Manure

[Max Jacoby]

I seriously doubt the data back-ups are costing us $100,000.

How about the archiving of the shot material David? Are there plans to save all the rushes or just the finished film?

[Michael Most]

Well, you figure that a movie like this would probably shoot about 200,000' of 35mm stock -- that typically costs over $100,000 in stock, processing, and telecine for dailies. I seriously doubt the data back-ups are costing us $100,000.

 

But you're still going through a facility based dailies process, along with daily duplication. That certainly isn't equal to the cost of a telecine process either, but it isn't free.

 

And we'd be doing a D.I. on this movie anyway, which is expensive, so the costs of doing color-correction and a digital-to-film recording would be the same -- minus the costs of scanning negative.

 

But with the time factors involved in scanning negative, except in this case it's spent for file restoration and file conversions. Which shouldn't be free either, but might wind up being free because facilities are anxious to get this work and are currently willing to give away things that are not labor intensive.

 

The fact that so many low-budget movies are shot digitally should be proof enough that digital can be affordable for people on a budget.

 

True. But especially in your case, "low budget" doesn't mean no budget. As it does for many on this and other Internet forums.

[Damien Bhatti]

Just counted, this is my 34th feature in the 17 years since I graduated from film school in 1991 and shot my first feature in 1992.

 

This and the next ("Stay Cool") will be my fifth and sixth feature for the Polish Brothers.

 

Hi David, I was just wondering I think I read somewhere that you went to film school when you were about 27, I might have remembered it wrong so apologies it thats the case. What were you up to before then? Where you involved in photography somehow ? (your interest in cinematography was always with you I presume) Thanks, D.

[David Mullen ASC]

I never meant to suggest that everything was free when you shoot digitally. But there is this tired old notion going around, ever since the F900 came out, that the production costs were actually equivalent. Before the days of D.I.'s, it was certainly close because the cost of a film-out was often equal to the cost of stock, processing, and telecine of 35mm film stock, assuming you didn't shoot a lot and you did a straight photchemical finish and you didn't budget for HD mastering for home video.

 

But with all the digital post that something shot on film goes through these days, especially the D.I. process, plus all the home video deliverables... generally there is a savings by capturing digitally unless you manage to pick a particularly expensive way of doing that.

 

Yes, we have a post house doing dailies & conversions, so we're not really saving any money there. The savings are basically in the stock and processing.

 

But I'm not really interested in getting into an old film vs. digital debate here.

 

We're making LTO tape copies of the data which I suspect will become the archived copy of unedited footage.

 

Now obviously there is more to picking a way of shooting a movie than bottom-line considerations, and many people (like me) will continue to use film when possible and appropriate, because in the overall budget of a medium-budget to large feature, the shooting medium is often a small percentage of costs compared to, let's say, your lead actor's salary. So I'm not really interested in the penny-pinching mentality of some producers that just want to eliminate film from consideration.

 

I will say this, especially with any sort of lighting-intensive movie, which is often most movies, I don't see any time savings by shooting digitally. Reload time in film is greatly exaggerated, and in this case, I have boot-up time, digital mag reformatting time, cabling to monitor times, etc. to deal with instead.

[K Borowski]

I never meant to suggest that everything was free when you shoot digitally. But there is this tired old notion going around, ever since the F900 came out, that the production costs were actually equivalent. Before the days of D.I.'s, it was certainly close because the cost of a film-out was often equal to the cost of stock, processing, and telecine of 35mm film stock, assuming you didn't shoot a lot and you did a straight photchemical finish and you didn't budget for HD mastering for home video.

 

But with all the digital post that something shot on film goes through these days, especially the D.I. process, plus all the home video deliverables... generally there is a savings by capturing digitally unless you manage to pick a particularly expensive way of doing that.

 

I have a hard time understanding why a film of this nature would need any DI at all, except maybe with any special effects you'd have. In fact, it seems that you have a huge amount of time/talent involved with doing things the old-fashioned way, with a backdrop on an indoor set. Taking this approach, and the fact that it is set in the 1960s makes it hard for me to understand the motivation to shoot RED on this feature.

 

Now, I know you guys know what you are doing, as I really like the work you did with "The Astronaut Farmer", and I understand that it must be fun to try out the RED, but I think that this of all features isn't the right one. If anything, Astronaut Farmer would've been a good film to shoot digitally.

 

I don't have a hard time understanding that there's a huge savings with digital over film. Saying that digital costs the same, or about the same, or only slightly less is more than a tired notion, it's an absolute God damned myth. Sorry. . .

