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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 :)

Big Sur

Stefan Antonescu said:
I love every single frame you posted !

David, thanks again for sharing your knowledge on reduser. It's a privilege learning with you...

What kind of light did you use in this scene ?
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Night interior dinner scene, the table lit with a light bulb hidden behind a real kerosene lamp, soft backlight from a Woodylight, and some ambience from bouncing a Source-4 off of the ceiling:
 
Great to learn from an old school master who gets it right in camera, instead of fixing it in post or having the lab take care of it. I don't plan on ever having the resources of even this "low" budget production, but the lessons are still relevant and adaptable. Thank you so much.

"Kill the baby" - especially strange and poignant given the climax to Kerouac's story. I haven't seen a child , but then I haven't seen a lot of characters. David in cameo as Arthur Ma/Victor Wong would seem to fit ;-)
 
Ivan Kovax said:
Nice stills David. Keep em coming! The lens baby shot was especially interesting. What was that scene about by the way?
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Jack starts to suffer the effects of his alcoholism, becoming increasingly paranoid, depressed, confused... basically he's losing it.
 
Zac C said:
Night interior dinner scene, the table lit with a light bulb hidden behind a real kerosene lamp, soft backlight from a Woodylight, and some ambience from bouncing a Source-4 off of the ceiling:
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To be more specific, the Woodylight (four 250w bulbs behind a medium-bank Chimera) had orange gel on it and was dimmed down, same for the 750w Source-4 bounced off of the ceiling, there was a real flame in the kerosene lantern and I hid a bare 250w bulb behind the lantern dimmed down, with a piece of blackwrap to hide the hot spot of the bulb from camera (otherwise you would have seen it through the glass cover of the lantern) with someone on a hand dimmer doing a mild fluctuation effect. I think we were at 1250 ASA at T/2.0-2.8 split.
 
Another shot of the cabin on the first day when we had some overcast weather... you can see why we thought we were so lucky to find this place nestled among the trees, rather than have to build it. It was the perfect size for the scenes we had (though probably almost twice as big as the cabin that Jack Kerouac stayed at, though that's just a total guess on our parts... but since he describes parties with up to nine people in there, I don't see how it could be much smaller.) I'm guessing that building is maybe 17' x 10', just enough room for a kitchen area with table at one end and a fireplace, cot, and chair at the other end.

bigsur37.jpg
 
David, that's a really great frame! It feels almost medium format, maybe that's just me. What focal length was that done at?
 
Zac C said:
Night interior dinner scene, the table lit with a light bulb hidden behind a real kerosene lamp, soft backlight from a Woodylight, and some ambience from bouncing a Source-4 off of the ceiling:
Click to expand...

David Mullen ASC said:
To be more specific, the Woodylight (four 250w bulbs behind a medium-bank Chimera) had orange gel on it and was dimmed down, same for the 750w Source-4 bounced off of the ceiling, there was a real flame in the kerosene lantern and I hid a bare 250w bulb behind the lantern dimmed down, with a piece of blackwrap to hide the hot spot of the bulb from camera (otherwise you would have seen it through the glass cover of the lantern) with someone on a hand dimmer doing a mild fluctuation effect. I think we were at 1250 ASA at T/2.0-2.8 split.
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Thanks to both of you. :-) Much appreciated...
 
Shawn Nelson said:
David, that's a really great frame! It feels almost medium format, maybe that's just me. What focal length was that done at?
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The shot of the cabin? I think that was a 25mm, we switched up lenses for a couple of sizes (18mm, 25mm, then 35mm) when we shot the wide shots of the cabin on Day One in the canyon. It may be the 18mm.

One thing I had to keep in mind when lining things up with a lens finder is that the shots were always a bit wider once the lens went onto the Epic because of the bigger sensor, as opposed to when I shot 4K on the Red One and all my shots were a bit tighter than what the lens finder saw with a Super-35 GG. The rental houses have to start making GG's for lens finders that match the Red One and Epic sensor sizes...
 
