What one area to master

[David Mullen ASC]

This is partially just an argument of semantics because I feel that even just turning on a desk lamp or opening a window shade counts as "lighting" -- anything that creates light or supplies light on its own, including nature, is up for grabs, fair game for use.

 

Just because Willis was using very low levels of illumination and a lot of practical lighting doesn't mean "The Godfather" is mostly "unlit" by Willis. It's very carefully lit, actually, just using very few units.

 

And as for movies shot outdoors in natural light, ala "Days of Heaven", "Thin Red Line", etc. I think you can hardly say that the look for those films was created in post either, even if they are also hardly lit. Nestor Almendros wasn't even available to time "Days of Heaven" yet he won the Oscar for that movie. So I don't know if those films support your argument anymore than they do mine.

 

Also, unless one is going to specialize in nature photography, not learning how to light will limit one's future as a DP. And I include in "learning how to light" knowing when NOT to turn on a light. In fact, I'd say it's one of the most important rules about lighting there is! The truth is that the majority of well-lit scenes are lit very simply and the majority of badly-lit scene are bad because they are overlit. So just because I advocate the importance of lighting doesn't mean I'm advocating an increase in the volume of lighting!

 

In fact, just think about all the great examples of cinematography from the first fifty years of cinema -- most of those DP's are dead, and some of them didn't even get to time the movies when they were alive, working so often as they were. Yet the artistry is still there in the original -- the guy who now prints or transfers "Citizen Kane" to video isn't really supplying the artistry, just trying to preserve it.

 

You have to remember though that I come from a feature film background where post manipulation is used sparingly, so a greater portion of the "look" is established at the time of shooting by the elements arrayed in front of the camera. If I only were looking at cutting-edge music videos or commercials, for example, I could see the greater place that post imagine manipulation plays, although often on commercials in the U.S., the cinematographer doesn't even get to grade the final image. They supervise the timing of dailies but the client and agency re-time everything to their desire.

 

Yes, one can always find examples of movies where its the post manipulation is the most obvious visual aspect, although the ENR printing of "Saving Private Ryan", for example, is one element among many techniques, most in-camera (45 degree shutter, handheld, shakeycam, etc.) And in a sense, I count having to fly 100'x100' frames of diffusion on cranes as part of Kaminski's "lighting" in the sense that he wasn't merely just shooting the movie in whatever light God gave him that day.

 

But even if he did, like "New World" did, I'd say that while learning to work in natural light is important to a cinematographer, learning to light is too, and ultimately a key to being marketable as a DP. You won't get many jobs telling a producer that your strong point comes in post production, the area you mastered the most. I mean, how many DP jobs over your lifetime will involve some form of lighting versus using only natural light?

[David Mullen ASC]

This issue has been much on my mind ever since being hired to shoot "Big Love" and dealing with a large outdoor backyard set built on a soundstage. And the question on everyone's mind is how to make it look more realistic, lighting-wise.

 

Of course, my suggestion was to rebuild it outdoors in real sunlight, but the problem is that they want characters to be able to move from the backyard into their respective houses within the same shots, and look between the inside and outside at action. And they never found a real location of three homes sharing the same backyard with no other houses that could look into their backyard (a key story point) YET the homes are part of a tract home development surrounded by hills that could pass for Utah.

 

So the front three homes which do exist in real life have unshootable backyards (too small and surrounded by other homes behind them.)

 

Now personally, if I had been involved in the first season, I still would have tried to find a way that the house sets could flow onto a real exterior backyard. OR I would have designed the backyard set with big trees that heavily shaded it, not a big open space.

 

But anyway, the truth is that every DP has to face the prospect of recreating natural light in a fake environment -- faking daytime at night, faking daylight on a stage. Even on my earliest low-budget features I found myself trying to make a house interior on location at night look like the middle of the day. Just because of some scheduling problem with actors or the locations (location "x" is only available at night but the scene is day, etc.)

 

So every cinematographer has to become decent at faking natural light. They can't always just take the attitude that if they can't shoot in real light, they won't shoot at all. It happens to me time and time again no matter how much I work with the AD to avoid it as much as possible. It's just the nature of shooting long narrative scenes -- the story dictates the time of day often. How often have we started a day interior scene only to find ourselves still shooting it at midnight? Even on my last feature, I tried to use more available light than I have before, and did minimal work in day exterior scenes with lights, but so often I'd get to some four-page scene that was a day interior with windows and we'd be starting to shoot the scene an hour before sunset, so I knew that either I'd start lighting from the start and let it flow from being more natural lit to more artificial lit, or I'd just use available light for the master but have to relight from scratch once the sun went down. But the problem with that is that you lose the momentum of the performances if there is a big downtime between the master and the coverage shooting.