 

Let's not pretend that film is cheaper. It just has a different set of hastles that most people don't mind as much as all of the hastles with digital capture. Every cost analysis ever done with film vs. digital ini still photography shows that digital is cheaper unless you spend hours photoshopping every picture you take (some people do indeed take this approach, but few and far between).

 

One other question: assuming that you shot for a photochemical finish, and needed to make an HD copy, wouldn't a straight transfer off of the master positive be significantly cheaper than the cost of a DI minus the cost of needing to do a separate HD transfer for home video/TV distribution?

[Michael Collier]

I will say this, especially with any sort of lighting-intensive movie, which is often most movies, I don't see any time savings by shooting digitally. Reload time in film is greatly exaggerated, and in this case, I have boot-up time, digital mag reformatting time, cabling to monitor times, etc. to deal with instead.

 

Good point. I was doing a radio interview with a director about a movie I had just shot, and the radio host asked me the same question. Oh it has to save you so much time on lighting since you can see it on the monitor. I tried to quickly explain why that wasn't really the case (or more, why its not really nessisary to look through the monitor when lighting, only for final tweeks, if that. eyes and a brain are the best lighting check.)

 

One more cyc question david. It looks like at a certain point the clouds shift their natural line, from moving left to moving right. That would seem to suggest a vanishing point? or is it just a style variation to add composition options? If it were the latter, I would be tempted to use that portion of the cyc for almost every shot, to the point of creating a stale composition motif. So how do you balance your desire to use that feature to modivate composition, with the need to keep images from becoming too predictable/stale? or is it just a vanishing point for one particular angle if your wide on set?

[Francis Kuhn]

Every cost analysis ever done with film vs. digital ini still photography shows that digital is cheaper unless you spend hours photoshopping every picture you take (some people do indeed take this approach, but few and far between).

 

Hi Karl,

 

My advertising stills photography clients have been surprised to find digital is quite noticeably more expensive than typical film shoots we did just a few years ago, about 30% more than film on average. Cameras are far more expensive to rent and there's now an extra crew person (digital tech) to feed, travel and lodge. Post processing days, archiving on multiple hard drives and DVDs have added to the extra cost as well. There is no Photoshop work involved, simply processing the hero shots out to TIF files for the Agency. I have several acquaintances who shoot for car manufacturers and they have told me they're experiencing the same cost increases.

 

I just did a small running footage shoot for American Honda using the new Sony EX1. Interestingly, there was really not much cost difference from a similar shoot I did for them in December using 16mm film.

 

-Fran

 

BTW I realize there are plenty of situations where dig would be less expensive than film. My wife keeps reminding me of this every time I want to shoot film for personal photos.

[Bruce Taylor]

But I'm not really interested in getting into an old film vs. digital debate here.

 

Exactly. I was asking about the real, true costs of high quality digital and film image capture and manipulation to a high quality presentation, like a theatre screen. As that changes, I wanted to get a reading on where things are now.

 

I suppose it comes down to the old standard, "it depends."

 

A non-DI, film acquired photochemical finish can be less expensive, and if one counts up the extra engineers on a digital set and the costs of storing and transfering files around they are significant. The cost of people (labor) is always the most significant expense no matter what you're doing.

 

Fran's observations from the digital stills world is interesting-- I'm sure we'll see that in the future when all movies are shot digitally.

 

Thank you all for your observations.

 

-Bruce

[K Borowski]

My advertising stills photography clients have been surprised to find digital is quite noticeably more expensive than typical film shoots we did just a few years ago, about 30% more than film on average. Cameras are far more expensive to rent and there's now an extra crew person (digital tech) to feed, travel and lodge. Post processing days, archiving on multiple hard drives and DVDs have added to the extra cost as well. There is no Photoshop work involved, simply processing the hero shots out to TIF files for the Agency. I have several acquaintances who shoot for car manufacturers and they have told me they're experiencing the same cost increases.

 

Then why AREN'T they shooting film? :blink:

 

I shoot it for no other reason than I like it and it looks better. In my case it is more time consuming (do my own lab work to save money in many cases), it is unappreciated (clients don't like the fact that I shoot under 1000 pictures sometimes, come on. . . ), and it is often unutilized when my 2 1/4 x 2 3/4 in. negatives are blown up to 5x7 in. prints.

Edited June 7, 2008 by Karl Borowski

[Francis Kuhn]

Then why AREN'T they shooting film? :blink:

 

I shoot it for no other reason than I like it and it looks better. In my case it is more time consuming (do my own lab work to save money in many cases), it is unappreciated (clients don't like the fact that I shoot under 1000 pictures sometimes, come on. . . ), and it is often unutilized when my 2 1/4 x 2 3/4 in. negatives are blown up to 5x7 in. prints.

