Before Sunset

[Curran Rowe]

Great film. I loved the serene, flowing camerawork.

 

From what I can find on the net it was shot on Fuji 250D and released on Kodak stock. No digital intermediate.

 

I was almost sure that they shot with type of Soft or Frost diffusion because of the glowing highlights. But watching the behind the scenes doc, you can briefly make out the labels stuck on mattebox:

 

ND3

POLA

ANTIQUE

 

(no soft or frost filter? I was surprised.)

 

It got me wondering, IF one wanted to create bright, overexposed, glowing highlights with a diffusion filter, would stacking a pola on top of that counter some of the effect of the diffusion filter?

 

Anyone have any further information on the cinematography of Before Sunset? Any additional information would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I don't think a pola would have any effect on glowing hilights, unless those hilights happened to be strongly polarised - this might easily happen for a specular reflection, for example. Plus, if you put the pola after the diffuser, you'd likely be depolarising the light in the diffuser and your polarising filter would become nothing more than a rather expensive ND6.

 

Phil

[DavidSloan]

You can get beautiful glowing highlights on exteriors if the actor is backlit by the sun. I just shot a short on vision 2 250D and we had some CU with actors backlit by the sun, with soft bounce card fill...the footage came back with some brilliant warm highlights. Gorgeous stuff.