[Mike Rizos]

Have you guys seen the intricacies of famous photographers lab work, for instansce? Richard Avedon, Robert Frank etc? Those images were literally made in 'post'.

 

I really don't see how both of these photograhers' pictures were created in post. I am not too familiar with Richard Avedon, but his pictures are usually medium portraits, have a full total range, and are shot in the studio using controlled lighting. You don't get this sort of tonal range unless you have a top quality negative to begin with.

 

Now, I've never seen a Robert Frank actual print, but looking at his pictures in books -specifically The Americans, Moving out, The lines in my hand-, I've come to the opposite conclusion: That these pictures have very little manipilation if any. Yes all the highlights are blown out, and I mean completely blown, not only clipped. There is always strong blacks, and very little in between, with lots of grain. Maybe Frank printed for the blacks, and burned the highlights, but I doubt it. I think it's more likely he got what he wanted, through exposure and the way he composed his picures. Like shooting inside buildings with a window in the frame, having the actual light sources in the frame, having the sun in the frame etc. Probably using single x in 1955 didn't hurt either.

 

But his pictures were succesful and influencial for none of the above, I think. He was able to capture that creepy moment in our lives we don't like to think about.

[Michael Nash]

FWIW, I break down the areas of cinematography this way (in no particular order): lighting, framing, staging, and imaging. That's just a very simple guideline to help me make sure I've covered the bases. It's not meant to be a full defintion of cinematography, and glosses over things like budget, schedule, working with the crew, and so forth.

 

Lighting - self explanatory

Framing - graphic composition, camera movement, focal lengths, distance, aspect ratio, and so forth

Staging - production design and blocking; basically everything you arrange in front of the camera

Imaging - control over the image through choice of filters, lenses, exposure, film stock, camera settings, processing and post.

 

I don't go into any production without addressing all of those areas in some manner, even if the choice is intuitive and unspoken. Even when I'm shooting ENG or documentry material, I'm conscious of the lighting and how to use it to my advantage. Same with image quality with regards to things like color temperature, gamma, black levels and so on.

 

I don't think I could put any one of those things ahead of the other in terms of importance; they're like four legs holding up a table. But it is true that the amount of skill, effort, and time involved in addressing those concerns can be very disproportionate.

[David Mullen ASC]

I agree with your table analogy, it's all important but not always proportionate.

 

But sometimes I think students get overly fascinated by special processing of the image, whether digitally or photochemically -- by which I mean some students who haven't yet mastered the basics of photography (lighting, composition, exposure, lenses, RGB printing, etc.), who barely know the different film stocks and how to expose them, are always saying things like "I'm shooting my first short film and I want to push everything three stops and skip-bleach the negative... what's it going to look like?" And they don't even know what the image would look like normally exposed and processed.

 

It's important to simplify things, especially as a beginner, but even as an experienced artist. Use the least effort to get the maximum effect, not the most effort to get the least effect. Don't use two lights if one will do.

 

What's funny about digital color-correction is that it is incredibly powerful at making extreme changes, and yet when you want a series of very simple, natural images that don't look manipulated and intercut seemlessly, then it becomes even more important to deliver consistent-quality images to the color-correction suite. The more subtle and natural the image becomes, the more TINY shooting & exposure mistakes become obvious on the big screen; it can be a timing nightmare to get it all to blend when there isn't a strong manipulated look being applied to distract you from the little things. You make it all look like a heavy skip-bleach process and few people are going to notice if one shot is grainier than another because it all looks odd, but the more "normal" the look is, the more a little off-color in a fleshtone or a little grain in the shadows stands out.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Let me give you a real world example from last week. We were in Croatia to shoot 4 models in bikini on a lagoon beach. The location is stunning and on the recce (scout in American) the sun is pounding down on us - sea glistening, sand white, models bronzed. Beautiful - they haven't had an overcast day in months.

 

Come shooting day, obviously, it's rainy and windy - the water in the lagoon has little unpleasant waves and the sand is dark, almost grey. Designed as a day shoot in sunlight with no money for huge lights to try to make sunlight on an overcast day, I'm stuck with a 4K, a 1200w and a 575w - that's it (and only a 5K genny, so I can't run them all at the same time). But because of the daylight and very tight schedule, I'm going to have to go with reflectors and negative fill alone - no time to lug around lights (that don't do much anyway) on a beach.

