Akeelah and the Bee

[David Mullen ASC]

I have one more day left this week and then I'll talk about how it's going. I never remember to take photos on the set but here's one I snapped of a set-up, near the camera position but off enough so that you can see the Kino Image-80 hidden behind the wall on the left, and the toys I put on the floor to hide the leg of the stand. It's an ordinary day time interior. I have some HMI's shining through the windows and that Kino providing the soft light inside the room.

 

(I decided to delete this photo since it had an actress in it...)

 

This is a location where we had to convince the line producer to let us paint the white walls some other color, which I'm glad we did because it made a big difference.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here's a close-up from the reverse angle, but of a stand-in, not the actress. Again, lit with the Image-80 from one side and an HMI backlight from the next room's window. There was a wide reverse shot of the same set-up.

 

 

These are all digital photos made with my Canon Powershot A80, but the scene itself was shot with Kodak 5205 plus a #1 GlimmerGlass filter.

[Kevin Zanit]

David,

 

Looks great. Are you playing with building up, and then exploiting reflectance in the black skin at all (ala Connie Hall).

 

It looks like you are subtly on the faces at least, a look that I really like.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Does the production company not object to you taking photos on set and posting them? I can think of a few jobs I've done where I wouldn't have been able to get away with it, and they weren't anything like as big as a full feature. I guess it depends on personalities.

 

Also, what sort of stops were you shooting there?

 

Phil

[David Mullen ASC]

Does the production company not object to you taking photos on set and posting them?

Also, what sort of stops were you shooting there?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I probably should be more discreet if the actors are in the shot -- I'll try and take photos of stand-ins only or empty sets.

 

This scene was on 5205 rated at 160 ASA; I was at an f/4.0. In general, I'm always trying to light for an f/4.0. I did shoot a night driving shot where I ended up just under f/2.8 and last night, one of my close-ups ended up being at an f/2.8-4.0 split.

 

The depth of field of anamorphic is so low that f/4.0 looks sort of shallow-focus. Also, my E-Series 135mm and 180mm at f/2.8 lenses, and my zoom is f/4.5, so even though the Primos open to f/2.0, I try and not use them that wide-open.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here's some snaps of the stand-in from some bedroom scenes. The wider shots of the girl at the desk were keyed with the actual desklamp, a flexarm lamp with a 100 watt light bulb. In the close-ups, I usually keyed from the same direction as the lamp with a 2K with a Chimera (the edge light is from a single Kino tube):

 

 

In this angle, I replaced the table lamp with a small Chinese Lantern:

 

 

I tried not using a fill light but instead, put a 4'x4' beadboard on the shadow side to barely fill in.

 

The bedroom scenes were either shot clean with 5229 (Expression 500T) or on 5218 with a GlimmerGlass diffusion for later scenes in the movie. I also used a blue-green edge light in the early scenes, motivated by the mercury-vapor streetlamp look I was using outside the windows. The later scenes had warmer edge lights. With the 2K & Chimera, I was getting an f/4.0 at 320 ASA.

[David Mullen ASC]

Week One is over!

 

Unfortunately, I caught a bad cold early on and am now fairly sick. But I have the weekend to recover.

 

As with "Shadowboxer", I think the camera crew were in for a bit of a shock dealing with these large Primo anamorphics every day, but now it's starting to get more routine. We had a problem because for the first few days, we did not have a wide-angle 4x5 mattebox to deal with the 35mm and 40mm anamorphic. Finally that showed-up.

 

But the real challenge has been dealing with a child actress for every scene, in terms of her availability on set. We try and start the day and end the day with shots without her but it hasn't always been possible.

 

Today we had a brief "unhappy childhood memory" flashback to shoot; I decided to skip-bleach the Expression 500T negative and use the 90mm slant-focus anamorphic to throw the edges of the frame more out-of-focus.

 

The studio's reaction to dailies seem to be positive although I did overhear that there was some concern over the close-ups looking too sharp! These are the early unfiltered scenes shot on Expression 500T; I may have to bring out the 1/2 Soft-FX now and then to reduce the sharpness. Certainly when you go for a single-source look, even when it's a soft key, in anamorphic there is such fine detail that gets recorded.

 

All the Kodak Vision-2 stocks have been looking good, at least on DVD dailies; very sharp but with very natural contrast and saturation. The only problem I noticed tonight, watching Day One's and Two's footage finally, is that the transfer person seems to be transferring the soundtrack area as well because I saw some things on the left edge that were framed out in the viewfinder and video tap, plus some centered shots look slightly off-center. We shot a framing chart but perhaps that was done wrong.

 

Next week we have our first spelling bee event so the challenge will be to deal with the huge number of shots needed.

[Matt Pacini]

Looks great, David!

I love that look.

Pretty good shots on your Canon A80 too!

I got my wife one of those, and was surprised at the quality of that little camera!

 

Keep us all posted on the progress, it sounds like efun (other than the cold!)

 

Matt Pacini

[Justin Hayward]

The studio's reaction to dailies seem to be positive although I did overhear that there was some concern over the close-ups looking too sharp! 

 

What did the director think?

[David Mullen ASC]

What did the director think?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

He didn't seem bothered by that aspect. Part of the problem is really just the DVD dailies, which unlike the washed-out and soft VHS dailies I'm used to, are rather sharp and contrasty with deep blacks. Looks much better but if you have a big TV set, the overly edge-enhanced transfer makes the image look much sharper than it really is. I had to same issue with the DVD dailies of "Shadowboxer" -- when I projected a print of the footage, it always felt softer. So you want to avoid judging how much diffusion to use based on video dailies.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

David, one of the things I enjoy about your work is the consistently strong and above average composition. I was curious about your thoughts and intent of the compositions you are using in this movie. How does your sense of composition compare with the director? etc. Has the director helmed a 2.35:1 movie before?

