The Barrier

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Well. I don't often put up things I've done, but I have decided to throw up a few things for you all to look at.

The following stills come from a shoot I did here in Philadelphia on 5260. The film deals with language barriers (it's a short) and we rolled on a BL4 with Ultra Primes, lovingly rented to us by DuAll Camera up in NYC. The Lab was NFL Films who also handled the best-light dailies. Final color correction (which these stills are a rough approximation of) will be done by Shooters Post and Transfer here in Philadelphia. For the crew I had my usual out with me (Chrissy McD as 1AC, Jay "Fuzzy" Wasley as Sound, as well as Steve McBride who graciously came down from NYC. Film was Directed and Produced by Eric Itzi, with whom this is my 3rd project (2nd he's directed)).

We shot over a period of 2 days here in Philadelphia, late at night, and of course under pressure from one hostile location; alas.

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about the film, yet. Like 99% of the things I've shot I am always a bit dissatisfied in the end, but I offer you up the stills and would be happy to answer any questions and field any critiques. (p.s. excuse some compression artifacts from my quick photoshop corrections)

[Adrian Sierkowski]

last 2:

[David Auner aac]

Hi Adrian,

 

nice compositions and staging on these. Love the one with the neon sign! I am however, but quite surprised how grainy some of these are. Especially the first one, the close up of the girl. What did you rate it at? Did you push? Or was the film old?

 

Cheers, Dave

[Adrian Sierkowski]

As am I. It was fresh stock we shot on, rates @320 believe it or not. Now, some of the grain comes from me playing 'round in photoshop, but it was certainly there in the video HD dailies as well, which is also VERY odd. Now, I seem to recall under-exposing a bit on purpose, so I'm pretty sure they pulled it up when doing the dailies transfer, which I then brought back DOWN in photoshop. While I love NFL films for their processing here in the US, I have had very mixed results with them following instructions for transfers.... and all of their stuff I've seen has been well grainer than expected. I'm waiting till I actually sit with the original neg to really worry too much 'bout grain. till then these are mostly references.

 

here's an example right out of the pro-res file.

 

Even here i'm a bit surprised by the grain... .

[Adrian Sierkowski]

As for the girl:

[David Auner aac]

As am I. It was fresh stock we shot on, rates @320 believe it or not. Now, some of the grain comes from me playing 'round in photoshop, but it was certainly there in the video HD dailies as well, which is also VERY odd. Now, I seem to recall under-exposing a bit on purpose, so I'm pretty sure they pulled it up when doing the dailies transfer, which I then brought back DOWN in photoshop.

 

Hi mate,

had you not specified what this was shot on I'd have guessed S16! Now, I haven't much experience with 35mm, never shot anything myself, but still, I am very surprised to see that amount of grain! Are you sure it's not on the neg as well? Maybe their soup was off that day? To me it looks almost liked pushed, especially on that first still!

 

Cheers, Dave

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Well here's hoping it's not the soup. Never had a soup issue @ NFL before, so we'll see once the edit is done and I get to sit in @ Shooters for the proper scene to scene. But, honestly, grainier than normal results aren't that surprising to me from this lab. It's the main reason why I use them primarily for development and dailies. Plus, having not shot a properly exposed grey-card @ the head (i know... just forgot) chances are they spent a good bit of time bringing up the purposefully under shots. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll have the properly corrected footage.

I have some other '60 out from another project that went through a different lab/post house, so once I get some of that I'll probably throw it on this thread as well for some comparisons. This being my first time on '60... I expected some extra grain (500T afterall) but, you are right it does remind me a lot of '18 in S16mm...

[John Holland]

I dont mind grain !! in fact i like it ! only thing without you having said you shot 35mm i would have thought it was S16 . As a non Kodak user i have know idea what 5260 looks like !!! Interesting !

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I don't mind the grain either, generally (the horrid grain in the top photos comes from photoshop, though; and my roughed in corrections which we'll polish later on). In the screen grabs from the actual shoot, they certainly raised up the neg despite instructions; alas.

[John Holland]

I havent heard of NFL labs ! take it they are local to you ?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Yepper, they're in New Jersey, they actually handle all the shooting for the National Football League here in the US which is still recorded a lot on S16mm, but they have a 35mm/16mm lab here as well for their commercial divisions and stuff out of their studio.

[John Holland]

Recorded ??? filmed you mean !!! dont slip into that !!!!

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Aye, you're right, apologies John, apologies.

[Saul Rodgar]

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about the film, yet. Like 99% of the things I've shot I am always a bit dissatisfied in the end . . .

 

Ditto on that, but that is the only way to move forward. There is always room for improvement, no mater how good the results. The sure sign of a true professional, or so I have been told. :)

 

Stills look very good. Love the fall off light on the kids face in the second still. Your overall style (of what I see here and in the past) reminds me of Lance Accord, which is good, not too many people can claim that.