 

So you try to make it work with graduated filters and reflectors. We shoot one scene in daylight up in the woods where I get to light a bit. Then we run out of time and daylight and have to return to the woods and pick-up three shots in pitch black night. And I have to make them look like daylight, even in the wides, with my 4K, 1200w and 575w..... Absolute nightmare, but I pull it off, I think.

 

Now, what's my point? My point being that this project would have been unusable, a complete waste of everybody's time and money had it not been for post grading and a decent telecine guy. Dead in the water. We made it look like sunlight, we blew out highlights, we did windows, graded water and more importantly, sold the idea of night-for-day as day-for-day.

 

Was it my lighting that did the trick in making the night stuff look like day? Probably. But it wasn't my lighting that made the rainy, overcast beach look like a sunlit beach. The thing is, most people don't have any experience in telecine and they think post is a bit like tweaking RGB on a Hazeltine machine. It's nothing of the sort, and it should be in every DP's interest to educate themselves about the possibilities you have there.

[Stuart McCammon]

It never occured to me before that the film community is as myopic and self-referential as many other large industries, but here we have living proof. Of course, if you believe that the only way to do it is the way it has always been done, you will be convinced that any other way of doing things is inferior.

 

Given the unique constraints of film production, I happen to believe that there are many insights to be gleaned from successes in other areas, such as in this case. To say that image processing is only for extreme effects and that it produces results that will be unmatchable with other shots denies the experience and visceral results of many photographers, and promotes the status quo. Matching something beautiful to something average will always produce strange results, but what if both shots were beautiful?

 

Anyway, this discussion may not have much practical value, but it sure is fun to consider what might be acheivable by a DP that takes the lab and the final look of the negative into consideration when composing every shot.

[David Mullen ASC]

Anyway, this discussion may not have much practical value, but it sure is fun to consider what might be acheivable by a DP that takes the lab and the final look of the negative into consideration when composing every shot.

 

That's sort of standard practice actually. You have to plan out your post before you begin a production, pick your negative AND your print stocks, decide the best ASA rating to give the stocks, test the filters, etc. Shooting the negative is always one part of the image process - no one looks at a negative image, they see it turned into a positive image in some way or the other, whether through printing or telecine.

 

Maybe I am a bit old-fashioned in believing the value of bringing into the post phase the best-shot image you could manage at the time of shooting, but having done a lot of post production work on my own shows, both digital and photochemical, I am repeatedly reminded of the old rule "garbage in / garbage out". Sure, we all need to be saved now and then in post, and we all sometimes shoot images that BY DESIGN will achieve a lot of the final look through a post technique, but as I said, that tends to be more true on commercials and music videos than features.

 

But it's hardly like I am not involved or aware of all the possible uses of post for image control... Look at the elaborate way I had to shoot "Northfork" to take the skip-bleach printing into account.

 

Like I said, my background is shooting features for theatrical projection, so my observations are not going to be the same for someone shooting commercials for video presentation. Anyone who thinks they can be as aggressive in applying a heavy digital grade to an image, transfer it to 35mm, and project it on a 50' wide screen -- as they might on a music video -- and not see any artifacts hasn't done a lot of testing themselves.

[Max Jacoby]

What I would add about grading is that in my opinion there is a big difference between the amount of grading that can be done on something destined for television and a film destined for theatrical release. Even if the film went through a DI and therfore one would have the same possibilites than one would have for say a commercial, a look which would look acceptable on the small screen would look completely over the top on the big screen.

 

There have been some films that had applied a commercials look applied to them and at least in my opinion they looked over-done in the cinema. One recent film that comes to mind is 'Hard Candy', shot by a director and Dop who do mostly commericals. The look of that film is just taken too far and there were plenty of artifacts that one would have passed on television, but on a cinema screen they were just jarring. I suppose one reason for that is that because film has more resolution and more color-depth, so small changes a more noticeable and one does not need to go as far to create a look.

 

I remember Janus Kaminski saying something to that effect: that most DI timers have a commercials background and have no idea where the limits are where color correction becomes unnatural looking on the big screen.

[David Mullen ASC]

I'd also say that even for television, the majority of digital grading is fairly commonplace: you add more or less contrast, raise or lower color saturation, black levels, etc. to "tweak" the look of the original photography. You may go further and use power windows to correct specific areas of the frame, but for the most part, you are just augmenting the original photography to the desired contrast / color level you want.