Hi Karl,

 

I'll make this quick as I don't want to hijack David's thread any further (and thank you David, as always, for the great behind-the-scenes info).

 

I agree, film looks better to my eyes, absolutely no question. I had an interesting discussion with one of my clients regarding the upcoming summer shoot season. We are considering adding a pair of Hasselblad H2 medium-format cameras, five prime lenses and a Phase One P45+ digital back to the arsenal, but the costs are really too much for them to bear. The back itself is about $34K. It would actually be far more economical to go back to shooting with the extraordinary Fuji GX680 and medium-format Velvia (and, probably get a better looking image in the process). Or, just cut to the chase and go 4x5. $34K would cover a few years worth of film and processing.

 

On the plus side, digital has given us immediate gratification, and it has been a great help to see instantly, on a 30-inch cinema display, what we've shot, then make creative departures once the basic shot is covered. It's also easier to see your mistakes with digital compared to looking at a 2 1/4 Polaroid (actually, nowadays, Fuji-roid) The image quality from the Canon 1Ds MKII we presently use is better than we need for almost anything printed in the client's automotive-type product brochures. The downside: We've given up film's amazing color depth and a certain organic feel and have never been able to recapture it regardless of the processing/post/Photoshopping. Digital simply looks different to our eyes.

 

Now, as for Manure, I think this stylized set is very interesting. Hope the story is good! I kind of wished the Brothers had taken The Astronaut Farmer in a little different direction, stylistically. I can't help but think how great it would have been if we went inside the barn and Mr. Farmer took the wraps off a rusty-beat-up old bucket of bolts instead of something that looks like it was rolled out of a clean room at JPL. I remember being so impressed when Han Solo showed Luke Skywalker the Millennium Falcon for the first time--it was a real wreck! But it was the ship that “made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs", as I recall.

 

-Fran

[David Mullen ASC]

Week Two

 

As usual, we hopped back and forth between Stages B and C all week, to give some time for the art department to strike and create sets on the opposite stage. This would be a good time to mention Clark Hunter, our genius production designer, who has taken on this monumental task of building dozens of sets, sometimes turning a farm set into a different set during our lunch break… or within a half-hour --which is nuts (he might have a more choice word for that). It’s been sort of breakneck work and the quality of it has been amazing, so he deserves a lot of credit for what we’ve been able to create visually. Our wardrobe designer, Bic Owen, is also doing some great work on a small budget. Those late 1950’s, early 60’s designs look great on our actors.

 

Monday started out on a “potato farm” on Stage C (the main stage), where Rosemary (Tea Leoni) pulls up in a car when she sees Fitzpatrick (Billy Bob Thornton) in a field doing a sales pitch to a farmer. We had a similar scene later on Wednesday when Rosemary and Fitzpatrick pull up in their car and see a bean farm and a distant farmer on a tractor. The problem is that both scenes call for more distance than we can achieve with a car on the stage, since the outer six feet of the landscape set is a sloped wooden platform/ramp that cannot take the weight of a car. So in order to increase the distance, both from the background and the travel of the car, we had to shoot the background behind the foreground car or car window with the camera near the top of the ramp, which means we’ll have to shoot the foreground car against a bluescreen later. On Wednesday we went further and shot from a higher angle on top of the ramp as if the car were on a hill looking down into the farm, with the idea to extend the background in post beyond the patch of farming with more crops, etc.

 

I lit the potato farm with half-orange 18K’s for a warm hard sunlight look, softened with frames of diffusion for closer shots. I have some ability to keep the look backlit, so the question always becomes whether I want to have reverse angles front-lit if the opposite direction was backlit, and whether leave the front light hard, or soften it, as I might do outside. So this scene is an example where in the wide shot, the scene is hard lit from the side, but high, so if two people are facing each other in profile in the wide shot, one would be backlit in their close-up and the other person front-lit. In this case I decided to soften the hard light in the medium shots so that they would be softened in the close-ups, but leave the wide shots hard lit – as if I were on location flying large frames of diffusion when I moved in tighter.

 

Please excuse my crude Photoshop color-correction skills...

