RedOne shoot

Alexander Disenhof · April 7, 2008

Hey everybody, I am a student at Emerson College, and I just finished shooting for the first time on the Red Camera. I had an operator, and mostly focused on the lighting, as many situations were really complicated to light with a small student package. This is the trailer, tell me what you think!

http://www.untunethesky.com/bowtrailer.mov

Edited April 7, 2008 by Alexander Disenhof

Tomas Koolhaas · April 7, 2008

Very nice work!

The lighting was naturalistic but still moody enough to draw me into the story and set a definite tone for the piece. The red looks good (again) VERY crisp as usual. The trailer was cut very well too, I actually wanted to see the whole film. There was one shot were his eyeline was a bit off and took me out of it but that is a very minor detail (and you may have intended it to be that way for effect).

Well done mate.

Alexander Disenhof · April 7, 2008

Anyone else? its hard to get good, constructive feedback at school, believe it or not. Some more details of the lighting/grip package we had...

2 -1.2k HMI pars

5 -650 tungsten fresnels

4 -1k tungsten fresnels

2 -4 bank kinos

1 - 500w china ball

1 mini lightpanel

duvatine, 6x frame with ultrabounce/silk/light grid, a bunch of 4x diffusion frames

various stands, and thats pretty much it.

thanks for taking the time and watching it

Jon Rosenbloom · April 9, 2008

Looks terrific. I love the DAY INT medium shot of the woman in green where the fill side just goes black. How much grading? What lenses? Some of the wide shots still kind of say "video," but everything else has a rich, clean look.

Adrian Sierkowski · April 9, 2008

Definitely looks really good. The only really "video," look comes in the ext for me. The rest, as mentioned, looks pretty fantastic. And I would agree the trailer is well cut with some good acting. Very nice work.

April 9, 2008

Alex,

This looks amazing but I'm sure you know that already. Easily one of the best pieces of cinematography I've seen on here in a while. The editing in the trailer is top notch as well.

Cheers,

Rod

Walter Graff · April 9, 2008

Don't know if I'd say it's some of the best cinematogrphy "I've seen here in a while". Do people say that because it was shot with a RED camera? I find that interesting. Almost wish folks whould just show their work and not say what they shot it with. It's good overall. Some shots better than others for my taste. Some shots are very 'videoesque" in look and feel. Not a fan of some of the bathroom shots. A few are a bit unnatural for my tastes. And one suggestion would be to never let the video hash get as sharp as you do as it competes with the titles. Much better when it is slightly blurred. Overall a good project.

April 9, 2008

I guess I just felt moved to write that after seeing the piece. There is always a lot of great filmmaking and photography on this site but this trailer just felt right.

Chris Loughran · April 9, 2008

Wow! The RedOne makes Southie look great! good work.

~Chris

Michael Nash · April 9, 2008

Overall it's pretty nice work. I like the feel of the trailer; seems a bit inspired by films like Babel, Reconstruction, Code 46 et.al.

The lighting was pretty naturalistic, pretty well handled throughout except for the bathroom scene as noted. The hard toplight just looked too much like a single fresnel, one of those things that always says "student film," I'm afraid.

But I'm going to acknowledge the elephant in the room: Everything I've seen from the RED has ugly clipped highlights, which ends up dragging the camera back down to "video" level. And I'm not just talking about the burned out lampshade in the bedroom; I can forgive mere overexposure. It's the way overexposed areas clip, very elecronic looking. Look at highlights in her lipstic, and even the toplight in the day exteriors. Clippy like the HVX.

Of course I don't know how the shots were exposed or color corrected, and I'm not assuming this production is proof of what the camera will always look like. But it is consistent with everything I've seen from it.

So when people say "it looks great" I have to say, "Don't you notice the clipped highlights? Do you think that looks 'great,'?" Don't flame me and label me a "hater," I'm just pointing out a shortcoming that's a legitimate concern for us cinematographers.

Sorry to drag down the review of your work with my tangent. I think the project looks pretty good, especially for a student film with limited resources. Nice job.

Phil Rhodes · April 9, 2008

> Clippy like the HVX.

Seconded.

It seems very clean and low noise; I suspect all people need to do is close down and gamma like crazy.

P

Mark Williams · April 10, 2008

> Clippy like the HVX.

Seconded.

It seems very clean and low noise; I suspect all people need to do is close down and gamma like crazy.

P

Phil I think the guy wanted some feedback on his work.

Good acting and nice framing/ camerawork. Technicly very good. A dream type sequence over a relationship break up? Why the repeated crowd scenes?

A trailer is to hook the audience. What they can look forward to and what the film will be about?

From what I could understand and I may be wrong it was a short film about failure and not fitting in? Someone trying to find themselves in a world they dont understand but see it in decline and a progression into madness isolation and the relationship consequences? from that.

