Switch

Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC · February 7, 2007

So unfortunately I had to pull out of "Love Money" because this feature Switch and Love Money ended up wanting to shoot at the same time. I ended up going with Switch because I had a personal investment into the project. Anyway, we did some camera tests with the varicam + pro35 on friday to determine what the Pro35's ground glass looks like on a film out. This film has a lot of slow motion so the Varicam was our camera of choice and the Director loves the look of the pro35, I'm not in love with it but it does give the film a certain look not seen in most HD productions. During the test I came up with a Key to Fill ratio and did some filter tests. Check it out.

BPM = Black pro mist

CS = Classic soft

WPM = White pro mist

I'm a big fan of the BPM, but the amount of halation that I was hoping for didn't show threw on the test. I do like the WPM, but its really softens the contrast, granted we can up that in post and we are planing to do that but I think that it will come out with a little to much of a glossy look, which isn't this movie. I think on set I will go with a little harder looking light but the same key - fill ratio. The key light being one stop higher then the iris looks great when you color time the look down a bit. I rated the Varicam at 320 ISO with the pro35 and -3db. I wish Clairmont had some Digi primes in stock for me to test so that I could show the director how shallow you can get the digi primes, but all they had was T2.1 canon zoom and I wasn't a fan.

I messed around with a paint box that they set up for us and I quickly found it useless and impractical to use since we weren't going to have it on set. So I dropped it and learnt the in camera options. Once we are in camera prep I'll create a Knee, gamma, and toe for the camera that looks the best for me and gives me the most information for color timing, then load that on a card and sync our Varicam and HVX's to it. Really not a fan of cinegamma look so I'm going to try and stay away from that. All the tests were shot with a lower contrast video mode. Hopfully we will get to see our film out next week.

freddie bonfanti · February 8, 2007

Chayse,

thanks for sharing the tests. i like the way things look and im sure youre gonna get great pictures with the varicam and the adapter, shame you couldnt get hold of the digiprimes.

i like the fact that you are trying to achieve an in camera look, usually what happens over here is to shoot things clean to get a very muddy image and a "negative look" and then create the proper look in post.

i do like the BPM more than the other filters too

good luck

yeah, i did use the word "look" several times...my dictionary is quite limited tonight...

Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC · February 8, 2007

Chayse,

thanks for sharing the tests. i like the way things look and im sure youre gonna get great pictures with the varicam and the adapter, shame you couldnt get hold of the digiprimes.

i like the fact that you are trying to achieve an in camera look, usually what happens over here is to shoot things clean to get a very muddy image and a "negative look" and then create the proper look in post.

i do like the BPM more than the other filters too

good luck

yeah, i did use the word "look" several times...my dictionary is quite limited tonight...

No problem. Its really easy with the Varicam to share footage, figured i might as well.

I think the in camera way is the best. I used to do most my stuff in post, but now a days I have a clearer vision on how i want the project to look and I shoot closest to that as I can. Since the Varicam is a Lin camera I still want to shoot a lower contrast image as if it were Log and adjust it in post. A lot of times you don't get to define a look on set if you don't have time to do tests. The way I have set it up is I found a key to fill ratio I like during tests and on set I will shoot a chart at the start of every tape. Then I can basically let the dailies colorist know to increase the contrast so X shade of gray is black on the chart. With the workflow on this film I will be able to be the dalies colorist on the whole offline and apply my own look to the HD offline as a template to what to recreate on the online threw a davinci and for the film out.

Edited February 8, 2007 by Chayse Irvin