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:
Trouble is that the look of night is subjective -- it matters less that you're matching reality as it does that it SEEM real. Even the worst-lit night exterior scenes generally look like they were shot at night, just badly. Mainly because the sky is black, etc. So the audience accepts that it is a night scene.

I find that the main problem with DFN is that is looks the most realistic when it is painfully dark. As soon as it is lightened up for TV or because the director wants to see what's going on in the scene, it looks too bright to be night. And the other problem, again, is getting the sky dark enough.
Click to expand...

Would a contrast filter help a DFN in this case making the overall contrast difference a bit less than what's there?
 
Obviously a low-contrast filter would lower the contrast, whether it was a day, night, or day-for-night shot.

But it doesn't help much. Mainly when you shoot DFN and you underexpose, you have to add light to areas you want to pop out after the underexposure, which is why reflectors are handy if it is sunny.
 
Something else I've learned about D4N is to make sure there's enough ND on the lens to be able to shoot all the way open or close to open. Often, people have an incredible depth of field on D4N shots that is totally unrealistic for that amount of (simulated) night light.
 
euredom said:
Something else I've learned about D4N is to make sure there's enough ND on the lens to be able to shoot all the way open or close to open. Often, people have an incredible depth of field on D4N shots that is totally unrealistic for that amount of (simulated) night light.
Click to expand...

Well observed...
I have problems realizing the obvious, thanks haha.

David Mullen ASC said:
Obviously a low-contrast filter would lower the contrast, whether it was a day, night, or day-for-night shot.

But it doesn't help much. Mainly when you shoot DFN and you underexpose, you have to add light to areas you want to pop out after the underexposure, which is why reflectors are handy if it is sunny.
Click to expand...

How much wattage are we talking here?
Fighting the sun doesn't sound easy for me.
 
I tweaked these images a little bit to get them to look better:

attachment.php


attachment.php
 
While we're at night shots, let me throw something into this thread.

David (and eveyrone who has been helpful on this thread), how would one go about lighting such a large night exterior like this:
vlc2008082113584319ox0.png

?

Lots and lots of big sources, with some light diffusion (or none?) would produce the same result?

And in cases like this, what is preferred? HMI or Tungsten?
Maybe HMI because of lumen per watt efficiency... But I'm not sure.

Thx.
 
The valley in "No Country For Old Men" was lit using three Musco lights on the hilltop, and T/1.3 Zeiss Master Primes wide-open, which gives you an idea of the impossibility of most of us doing the same, and just how much light it takes at a great distance just to get a barely recordable exposure at the camera. Deakins originally hoped he could use one Musco and had to order two more at the last minute to light this valley.

Each Musco has 15 6K HMI globes in it. So it basically took 45 6K HMI's to light this valley to a T/1.3!

In other words, for most of us on a budget, either we shoot that scene day-for-night, or we light a smaller area, or we don't attempt to create an even amount of moonlight over such a wide area, we break it up into smaller areas with natural formations that justify gaps in the light (trees, hills, etc.) so we can use multiple units.

There is nothing harder than lighting a large area with a single source effect. In "From Earth to the Moon", for the moonscape, they did it by using something like a dozen 10K Xenon's pointed into a curved mirror that was water-cooled so it wouldn't shatter from the heat.

So far, the biggest night light I've used has been two 18K HMI's on a single condor, which gave me a T/1.3 (on 500 ASA film) when they were coming from two blocks away. I've also lit about two blocks worth of night with a Dino (24-light) using 1K spot and medium globes. So take that and imagine trying to light something ten blocks wide and deep...

The other problem quickly becomes height... a 125' condor crane that is two blocks away is basically in the master wide shot unless you shoot down from a high angle or use a long lens. At that point, what you really need are construction cranes or a convenient high-rise building or hilltop to get higher.

A balloon light is good for a half-city block's worth of area, no more. And they are hard to get high enough in the air and tend to blow around unless secured. And if you are talking about HMI balloons for the extra output and the blue color, then you have headfeeder cables going up to the balloon to consider.

I'd say this is one of the most common beginner questions: "how do I light a large area at night with no money?" and the answer tends to be "you don't." Lighting large areas at night is always one of the hardest things to do even with a decent budget. There are few tricks other than to NOT attempt to light everything and work with smaller pools of light and a lot of blackness in the background. Which is why when you scout locations, you look for formations that will naturally cut-off some of the area that needs to be lit, like a convenient hillside.

