Akeelah and the Bee

[David Mullen ASC]

We shot for two days and have tomorrow off, being a holiday. Weird to work only two-days...

 

This has been getting tougher and tougher now that the weather has turned bad recently. Combine this with a leading child actress that gets yanked off of the set on the minute when her working time is up and who is in every scene and almost every camera angle, and I feel this horrible pressure everyday to work as fast as I possibly can without a break. It's like having someone fire a pistol next to your head over and over again.

 

Since we only have our actress for 2/3's of a day, our choice is always whether to start the day with her and lose her early -- or end the day with her and not have her there a few hours in the morning. So since one of the scenes today was in a windowless stairwell / hallway and she was in it, I opted to end the day with that scene since I'd be indoors when night fell. That placed a crowd scene in a gynasium first without our actress and then a pep rally with crowds outdoors in midday with our actress, followed by the stairwell scene at the end. So while we were shooting in the gym, it was partly sunny outdoors. As soon as we move outdoors to shoot the rally with a hundred kids or so, it starts pouring rain. Then we spend the next few minutes talking about shooting the scene indoors back in the gym. Then it stops raining so we commit to start shooting the scene. We get one shot off and then it's lunch. After lunch, it's pouring rain again. We bag the rest of the scene for awhile and set-up a smaller scene under a 20'x20' Griflon tent to stop the rain. We go back to the pep rally scene and it starts raining again. We try shooting the actors in the light rain hoping it won't show up on film. The light level starts dropping and I'm adding HMI light, which doesn't quite look like the natural overcast light. Then it starts raining harder, so we stop again. We lose one small scene and move indoors to the stairwell.

 

I realize that lately I've been rather cheerless on set because I'm under so much pressure to work so quickly so all I can do is focus on problem-solving. It's not like I want to be unfriendly but I'm just in deep thought so much of the day that I forget to use social pleasantries. My key grip, Brad Heiner, is great and he's somewhat used to me by now after three features together, but even he's a little thrown by the fact that the first thing I say to him today when he first steps on set is "I need an 8'x8' Full Grid in this corner and a 6'x6' Light Grid over there, plus bring in four 8' pieces of track and we're going into low-mode on the dolly..." And he's like "How about 'Good Morning'?" "Oh yeah, Good Morning!" I just forget, I'm so in my problem-solving mindset.

 

The other day, someone came to visit on the set and I barely got to say "hello..." when the AD called me over to ask some question, then this and that happened, etc. and literally I blink and it's six hours later and I remember that there this set visitor for me who is long gone by that point.

 

I drive into work almost everyday thinking to myself "I've got to say hello to everyone, I've got to say please and thanks, I've got to thank everyone at the end of the day, remember to greet the actors when they come on set, return that phone call during lunch, etc..." and I forget half this stuff when the first problem is thrown at me. So I get a reputation sometimes of being a little standoffish, but some people recognize it as being overly focused and often deep in thought.

 

But literally, one thought crowds out another -- even as I think "I'm going to go over there NOW and say hello to the actors" I take ONE step... and I get twenty questions thrown at me "which lens, which filter, how high, what's in frame, who do need in the shot, did you look at the prelim for tommorrow, do we need that video camera next week, does B-camera need a 2nd AC for Sunday, David, how many Steadicam mags should I load up, we only have 2000' of 29, is that enough to finish this scene, I can't move the light there because a tree is blocking, so you want to rig something over the window, is B-camera working in this shot and where, can I wrap B-camera? etc." And then ten minutes later while shooting the take I think "oh yeah, I never said hello to the actors when they arrived."

[Allen Achterberg]

David, you are a machine man. god please if I ever get an oppertunity like that dont let me break down and cry! sounds like you need some assistants david, I'll say hello to everyone for you haha. sorry I didnt give you a buzz man but this month for me is about half your issues on set and I didnt get around to tellin you I couldnt make it. But I really appreciate the offer. just hang in there man, stay strong!

 

 

Allen Achterberg,

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Ouch. Well, for what it's worth, I can vouch for Mr. Mullen's general friendliness and approachability in a social context, but while I've never had that much responsibility, I think I've probably been that busy recently.

 

Did a music promo years ago in the Sound club on Leicester Square which was a bit like that - they had to keep pounding music going or they'd lose all their extras, so it was a stupidly over-stretched shoot going on in incessant noise, that was fun.