Sounds like everyone bit the bullet to make it special, and it looks like all that hard work really payed off! Texture detail on the weathered wood of the cabin should come across on the big screen. The lens baby really seems to sing on Epic! Can't wait to see that on the big screen too.

Love-- the wide of Jack so small in the frame with the massive redwoods filling the BG. That's my favorite so far, but I am a bit biased when it comes to ~2,000 year old living creatures. :) And the first shot! And the last. All of them are special in some way. Thank you yet again for your posts, grabs and BTS shots David. Sounds like it was complicated inside the small cabin, but probably also a lot of fun for you to work out. And hopefully it felt like a bit of a retreat to some of the most humbling forests in the world.

I am also very interested in the medium format point that Shawn brings up. I realize that an obvious factor is the sheer resolution you get out of such a clean 5k frame. But how much do you think comes from perspective change? Being able to shoot with a pinch more magnification has to really weigh-in on wides. If a 25mm gives you a 21mm equivalent FOV or thereabouts, but you still get 'a bit more normal than wide' look from it... It just feels that it would be a big deal if we were able to somehow compare two ceteris paribus shots on slightly different focal lengths.

Would love to see more if you can! Thank you.
 
I'm not sure exactly what a medium format look is other than increased detail /resolution in wide shots, but obviously you can potentially have a bit less depth of field even on wide-angle lenses. However, with an 800 ASA camera generally-speaking, it's not like I'm shooting day exteriors at f/2, more like f/8, so there is plenty of depth of field.

But since my original idea was to shoot wide-shots in VistaVision, the director and I have always intended to shoot a lot of distant shots, but then, we've always tended to do that on our features. Michael Polish is a director who really understands the visual power of wide shots -- I know they'll end up in the final cut, unlike many movies I shoot where most get tossed out and all you are left with are the close-ups. But what's nice about shooting in a higher resolution format is that your wide shots really hold up, and hold the viewer's attention because of the detail.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
8Michael Polish is a director who really understands the visual power of wide shots -- I know they'll end up in the final cut, unlike many movies I shoot where most get tossed out and all you are left with are the close-ups. But what's nice about shooting in a higher resolution format is that your wide shots really hold up, and hold the viewer's attention because of the detail.
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As well as a appreciation for Seagulls flying:)

Its magical watching Davids shots in 2.5K I can't wait to see the 4K. I pulled all the stills he's posting and with limited time to find the true gems. The Master Primes really make for a very lush amount of detail. You haven't see nothing yet.

I'm happy to get a paid 4 week Cinematography course in David Mullen's lighting for Indies:)
 
I see, thank you David. Sorry if I am not making myself clear but I was talking about the slightly lower barrel distortion on wide shots from being able to use slightly longer lenses, and the slightly more compressed depth that goes along with it (relative size of objects at different depths not DoF). Though with the 5k sensor it might not be as big of a difference over S35 as I am hoping it could be anyway. (Yet! Since bigger sensors are imminent for Epic :)

Did you guys shoot any slow motion or HDRx?
 
Hey David, just a couple questions.

Did you end up using any diffusion on the 6K, 4K and 1.2ks that the electrics hauled up the hill for the night exteriors of the cabin?

Did you fog the day exteriors or was that natural fog? Tube of death?

For rigging to the top of the ladder in the first pic you posted this week, is that a custom-fabricated rig (by your key grip?) mounted to the top of the ladder or is there a name for it I can be asking for at the rental houses? It looks incredibly sturdy and the amount of offset without the need for counterweight is pretty amazing.

When you use the 5k Par as a 'late afternoon sun' did you use any correction at all? Or are you simply exposing the 5K so hot that the majority of the colour difference is overexposed enough towards white to be neutral?

And last question, I swear! Did you end up using the 20x20 with daylight compact flos for the night exteriors? If so, did you shop and test for the bulbs with the highest CRI? Or did you simply add 1/8 or 1/4 plus green to your other lights?