This is may be true of most of us to some degree. Using a story to portray this is a good idea for comment on our society. (Should be more) And peoples struggle. Not a good idea though just to show the fallout without a story. It needs to have hope and a fight back.

This wasn't conveyed in the Trailer? Only a hopeless situation. If its to showcase your talents then its good for that. It also may have a good idea but doesnt have a story. At least not in this trailer?

As a trailer To me at least It didnt work only to say it was a statement and feeling about the world from a certain perspective. And thats a good start ..

Perhaps a future film would be something along the lines of the guy fighting the establishment Or perhaps a fall from grace as he is transformed into a politician but remains in love with the girl?

Although maybe I'm completely wrong and the film is about someone becoming more absorbed into the internet living in cyberspace? In which case it needed more clarity.

Wherever your taking this the emotions feelings and the desperation could be in tune with many . However at the moment for me its not clear where its going or what its about.

Jayson Crothers · April 10, 2008

Alexander~

Can you talk about how this was shot and posted?

4k, 3k, 2k, 2:1, 16x9, etc?

K Borowski · April 10, 2008

I am actually surprised to hear myself saying this, but I am going to step in here and defend the quality of this footage.

I think the spot on her lips is more the sharp reflection of a light than a blown highlight (hard to tell at this size though) and it shows that the people that shot this movie worked very hard to overcome the limitations of the dynamic range problem.

I can see only two shots that really have blown highlights; one is with the lampshade, and I think the other is too.

The stuff that strikes me as student-film are the awkward cuts in spots. What struck someone else as awkward lighting placement strikes me as an awkward cut to hide bad lighting placement.

Another gripe is that in some shots the skin tones look dark and grimy in shots where they are intentionally underexposed, shot in shadow.

Finally, does anyone else see the irony in spending money on Polaroid film in a movie shot on Red? ;)

Seriously though, well done, probably the best Red-shot footage I've seen so far, although admittedly I haven't seen more than 20 minutes worth that I've pulled off of links I've found here.

Edited April 10, 2008 by Karl Borowski

Michael Nash · April 10, 2008

I think the spot on her lips is more the sharp reflection of a light than a blown highlight (hard to tell at this size though) and it shows that the people that shot this movie worked very hard to overcome the limitations of the dynamic range problem.

I wasn't saying the lips were "blown out," it is obviously a specular reflection. It's not the dynamic range, it's the way the highlights clip instead of rolling off gracefully. Film has a "shoulder" that rolls off highlights into overexposure; video cameras have a knee function that does the same, no matter how limited the range. This camera seems to just clip to white abruptly. So it's not that fact that there's a specular "ping" on her lips and the chrome faucet, or that the lampshade is blown out; it's that fact that these overexposed areas have an abrupt, hard edge that makes the image look electronic. No amount of controlled lighting will overcome this unless you want to eradicate the color "white" from your palette. As a DP I want to be able to choose that color, and that value of light. There's plenty of clipping going on in the street exteriors too; look at any white subject and the tops of peoples heads.

But again, this isn't the fault of the filmmakers and I think they made pretty nice use of what the camera can deliver.

Alexander Disenhof · April 14, 2008

Hey everybody, thanks for all the feedback, its great to hear all this stuff. Sorry I haven't replied in so long, but its finals time, so I've been super busy. To answer some questions that came up - we used the Cooke s4 primes (my first time using them). We shot in 4k, and I was told by the editor that he used h.264 in compressor (gamma 1.2?) to get the video online after editing it in Final Cut.

I have some more questions for all you knowledgeable people out there. A few of you said that some of the wide shots still feel like video. I totally agree, and I am just wondering what can be done about that? Any tricks in lighting more subtly maybe? Or is it just unavoidable to get that wide on most digital cameras without it screaming video?

Also, for the bathroom scene with the overhead lighting, where I think Michael said looked like a fresnel pointing downwards (filmschool-esq) it is actually two kino bulbs taped over the mirror she is looking in, with a lightpanel i rigged behind her for some fill (it was a tiny bathroom, and the mini lightpanel was the only thing i could hide). I'm just wondering how you all might have lit it. Would you have motivated the source from somewhere else? The bathroom was about 8 feet wide, with yellowish wallpaper.

Thanks again everybody!

Alex

Alexander Disenhof · April 16, 2008

any ideas?

Jon Rosenbloom · April 16, 2008

Longer focal lengths (then it wouldn't be so wide). Soft FX filtering. Couple of Beebee lights giving a soft edge? I recall you had a fairly flat day for the outdoor footage: nice for CU's, but tough for wide shots. Try some stuff in post - desaturation, steeper gamma.