"Manure" Tech Specs

[Joe Taylor]

Hello

 

Been looking at the stills for "Manure." I understand that it is being filmed with the RED ONE.

 

Much of David Mullen's past work has been 35mm anamorphic, and the stills show 2.35 compositions. Is David Mullen shooting with spherical lens (if so, what kinds)? I also assume that the film is being cropped. How does the images hold up to being cropped down from 16:9?

 

If David Mullen reads this, can you tell us if you are using any filtration on the lens?

 

If you are shooting with spherical lenses, I am also wondering if you tested filming with anamorphic lenses.

[Matt Garrett]

"We are renting the rest of the camera gear, including Zeiss Ultra Primes and Angenieux Optimo zooms, from The Camera House. Theo Pingarelli will be A-cam operator and Marcus Lopez will be A-cam 1st AC. We have a 2-camera RED package (with a back-up third body) but, due to budget, there won?t be a B-camera 2nd AC, just a Camera PA."

- David Mullen

"We are shooting with Build 15 loaded in the cameras (Build 16 comes too late for this production but maybe the next one in July will use it). 4K RAW 2:1 mode, framed for cropping to 2.40 : 1. Since everything is painted in shades of brown, and all the clothing is also brown, I don?t have to do much in-camera or post manipulation to the colors to get this desaturated brown effect, it happens naturally (i.e. it already looks manipulated.) We are going for a softer look, so I will be using some diffusion. In this case, I am trying out the new Schneider Classic Blacks, a combination of Classic Softs and the #1/8 Black Frost. We may also do some digital diffusion in post. Right now, Plaster City in Hollywood is handling our dailies workflow."

- David Mullen

[Max Jacoby]

Gosh, so all this info was already available in this very forum BEFORE Joe asked his question ;)

[Jamie Lewis]

Aren't the stills from his DSLR?

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, when I post stills from my DSLR Nikon, I say so, and when I occasionally post a RED frame, I say so as well. Most are from my Nikon. The RED frames I get are 2K conversions to TIFF's. My data wrangler grabs an example from most set-ups and gives me a copy at the end of the week.

 

I'm cropping both my Nikon stills (I think that are 1.5 : 1 native?) and the 2:1 RED frames down to approx. 2.40. I guess at the amount of cropping.

 

Trouble with using PL-mount 2X anamorphics on the RED is the lack of ability to desqueeze the image on the set, plus the fact that an anamorphic frame is really a 1.19 : 1 square-ish image with a 2X squeeze, so I'd be cropping the sensor horizontally, as opposed to cropping a spherical image vertically to get 2.40 (and it doesn't take much cropping to get 2.40 from a 2:1 recording.)

 

While I might shoot a RED movie someday with an anamorphic lens just for the look, these two movies have short schedules and I had almost no prep for them, especially to figure out the on-set viewing problems of a 2X squeezed image, plus the post (how to unsqueeze them for editing on FCP)... so it seemed safer and simpler to just use spherical lenses.

[Joe Taylor]

Gosh, so all this info was already available in this very forum BEFORE Joe asked his question ;)

 

 

Not all of it. I'm just curious what David feels after the images are cropped. I am also interested in what you can achieve by shooting with anamorphic lenses on the RED and how the anamorphic would compare to the image after it's been cropped to 2.35.

 

The stills that David has posted look amazing. I really hope the movie itself is as dream-like as the photography and set design. Especially the late afternoon shots with the sun blazing the clouds. It really looks like an alternate universe.

 

This is really amazing work. Can't wait to see it.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't feel anything after they are cropped because they are supposed to be cropped. I'd feel more if they weren't cropped and thus shown incorrectly!