Roger Deakins is one of the best DP's for night scenes and his solutions have been varied. In "Fargo" for example, he knew he couldn't light a roadway at night for the length of a fast car chase scene (too much distance covered), so he opted to have the scene look like it was just lit by headlamps, which he augmented off-camera at times.
 
David, thanks for the answer...
That sure sounds tricky and expensive.

I just received my The Art and Technique of Digital Color Correction book and the first page I see when I open has your name on it hehe.

Just in case someone is interested, this book looks really good didatically speaking.
 
Wow. Makes you wonder if they wanted an image that underexposed or if they would've preferred a brighter image.

And that makes me think of the second scenario...which is you'd have to shoot all the coverage so that it matches the look of the master (which is a duh, i know), but you have to decide how to go about it. Do you continue to shoot wide open and light accordingly so the lens characteristics match? Do you go back to "normal" exposures and then time it to match so your AC can sleep that night?
 
Robert Sanders said:
Wow. Makes you wonder if they wanted an image that underexposed or if they would've preferred a brighter image.

And that makes me think of the second scenario...which is you'd have to shoot all the coverage so that it matches the look of the master (which is a duh, i know), but you have to decide how to go about it. Do you continue to shoot wide open and light accordingly so the lens characteristics match? Do you go back to "normal" exposures and then time it to match so your AC can sleep that night?
Click to expand...

Just depends on the background in the shot. An insert of something on the ground or inside a car wouldn't have to be lit to a T/1.3.

I've sometimes lit wide shots to T/1.3 for the Master Prime but lit the close-ups to T/2 or T/2.8 when I can get away with it because of a radical change in shot size or background.
 
I can't remember from the AC article, but I assume they shot that desert night sequence with a full moon? I remember Deakins saying they had time serious time constraints on that entire sequence, but I don't recall him mentioning the moon.
 
Musco's are what, $2500/day. Not including techs. Master Primes are also roughly $2500 a day (for a kit). So you've got $10K in rentals alone (for one shot). On a movie with a budget as big as theirs, I'm sure those expenses are nominal compared to the crew payroll and all of the above-the-line expenses (not that line-producers don't bitch regardless).

To an indie filmmaker making an entire film on a quarter mil, $10K is probably the ENTIRE camera budget for the whole show. LOL!
 
David,
I read articles/posts that break down great portrait photography (which has some really cool stuff sometimes) and almost every shot involves chimera strip banks but yet I've never seen those on movie sets or BTS shots. Why does this tool see so much use in still but not in movie?
 
I use Chimeras all the time... on "Big Love" it was one of those things I inherited from DP Jim Glennon, using Chimeras on almost every light.

It's just that they are not always the best way to soften a light depending on the light, the set-up, etc. If you want the softness of using a 6'x6' frame of diffusion, then a 4'x3' Chimera isn't going to be the same effect.

But recently I have been doing a lot of soft backlights on hair using lights with Chimeras on the front, armed out using a menace-arm rig or rigged to the ceiling. Easier than rigging a diffusion frame and a bunch of flags to cut the spill.

With all of the different sizes of Chimeras and different speed ring adaptors needed for all your lights, it's just hard to have enough of them for all situations. On "Big Love", the previous DP had just insisted they order a lot of Chimeras for all the lights, so I inherited that. But usually I have to limit myself to renting a few sizes for the medium to small lights I am carrying.

However, on "Akeelah and the Bee" I got a huge Chimera for a 10K that I wheeled around for some of the spelling bee events so I would use the stage lighting for the wide shots and roll in the 10K Chimera for the close-ups, essentially letting the big Chimera block out the hard stage lighting while replacing the key with a softer light. It was a fast way of working. But I often find that the large Chimeras make the light SO front-heavy that you are constantly trying to keep the light from tipping down slowly no matter how much you tighten the knob.
 
Thank you, i guess my emphasis was on the strip part (the long skinny chimeras), the basic S-M-L Chimeras I see all the time.

Thats a cool story about the 10k chimera on Akeelah! Do you have a pic?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top