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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

Hey David,

Thanks for the reply back, I really appreciate you taking the time to look at my work. I do agree about the beginning with cutting down the footage with the DJ. Both my teacher and Cundey both said the same thing. I actually had my good friend who is an editor to cut my reel and he admitted that he kept thinking of my reel from an editors stand point. I will definitely shorten it and change out shots once I get the footage from my latest shoots.

I also have a lighting question, my last project at school we got to shoot 1,000ft on a Panavision GII (my first time ever playing with a Panavision and it was amazing). I was trying to approach the Bob Richardson approach to the "halo effect" he does with hot top sources. I shot on Kodak 5218 and used Leko source 4s banging straight down into my actors, metered to let the hot spots go 4 1/2 to 5 stops over. Our school sends our footage to Fotokem and I got my footage back and it wasn't hot at all, look like maybe a stop over. Our school has had problems with Fotokem (assuming interns are running our film) and they judge everything by eye and don't listen to our notes or even look at them. I accomplished the look I wanted after passing my footage through Apple's program Color but I really wanted to try and nail the look I was going after in camera. From the stuff I told you does this seem like I was going in the right way to get they "halo effect"?

I put the project up on my website under my narrative section under reel if you want to take a look to visually judge if I was going in the right direction.

link - www.singhoweyam.com
 
Sounds like you did it the right way. Did you add any type of diffusion filter to get the halation from the overexposure? Otherwise all you get a bright area but no glowing.

Fotokem is fine but if you don't supervise the transfer, they will naturally do a one-light that preserves all the information on the negative. So the fact that four stops overexposed doesn't look that hot is a testament to the color negative. Hopefully you had a normally exposed grey scale before the scene as a frame of reference.

Truth is that it can take nearly five stops of overexposure to get white on some objects, so I just use a super narrow spot globe and expose for the outer fringes of the light so when someone passes under the center of the beam, they go nuclear. But you still need a little diffusion on the lens to create some spread and halation.
 
Hi David, I was trying to find a way to check if you had answer this previously but I couldnt so I apologize before hand if you have had answered this a few times now. My question is, how do I avoid NOISE in low light situations shot on RED? I have a shoot coming and we want to shoot in a studio with low key lighting with hot spots around the frame but I am afraid the camera will produce some noise in the shadows where the light grades from hot to low.
Thanks!!!!
 
estebanred said:
My question is, how do I avoid NOISE in low light situations shot on RED? I have a shoot coming and we want to shoot in a studio with low key lighting with hot spots around the frame but I am afraid the camera will produce some noise in the shadows where the light grades from hot to low.
Thanks!!!!
Click to expand...

Dial 270 deg shutter, put MP glass on, open all the way up and there is no noise even in candle light :whistling:
 
Just depends on how you expose and how you color-correct. The noise level of dark shadows at a 320 ASA base for the key shouldn't be objectionable.

Most people get into noise problems when they essentially expose darker than how they decide they want it to look in post and basically end up trying to lift the image later, causing noise to appear. Or they are trying to do heavy color shifting in the shadows and there isn't enough chroma information to push around.

You should consider lighting a little flatter and then crushing the shadow detail down a little in post to compensate, that tends to improve the noisiness in the shadows.
 
Thanks David and Pawell.
Very much appreciated.

EDIT> I just did a test and I feel that depending on the camera space and the gamma space that I set in RED CINE the levels of noise vary. I just dont know whats best in order to avoid that situation. Any advise?
 
Hi David, I have a question about light cheating. How do you feel about cheating between a master or establishing shot and a close up? I'm shooting a project right now where I normally don't have enough light output or can't properly light a full master (no space for hiding the lights or stands) in slightly larger rooms and I'm ending up having to probably underexpose the master by 1 stop and also sometimes can't get the right light direction as I have to mount my lights wherever I can. Especially in scenes where characters walk around a lot. But then I don't want to do the same in the close up and I cheat and have the right exposure and light direction. How do you feel about that and about cheating in general and how do you usually cheat? Thanks David.
 
