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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

Yes, it's all halves and doubles...

1600 ASA is one more stop of speed than 800 ASA, 20 seconds is twice as long an exposure as 10 seconds, or more more stop of exposure, etc.

Trouble is that at very long exposure times, you start getting into reciprocity failure with film emulsions where there aren't enough photons to get an equal reaction in the silver halides. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_failure

However, it apparently isn't a problem with digital cameras.
 
Just out of curiousity, has there been a major feature film that's shot footage at below 45 degree shutter angle? Someday when the sun's really bright, I'm gonna go Ridley Scott on it.
 
toolizcool said:
Just out of curiousity, has there been a major feature film that's shot footage at below 45 degree shutter angle? Someday when the sun's really bright, I'm gonna go Ridley Scott on it.
Click to expand...

As I recall, the action scenes in Gladiator were very strobey. It looked like a 24 fps slide show. I would estimate it was 15 deg or less, which would be about 1/500 sec. Or did you mean other than Ridley Scott?
 
Hi David,

I'm about to shoot a music video on the RED and it'll be my first rime using the camera. My question is: in what way (if any) does it differ in exposing for RAW? I've shot lots of film, DV and HD, but i'm curious if there's a different approach to be taken when shooting RAW. Instead of exposing for specifics, like highlights or shadows, is it best to just split the difference, try and capture as much information on both ends as possible and then dial in the exposure in post? Also, what would you estimate the effective latitude of the camera to be? (forgive me if this has been answered in a previous posting)

Thanks in advance!

paul niccolls
dp/nyc
www.niccollsdp.com
 
I don't really have a scientific measurement for the latitude; my personal experience is that it is similar to other high-end digital cameras, which means, pretty good, just not as good for overexposure latitude as color neg film.

320 ASA is a good base for metering. If there are no bright areas or hot spots in the frame, you can afford to open up a little to reduce noise in the shadows. If there are hotter spots or light areas, then expose at 320 ASA in general, and if there is something specific you are worried about clipping, then bring your exposure down until you aren't clipping detail in that hot area. The histogram on the camera is a good guide to see how your information is falling exposure-wise in general.

I don't believe you always have to expose so that nothing is ever clipping -- if a car passes by the camera at night and the headlights flare the lens and clip a little, that's better than underexposing the whole night exterior shot and getting a lot of noise but well-exposed headlamps. On the other hand, if the car pulls right up to the camera and the headlamps fill the frame, obviously you may want to think about how much clipping you want to see. The main issue with clipped areas is whether they are noticeable and distracting / ugly. Generally if you point the camera at the sun, the sun will be clipped, but if it's a wide-angle shot and the sun is a dot, who cares if it is a white dot? However, if it's a 1000mm shot of a sun ball, then you'd want to expose to retain some color in the sun.
 
In his thread on Barry Lyndon, gunleik noted mismatched focal lengths, intercut in the same scene. And you do see this in other highly esteemed productions, Storaro/Bertolucci comes to mind, The Last Emperor, for one.

Apart from multi-camera shoots, where it's unavoidable, what's the prevailing orthodoxy on this one today? Avoid it or not?
 
Chris Newman said:
As I recall, the action scenes in Gladiator were very strobey. It looked like a 24 fps slide show. I would estimate it was 15 deg or less, which would be about 1/500 sec. Or did you mean other than Ridley Scott?
Click to expand...

Haha, Chris, no, I just used "Ridley Scott" as an adjective in that sentence, since so many of his recent films (primarily the ones with DP John Mathieson) use the low shutter angle technique to convey high tension and frenetic action. Sort of like, "I'm gonna go medieval on your ass". I don't know what it is, but whenever I see a shot with a low shutter angle, my eyes just widen up because the shots just look so beautiful and exciting. Sometimes, people use that technique on very basic scenes with just dialogue, and yet it still looks interesting. Like David said, whenever you shorten the shutter, you need to compensate for the lesser amount of light allowed in.

Those action scenes in Spielberg/Kaminski's Saving Private Ryan and the action sequences in those Ridley Scott movies like Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven are just stunningly gorgeous and totally badass at the same time.

By the way, David, do you know which director/DP/feature film was the first to use that specific technique? The oldest movie to my shallow/limited knowledge that used it was G.I. Jane, which came out in 1997 (there's a cool shot when Demi Moore assembles a rifle really quick, and they shot it in 45 degrees). That movie was also directed by Ridley Scott, and DPed by Hugh Johnson. No surprise.
 
David, I was also wondering if you could give me some advice on this.

A while back, I was helping someone else on an amateur short. I was talking to the DP of that project, who isn't a professional, either. Personally, I thought both him and the director were talentless and unqualified after working with and getting to know them more (I'm usually not this negative, but I really just didn't have too much admiration at all for them). Anyway, I told him (the DP) I had a project I wanted to make, and I was having a conversation with him about the lighting I wanted. This is a film about a detective investigating a series of bizarre murders. I told him I wanted generally harder lighting, moody, with a considerable amount of contrast in the frame, and especially during the close-ups on the actors' faces. He said it was a bad idea, because using hard lighting would cause the innocent characters to look creepy and guilty. I said to him, "well, first of all, you don't know if he/she is guilty or innocent".

Second, I explained that I wanted the light to be similar to the C.S.I: Vegas style, where there's a considerable amount of contrast and hardness. The guilty and the innocent don't look noticeably different, in terms of the lighting on their faces (at least not to me when I watch, but then again, I'm not really experienced or a professional). The law enforcement characters and the suspects look about the same. I also said I thought it'd be better if the light were to treat both actors/characters roughly the same, and that the scene, itself or the mood of the particular scene was the factor in how the lighting scheme should be decided and not the specific character. Or perhaps, the physical setting of the story (for example if two characters are talking in a kitchen room) should also influence the lighting scheme. The lighting should look like the kitchen light in the story setting is lighting up the shot (whether it be the actual kitchen light itself or a more powerful, artificial set light pretending to be a kitchen light). I think C.S.I does this a bit, since they have elaborate and cool production designs. If a coroner's light is shining on a dead body, the examiner's face is lit up like that morgue light splashing off the coroner's table.

