Remove lens during shooting

[Georgi Andreev]

Hello, is there anybody, who has tried to remove the lens while shooting and then put it back on. Also if anybody can give me a link for such a video or footage.I'm really curios about the effect we got?

 

Thanks

[Steve Zimmerman]

Hello, is there anybody, who has tried to remove the lens while shooting and then put it back on. Also if anybody can give me a link for such a video or footage.I'm really curios about the effect we got?

 

Thanks

 

David Lynch called it "wacking", and used it a few times in Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.

You can see it here at 1:42. They were also using a net filter on the shot.

 

http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/quotecollection/whacking.html

http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/losthighway/intlhdeming.html (second page, middle of page)

[Phil Rhodes]

I'm not so sure about this. I've done it on video cameras and DSLRs. If you just gently rock the lens in the mount, of course you end up with some very extreme out-of-focus effects and flaring as light leaks in through the gaps, which could be quite interesting. If you actually completely remove the lens from the mount, the overwhelmingly large amount of light that floods in just tends to produce a rather uninteresting white bleached frame which doesn't really do anything much for me.

 

P

[John Sprung]

Another thing you can do on some cameras is rotate the turret. You get a kind of distorted wipe with black in the middle, and a new focal length. I remember a student film from long ago, they had the actor walk up to the camera and do that....

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Phil Rhodes]

I think Top Gear ran the entire gauntlet of "bouncing the extender in and out during the shot" techniques about five years ago. Twice.

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

FYI: Hunter Richards posted this footage he shot using a GH1 (before he update his cam with the firmware hack). In the thread he mentions he "flashed" the sensor by partially removing the lens during shooting:

[Greg Gross]

Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite films. Does anybody know in which scenes Mr. Lynch used "wacking"? I have it here but have not watched it for a while but probably

could figure it out. Thinking about trying this in a short film. Looking at it as sort of a new, personal adventure in film/digital. Liked the Hunter Richard's production.

Greg Gross

[Brian Drysdale]

I think Top Gear ran the entire gauntlet of "bouncing the extender in and out during the shot" techniques about five years ago. Twice.

 

There was also the fashion for a while of holding the extender half way, so that both images were superimposed upon each other.

[Chris Keth]

There was also the fashion for a while of holding the extender half way, so that both images were superimposed upon each other.

 

Hell, I just did that this spring on a show for MTV.

[grant mcphee]

Whacking:

 

I worked on a feature with Peter Deming a few years ago. On the first day he used this technique. It was using a PanArri 435. He had the focus puller remove the lens in different variations while either he or the fp used the rcd to run/stop the camera in time with the lens removal, and at different fps. It looked great on the monitor but never saw the full effect as it never made the final cut of the film.

 

I've been on shoots where the dop managed something similar using the macro focus ring on eng lenses.

[Edgar Dubrovskiy]

How safe would it be to do something like this on Arricam SR3?

I considered to do it on my last short - but we shot on a beach and constant sandstorms prooved it to be extremely risky.

How bad is it for the camera/mirror/gate?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

It shouldn't effect the mirror or gate etc, so long as the butt of your lens isn't protruding too close "e.g. close enough to risk contact if angled the wrong way," to the camera. When you're twisting your PL mount, the only thing you're effecting is the holder for the lens, ya know. I'd just make doubly sure the lenses you're going to do this with don't remotely risk impacting the mirror shutter.

[Edgar Dubrovskiy]

But that's kind of the queston - how do you check it? Apart from taking some standard sr2 and smashing the rolling shutter, while testing :)

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Well, one way you can check it is @ prep, inch the shutter of the SR open, and gently nestle the lens in there at different angles and see how much room you've got.

[Edgar Dubrovskiy]

Kind of did this on the shoot - but as the whole film was hand-held this proved to be extremely difficult to get any decent lensbaby-ish effect...

:)