 

Here is a Nikon snapshot of the wide shot:

 

Here is a closer two-shot where I softened the light:

 

Then we turned half of the farm into a carrot farm and looked the other direction in the afternoon, to shoot a scene where Fitzpatrick and Rosemary, hiding behind a crate of fertilizer, see “Jimmy” (Kyle MacLachlan) selling the new “Milagro” mixture to a farmer:

 

This was the last scene of a sequence before a night hotel scene, so I lit it with tungsten (essentially full-orange on the RED set to 5600K) from the 12-lights above the cyc, for a late afternoon look. Because the look of the movie is somewhat desaturated, I’ve had to increase the saturation of the warm backlights, etc. to keep the effect visible, so half-orange looks more like quarter orange, full-orange looks more like half, etc.

 

Some scenes have some light haze added, mixed with the unavoidable clouds of dust that the farm sets seem to send upwards all day long while shooting.

 

On Tuesday we were in Stage B shooting two motel scenes, one night and the other day, two different motels build next to each other in an “L” formation, making it hard to frame one without seeing the other, due to space limitations on the sets. We did a high-angle shot of the night motel set (in this Nikon snapshot, you can see some missing rooftop in the top left corner which we hid in the RED shot with some black tape on the mattebox of the camera.) I set the camera to daylight balance and used a tungsten backlight for a warm streetlamp look. In the background, you can barely make-out the other motel set running at a right angle:

 

We shot an interior scene in the motel room, the first tungsten-balanced scene of the movie, but I didn’t really see much increase in noise on the monitors from the 3200K setting.

 

After that, we shot the other motel set, removing the last room of the previous motel structure to create some separation between the two sets, but even then, this set actually ends only one-foot from the backing, which was a problem for a day scene. I had to hide a Kinoflo behind the wall to get rid of the shadow of the building on the backing. I used the overhead Lumapanels, three in a row, each through a 12’x20’ frame of quarter grid cloth, for an overcast look. Generally I haven’t been able to do a hard sunlight effect on Stage B’s sets because I can’t back away enough for a single 18K HMI to light the length of the sets evenly, so it has been safer and faster to go with the overcast look, almost a dusk feeling in this case. Here is the other motel set (you can see the overhead Lumapanels reflected in the car.)

 

We went back to Stage C on Wednesday for a bean farm set, consisting of six-foot high poles of beans in rows. I lit it for late afternoon with the tungsten 12-lights. As I said, we put the camera on the top of the ramp to suggest a small hill from which the main characters look down across the farm. I snapped this shot of Tea Leoni turning to camera (the shot in the movie is wider, of the two backs of the leads looking out at the farm):

 

Tea is a wonderful person to work with, by the way. Very down to earth, funny.

 

The reverse angle was shot in three-quarter frontlight, partly because I thought it looked good to see the characters staring into the setting sun, but also because we were too close to the backing to get a good backlight effect (it would have been too close and too toppy from the top of the set wall.) While I normally would have softened the light, I thought here that the actors looked good in the hard light:

 

The back end of the car is only about eight feet from where the ground meets the sky backing.

 

Art department then plowed the entire set over to create prairie where some Milagro agents are kidnapped by Rose’s manure salesmen dressed as Indians. I went for an overcast look in that case.

 

Thursday was spent on Stage B shooting a small scene in a hospital hallway, lit with the overhead fluorescent fixtures plus a shaft of light at the end of the hallway from a 2K Xenon combined with an HMI Source-4:

 

Then there was an interrogation scene, again lit with the overhead fluorescent fixtures and a backlight through the window from the HMI Source-4 (which I used when possible instead of the Xenon because of the fan noise of the Xenon.)

 

We went outside near sunset to shoot a scene against a 60’ bluescreen stretched across the wall of the building, in the shadow side, in natural skylight. We had to add two 20’x20’ and one 12’x20’ bluescreen on the sides of the 60’x60’frame to contain all the action. In post, we are creating a huge factory building in the background.

 

Friday began on Stage C shooting a mobile home parked in a field. Since there was a tree on this set, I decided to try out an idea, which was to mount a 2K light to the top of the tree as if it were the sun peeking out from behind:

 

We also shot some incredibly cramped scenes inside the trailer. We ended the day shooting a fight scene in a brussel sprout farm (created quickly on the same spot once the trailer was removed) where the Milagro men show up in vegetable masks to beat up our main characters.

 

And we did that bluescreen scene that I already mentioned.

 

I have so many photos but decided to cut them down a bit in this post.

 

I’m pretty beat-up myself, after some long, hard days this week. We’re basically trying to do a seven-week movie in five-weeks, on scenes that require huge amounts of lighting and grip work to pull off, not to mention all the art department chores to get the sets ready multiple times per day. And despite all the discussions on how we will shoot some of these scenes, some aspects cannot be worked out in advance until we see the final set and start to stage scenes on it. This creates some tension as one shot becomes three shots or the camera ends up looking somewhere we said we weren’t going to look, etc.

