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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 :)

Soderberg on RED

I don't know guys. . . they must be doing some very special denoising in those low-lit areas. We had no choice but to shoot available light in parts of our film last year, and we definitely ran into noise issues whenever the light gets what we would consider "low." I do like the philosophy, however, and, when we light, we try to mimic the natural light in a scene rather than attempt to create something from nothing. But sometimes that au natural light works just perfectly. Just don't try it outdoors on a cloudless day.

:-)

Stephen
 
Sanjin Jukic said:
Just to again POINT OUT and make one more time a distinction between

the people who what to make an art piece out of RED1

and others...

who would like to but cannot make it

and try impose a certain treat to us the "artists" on this forum...

Sorry after all... but I couldn't resist...
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Is this supposed to insult Macgregor? He's been posting great short films from the very beginning. I really like his work.

If it isn't an insult, then as usual I have no idea what you are talking about.
 
The trailer on the apple site looks great to me. But there are two distinctions here:

- How it's shot and how it looks

and

- Is it a story you'd want to see

Obviously there's some crossover to those points. I've always found SS's shot and director films to be artfully crafted. It's like watching candid photography in motion. The great thing about SS is that he's pushing the limit and pushing the small budgets. He has to in order to sustain the day and date business model. Sure he can get more money, but why do it when it takes away the creative freedom and distribution goals he (and HDFilms) are looking to achieve.
 
Julio Quintana said:
Is this supposed to insult Macgregor? He's been posting great short films from the very beginning. I really like his work.

If it isn't an insult, then as usual I have no idea what you are talking about.
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Either I don't not have an idea what you are talking about???
 
Julio Quintana said:
Is this supposed to insult Macgregor? He's been posting great short films from the very beginning. I really like his work.

If it isn't an insult, then as usual I have no idea what you are talking about.
Click to expand...

See my post about "epic years-long online feuds". yes, Sanjin is insulting Mac. It's the most prolific feud on here (that I'm aware of)
 
I certainly think the world of SS, but what we see with our eyes is not what even the RED captures as far as shadow detail. I would think natural light with just a bit of fill to bring the dark areas up to what our eyes see, is representing reality.

It's a wonderful achievement to be able to capture such beautiful images with little or no lighting but I'm not sure I would want to shoot a whole movie that way.
 
Actually the Red sees better in the dark than my tired old eyes do these days. My opthalmologist told me that by the time you reach 60 your eyes are on average 16 times less sensitive to light than when you are 20.
 
I honestly think that this is an incredibly restrictive way to shoot. Let's say you want to do a scene inside a room, it's high noon, there are no clouds, and you not want the windows to blow. How do you do that without either a decent light kit and/or 1.21 gigawatts of bounce cards?

Stephen
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
I honestly think that this is an incredibly restrictive way to shoot. Let's say you want to do a scene inside a room, it's high noon, there are no clouds, and you not want the windows to blow. How do you do that without either a decent light kit and/or 1.21 gigawatts of bounce cards?

Stephen
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Depends, is what's going on outside important? If so, then is what's going on inside important? If you answer yes to both, then it comes down to determining how much detail needs to be seen in each space, which then in turn determines how much light/bounce you'll need. However, if one of the spaces is not important, you can find creative ways to do it. Person inside is silouetted for example. Or you work around the window if it's not important to the story. You can potentially gel the windows but that is getting away from the spirit of no lighting approach.

What I take from this approach Steven used is that sometimes we walk onto a set and think it has to be lit to the nines. Need twenty lights to make it look like a morning breakfast scene. He's saying, no, I just need to see what's available and try to use it effectively to tell the story. If for some reason the Red doesn't see it properly, okay add a little light to supplement it. But apparently he didn't have to do too much of that. The Red saw it the way he wanted it most of the time. But it's not just using the available light. It's composition, placing the actors in positions where they can take advantage of the available light. Steven's got a good eye and I'm looking forward to seeing what he was able to do with this approach.
 
Martin Weiss said:
I think it really depends on the story you want to tell. E.g. The Matrix or James Bond would not work with natural lighting, just as Once would lose its charme if it had been lit.
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There are any number of defensible reasons to shoot without lights: it's cheaper, it's faster, you think you'll get better performances, you want a documentary look, "no lights" will be a great marketing angle, you can tell yourself you're a cutting edge filmmaker, etc. All great reasons.

