Better Call Saul - amazing low key Dragon images

[Nick Morrison]

Very kind words, Nick.
The producers of "Saul" wanted to shoot on film. It was only after learning that going that way would cost an extra million dollars over shooting digital, that Vince Gilligan asked me to shoot a test of film versus RED, Sony and Alexa cameras. I did a full day of testing, pushing the cameras any way I could think of: candlelight, sunlit exteriors against dark interiors, high contrast lighting, flat lighting and so on. We screened the results at Sony on a 4K system and everyone had to guess which was which. Even the colorist who did "Breaking Bad" for 5 years guessed wrong on what was film and what was digital. Everyone got it wrong. So much for the film beats digital argument.
Obviously on an 80' screen, other factors come in to play, but for the best monitor money can buy, the results were indistinguishable.

Great anecdote Arthur, thanks for sharing!

I created some generic LUTs, for example 1 stop underexposed (mostly to stop directors from asking me to make it darker), more contrast, etc.

The one stop underexposed for directors is kind of wonderful. Speaks volumes about your experience and comfort on set. Kind of love it.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Or that your lenses all the sudden went down to 1.2f instead of 2.0f... Yes? Have I been calculating stops wrong all these years?

Your right... I was tossing numbers that did not match, but what I´m trying to say is lowlight olpf is more than twice as good in the dark end, that makes difference. Nothing to complain about but for a lot of situations that is to me more desirable than the better color renditions of the skinetone olpf... especially as the lowlight olpf´s color renditions are pretty freaking nice as well. So in a light controlled environment where you can dim up the fill light, skinetone olpf is excellent, in other situations where there is no such possibilty and the set falls out in underexposure and in reality you would like to have more light, then the lowlight olpf is really whats prefered. And normally thats not so much about shooting budgets or skills... As no matter of how many helium ballons you have you can not light up the whole city at night etc.

 

[Brian Boyer]

I think it's a matter of budget for lighting. I use LLO and haven't tried the STH yet.
If my budget is low or 0, and I'm shooting a night scene in NYC streets at F/1.4, I appreciate the ability to push the ISO and be 1.25 stops cleaner (based on the consensus).
The cost of lighting might include the actual lights, lighting modifiers, a power source, time to setup the lights, a vehicle to transport the lights, time to find parking, parking, returning the vehicle, etc. If you have a crew, great, put them to work, but for one person, that 1.25 stops means a lot.

If I had space and budget for outdoor lighting, yeah I'd just use STH if the colors are going to be better.

Of course there are situations like the one you describe where the LLO would be more beneficial. I wasn't implying there weren't.

My point was several unfortunate factors led to the general belief among many that if you wanted to shoot in low light, LLO was necessary and STH was unusable - this is inaccurate.

This misconception often leads to surprise when people discover clean, low light scenes were shot with STH. I've seen a number of people make the wrong assumption before the OLPF was revealed.

A more realistic characterization is STH is very capable in low light and, if you need it, LLO is even better.

Let's try to keep in mind that it's, at best, 1 1/3 stops better in the shadows, not 3 or 4 stops like some people tend to make it sound like when they talk.

When using the STH, depending on what you're shooting and, in your particular case, if you can get an extra pair of helping hands, making up that 1 1/3 stop difference on the shadow side doesn't necessarily require a ton of light.

There are many inexpensive, lightweight, battery powered lights that will do the trick for those light levels.

Having a camera that's very sensitive may cause the opposite problem - too much light.

If you have a camera that's sensitive enough to register barely lit buildings three blocks away in the background but you want your scene to read and feel like night, you may still have to end up lugging around grip equipment in order to block nearby light from hitting your subjects.

There's always a trade off in filmmaking.

 

[Bruce Schultz]

But, how much darker than Chuck's house, the after-hours scenes in the nail salon or Jimmy's back office does a shot have to get before people acknowledge the STH can do low light like a champ (when exposed properly)? I mean, that's what started this thread in the first place.

I started this thread after watching all of the Better Call Saul shows but just before watching all of the latest season of House of Cards streaming from Netflix. I think that the - I'll call it subdued lighting and finalized printed picture levels on HoC were about as naturalistic and low-key as any footage I've ever seen. BCS was shot differently and deserves an exalted place in the Dragon pantheon, but HoC / Season 3 is also a stunning look achievement in low-key but not necessarily low light Dragon 6K photography. I did not watch it in streaming 4K but in streaming HD but it just sang an aria to me.

I hope I haven't hijacked the thread here, I also thank Arthur Albert for his genuinely valuable input to help us all decipher the great BCS look he created. Looking fwd to BCS Season 2.

 

[sam karr]

I just saw that Panasonic added "Better call Saul" on their "Shot on Varicam" page today. Did they switch?

http://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/varicam/index.html

Edit:
Just found that on the Codex FB page, which seems to confirm it:
"Since the arrival of my first VRAW recorders for the Panasonic VariCam 35, they have been in constant demand on Netflix shows like "Deathnote" and "Better Call Saul". With the imminent arrival of both the more ergonomic VariCam Pure and the advanced ARRI ALEXA SXT cameras, which use the same SXR media, there's nothing but blue sky ahead!"
John Sharaf, John Sharaf Photography, Atlanta.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

The Varicam is picking up some traction. I believe Roberto Schaefer is using it on Star, the Fox show. That 5000 iso is helping shows.

 

[Bob Gundu]

I believe OA was also shot on the Varicam.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

The Varicam is picking up some traction. I believe Roberto Schaefer is using it on Star, the Fox show. That 5000 iso is helping shows.

It's easy to see that there's a great trend in cinematography to aim for pure practical shooting without much supporting lights. It's faster and with a clean image it's sometimes more pure and better looking than artificial.
On the production I'm working on right now we're shooting on Epic Dragons at 5K 2:1 (because of the zooms), but we will do back projection work with the Varicam because the 5000 ISO makes it possible to light with the luminance of the projected image and makes it look better than green screen. We're saving weeks of simple but time consuming keying by doing it.

I'm not a fan of the Varicam over Red, but for shooting ISO 5000 stuff it's amazing. I've been looking at Helium footage and while there's much less noise than the regular Weapon Dragon, it's still noisy. I believe that the road ahead, the sensor ahead for Red needs to be something rated at around ISO 1600 with a totally clean push to 5000 or 10000; and I mean really super clean, not "feeling" clean.

I believe OA was also shot on the Varicam.

Didn't like the look of it. Looked like it was shot on a DSLR and went through post production with gamma correction problems.

 

[sam karr]

Didn't like the look of it. Looked like it was shot on a DSLR and went through post production with gamma correction problems.

I agree and don't really understand the color corrections on the Varicam shows. The OA, Master of None, Frontier don't look good. Orange is the New Black looks better though. But this camera has tons of DR and beautiful colors and it seems they just use 10% of its power by crushing everything. This camera deserves better.
This BTS video, the last posted Varicam one on Vimeo, is exactly what you get out of the camera without any grading. Difficult to end with dull unsaturated burnt footage IMO.