I try to not make the cheating obvious and I try to light the master well-enough that the cheating is not too radical... but usually you need to do some cheating for the actor's face.

However, I think it's better to live with some mismatching and have nicely-lit close-ups even if the masters suffer, rather than be consistent... but be consistently bad.

But an underexposed, grainy/noisy master that is badly lit isn't a great idea either. It helps to stage your action so that the actors naturally stand near areas that can be lit, like by a lamp or a window, etc.
 
Well, you have to ask yourself what would be lighting these actors in real life in a large space. If the answer is "nothing" then you should think about adding a practical source that would realistically be lighting them, rather than simply throwing light onto the scene. At the least, you have to decide what the effect you want is -- a soft overhead skylight effect, a series of downward spots, light falling from a window, etc.
 
A large night exterior for example. It does depend on what you are lighting but in general there would be some practical lights somewhere you could cheat I would imagine.

I have seen quite a few movies where the lighting tower is seen way in the background like the one in the top left of frame from, "For Richer or Poorer" (1998).

 
In this case, they have decided that the moon is the source of light in the scene (seeing the arm of the condor is just an accident -- nowdays they'd probably paint it out in the D.I.). If you decide that is what is lighting your big empty space, then light it for a moonlight effect.

The point is to imagine what could be lighting the actors in real life, and ideally, it's a source that creates the mood you want... rather than simply adding light just to see what is going on. That's the difference between lighting a dramatic scene and merely illuminating a room.

Even if you end up with a big soft top light like from a spacelight or balloon, you're basically simulating a skylight or overhead fluorescents, etc. in the space. If you use a bunch of hard spotlights pointed straight down, you're suggesting that the space has track lights or can lights.

Maybe you decide there is one really bright downward spot in the center of the large space and people standing a few feet away from the center are lit by the bounce off of the floor; you can justify that as just a really bright center spotlight like from an industrial fixture.
 
One reason I asked was because I watched Alien this weekend and I am amazed how Mr. Derek Vanlint lit the film as a whole. I never felt the presence of "lights".

Especially the handheld shots of Sigourney Weaver running through and around the Nostromo. The huge shots of LV-426, are models and matte paitings, but still they are huge and just prompted me to wonder how they are lit not in a technical way but an artistic way.
 
You have some leeway in an industrial space, especially on a future spaceship, to make-up sources. "Alien" is a very "textural" movie, lighting-wise, i.e. often the lighting, soft or hard, emphasizes the texture of surfaces, shiny, greasy, polished, rough, etc. usually by coming in at a raking angle, other than the frontal strobe lighting.

Derek VanLint did say in the American Cinematographer article that, because they were shooting in anamorphic and "saw" a lot of the set even in a close-up, he wanted as much lighting as possible to come from practical fixtures, but in the end, he still had to augment those with off-camera lights, either for mood or exposure in anamorphic (the movie was shot on 125 ASA 5247 stock.)

But overall, the impression when watching the movie is that the lighting is very "source-y" coming from wall fixtures or instrument panels, etc. even when it isn't. It's an excellent example of cheating light in various spaces, or making up interesting sources.
 
I noticed this when I was looking over the pictures you posted of Manure. If I did not know it was shot in a studio against a painted backdrop I never would have said so. It is stylized but done very well.

Some of the pictures show us how small the backdrop is or how close it is to the foreground action. I guess it is all about cheating the light and the scale but I thought it never felt fake.

I can't wait to see the final film. :biggrin: The story seems very cool.
 
Hi shawn , i am not david but i couldn't see what you did without a comment
This should be in totally especial thread , this was Brilliant work
1- the story .wow
2- shooting
3-color correcting
4-editing (some remarks on it 0
5-sound composition BTW how can i get some track from Herman Witkam
this guy's music very creative
6-dircetting was more than awesome .
7-Actors ..
all so great.
 
Shawn - I'm no David, but for all it is worth - I really love the short. Stunning cinematography, especially considering that You only used natural light. The music also enhances the vision. Brilliant...

What lens did You use for the medium-close-up looking up on the girl's face right after her resurrection? Any filters?

Wow...
 
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