 

Phil

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I know the feeling, David. Although your problems are probably compounded by the fact that the sets and crews are bigger there - there must be a lot on your mind and a million questions to answer all day long.

 

Have you noticed that you sometimes actually get less done when you stress and worry about everything? That happens to me all the time. I especially waste energy on checking that a thing I asked for or wanted actually gets done. This is extra useless, because these are professionals and they will do what's needed. Sometimes even without you asking. So I try to let go of that - I'm a bad gaffer, caterer, grip, whatever compared to them. But sometimes letting go is hard. And sometimes they forget, so you can't completely forget about it either...

 

Maybe you should try to get there a little bit early when everyone's still arriving? Then you can't work 'cause nobody's there. And can take your time having a coffee, walking around the set and perhaps chatting a bit with the arriving crew members and actors. I bet you eat breakfast at home and skip the on set one as to not waste any time? :D

 

Anyway, hope the pressure eases up.

Edited February 21, 2005 by AdamFrisch

[Lisa Wiegand]

David,

Thank you so much for these wonderful posts. It is great to hear about your experiences and reasuring to know that there are other DPs that have difficulty finding time for pleasantries. For me it is a battle and I feel awful whenever I think that someone may assume I don't appreciate their hard work. On these indie films our crews work so hard for us, I hope they realize how much we appreciate them, even when we don't have the time to say "hello."

 

Lisa

[David Mullen ASC]

I try and thank everyone at the end of the day because I really do appreciate the hard work. But I ultimately feel that I'm doing them the greatest service if I get my s--t together and come to work organized and that I'm clear, decisive, specific, and realistic on the set and not waste their time because I don't know what to do or what I want. Of course, I'm not perfect and sometimes plans change moment to moment (especially with this weather) but most of the crew know that's going to happen now and then.

 

It's interesting the more you work on a set with prime lenses how good you get at guessing which lens to put up and how far away the camera should be. I had to place some tripod legs awkwardly on a stairwell yesterday and line-up a tight over the shoulder, so I said "well, let's try putting the camera on this step with a 100mm (anamorphic)" and then I looked through the eyepiece and it was exactly the angle and size I wanted.

 

Sometimes I guess wrong of course... "hmmm, try the 75mm instead" and then the 1st AC gives the 100mm back to the 2nd and says "why did you bring me that? What were you thinking?" as a joke.

[Wendell_Greene]

David, on behalf of everyone here, and in appreciation for all your hard work, I'd like to present you with this the first official Cinematography.com "Badge of Merit" card.

 

This card entitles you as to 30 18 hour days of being exempted from having to verbally say the word "Hello" while on working on set. It comes with a secret "Director Question Decoder Ring" [batteries not included] Gordon Willis' Snappy Answer to Stupid Studio Executive's Questions, aka "Why Are The Dailies So Dark?" and just because you posted on your day off, you'll also receive the special brochure: "Tales From the Darkside: Or How I Learned to Love Pulling Focus with at 2.8 on an Anamorphic Lens with Bob Richardson Screaming in my Ear! by 1st AC Greg Tavenner.

 

And best of all, you'll receive a 20 minute State approved "child actor must remain on set" extension voucher that you can use at your discretion. The card is also redeemable at Starbuck's for a free grande mocha latte with whip with a chocolate scone.

 

Just print it the card below and pin it to your shirt.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

**********************************

 

 

 

 

HELLO! My name is:

 

 

DAVID MULLEN

 

 

Have A Great Day :)

 

 

 

* * **********************************

[Landon D. Parks]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I mistake the focal lenght all the time. "Put a 75mm on" and after I have a look, "no sorry, make that a 50mm instead". I don't lose a seconds sleep over that, to be honest. I'm just a human being and the pursuit of the best focal lenght is not something I feel I have to get down cold stright out of the box.

[Frank DiBugnara]

On the 4th day of 4 all-night shoots, for various reasons all hell broke loose. The analogy of having a pistol to your head is a perfect one. I felt as though all the pressure to remain precise under the panic led me to be discourteous to the crew. I did not even get to say "good-bye" to the gaffer as the AC and I were grabbing one last available light shot at as the sun was coming up and he was leaving to get off the clock.

