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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

i must have asked a stupid question? my apologies... was just looking for any tips to avoid/reduce noise shooting a beach/wave scene at night... with a RED ONE.
 
Besides shooting it day-for-night? :cute:

It's fairly basic -- you get less noise by getting more light onto the sensor, and by keeping the blue channel in particular well-exposed so that you won't have to push it in color-correction later.

So if you wanted a blue-ish moonlight effect, setting the camera to 5000K at 320 ASA, let's say, and using a big HMI with half-blue gel on it would get you a nice blue-ish image with minimal noise. Using a little fill so you could keep the blacks pushed down a little will help too.

The hardest part of lighting a beach at night is trying to not front-light the ocean, which tends to just get you white froth and black water. Ideally you get a big light out across the water somehow, like off of a dock or outcropping of land around a cove, etc. Or give up on a big moonlit look and let the background fall off and have the foreground lit by something like a campfire or lamppost. If it's just one shot, you could also try shooting near magic hour, like the opening of "Jaws".
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Besides shooting it day-for-night? :cute:

It's fairly basic -- you get less noise by getting more light onto the sensor, and by keeping the blue channel in particular well-exposed so that you won't have to push it in color-correction later.

So if you wanted a blue-ish moonlight effect, setting the camera to 5000K at 320 ASA, let's say, and using a big HMI with half-blue gel on it would get you a nice blue-ish image with minimal noise. Using a little fill so you could keep the blacks pushed down a little will help too.

The hardest part of lighting a beach at night is trying to not front-light the ocean, which tends to just get you white froth and black water. Ideally you get a big light out across the water somehow, like off of a dock or outcropping of land around a cove, etc. Or give up on a big moonlit look and let the background fall off and have the foreground lit by something like a campfire or lamppost. If it's just one shot, you could also try shooting near magic hour, like the opening of "Jaws".
Click to expand...

Thanks so much David, as basic as it is to you, this is very helpful to me for choices... im going to try all of these techniques in the test..
not too worried about moonlit... as its stormy and almost always overcast...
also appreciate the Jaws reference... funny, its my all time fav film if I have to pick one... i also rented castaway so see if can replicate that night footage... and will also shoot day for night ... will post when Im done.

thanks again
 
Akeela and the Bee

Akeela and the Bee

David,

I saw this movie last night. I just had to say it was wonderful. My wife and I were two crying fools. Your work was outstanding, and the movie was first rate.

Well done sir, very very well done.

Jay
 
Question about lenses, hoping for recommendation?

Question about lenses, hoping for recommendation?

David (or anyone else who is willing to offer advice)

My partner and I are currently putting together a budget plan for a short film to be shot on the Red One camera. I have a choice of shooting with a set of ZF Primes on S mount, or a set of Arri Master Primes on PL mount. Of course, the Arri Master Primes will be much more expensive, and will really really stretch my budget (as if my budget wasn't stretched enough as it is).

My question is, do you think it's worth the $1500/day to use the Arri Master Primes set for the increased quality in picture, or should I go with the cheaper S mount ZF Primes? How much marginal increase in picture quality would I be getting with these Arri Masters? The guy who has the set of ZF Primes says they're sharp, but I can't be sure.

Essentially, I'm looking for a relatively shallow depth of field, with a sharp image in the plane of focus. I want the picture to look as "film-like" as possible. Would these lenses make a big difference?

I might also get my hands on a set of Cooke S4 Primes, but that may be going out of my way to do so.
 
I'm not familiar with the ZF primes, but are they cine-style with big focus marks and a long barrel rotation, or are the still camera lenses? The sharpness of the lens is not the only issue here, you still have to be able to pull focus on them. I'd almost rather opt for older PL-mount lenses if you can find them, or at least, Zeiss Ultra Primes, Cooke S4's, or even Zeiss Super Speeds.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Sounds like you want high-contrast lighting with black shadows against a green screen. Well, I'd keep the green screen as far back as you can and put black flags just off camera to reduce the green spill bouncing back, and make the green screen as dark as you can get away with and still pull a good key. Avoid shiny objects in the f.g. If you have to, use a weak amount of backlight to wash out the green spill. There are some good compositing software also that gets rid of spill.

Then time the final composite on the contrasty side with deep blacks.
Click to expand...

Thanks for reply. Much obliged to you. Got a few days of tests before shoot anyway so at least I can experiement.

Thanks again.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
I'm not familiar with the ZF primes, but are they cine-style with big focus marks and a long barrel rotation, or are the still camera lenses? The sharpness of the lens is not the only issue here, you still have to be able to pull focus on them. I'd almost rather opt for older PL-mount lenses if you can find them, or at least, Zeiss Ultra Primes, Cooke S4's, or even Zeiss Super Speeds.
Click to expand...

They're modified to cine use. They have gear rings mounted on the barrels for follow focus. Just to make a correction: They are F mount, not S mount (don't know why I even said that, never even heard of such a thing).

Another question real quickly: Knowing that shutter angle affects motion rendering, what is the highest shutter angle I can go on a digital camera (specifically the Red One) without getting that ugly digital blur. I'm thinking of shooting my daylight exterior shots in 90 and 45 degrees (assuming I have sufficient light). My interior shots, do you recommend a shutter angle for interior shots that's mostly lit by set lights? The interior shots will be of conversations of a very moody, dark, and claustrophobic nature. I'm thinking the absolute highest degree I'd even consider is 180.
 