 

For the most part, the RED cameras have been fine to work with. Everyone loves the image on set, and that’s just 720P. The boot-up times are still annoying but the camera crew have gotten a lot better about timing the battery swaps and digital mag swaps during moments of downtime. We did have a couple of problems. On Friday, the EVF kept acting up and while trying to get the camera to send a picture to it by re-entering the commands, the camera somehow managed to reset itself to Build 14 instead of Build 15. We shot four set-ups that way, on Build 14, until the script supervisor noticed that the clip numbering system had changed. We had no time to reshoot the scene so we’ll have to deal with some minor image differences in post later, plus warn the post house about the different file labeling or whatever (I’m not sure of all the differences.) So in the meanwhile, we switched from that camera (A-camera) to B-camera, which finally arrived after we sent it back on Week One for repairs.

 

Then I noticed again something I noticed the day before, that by the end of the day, it seems that the image on C-camera (our main “B” camera for the shoot since Day One) is slightly yellower than A or now-returned B camera. We thought it was just a monitor/output/cabling issue but at the end of Friday, Conrad looked at the RAW files and we saw that the yellowish difference is in the original recordings. It’s a simple color-correction fix but the question is what is causing it. We’ve been doing a black shading every morning but we may try doing it twice a day to see if that helps. It’s like the old days when you used a lens that was warmer than another lens, annoying in color-correction later when you’ve got a lot of intercuts in a scene, but workable. Maybe there are slight differences between digital cameras of the same model that only become visible when doing RAW recording where you don’t have a lot of electronic adjustments happening to the recording to match signals between multiple cameras.

 

Another minor problem is just data management related. We make two back-ups in the office on RAID-5 drives, and send a shuttle drive to editorial (which just started) to copy and create the master recordings which will be use in post, along with whatever back-ups the post house makes. But I guess they are still trying to smooth out the workflow in editorial room because they have not copied over all the files before erasing the shuttle drive and sending it back to set, so then they called the camera department asking them to resend select files from our back-up RAID’s. There was some talk of having the camera department make four back-up copies instead of just two and keeping them in the camera room. We’re just trying to get the point across to the production office and editorial that once all the footage gets copied and sent to the post house and the editorial room, the primary archiving of the data stops being the burden of the camera department – we just keep a back-up, as does editorial and the post house. Otherwise it’s like asking the camera assistants to vault the negative on the camera truck…

 

I’m glad I’m able to experiment with a new camera technology on this movie because the Polish Brothers are brave enough to try new things out, just as they have been willing to take a risk on bleach-bypass, or even riskier, negative flashing, not to mention difficult formats like anamorphic. On most other movies, I’m less likely to propose anything riskier or more complicated because I don’t know the people I’m working for well enough to take risks, so there is a tendency to take the easy and tried-and-true path (usually Super-35 these days). I did one of the first 24P F900 movies thanks to the Polish Brothers and now I’m doing my first RED movie with them, giving me a chance to learn new things that I can apply in the future. Plus what I love about working for them is that they are visual filmmakers, and they love classic wide shots, unlike the close-up obsessed directors of today.

[Saul Rodgar]

Excellent job!

 

I would have never guessed these stills were shot in a stage had you not explained it.

Edited June 8, 2008 by Saul Rodgar

[adam ward]

I'm about to do a feature on the Red as well as "B" camera/steadicam and 2nd Unit DP, so I'll be interested to hear how things go. The shooting conditions will be very different on my feature though. We're shooting in the Bahamas and doing a lot of water work. I'll be interested to see how the cameras handle the heat, humidity, sand, and water. We don't have the luxury of a backup body, so I really hope the cameras hold up well! If not, I guess I'll spend a lot of downtime drinking Mai Tai's on the beach while we wait for another camera to be shipped to us.

Hi Mr Grimmett,

I just finished an 8 week feature with the RED as the A Cam/Steadi op. Kids, low-mode..running..with animals and water.. The camera held up great..be mindful of the vents along the bottom of the camera for the water housing..this will play greatly in the time set up. The camera gets a little "squirrelly" when panning side to side..be mindful of the gimbel hand input..for me it was about 1/8th of normal input..tricky. The camera can be used with a simultaneous double battery system from AB which is useful when changing batts..cause the system takes 80 seconds to reboot if you are only using one. If you use the dual mount, it makes the mass more easily manageable on the post..bringing it closer to the mass of a film camera.

