Lens decisions in building the look of a piece

[Curtis boggs]

again, interesting.

Coming from the "old days" of being a stills guy on medium format film, ..
I'm used to doing it in camera, filters etc.
I've pushed the debate a little here because I've heard several conversations
revolving around the idea of relying more on post.

On the lens front the Leica-r seem to be popular as owner sets,

Cheers,

Curtis

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

I've seen DPs take the same kit every shoot, sometimes throwing a filter or two in front (after considerable amount of testing) to give their image the character they want. As a result, we have stocked up on filters like Hollywood Blackmagic, Black Satin, Pearlescent, etc. While I respect this method, I do however shy away from it as I have this snobby/purist mentality about not veiling the natural look of a lens.

Well, of course you would say that if you worked at a rental house!

I do agree with you that cinematographers should make personal imaging choices, and that the result, the sum total, of those choices is more or less your style. But I think we should be careful to not equate equipment choice with style. For example, (Alexa + Cooke S4 + 1/4 Hollywood Black Magic) is not a style - that's a recipe. Anyone can copy a recipe; not everyone can cook or has good taste. It's a fine distinction, but I think it's one worth making.

 

[Simran Dewan]

Well, of course you would say that if you worked at a rental house!

I do agree with you that cinematographers should make personal imaging choices, and that the result, the sum total, of those choices is more or less your style. But I think we should be careful to not equate equipment choice with style. For example, (Alexa + Cooke S4 + 1/4 Hollywood Black Magic) is not a style - that's a recipe. Anyone can copy a recipe; not everyone can cook or has good taste. It's a fine distinction, but I think it's one worth making.

I completely agree that this is not a style, but rather a recipe. What becomes style, however, is taking said recipe and adapting it to your vision. Take the world's best chef and ask him to follow a recipe. Same deal.

These choices allow us to get closer to the ideas in our heads. Spending the time to learn how certain "recipes" look will only help get us closer.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

But I think we should be careful to not equate equipment choice with style. For example, (Alexa + Cooke S4 + 1/4 Hollywood Black Magic) is not a style - that's a recipe. Anyone can copy a recipe; not everyone can cook or has good taste. It's a fine distinction, but I think it's one worth making.

Another great post Satsuki! That's such a fantastic way to phrase this situation! Do you mind if I steal it?

 

[Marc Wielage]

So IMHO characteristics like colour, flare and glare (to a degree) and 'softness' can often be done in post. Other features like DOF, Bokeh and spherical vs anamorphic, not so. So personally i'd concentrate on those visual aspects.

You actually can do that stuff in post, and in fact I often throw in defocus windows to soften backgrounds a little bit and heighten the attention to the actors in the foreground. Anamorphic lens flares are almost a cliche now, and I see them added to tons and tons of commercials and shows that I know were shot on spherical lenses. But you can make a good argument that it's more "organic" to just shoot it that way.

Would shooting on Master Primes be more reliable and faster, is that a consideration?

I agree completely. Shoot with the fastest, sharpest lenses you can afford and then come up with a scheme to reduce the sharpness with filtration and/or post (or both) if that doesn't work with the style you're going for.

I always welcome DPs who have a "Look Book" and can show me exactly what their influences and intentions are for a specific scene. If I know they want really deep shadows and to have a very shallow depth of field, that requires a very different approach from a light "fluffy" low-contrast / desaturated look. And then there are always the directors who freak out when you start steering away from the baked-in "temporary" look they've been looking at for six months in editing... :nonod:

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

Another great post Satsuki! That's such a fantastic way to phrase this situation! Do you mind if I steal it?

Cheers Marcus, be my guest. I stole it from someone else

 

[paulcurtis]

Clearly there's no right or wrong way in terms of in front of the camera or in post. IMHO Largely it primarily depends on the skills and experience of the people involved.

One extreme is that you could shoot a scene flat. 3D track that scene and create a point cloud of positions, so you can 'generate' a 3D version of the scene using points. Then use those points to relight (cast more light) onto certain areas and use the generated depth to add atmosphere and so on. Adding lightning and effects can be done this way fairly well (shot dependant)

But there's no way i would do that unless it was for a specific reason, or a specific shot design.

For me personally at times i would happily shoot for post in that

- I would shoot at fast shutter speeds and do the motion blur in post if there was some stabilisation or heavy tracking requirements
- I tend to exposure over a bit and bring down in post, although with the Epic-W i am finally at a point where i feel i don't have to fight the sensor and actually i have the latitude i always wanted.
- I'm happy adding a degree of flare and glare afterwards, it's one of those issues that shooting with a flarey lens means it's constant flare and sometimes it's nice to make a creative choice about where the glare/flare goes.
- I generally don't diffuse or filter in front of the lens.
- When something cannot be flagged then happy to window it or defocus to taste.
- I'm not totally anally retentive when it comes to consistency exposure, i would generally expose to capture the scene and balance shot by shot later, often shots are pulled from different takes/scenes at different times, so i would always err on the side of a good thick negative.