 

We all do that when we go into a telecine session. Occasionally you really push the image around to get a specific look or fix a problematic shot.

 

Even on the HD D.I. that I did for "Shadowboxer", I pushed a few scenes pretty far -- one is an establishing shot of a university where I attempted with Power Windows to make the springtime trees look like fall foilage (brown, gold, etc.) Not completely believable, but I felt it was more important to make that story point and live with a bit of unreality for a brief establishing shot.

 

So yes, everyone needs to learn what post tools will be available to them and what the consequences are of using them.

 

But in terms of "saving" day exterior work to make overcast look sunny & cheerful, I'd say that most of us run into that regularly (more so for shooters in the U.K. I suppose!) but it's not the majority of what we will shoot in our lifetime compared to solving lighting challenges unless we specialize in exterior shooting.

[Tom Bays]

Articulating what you want is the most important area to master.

[Guest Aaron_Farrugia]

so what your all saying is that cinematography is broard

you can master one area but that still doesnt make you a cinematographer, you need to get a grasp of all the areas

 

a jack of all trades

[peter kantor]

what do you mean by graded and ungraded?

[David Mullen ASC]

what do you mean by graded and ungraded?

 

"Grading" is more of a European word for what we call "timing" in the U.S. -- technically it just refers to RGB / YCM printer light color-correction, but now the word has slipped over to describe digital color-correction.

 

Something that is "ungraded" or "untimed" is just the original photography on the negative before being adjusted for desired color, contrast, etc.

[Guest Alexandre Lucena]

Light is a wild thing one has to tame.

 

 

Alexandre "Flag" Lucena

[Michael Collier]

I would recomend focusing on story telling. Every disipline in cinematography follows that. If you don't know your charecters are feeling very conflicted, how can you compose and light something to reflect that? There are tons of things to master, but in my head there are only two. First is deciding what you want the shot to look like, given the story elements. Second is the practicle method of getting that image, given the resources you have availible (every shoot is lacking resources and requires inginuity)

 

Past that people skills are important. You have to learn to convey what you feel and think, not so much dictate to everyone how to do their jobs. Keeping people on your side is very important.

[Daniel Yun]

I think i jumped in here late! But this is something i think.. (which is just a thought no less!)

 

I havent used film before so i guess i cant really speak on films DP's behalf - but for an area for DP's to master in the video world .. i guess there are many to name!

 

Because video is such a 'machine gun ethic' medium compared to the more 'sniper like' eficentcy of film - (tape being able to shoot more and cheaper than the carrefully planned expensive film stock) one thing you should probally build on is to be careful to plan shots and not just jump in half assed "because you have tape to burn." I think that can be a mistake, because one can take for granted thier error margin and suddenly have a 100:1 ratio of film stock! Prehaps one could still take thier time in planning thier shot and look and then taking advantage of that with extra takes.

 

I think this cinematography really is quite a unique field - like each artist with thier paintbrush and paints, you may want to find out what kind of style you like when holding a camera. I think when you find a style you like, you can then work on mastering the way it is pulled off if that makes sense?

Like César Charlone on 'City of God' or Darius Khondji on 'Seven' - see what you like about thier visual story telling style, and how they light that element to further propell the story narrative.

 

If you enjoy the looser handling style or the floating steady cam - you may want to learn your handle to show this, in the same token, you'll be able to learn how and where you may need a focus puller and where your limitations are to how close or far you can get to the shooting subjects.

 

I've learnt so far that it's very important for a cinematographer to composite a shot well, as well as being the visual storyteller for the audience and to be flexible to constant changes around you - (eg light, space constrictions, height, time mangaement, light set upt etc etc.)

 

Something i read before in the posts was that lighting was the master key to understand. I agree but, one must learn to improvise if nothing is availible - such as documentry shoots, wedding videography, on the fly new capture etc. As it once was - the masters of yesteryear painted using the natural lightsource availible. If you can learn to shoot barehanded, and improvise - when you reach a fully lit set you should be more than adequetly supplied with knowlege of lights you do need. Almost a 'Cupeth runneth over' type feel.

 

It all comes down to style and individual taste though, so people may very much disagree!

 

I think being a DP can rely heavily upon being a jack of all trades and having a knowlege of the fields around you so that you can understand how to rely and work with others in th crew/team enviroment. (Understanding the directors vision, the gaffer's skill to setup and light what you want, how to move with the sound person etc)

 

:D