Just my two cents..

cheers,

adam ward

[Matthew Bennett]

Just watch out for red in your stool.

 

<sorry couldn't resist

 

Thanks as always for the informative posts

[Guest will griffith]

Just watch out for red in your stool.

Appropriate considering the name of this thread...

[Stuart Brereton]

Absolutely beautiful work, David! Your stills look fantastic, and it's a welcome change to see actors in them, rather than stand-ins. It really gives a feel for the finished article.

[John Holland]

Stuart i agree apart from the great looking stills nice to see real actors and not so called "actors" 20 year old celebs ??

[Vincent De Paula]

Great looking stuff as always David.

It's fab that you have such a good (and fast) prod. designer and the fact that you can work with those colours already on set.

I will be doing soon a fair amount of work on the Red One camera, so I appreciate all the information.

Keep the good work!!

[Ram Shani]

thank for the info it's great master class

 

i love this form save me $$$$$$ :)

[David Mullen ASC]

I’m so tired I can barely type these days… We did a string of 14-hour days capped by a 16 ½ hour day on Friday, wrapping at 3:30 AM.

 

Monday and Tuesday were spent on Stage B, where Clark Hunter had to squeeze a five-room motel set on the small stage with a parking lot in it, and I had to light it… The long parking lot area required six Lumapanels through six 12’x20’ Light Grid Cloth frames overhead for the base soft skylight effect, plus four HMI Goyas to light the length of the backing. That’s just for starters.

 

Anyway, we started with some small hotel interior scenes. Most of these take place in early morning before the salesmen hit the road, so I lit some of them with a hot streak of orange light (a tungsten 5K Molebeam with the camera set to 5600K) cutting into the bottom of the window frames, lighting up the sheers and adding a warm glow to the rooms. I also had some softened light coming through the window (an 18K HMI through two layers of diffusion). Fill or key lighting for areas where the window light didn’t reach was often handled with some small Kinos or by bouncing an HMI Source-4 off of something.

 

A lot of these scenes involved all six principals (the five manure salesmen plus Rosemary, played by Tea Leoni) group around a small table in a small hotel room, most of which was taken up by the beds. For one night scene, I lit the group with a large Chinese Lantern hanging overhead, and turned on some practical lamps in the background. For scenes where the room lights were off at night, I used a 5K tungsten gelled half-orange for a streetlamp effect coming through the windows. All of the night work was done with the cameras set to 3800K for a warmer look than a 3200K setting would create, and I used tungsten lamps for those scenes.

 

We ended the night with a bedroom scene where the camera was mounted on a jib arm looking directly down on the bed, followed by a night exterior scene in the parking lot, which I lit with some strong orange backlights as if coming from the hotel behind the actors. Both scenes were “one-er’s” more or less, a 2-shot that contained all the dialogue.

 

As soon as we finish with a RED drive (we only record maybe 15 to 20 minutes per drive, though they hold more) we send it to our data wrangler Eric, who downloads and backs up the data. So it wasn’t until I got home on Monday night that I heard that the second to last mag for the evening, which Eric had started downloading right around wrap time, failed during the download, causing the table of contents for the files to disappear, making the two scenes unplayable or uncovertable. The camera recorded the scenes fine (otherwise we would have gotten a recording error message probably) but somehow the problem in the RED drive developed afterward. Conrad Hunziker spent part of the next day rendering all the footage to see what was salvageable, which was only about 20 seconds of the ends of the 60-second segments that takes are stored as. PlasterCity couldn’t recover all the data either, so the mag was sent to RED to see what they could do. Meanwhile we scheduled a reshoot of those two scenes for Thursday night, which I wasn’t looking forward to because of our excessively long days already. Luckily on Thursday afternoon, we got the word from Deanan at RED that they managed to recover all of the footage, allowing us to cancel the reshoot (the day ran 14 hours long anyway, so I can’t imagine adding another hour or so just for reshooting…) So I am very grateful to RED for working so hard to solve the problem for us.