But i would always light for ratios and colour temperature and try to spend all spare time lighting.

At the same time i am also very aware that it's not always possible to do what you need at the time and i'm comfortable enough knowing what i can change afterwards. When that is an easy fix and when that's a hard fix.

Also sometimes in camera yields better results - defocusing afterwards *properly* requires knowledge of the objects hidden because they will be diffracted as you move. Of course 99% that's never going to be an issue but if that effect was the focus of the shot then obviously need to do it for real.

Ultimately perhaps we'll all be shooting Lytro style rigs and doing everything afterwards. I hope not, because i think a lot of spontaneity will be lost, but as that tech moves forward i can see the 'business' of show getting behind it.

cheers
Paul

 

[Ben Scott]

I have the utmost respect for people who shoot that way just like I have utmost respect for people who want to get it all 100% in-camera bar the colour timing and slight tweaks. I think I'm somewhere in the middle in terms of my shooting for post.

Going back to my guitar effects analogy, I like analogue overdrive and digital delays. I like the visceral thump of a valve amp that makes me play a certain way which no digital modelling amp ever has. It's the same with shooting. An optically imperfect (or 'characterful') lens or a piece of diffusion will make me play/shoot a different way and will inform it as I'm doing it. That's a part of the job I value and enjoy. At the same time I love shooting raw and pushing and pulling my footage any which way.

As I said Master Primes may well be an option but if I go down that route it would be for their intrinsic aesthetic qualities and not so as to mush it up and 'degrade' it, for want of a better word.

Lots to think on.

 

[Scot Yount]

Going back to my guitar effects analogy, I like analogue overdrive and digital delays. I like the visceral thump of a valve amp that makes me play a certain way which no digital modelling amp ever has.

I feel exactly the same about this. Give me Line6 Delay, and a FuzzFace. I never play the same way though some computer based model as I do through a Plexi Marshall.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I love the Lytro. I think a lot of people don't like it because they won't be able to brag about how fast their camera can focus. That isn't quite the same thing as defocusing in post (which I loathe, although I have utter respect for colorists because they have to put up with so much idiocy).

 

[Ben Scott]

I'm not sure I have ever heard someone who works in this industry brag about the speed of their camera's autofocus.

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

I completely agree that this is not a style, but rather a recipe. What becomes style, however, is taking said recipe and adapting it to your vision. Take the world's best chef and ask him to follow a recipe. Same deal.

These choices allow us to get closer to the ideas in our heads. Spending the time to learn how certain "recipes" look will only help get us closer.

Sure - I think we are saying the same thing. I guess my point is that I think the end result is way more important than the process. So if someone wants to get there by throwing their favorite diffusion filter on a set of boring Ultra Primes, then we should probably reserve judgement on the process until we see the footage. It's really easy to get caught up in the recipes, a little bleach-bypass here, a bit of rear-net there, maybe bake the negative in the oven for a few minutes, or use that special uncoated vintage scope lens with that crazy fungus. It's easier than thinking deeply about how your images should feel to an audience, moment-by-moment.

I'm certainly guilty of this at times, and I'm not accusing you or anyone else in this thread of doing it now. But there is a general tendency in our online communities to fall back into discussions of pure technique (or worse, equipment) without considering the application, and I think a little push-back on that from time-to-time is probably healthy.

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

Getting back to this:

The very early stage notes I have made so far are:

Interiors to be rich and shadowed and low key with motivated light and a sense of claustrophobia.

Exteriors to be epic in scale to use the rolling English countryside almost as a character in its own right.

A bit of grit/grain to the image

Possibly shooting a lot of flame and candlelight so flaring characteristics of any lens needs to be taken into consideration.

I'm interested in how others go about making these decisions that will eventually support the story so much.

I'd say, maybe try narrowing down your key words even further. What specific images do grit/epic/claustrophobic/shadowed/low-key conjure up to you? Seems like a bit of a mixed bag to me, but maybe that's ok if you are going for two opposing looks between exteriors and interiors. Some movies are structured like that. What formats, lenses, and techniques could you apply to create those looks?

If the look still eludes you, go looking for references. It could be paintings, photography, other films, anything as long as it is visual. You want to transmute these ephemeral ideas into something concrete that can be photographed. Beyond lenses, you could consider different formats as well. There are many possible options, but the answer should come organically out of your own experience, imagination, and taste, as well as a deep understanding of the story you are telling. When in doubt, always go back to the script. The answers are all there.