[David Mullen ASC]

We're having some issues right now because we've just noticed that our dailies seem skewed to one side -- we're seeing too much picture info on the left side. I'm hoping that it's just a telecine problem, that they are transferring the picture info in the soundtrack area by mistake, and that it's not a groundglass issue.

 

I've been trying to play things to one side or the other in the scope frame but now it looks TOO far skewed because of this problem, so the director is concerned obviously.

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, we found the problem and it's not good news -- apparently our Millenium had a regular Panaflex groundglass and the difference between the two is halfway between Full Aperture and Sound Aperture, enough to make all of our footage look slightly offset. We may have to digitally reframe the worst offenders in post.

 

We got the groundglass swapped out today, our day off, but it required I pull my second AC in to work.

 

So if anyone sees the movie and thinks I've been daringly playing with an imbalanced scope composition, you'll know what happened.

 

We had shot a framing chart and my 1st AC had projected it at the lab and said it looked fine, so I suspect the lab was projecting Full Aperture but with a scope lens or else he would have seen the left edge trimmed off. And, of course, the telecine house failed to notify us that our framing chart was in a non-standard position for anamorphic. Plus we got our first set of dailies late so the problem took a while to be noticed.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

Wow, that must've made for a sleepless night. I guess that's about the worst technical snafu you've ever had?

[David Mullen ASC]

Wow, that must've made for a sleepless night.  I guess that's about the worst technical snafu you've ever had?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I wouldn't say that since all the footage is usable.

[Kevin Zanit]

That, and the filter issue on Northfork would be up there I'd imagine.

 

In anamorphic there is not much room for error, but at least due to the quality of the format you could get away with a bit of a zoom.

 

David, is there much room on the neg to shift the image over? I know up and down there is very little, but I don?t know about left and right.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[David Mullen ASC]

I was looking at tonight's dailies and the problem isn't so bad; there are only two shots where something gets into the frame that shouldn't be there, and only for part of the shot. It's basically as if I had panned a quarter-inch over to the left on every shot, so it's pretty subtle shift. I'd say that for most of the footage, there won't be any need to reframe it.

 

I've been lighting on the contrasty side but so far I kind of like it that way; a soft key that falls off into black, so it has some snap.

 

To reframe, I'll have to zoom in slightly.

[Allen Achterberg]

God I hope nothing like this happens with my panastar tomarrow. groundglass.....ehhh

[Kevin Zanit]

It is rare, but clearly problems like this can happen. I had a GII go down, and when a new body was hurried over, it had the wrong GG in it, even though the show was clearly labeled as anamorphic (the color of their paper work is different, and it has a huge ANAMORPHIC on the title).

 

Luckily we had the old GG, so it worked fine.

 

The point is, you have to watch your ass, and be aware of these types of problems. And even if you do what you should, like David did, things can still go wrong. He caught it in the first week, and it sounds minor.

 

Anamorphic is a lot less forgiving in every aspect, hair in the gate, focus, lens performance, etc. But, I think most people will put up with the small problems for the quality of image they get with anamorphic.

 

David, I am glad to hear the problem is relatively minor.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[Mark Sasahara]

Wow, David, pretty scary! Murphy's on the loose, y'all watch yer asses.

 

Thank goodness you caught it before it got out of hand.

 

Thanks for being so generous and sharing with us.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Reminds me of a fellow I know when I was focus pulling that forgot to check if there was a hard matte in the gate until the shoot was over. They'd framed for 4x3 but all they got was an 1,85:1... My feet grew cold as he told me since I'd just done a shoot and forgotten to check myself.... Luckily it was fine.

 

But at the same time one has to ask: who the hell puts a hard matte in the gate? Give me one good reason to do so.

[Guest Sean McVeigh]

But at the same time one has to ask: who the hell puts a hard matte in the gate? Give me one good reason to do so.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

3-perf?

[Glenn Hanns]

or 2 perf or even an optical effect.

[David Mullen ASC]

Until "Van Helsing", Allen Daviau always shot with a 1.66 hard matte. I can understand the logic of it; your contact prints have some masking and your negative has some indication that the movie is intended to be projected in widescreen. I get a little nervous about all of these Super-35 movies being left to posterity; imagine someone digging a Super-35 negative up in a vault one hundred years from now and having to make a guess at how it was intended to be cropped.

 

I shot a lot of my 1.85 features with a 1.37 Academy hard matte -- I know that's hardly controversial or daring, but at least I didn't have to worry about the dailies colorist thinking it was a Super-35 project and transferring Full Aperture.

[Laurent Andrieux]

(David) We had shot a framing chart and my 1st AC had projected it at the lab and said it looked fine, so I suspect the lab was projecting Full Aperture but with a scope lens or else he would have seen the left edge trimmed off. And, of course, the telecine house failed to notify us that our framing chart was in a non-standard position for anamorphic.

 

and refering to what was said about hard mattes...

 

I remember one day here in the forums saying one should have the hard matte corresponding to the format one wants the film to be issued and people here saying, "no, the guy at the telecinema would never make such a mistake"...

 

anyway, when we make tests, here in France we always check the hard matte and the ground glass, we do "framing tests" to make sure the full print frame is the limit of the neg print.

 

Another point about the wrong gg that was put by the rental. I was preping a feature in portugal once, and I had strange results about the lenses. Made me feel like the camera mount wasn't properly calibrated. The guy was always saying "no, i sware, it's properly calibrated" I lost 2 days in my prep before the guy checks and sees it was not properly calibrated...