But I think we can agree that there's a difference between *being* unlit and *looking* unlit. "Looking unlit" is a matter of craft, it can be beautiful, harsh or purposeful, and could serve not only "Once", but a Bond film as well. There's no reason a Bond film couldn't retain its glamor and sheen, without obvious theatrical lighting. Similarly, I don't think you can say that "Once" did more box office because it actually was unlit or was lit poorly, as opposed to simply looking unlit or being well-lit but in an unobtrusive way.

Without lights, we know that the image captured will not be what the eye sees. With any given camera system, that image may be haphazardly or accidentally beautiful, it may not. But, to the extent the filmmaker doesn't manipulate light in other ways, what you're getting is a product of the limits of the recording technology and accidents of ambient lighting.

Why imagery generated randomly and mechanically in this way should be of high value, much less a source of virtue, to anyone with the resources and time to intervene with lighting instruments, is a mystery to me -- beyond, that is, the marketing angle, as this NY Times feature yet again demonstrates. Sort of like hiring a porn star.
 
jpp said:
But I think we can agree that there's a difference between *being* unlit and *looking* unlit.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's a critical difference. We spend a lot of time learning how to make scenes look naturally lit even if we use artificial lights. We don't do it because we like making things more difficult or more expensive, but because we get asked to deliver a natural-looking movie regardless of whether we have a schedule, script, or locations that take advantage of available light.

With a loosely structured project like "The Girlfriend Experience", you have the possibility of taking advantage of whatever reality is handing you, and just using your skills are capturing that light artfully -- and it is a real skill, don't get me wrong.

But most movies aren't made that way -- there's a script that you have to adhere to and there's a schedule to shoot that script in "x" number of days -- and the type of natural light in the scene may be determined by the story, there may be a need for scenes to be set at dusk or night, etc.

So if you've schedule 12-hours of shooting a single scene as a day interior, and you're working in the far north in winter where there may only be usable daylight for 8 hours, and some of those hours produce very low raking sunlight and your scene is set in the middle of the day... well, sure, maybe you can schedule it differently so you only have to shoot in the "right" natural light, but maybe you can't -- maybe that actor only works for that day, or maybe that location is only available for that day.

So we may end up lighting a day interior to look like we're not lighting it all, but we do it because it will be consistent throughout the shooting day.

I remember doing a scene in a hallway where the natural sunlight falling into the room was beautiful, and I decided to not bother rigging any lights outside (we were on the second floor so it would have taken more work) but within a couple of takes, the sun moved off of the window and started hitting a brick wall outside, flooding the room with a reddish light and no hard sunlight -- and after a few hours, the sun moved off of the brick wall and now the hallway was only lit by soft blue-ish skylight. Not to mention my stop went from f/5.6 to wide-open by the end of the shooting in there. And the light did not match, nor did the color or depth of field, and it was a total pain to color time later.

So using natural light does not always make things easier, and it doesn't even always look better -- and by being inconsistent from angle to angle, it may actually take away from the reality of the scene.

But I think everyone should try doing an available-light movie at least once just to learn something about it. I did one movie like that -- I had four lights in a van but I only used them in emergencies -- and I learned a lot about how often I could get away with using available light, but I also learned why I needed to light scenes sometimes.
 
I just watched TGE on Amazon's VOD service and enjoyed it - when I get home to LA next week I'd be curious to see it on the big screen.

Some things struck me about SS's available light strategy that I feel were crucial to its success -

He seemed to have the resources to get high-end locations that would look good shot in available light, and to shoot them at the right time of day for the scene.

A lot of the scenes are played out in masters, so lighting continuity is less of a concern than it would be in other shooting styles. He often only had to deal with how the scene looked from one general direction (no "turning the room around") and didn't have to worry quite as much about matching a lot of coverage over the course of several hours at a location under changing light conditions.

He's not trying to bring up underexposed areas in the grade, which reveals noise - dark areas look dark. Often, faces are intentionally played in silhouette. This is a bold strategy that wouldn't be appropriate for every production (and that many producers wouldn't be happy with: "I can't see her face!")