As always, thanks for your detailed and articulate responses. I always look forward to reading your production journals.

Cheers!
 
Roberto Lequeux said:
I see, thank you David. Sorry if I am not making myself clear but I was talking about the slightly lower barrel distortion on wide shots from being able to use slightly longer lenses, and the slightly more compressed depth that goes along with it (relative size of objects at different depths not DoF). Though with the 5k sensor it might not be as big of a difference over S35 as I am hoping it could be anyway. (Yet! Since bigger sensors are imminent for Epic :)

Did you guy shoot any slow motion or HDRx?
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Well, not sure if it makes much difference -- the sensor sees more (27mm instead of 24mm wide) but not only is that not much of a difference, but if you see more of the lens, you see more of the edges so distortion is not lowered if you jump from an 18mm to a 20mm but see more to the edges of the 20mm. Besides, wide-angle lenses in medium format cameras often have barrel distortion too, I don't see the format as having less of that problem. Look at "Far and Away", shot in 65mm using medium-format lenses adapted for the 65mm Panavision camera... the wide-angle shots have plenty of barrel distortion and corner fall-off.

Yes, we shot some scenes at 5K 72 fps, and we used HDRx a number of times.
 
Patrick Kaplin said:
Hey David, just a couple questions.

Did you end up using any diffusion on the 6K, 4K and 1.2ks that the electrics hauled up the hill for the night exteriors of the cabin?

Did you fog the day exteriors or was that natural fog? Tube of death?

For rigging to the top of the ladder in the first pic you posted this week, is that a custom-fabricated rig (by your key grip?) mounted to the top of the ladder or is there a name for it I can be asking for at the rental houses? It looks incredibly sturdy and the amount of offset without the need for counterweight is pretty amazing.

When you use the 5k Par as a 'late afternoon sun' did you use any correction at all? Or are you simply exposing the 5K so hot that the majority of the colour difference is overexposed enough towards white to be neutral?

And last question, I swear! Did you end up using the 20x20 with daylight compact flos for the night exteriors? If so, did you shop and test for the bulbs with the highest CRI? Or did you simply add 1/8 or 1/4 plus green to your other lights?
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No, the HMI's on the hill were clean.

Yes, we had some hand-foggers that we ran around with in the woods to add some haze. We only had time to set-up a tube of death once, for a night scene on the beach, otherwise it was just two or three guys running around before we rolled, fogging whatever they could.

My Key Grip Brad Heiner owns the ladder mount but I'm not sure where he got it, I'll have to ask him.

The 5K PAR was uncorrected; with the desaturation, it looked more like half-orange instead of full, but I also find in general when I use tungstens for warm daylight effects, it doesn't go too orange because it's a bit overexposed.

No, since we couldn't raise that frame into the trees, I never got to try that idea of daylight compact flos for moonlight, but if I had, I'd probably have to add some green and maybe a bit of orange too to HMI's and Kinos to match that cyan look. I figured that a bit of green in the blue moonlight was fine (after all, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies did a lot of that.) Especially since we were desaturating the image, so I doubt the green would have been that noticeable.
 
Roberto Lequeux said:
Did you guy shoot any slow motion or HDRx?
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Yes about 35% of the film has HDRx. I'm sure Ian and David will have much better tools to make use of the HDRx. On-set Playback is at best a reference.

We shot up to 72fps for scenes David wanted to accentuate or extend time I know of a few times on the beach in Big Sur with the waves that looked rather nice. Day for Night:)
 
David Mullen ASC said:
The fact that some people will find what I say useful to them in some manner is enough compensation for me. The greatest gift is to know that my accumulation of knowledge has practical value for others.
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I should absolutely be sleeping, but I can't stop reading BECAUSE I find your production notes/diaries to be of incredible value.

Very much looking forward to seeing the final product, looks like great work as usual!


*EDIT: Having finished the thread I would just like to note that the frames all look incredible. Inspiring stuff!
 
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