I also mentioned that it wouldn't necessarily be a good idea, regarding lighting continuity if the light (that could very easily be coming from a light that's a part of the setting in the story, or a light that pretends to be so) treats one actor differently that another actor. It wouldn't make any sense, scientifically, if the light is coming from an angle and hits the actors' faces from roughly the same angle when they're positioned roughly the same distance from the light source, whether it be the actual artificial light used on set, or the light that's a part of the story setting. The only response I got from him was, "you don't want your innocent characters to look guilty".

One example I did notice, if you ever watch that movie, Just Cause, (the movie with Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne), there's a particularly interesting scene between Sean's character and Ed Harris, who plays a psychotic murderer. Both characters have high contrast and hard light on their faces. However, Ed's character seems to be even more contrast and harder light than Sean. I'm assuming this was intentional? There's one shot where Ed Harris blows up in anger, and right there, he bursts up standing, and all of a sudden his eyes and face just make him look almost like a monster, with the particular lighting scheme they used (which made his face look extremely creepy and his eyes gleam in a really disturbing way).

Do you think that might be a good way to go about lighting/shooting it? (By the way, sorry for the long post and the abundant use of parentheses).
 
I'm sure commercials and music videos were using it before features started.

Of course, I've seen the accidental effect of closing down the shutter and getting strobing of motion in earlier movies. I remember a shot from a James Bond movie ("A View to a Kill" I think) with an establishing shot of a ranch as James Bond drives up with race horses running by in the foreground... it was shot with the shutter closed down, probably for exposure reasons, and the running horses were strobing too much as their legs went by the camera.
 
Modern lighting tends to be source motivated, with some leeway in tweaking that source in the close-ups. You can do what you want, there are no rules really. What's wrong with motivated hard light on the actors' faces? (unless it makes your star look horrible.) If both actors are being hit with the same light source, generally you would do the same cheating, if any, on both their close-ups so it still felt like the same source was hitting them. So if you softened or lowered it for one, you'd probably do it for the other. But not all movies have to be strictly realistic.
 
This is not really a question, but more of myself sharing some thoughts and information about a filmmaker, and I was curious to hear your opinion on it, David. I was listening to Tony Scott talk about his method of shooting. He says that while filming an action sequence, he likes shooting with multiple cameras, usually around 4 or 5 at least. He then says he likes to have them on different focal lengths and frame rates, but have them coming from the same general direction, since the lighting is really only good from one. The different focal lengths and frame rates give the film a thorough feel of the situation. Usually the movement in the cameras vary as well. I've also noticed he tends to shoot with two cameras pointing from the exact same angle, but with different focal lengths, and you notice it in the final product, when you see a person in a wide shot, and then later, after a few cuts, you'll see the person from that exact same angle, but much closer-up. A lot of other times, during an action moment, he'll do that two-camera thing, and in post, he'll cut from the wide straight to the close-up coming from the exact same angle. I was just wondering what your thoughts on that was, David.
 
Ridley and Tony Scott obviously know how to use multiple cameras in a way that does not make the lighting in their movies look bland or bad. Part of that comes from being fairly high contrast and source motivated, but also by the care in choosing angles. Side-light and backlight are more interesting than front light, so they often try to keep in the same general direction, maybe shoot a side-lit face with multiple cameras for different sizes, but have some cameras come around for a nearly profile angle that is edge/backlit, or almost silhouette against the source.
 
Hi David,

I'm a recent graduate from filmschool (North Carolina School of the Arts, not sure if you've heard of it) and I'm kind of caught in a weird area of where to start my career. I've recently got lucky and have actually been DPing a few music video's fresh out of school. Although they're not big huge music videos , I get to work as a DP which has been teaching me a lot about working in the industry. I've been planning on moving to LA for quite some time but have made commitments to videos here in my home state of VA which has delayed my move. I'm sticking around and DPing these music videos because I'm trying to build up my DP reel but I keep getting calls from fellow cinematographers saying I need to get to LA for work (2nd AC and electrician jobs that probably pay more than I get as a DP in VA). Trust me, I'm not being a snob and saying ACing is too small for me, I just feel the oppurtunity for me to DP some decents things so early on is something I shouldn't pass up even though I don't make as much. What would be your advice on this?

Sorry for the long post, I've just been thinking about this a lot lately and wanted to get an opinion from an established DP who has had a lot of experience in the indie world.

Sorry again for one last question, my teacher at school is a good friend and fellow co-worker of Dean Cundey ASC and he critiqued our DP reels when we went to LA. It would be great if you could check mine out at my site: www.singhoweyam.com and give me an honest critique on my reel, I'm still young and aspiring into a world of great potential so any wisdom and honest critique about my work would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Sing
 
Your reel is very nice, it just could be a little shorter. You could easily trim that opening before the needle touches down for starters, and reduce some of the more repetitive shots -- i.e. you don't need to revisit the same lighting set-up once you've seen it, keep moving on to new stuff. The camera moves are nice and so is the lighting.

My reel isn't the greatest so I find it hard to get too critical of others... :wink:
 
He mentioned the site for his reel in the post:

TheSHYRED said:
It would be great if you could check mine out at my site: www.singhoweyam.com and give me an honest critique on my reel, I'm still young and aspiring into a world of great potential so any wisdom and honest critique about my work would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Sing
Click to expand...

Put the cursor on FILM WORK and the option REEL appears.
 
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