I need some help with green screen. Shooting on red in a small room with a window, kind of like an attic, the window must me closed and outside of it I need to see the statue of the virgin of the city, which stands on top of a little hill. I have a couple of actors on this scene which is suppose to gloomy. I´m thinking of the right way of doing it, and the concerns and problems that may arise. First green scrren, hanging out of the window far enought to net bounce light back. Piece of wood probably painted in green. One hmi, and probably, natural light might be more than enough to ight the green screen.
I´m concerned because of the glass, how it might affect the green. The windows are a bit dirty from the inside and it is raining. Plus it would be nice to keep some reflections of the actors face on the surface of the window, which would be nice.
Bottom line, medium shot of two people with a statue in the background, seen through the rainy window. Picture of window has two windows, one will be blocked. The third picture is just to share.
Any kind of advice would be appreciatted
thanks
 
The reflections aren't necessarily a problem, the dirt and rain on the glass is a bigger issue because it can be hard to key around such texture. It can be done, but it may be better to clean the glass and get a better view to the green. Perhaps the dirt and rain could be added back in post, maybe you could shoot a separate version with the dirt and rain but with a black screen out there, then you could pull that detail and put it into the green screen composite, though you may need to roto around the foreground actors if they cross the window.

If the shot is a lock-off, you could try a front-lit / back-lit approach -- i.e. shoot the normal version with a black screen in the background, then shoot a second pass with the room dark and the window with a white screen beyond it, and then the compositor may be able to create a luminance key.

This is the sort of thing where you need to talk to your efx person.
 
Shooting in Desert

Shooting in Desert

Hi David!

Thanks for such an amazing thread, it really is an asset to this community.

I have a question about shooting in the desert.

What would be your minimum kit be for daytime shooting? Meaning diffusion, bounce, filtration, etc? Not planning on using any lights, just available light.

Thanks David!
 
I'm not sure by what you mean by "minimal" because it would depend on the size of my crew -- I may want to carry a 20'x20' silk, for example, but there would be no point if it was just me and another guy out there trying to set it up.

But on most features with a basic grip crew (let's say, four people), I'd carry 20'x20', 12'x12', 8'x8', 6'x6' frames. I'd also have 4'x4' diffusion frames. I might also carry an odd size like 12'x20'. Plus of course bounceboards, white cards, bedsheets, silver reflectors, etc.

I like to carry UltraBounce, Griflon, Muslin for bounces, and Silk and Half Soft Frost for sunlight diffusion, plus nets and solids. For lighting diffusion, I'd also have Light Grid and Full Grid Cloth for the big frames, plus different plastic diffusion for the 4'x4' frames.

Half Soft Frost is nice because you lose less than a 1/2-stop standing under it, it just takes the harshness off of sunlight without killing the directionality. It's similar to Opal but doesn't rattle.
 
David

I've been considering using the Cooke Varotal 25-250mm zooms, the Angenieux 25-250mm HR, the Angenieux optimo 24-290mm, and a few others. Do you know how well these lenses perform compared to each other? Also, do you have any recommendations for a zoom lens with a wide range of focal lengths that fairly fast, with decent sharpness, and in a reasonable price to rent (on PL mount).
 
I've only used the Ang. Optimo in that list; normally I shoot Panavision, which would be the 11:1 Primo zoom in this case. Actually I don't like 35mm cine zooms in general and don't like 10:1 zooms or longer in particular, so I don't have a lot of experience with them. I think the Cooke 25-250mm is the oldest one in your list, but I may be wrong. I see the Optimo used the most often, followed by the Ang. HR.
 
Hey David,
I was curious about your approach with RED on set. I understand you keep an additional camera on set because once a week one of the others goes hay wire and needs to be sent in. I was wondering if the major problem was color? I have shot several project on red and each camera has a different over-all cast of green to the image, some it's minor others it's nuclear. I correct the cast in Color with just 2 printer points normally and everything looks fine but on set it becomes difficult to judge the image with such bad colors. How do you judge your images knowing the color will eventually change? or is there something you do to fix the cast when viewing REC 709?

Thanks!

Larkin
 
We carried a third camera, which was useful when one of our A or B cameras needed to be worked on, even if it was just something simple like reloading some software, or it was more complicated like sending the camera back to RED for fixing -- one time it was because a giraffe kicked our camera, which I can hardly blame RED for...

It was a convenience having a spare body, that's all. The problems we ran into varied, like one camera that would shut down after being triggered. One camera seemed consistently more yellowish than the other and we sent it back to RED to look at, but I'm not sure they changed it or fixed it.

I have to say though that I've had to send other camera types back to rental houses, so this is not necessarily a RED issue. It was only slightly more "buggy" than any other camera I have used.

Part of the color issues may be processing related, because I had some Quicktimes come back where the metadata for Chroma tracked with one camera but was ignored on the other camera. So I'm not sure where some of the color mismatching was coming from.

I did notice that the cameras were a lot more sensitive to green and yellowish shifts, and exaggerated the difference between the warmth of the Ang. Optimo zoom and the coolness of the Zeiss Ultra Primes we were using.

It may be that most sensors in digital cameras have some degree of color mismatching that is normally compensated for in signal processing, so a RAW camera may be more prone to show-off those differences between sensors, whereas the processor in a Sony may be set to zero-out the differences.
 
Mr. Mullen,

What is your prefered instrument to use has an eyelight?

I bet this has been asked before so I apologize, but I couldn't find the thread or post.
 
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