 

I always hate it when the colorist ignores the DP's instructions. The grain doesn't bother me here, (although it does in my own pictures sometimes :P). But hey, if we didn't get grain, we'd be shooting HD, right?

 

Looking forward to seeing the finished product.

[Saul Rodgar]

Interesting, the stills didn't load all the first time. Personally, I am actually liking more the less-contrast still of the girl from the un-retouched Pro Res file. both her and the background look very natural in my monitor, the way you timed it in Photoshop really makes it a bit garish for my taste, but the rest look good with more contrast.

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Yeah I think I went a bit extreme in photoshop :P

In the end I'll settle for a happy medium and over here on my MAC i know i'm not properly calibrated ;)

 

Thanks Saul. here's hoping i'm getting better and i'm a little bit blushed at the remembrance to Mr Accord.

[John Holland]

Adrian i did forget to ask where will this production end up ? i mean TV , short for Cinema where ? so i am asking how come you had the luxury of shooting on 35mm?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Short for feast distro. In the end, 35mm was more economically feasible than other formats we were considering, if only briefly. The Director and I both spoke a bit about how to make it look and the best workflows for that. We knew we wanted to use shallow DoF as a way to further isolate our character, and work a bit with colors (the greens/blues/yellows) but that we wouldn't be able to actually do those things in our locations. So having a high quality format with tons of information was important. Originally we had thought about going anamorphic as well for all that that entails, but I worried about stop on anamorphic lenses (as well as rental cost). In the end we decided on spherical and got really lucky on getting a set of ultraprimes (brand new too, though a smaller on. I seem to recall an 18mm/32mm/50mm in the set, and i stuck mostly on the 32/50).

We had thought about S16mm, but, to be quite honest, the money was there for 35 and I really wanted to bring out the Kodak 5260 which is a 35mm only 500T stock, based on a test roll I had shot furnished by Kodak. And, I suppose the simple answer is luck. Granted we got a great deal on our camera package for the weekend from DuAll (800 I seem to recall which included the camera a heavy duty tripod lenses/mattebox). So here's hoping the edit holds up and it actually gets finished. We'll see.

What also helped was the lack of dialogue (for the most part) and the very slim ratio. The director rehearsed a lot and we planned out each and every shot so as not to shoot unnecessary coverage. I think the worst of our shots was something like 4 or 5 takes. Most were 2-3 takes and a few we chanced and went with the first take. We were lucky, no hair/scratches on the whole thing, there there was a bit of weave in one of the wide shots from day 1.

It's odd that I seem to be a bit outside of the film-world in terms of these pressures to shoot HD-- for the most part. I actually got a little chided recently for NOT wanting to shoot film (S16mm) on a project. I didn't suggest it because I assumed it was out of budget... makes me wonder how much more of a day-rate I could've asked for...

Here in Philadelphia, at least in my experience with the group of people I have 'round, there seems to be a continued appreciation and love for film and I try to keep a certain honesty with production about what format I think best suits the story. Of course, i'm not immune to budgets, either, hence why so much stuff I've done of late has been on the Sony EX series of cameras. Though for shorts, such as this, I seem to be able to roll 50/50 in terms of film v video, and in this case, I guess I just got lucky. But, sometimes I'd rather be lucky than good!

[John Holland]

Thanks for that , over here that wouldnt happen ,wish you the best with post etc.

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Thanks John. I'll update when/if any developments come up.

[John Hoffler]

Hey Adrian,

 

the grain issue probably had to do with a little push to get them up to exposure.

 

I shot on 5260 and I had some footage that was 2/3rds overexposed that came out pristine. But I had some stuff go a little under because of cloud conditions and it all came out grainy as hell when they brought it up.

 

Hope this helps.

 

John

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Yeah, I certainly think the noise/grain i'm seeing is from them bringing it up for the quick and dirty version to edit.

I'm mostly confident that the neg looks much better.

I did a little more detailed work in Photoshop and am thinking of going in this direction; though perhaps without the "diffused glow effect."

[John Holland]

Just had another look , the girl is lit with what ? 3200k the background is just so green [fluo tubes ] i think you have used some correction on your lights to match with the available light , then would have been so much easier to get it correct when its timed !!

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Yep, the girl is 3200K-- just a 300w arri fresnel providing her frontal key-- and I wanted the BG to go blue/greenish so I left to tubes as are . I certainly don't really want them to match. I actually threw uncorrected tubes in most shots, these were daylight balanced and higher CRI than normal (rendering blue with less green than some other floros). The stuff in the laundry had lower cri green tubes, which i was fine with in the end, and I threw in some 5500K Kino tubes behind some equipment for the "diner" scene just to try to keep the "uncorrected tube" look consistent. If anything I might work on amplifying the tube colors a little in the pharmacy bit as both actors are hit with "white" light (3200K) for their shots (at least a little).

[John Holland]

Ok thats fine ! its the look you are after .