I'm not trying to downplay SS's achievement, only to suggest that it's not the Red camera that allowed him to do it, as much as it is talent, production value in front of the camera, careful planning and smart choices. Someone doing a feature on the Red in a more conventional style with less resources for locations probably wouldn't want to try it with available light.
 
Good points, all. It's just that, speaking personally and with careful deliberation and a sweet temper (what else?) do we really want to be told by a big celebrity filmmaker or his PR firm that he's venturesome because he shoots without lights? Or tells the story non-chronologically? Or casts a porn star?

If we had a vibrant and inventive alternative cinema in this country, none of this would matter. S.S. could compete with Hollywood on his big budget ventures, and with non-Hollywood cinema on projects like TGE, which would reveal TGE for what it is.

But no. We don't have that movement. So, they get to tell us how wonderful the work is and how much we all love each other. The industry tells us. The New York Times tells us. Mark Cuban tells us. Steven Soderbergh tells us. All these vital works of genius, enriching our lives and the terrible sacrifices made. No lights! Only $1.6 million!

Is there no end to the impositions of fame? Will celebrity culture eat us alive? Looks like it.
 
I'm only commenting on the video... I haven't seen any publicity about the movie, itself.

In the video, Steven Soderbergh says that using natural light enforces avoiding 'imposing your will' on the image and that 'it makes you realise how constructed most movies are, visually'. It's an opinion and an observation; he makes no assertion that 'constructed' is somehow worse. Using mostly available light seems to have fit his needs. So, I think it's more a matter of choice than restriction, here. Something like the 'dogma' films made it a restriction but no one was forced into making a 'dogma' film, either (as far as I know!).

One style isn't inherently better or more 'real' than another. I think a scene should be lit to match the visual goal of the film-maker.
 
SS told what happened on GFE because he was asked. He does pictures with lights and without them. He does pictures for $1.6M with porn stars and pictures for studios with Brad Pitt. So what? Just because he does it and talks about it doesn't mean you should do it... or that he is saying you should.

I have spent time with Steven. He is brilliant, thoughtful and extremely talented. He doesn't push anything or preach to anyone. The thing that makes SS special is that he has been able to put himself in a position to do what he wants. In a world of compromise and "pressure from the top"... this is refreshing.

Jim
 
Patrick Grossien said:
whatever happened to the real name policy?
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If any thread makes the case for anonymity, it's this one. How many people, identified here by their real names, are prepared to speak critically on this subject? None, apparently.

I think you'll agree that there's a difference between speaking your mind among equals or colleagues, and hiring a megaphone truck, a football stadium or a TV studio to broadcast those views. Exchanges on this thread may have the intimacy of private conversations, but they are clearly not private conversations. There is no discretion here. These posts will searchable, under real names, for eternity, by persons who were not parties to the conversation -- in an age where nobody will even go out on a lunch date without first exhaustively googling the victim.

Maybe that's the best case yet for a fan site, where praise for the products and the house brands is assumed, and dissident views are not heard. The movie business is, after all, a small world with big egos, and not much in the way of self-criticism or modesty. People with power in this business don't like to hear anything unkind, and cultivating the goodwill of people with power is essential, if you expect to get anywhere. Real names would, if nothing else, impose self-censorship for all but the most reckless or indifferent contributors. In your view, that silencing might be a good thing (I don't know). But it's obviously a choice for the owners. So far, they're putting up with it.

My suspicion is, these exchanges actually have commercial value, but it could be I'm flattering myself....
 
I would speak critically on this subject... if I had seen the movie.

There is a way of being critical in a responsible, professional, and respectable manner, so that you can sign your real name to a post.

Being constrained by manners is not the same thing as having to be dishonest. But yes, it does require some limitations on the range of your criticisms. But personally, it's a bit like the old Production Code - you become a better writer when you learn to sneak in biting criticism in a publicly acceptable manner.

I used to worry about whether some critical post I made about some movie, DP, or director on the internet would come back to haunt me, but after more than a decade of posting under my real name, this problem has yet to surface, and the truth is that I get more positive industry feedback from my posts than negative repercussions.
 
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