lamps in the scene, or if this is a day scene, to find places with good window placement, and hopefully, give yourself a way of lighting through that window.

I was working on a stage the other day, a bedroom set with one small window, for a day scene. I started with a hard light streaming through the window (we smoked the room lightly). I used a 5K Mole-beam projector but added two 1K PAR64 firestarters on each side of the 5K coming at the same angle -- the reason I did that, even though it created some multiple shadows and a broken-up beam, was that the client insisted that there be sheers on the window, plus the window had a lot of panes, so I wanted the effect of mini-shafts of light breaking through all of that, plus an imaginary tree outside, rather than one single beam. But all the light came in at the same angle. It was not hitting the back wall but coming into the room on a diagonal towards camera.

That light was gelled with 1/4 CTS to make it seem like warm directional sunlight. I also put some soft light through the same window, white (a 5K through a 6'x6' light grid cloth) to create a glow on the back wall, although the hard light hitting the sheers (tan luckily, not white) also created a soft glow on the walls.

So that light coming through the window was the basic look. I hadn't turned on any lights inside yet because I wanted to see if the window light was enough.

Because the set had no ceiling, and in real life, a ceiling adds to the ambient light in a room, I had the grips put a 12'x12' white Ultrabounce over the set where the ceiling would be. This, and the light-colored walls of the set, meant that the shadow side of the actor's face, opposite the side hit by the window light, had plenty of natural fill without adding any.

But the actor had to cross to the extreme foreground away from all the window light. So I had to add some interior light. So I pretended there was a foreground window along the same wall as the background window and created a soft side light (a 2K with a Chimera through an extra frame of diffusion. The actor then crosses back to the midground to a mirror & vanity table along the window wall, so they are slightly underexposed against the window light. So rather than create a new key light for that area, since that would make the scene look "lit", I bounced a Source-4 off of the white Ultrabounce ceiling to increase the ambience around the vanity table.

So basically the look was soft but more or less directional, keyed from the window.

So in this case, the interior of the room was lit by a 2K and a 575w light on the inside (and I could have used thet 575w Source-4 as a bounce or through diffusion instead of the 2K Chimera.

The big lights were just used outside to recreate the window light, so on location in real daylight, I would have had natural illumination. But if I wanted that shaft of hard light, I'd probably have to create it myself unless I got lucky with the real sun.
 
Thanks David,

I've noticed more and more on TV/film that even in the daytime all the practicals are turned on. The funny thing is that it doesnt really look odd when you're into the story. I guess that is a quick fix to creating some atmos or visual interest in daytime scenes.

Thanks for the explanation, it helps a lot.

Where we struggled was an indoor scene at night with the curtains drawn. There was only a single desklamp as a natural source, so bounced light added to this just looked a little bland (and unatural). I think perhaps we should have opened some of the curtains to create some moonlight or moved the scene to a room where there was at least some windows or other sources of light in the room. As you say finding where sources 'could' come from in the scene is what we should be doing.

Thanks again

Karl
 
Hi David!
I have a lighting contrast ratio question.
What is considered a normal contrast ratio and what is considered a low key and a high key? Like the lighting in Blade Runner or Dark City was pretty low-key high contrast. What would you say the lighting ratios where around in those shows or the right ratio to get that kind of look? 6:1?
Also is there a rule of thumb for background contrast ratios?
Still on the subject of contrast ratios, one of the things I have the hardest time with while learning how to light is keeping contrast ratio between shots in the same scene. Would you have any rules of thumb or tips for that? I find it harder than the lighting design. I can come up with interesting lighting if given the time but to make it all cut smoothly together is the harder part. Thanks.
 
"Low-key" just means that the frame has a predominance of under "key", underexposed, areas compared to the areas at normal brightness.

A low-key scene can either be high-contrast (small area of brightness surrounded by darkness) or low-contrast (everything generally underexposed and dim) -- "Blade Runner" has both effects at times.

If you are shooting film, you usually shoot a contrast ratio test to determine how the ratios look on the negative when printed or in the telecine transfer, depending on your post path. There is some loss of shadow detail when printing, so you need to understand that. With digital, you can see your contrast ratio on the monitor and know when there is no shadow detail being recorded.

My general rule is that when the key side of a Caucasian face is at normal exposure (which is not always common) then if the fill side is 2-stops under, it looks pretty well-lit, almost high-key. Three-stops under and there is shadow detail but it definitely looks dark in the shadows. Four-stops under and there is detail but it is barely there and runs the risk of going black.

So if I meter the fill side (which I rarely do, setting fill by eye), I'm usually looking at setting the fill at 2.5 to 3-stops under.

As for being consistent, you could do a quick spot meter reading to compare the key to fill side, or use an incident meter.

I usually knock my fill down to nearly nothing all the time anyway, prefering that the natural ambience add detail in the shadows. Basically you knock down the fill, then turn it on and off, and if you can still see an effect when it is on, but barely, it will be visible on film too, but barely.

Now the only time judging ratios by eye doesn't work is when using a high-contrast process like bleach-bypass or skip-bleach to film. There can be a tremendous drop-off in shadow detail with some of these processes, so you have to test, and then meter carefully on the set.
 
David, did you see the recent sci-fi, "Sunshine"? If so, what did you think of the cinematography in it?
 
David - first thanks for the awesome thread. Second, any tips for dealing with talent with glasses and the resulting lighting instrument reflections? I know angle seems to be everything but if they are bobbing their head around while speaking it seems difficult to control. I recently shot a scene where the actor swore she had specifically treated anti-glare spectacles but despite that and angling the glasses down we still got unwanted reflections.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top