 

[Ben Scott]

Thanks Satsuki.

Interior vs Exterior contrast is on purpose as a plot device of sorts. You're absolutely right about honing in on the particular qualities of the descriptions I used. Will get on it. Cheers.

 

[Curtis boggs]

I completely agree that this is not a style, but rather a recipe. What becomes style, however, is taking said recipe and adapting it to your vision. Take the world's best chef and ask him to follow a recipe. Same deal.

These choices allow us to get closer to the ideas in our heads. Spending the time to learn how certain "recipes" look will only help get us closer.

Great post. Ultimately knowing the recipes, either in camera or post, and having control over them is
what gives great DP's a deep "tool box"
Really isn't so important what the recipe is, what matters is the result.

On any project i do I really appreciate a director who
can reference material to express what they are looking for.
Seems so easy to have several opinions on what "warm" means etc.
Satsuki give great advice looking for references from my point of
view because it always seems to help me focus.

Curtis

 

[Christopher Mills]

The old still lenses I'd consider

The old still lenses I'd consider

Spherical pentax 35 and 50 42mm super takumars with as much orange fading as I can find. A rented Cooke 75mm series 2 or 3 with same flaws.
and any other stuff I can find with the older thorium chemistry coatings... those ought to be around t2 in aperture.

second choice... Zeiss Standard speeds, real net filters, possibly with some spangles on them see the 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream for how this would look with an intentional flaring light bounces into the lens..
and also play with lots of other filters.

Tungsten lights, mantle lights, multi wick cine candles.

testing testing testing... and interview colorists to involve in your shoot!

 

[paulcurtis]

You actually can do that stuff in post, and in fact I often throw in defocus windows to soften backgrounds a little bit and heighten the attention to the actors in the foreground. Anamorphic lens flares are almost a cliche now, and I see them added to tons and tons of commercials and shows that I know were shot on spherical lenses. But you can make a good argument that it's more "organic" to just shoot it that way.

You can certainly superficially do DOF in post, but *real* DOF bends rays that are behind the subject and creates a distortion of the back that is very rarely done in post, something when layers are moving can be quite obvious. About the only way around that is to do DOF with deep passes (meaning that pixels behind the foreground pixels are recorded) but that only really applies to CGI sourced imagery unless you get into savage background reconstruction on live action. On the other hand there are some wonderful DOF tools out there (peregrine bokeh for example) that also deal with aberrations. Combine that with a true floating point linear source and it can be very realistic.

I'm really just saying in this instance that if the shot is designed with shallow focus for a particular effect you wouldn't want to do that afterwards.

And then there are always the directors who freak out when you start steering away from the baked-in "temporary" look they've been looking at for six months in editing... :nonod:

+1

cheers
Paul

 

[paulcurtis]

I'm certainly guilty of this at times, and I'm not accusing you or anyone else in this thread of doing it now. But there is a general tendency in our online communities to fall back into discussions of pure technique (or worse, equipment) without considering the application, and I think a little push-back on that from time-to-time is probably healthy.

Wonderful and thoughtful posts and couldn't agree more... It's even more difficult for those stuck in post staring at pixels. It can be quite difficult at times to step back from the trees and look at the forest. It's a skill that needs constant practice.

cheers
Paul

 

[Ben Scott]

Spherical pentax 35 and 50 42mm super takumars with as much orange fading as I can find. A rented Cooke 75mm series 2 or 3 with same flaws.
and any other stuff I can find with the older thorium chemistry coatings... those ought to be around t2 in aperture.

second choice... Zeiss Standard speeds, real net filters, possibly with some spangles on them see the 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream for how this would look with an intentional flaring light bounces into the lens..
and also play with lots of other filters.

Tungsten lights, mantle lights, multi wick cine candles.

testing testing testing... and interview colorists to involve in your shoot!

I mentioned earlier - I'll be using cine lenses and not stills glass. And that I want to ensure I don't have flaring issues.

 

[Ben Scott]

Just to hone in a little more a major visual reference for me is the 2009 Winding Refn and shot by Morten Søborg, 'Drive on a longship' movie Valhalla Rising. Shot on Red One, I can't seem to find what glass was used. Some of the grading might seem a touch heavy-handed by 2017 standards but I love the overall aesthetic.

Ignore the blown skies because the only thing I'm not too keen on in the film, but the tones/palette/use of wide lenses up close etc are all somewhere in the ballpark.

Just found an ASC podcast on the film so will report back if it has answers...


EDIT: Podcast was interesting but doesn't mention lenses other than to say it was all shot on a 16mm.