 

This brings up the big issue on everyone’s mind these days regarding the RED ONE, which is reliability. No system is ever perfect and you lose footage when shooting on film now and then (and in this case, no footage was lost, just to be clear). All cameras and accessories fail in some manner now and then too. So when I get asked everyday what I think about the RED ONE in this regards, part of me just wants to say “wait until these two movies are done shooting and I go through post and THEN ask me what I think…” But I have to say that 95% of the time, it’s like any other shoot – I don’t really have to think about the cameras, they just shoot and shoot all day long. Just now and then there is some quirkiness or bugginess with the RED cameras that makes me feel like the kinks are still being ironed out. After the incident with the RED drive, I am starting to form the opinion that once the RED RAM is developed, or whatever solid-state flash memory unit RED creates, I don’t see much reason to use hard drives on cameras on movie sets, which are physically abusive places for computer equipment. Even when you are careful about it, let’s face it, these cameras are slapped on and off of tripod heads all day long, bounced around on dollies being moved across rough ground, etc. There is dust and heat (or cold) to deal with, humidity, etc. So while the RED drives seems to work just fine most of the time, they make me nervous.

 

My main annoyance with the cameras is quite minor, the time it takes to boot. We are doing elaborate scenes and at the last minute I might come up with a B-camera angle, so we suddenly grab the camera off of the cart just before the actors come on set or just before we roll and set it up… and then wait for 90 seconds before I can even see a picture. I feel momentarily blind. That’s the longest 90 seconds of my life, as the AD is yelling if I’m ready or not, when I can’t even see a picture to know what needs to be adjusted.

 

There also continues to be some minor color mismatches between the cameras, which I seem to notice more in the afternoon than I do in the mornings. We had one 5600K scene where the B camera image was a little warmer looking, but when we switched to a tungsten-lit scene and I set the cameras to 3800K for a warm look under 3200K lighting, well, the same B camera now had a slightly cooler image than A camera. Beats me what is going on.

 

On the plus side, the form factor is smaller than most 35mm movie cameras so, for example, cramming the camera into the back seat of a car or into a closet isn’t so difficult. There is less weight to deal with for the camera assistants, though most (out of pride) won’t admit to having any problems dealing with 35mm cameras and 1000’ mags all day long.

 

An even bigger plus, perhaps one of the best features about the RED, is the fact that you can see a larger “safe” area than what gets recorded, compared to most digital cameras.

 

And I like the picture it creates, which is the most important thing ultimately.

 

I like the fact that it creates a sharp, detailed image that doesn’t have that electronic edginess of HD cameras, even ones where the Detail is supposedly turned off. Actresses don’t look like they’ve aged a decade, like many HD cameras make them look. And despite all the talk about the dynamic range of the RED camera, I find it pretty decent in that regards, not as good as film but better than an F900. When I look at the RAW files, I’m impressed with how much overexposure information is actually there compared to the monitor output. So I know that if I like the lighting on the Rec 709 monitor image, I’ll have more room to work with later when going back to the RAW files in the final color-correction.

 

Anyway, on Tuesday we had director Gary Marshall on set doing a cameo as a doctor in one scene – I worked one day with him several years ago on a Super-16 movie where he did a cameo. Nice guy. We did some night scenes in the motel, again tungsten-lit with a combination of practicals and soft light from a 2K through 129 diffusion (my favorite new diffusion gel, a heavy frost closer to Full Grid Cloth in density.) Then we moved to Stage C where we somehow managed to barely fit a car and a dump truck on a small road set. In the scene, the dump truck buries a car that rolls up behind it by dumping an entire load of manure onto the car. But we found that even when the dump truck was filled, the entire contents only buried the nose of the car, so we had to do multiple takes where we kept dumping more and more soil (peat moss I think) over the car until it was finally buried.

 

Wednesday was spent (mostly) on another stage, Stage A, where we had something like a 20’x40’ bluescreen set-up, lit with daylight Kinos. We did a bunch of car interior scenes, too many perhaps because I didn’t have time to get all the bad reflections out of the car windows in a few key shots – the windows are a constant nightmare for me. When they rolled the car into the stage, the first thing I noticed was that, despite being painted black, you could see the stage rafters all over the windshield, so the grips had to put a 20’x20’ black over the car and then black out the stands as well. And even that wasn’t enough to always hide the lighting on the car being reflected. A nightmare, as I said. We moved to Stage C at the end of the day to do two more road scenes, including some plate shots for the bluescreen stuff we had just shot. Again, ending the day with an elaborate stunt scene that takes hours to set-up and shoot. The B-camera team went up into the catwalks to see if they could get a straight-down angle on the road set for a stunt, but the rafters, which are a few feet lower than the catwalk, are spaced together so much that they had to use a combination of a hi-hat screwed into the catwalk, then a camera offset, and then an underslung head, to get the lens below the rafters. And once they set all of that up, screwed-in, supported, safety-cabled, etc. -- I was told that the head now stuck out so far down from the catwalk that there was no way of now putting the camera onto the head without driving in a 60’ condor and doing it from below. The AD said something like “are you shitting me?” when I told him that we’d need to drive the condor onto the set, but then my Key Grip Brad Heiner (dealing with some other big rig at the time) ran upstairs and managed to find a way to get the camera onto the extended head from above – I just hope no one risked their lives doing it, because it’s a big drop.

