My Ambien CR commercial

Hal Smith · March 14, 2008

So that must explain why you all voted a strange chimp like looking President in twice , now i understand thanks . :(

I beg your pardon sir: Do NOT insult the Great Apes. They're intelligent and good at problem solving.

David Mullen ASC · March 14, 2008

Hi David,

Think I caught your commercial a couple of nights ago on late night tv. It's the one with the smoked day interior at the end and shafts of light coming from the window, right? I thought it looked great. I thought I noticed a slight yellow-green color cast to that scene - was that something you were going for or was that some more creative timing by the agency/client?

Yes, that was it. The light was gelled 1/2 CTO and was coming into a green-painted room, hence the yellow-green tones. That looked fine -- my complaint was how bright and lower-contrast they timed the moonlit scenes.

Walter Graff · March 14, 2008

"Yes, that was it. The light was gelled 1/2 CTO and was coming into a green-painted room, hence the yellow-green tones. That looked fine -- my complaint was how bright and lower-contrast they timed the moonlit scenes."

David, keep in mind that there are soooo many other conditions and circumstances in broadcast TV that could have made what you shot look quite different from how it was shot from your TV, to a DA on a pole, to an editor looking at a scope and thinking something needed a tweak, to how the tape was transferred to a server. Recently the Obama camp tried to claim racism (once again) when Clinton ran an ad showing Obama where he claimed they darkened his skin. I don't know if they did, but as a person well trained in video and QC of broadcast, it didn't look like anything less than standerd issues involved in the chain of broadcast to me that could have made him look slightly darker and even lighter. I have yet to see many of the commercial I work on ever looking exactly the way I shot them on my TV and when seeing them everywhere else. I certainly don't disagree with your original comments about how they took your stuff and went ways visually that you might not have started with but I think another poster aid it best, you are probably used to more following the ball as it goes with features when in the commercial world, the cinematographer is often just a day player.

David Mullen ASC · March 14, 2008

Yes, I know that TV standards are all over the map -- in fact, the commercial may not be quite as bright as I think because the TV in my hotel room, though a nice big HDTV flatscreen, is set too bright for my tastes and I've had the engineer for the hotel in a couple of times to fix it -- first thing I had them do was to stop stretching 4x3 TV shows to fill the 16x9 screen. I hate that. But the brightness and color controls are locked-out by the hotel chain itself and even the staff engineer's remote can't adjust them!

Had to take my per diem on this current feature and buy a TV set for the hotel room so I can watch dailies and adjust the friggin' brightness myself -- seems a bit silly to have this big 42" HD screen in my room and set up a little TV next to it.

Matthew Buick · March 14, 2008

Maybe you should have, so they wouldn't have been able to make it brighter later on ;)

Excuse me, but wouldn't underexposing negative make the image brighter anyways? Therefore defeating the object of keepng the moonlight scenes dark.

Michael Nash · March 14, 2008

Excuse me, but wouldn't underexposing negative make the image brighter anyways? Therefore defeating the object of keepng the moonlight scenes dark.

No, you've got that backwards. Underexposed = darker positive image; for both negative and reversal. The negative image would be brighter, which means the positive image comes out darker.

Walter Graff · March 14, 2008

No, you've got that backwards. Underexposed = darker positive image; for both negative and reversal. The negative image would be brighter, which means the positive image comes out darker.

And of course regardless of how you exposed it, if the agency decided to make adjustments in post or transfer to suite their tastes, then anything you tried to do just got altered. :(

Satsuki Murashige · March 15, 2008

And of course regardless of how you exposed it, if the agency decided to make adjustments in post or transfer to suite their tastes, then anything you tried to do just got altered. :(

Not mention, if you did as Max suggested, you'd probably just get a frantic phone call from the agency saying you'd screwed up their shoot - I know, it just happened to me for the first time a few days ago. :angry:

Matthew Buick · March 15, 2008

No, you've got that backwards. Underexposed = darker positive image; for both negative and reversal. The negative image would be brighter, which means the positive image comes out darker.

Oh ok, I guess my head wasn't screwed on properly when I wrote this, thanks. :)

Not mention, if you did as Max suggested, you'd probably just get a frantic phone call from the agency saying you'd screwed up their shoot - I know, it just happened to me for the first time a few days ago. :angry:

That's really horrible luck. :( If they really want to see a srewed up shoot they should hire me, you should tell them that, Satsuki. They'd soon be grateful you were around. ;)

Satsuki Murashige · March 15, 2008

That's really horrible luck. :( If they really want to see a srewed up shoot they should hire me, you should tell them that, Satsuki. They'd soon be grateful you were around. ;)

Actually, there was nothing wrong with the footage.

Client: "The sound is choppy."

Me: "The sound is fine. The editor's system just doesn't have enough RAM. He also captured the footage with the wrong settings."

Client: "The lighting is too dark."

Me: "It hasn't been color corrected yet. And it's supposed to be night. But I'll color correct it for you for free."

Client: "You didn't shoot enough close ups."

Me: "I asked you specifically on set if you wanted me to shoot these, even going over the director's head once to do so. You said you didn't need them. But I'll shoot an insert for you for free."

Meh.