 

Thursday we were back in the motel set doing some early morning scenes in the parking lot. I decided to expand upon the trick I used last week and put a 5K tungsten fresnel in the far background, in camera, pointed into the lens to look like the early morning sun. I had to also light the backing behind the 5K quite hot. So a “simple” morning establishing shot took: 6 5600K lumapanels through 6 12’x20’ light grid frames overhead, four HMI Goyas from above gelled with ½ CTO for the backing, the 5K tungsten fresnel for the sun effect, a 12-light tungsten on a scissor lift behind the hotel for an overall warm backlight, an 18K HMI gelled half-orange hitting the backing, plus another 4K HMI and a 1200w HMI, both also gelled half-orange, to fill in the dark spots on the backing. And there were a few other lamps here and there, plus the hotel’s practicals and neon signs. Plus another 4K HMI bounced into a 12’x12’ UltraBounce in the foreground for fill. That’s just for the first shot.

 

As I said, we got word by the afternoon that RED had recovered all of our data from the two scenes shot on Monday, so we breathed a sigh of relief and cancelled the reshoot for those scenes on the motel set, which was going to be gone by Monday.

 

To give you an idea of how ambitious this little film is, with the crazy schedule we have, on Friday we jumped back and forth between two soundstages. We started on Stage C, which had been split up into two different farms, a corn field and a sunflower field. I had to switch the lighting between an overcast look we had established for some story days and a later afternoon sunny look… but the scenes could not be bundled together in terms of time of day / weather lighting, so we had to constantly gel and ungel our lights for the two looks. Three looks actually because the only night exterior scene for the farm landscape sets was slipped into the middle of all of this.

 

We spent hours dealing with stunt men parachuting into the cornfield, to the point where we broke an hour late for lunch. Then we had to move to Stage B and shoot part of a dialogue scene in a motel room, then move back to Stage C to give the effects people time to rig the room for a small explosion that demolishes a whole wall of the motel. On Stage C we set up for a stunt drive where a car crashes into the cornfield. As I was lining up the shot on the cornfield, suddenly I saw three men levitate to the ceiling in the far background and I realized they were already practicing the stunts for parachuting into the sunflower field behind the cornfield. So we then shot the car crashing through some corn, and then moved to the sunflower area to set-up for parachuting, switching again from late afternoon sun to an overcast look. While I was setting up those shots, a forklift was driving in behind me to put a now flipped-over car into the cornfield set. So after we shot more parachuting men in the sunflower field, we turned around and shot the second half of the car crash scene in the cornfield (again all of this required switching the soundstage lighting from an overcast look to a sunny look and back again and back again, etc.) Then when we finished the cornfield, we had to move again back to Stage B now that the room was rigged for the explosion and shoot the second half of the scene we shot right after lunch.

 

So moving from Stage C to B to C to B, lighting for overcast to sunny to night to overcast to sunny to night… hence why we finished after 16 ½ hours. It’s insane.

 

Some stills to follow...

[David Mullen ASC]

Some frames, a couple are manipulated RED frames, the others Nikon snapshots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[James Steven Beverly]

 

 

I REALLY like these 2 shots. I love the lighting and composition on both. But I do see what you mean about the windshields being a nightmare for reflections. I suppose if you have the budget they can take them out in post.

Edited June 15, 2008 by James Steven Beverly

[Jonathan Bruno]

Hey David,

 

The set up looks nice. If it's at all possible, could you tell us what the story is about? I am just curious, because the images are very unique and I am very interested to hear about what story would warrant something like this heavy chocolate palette.

 

I understand if you can't divulge.

 

Nice work.

 

-Jon

[Max Jacoby]

I?m so tired I can barely type these days? We did a string of 14-hour days capped by a 16 ½ hour day on Friday, wrapping at 3:30 AM.

Gosh, when will production ever learn that working people to death will not make your film better, only worse.

[freddie bonfanti]

But I do see what you mean about the windshields being a nightmare for reflections. I suppose if you have the budget they can take them out in post.

 

 

David,

 

i love what you're doing with lighting and your posts are just brilliant, i've got one question though: wouldn't a singular large piece of silk or grid cloth hanging below all your main overhead rig solve the problem with all those reflections? wouldn't it then look more like a large overcast sky?

 

Freddie