 

I spent the next few days calling the crew to apologize for my terse nature on the set that last day. It's nice when an experienced crew understands what you are being put through. It was a comfort to hear the Key say "we felt sorry for you....did you know that you did 46 set-ups in 8 hours?"

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, we finished our third week and all of our scenes at the middle school where the little girl of our story goes to.

 

Yesterday was another spelling bee event, the first in the script. We decided to make this one less ambitious, location-wise and scale-wise, to make the later bees seem bigger so we had somewhere to go visually. We chose a gymnasium with a huge row of windows to one side, so I had a lot of natural light (at least, until the sun went down) which I augmented by having a couple of 18K HMI's in a row outside. I was getting around an f/5.6 to f/8 at 320 ASA inside (Expression 500T stock rated at 320 ASA and shot in 5500K with no 85 correction.) I wanted this much stop because some shots were done with the B-camera using the Primo anamorphic, which is a f/4.5 lens. Lens changes are rather slow with the big Primo primes, so I wanted B-camera to be able to grab shots of the audience when possible. However, I only ended up putting the zoom on for about six shots.

 

With all of these day interior scenes shot with HMI's at 320 ASA, getting enough stop has not been a problem. I had one scene in a principal's office where I tried to recreate the deep-focus storyboard drawing of the director of the girl's face in the f.g. as a mysterious man is sitting behind her head, distracting her. I used the 90mm anamorphic slant-focus lens to pivot the lens so that the focus fell on the f.g on one side but the b.g. on the other, than lit the shot to an f/8 to try and hold focus -- it seemed to work, creating a deep-focus effect. So today I had an even harder split -- a test score on the corner of paper in the f.g. with the faces of students in the b.g. as the teacher hands out tests in a tracking shot along the row of desks. I tilted the lens again but lit this to f/16 and it all seemed to look in-focus. I just hope the director doesn't get too enamored of this trick since I've pulled it off. Because storyboards don't indicate depth of field -- everything is in-focus in a line drawing -- the director sometimes gets disappointed when I tell them that this or that will be soft when we are focused on something else. He'd probably be happier with the extra depth of field of HD but here we are shooting in anamorphic, the worst format for deep focus... He also tends to draw storyboard panels where he combines far and near elements, like starting on a macro of something in someone's hands but ending up in a wide-angle 360 degree dolly move in a wide-shot in a small location. So when I say "I'll probably have to zoom out and then dolly" he's disappointed that I can't do it with just the dolly, but the truth is that I can't dolly into a macro shot if I need to use a 40mm anamorphic to get the wide shot. Plus it's hard to design a dolly move that pulls back and then takes a right-angle turn and then does a complete circle, sort of imagine dolly track shaped like the small letter "e". Not so easy on dance floor either, but the real problem is you can't push a huge wide-angle 40mm Primo anamorphic up close to an object and focus let alone not shadow the object, then pull back to a wide shot.

[John Mastrogiacomo]

David,

 

What are the chances that the producers will let you do a DP commentary for the DVD?

Have you talked to them about it?

 

It would be so helpful to all of us.

 

Thanks so much for all of your input. I have learned a great deal from your posts. :)

[Adam Frisch FSF]

It sounds like a focus pullers nightmare, David.

[David Mullen ASC]

In terms of the combining a deep stop with the slant-focus lens, actually there isn't anything the focus-puller is doing during the take in this case. The pullbacks from close to far have been difficult, but since I am averaging an f/5.6 on this movie, it's not like the focus puller doesn't have a fighting chance...

 

Biggest focus challenge is just getting children to sit still while getting measurements -- and then hope they do something similar during the take.

 

I think our worst shot for focus was one on a 75mm at f/4 where we were on an over-the-shoulder and had to rack-focus to the extreme foreground as the near person turned to camera, got up, and then we dollied in a CU across the room. We never really got the timing of the dolly and the person so the distance kept changing.

 

I also operated and focused myself on an extreme macro shot of someone holding two ends of a jump rope to lens to read some initials carved on them; I got an eye focus but the director kept calling out directions -- "lift them up, now lower them, now lift them up, switch the two ends, switch them back, lower them, lift them up..." really fast as I was trying to maintain an eye focus with the lens (180mm) stopped down to f/8. So hopefully the editor will use a moment when it's all in-focus.

[David Mullen ASC]

Here's some photos from this week.

 

We shot in a small stairwell. The characters run down into a tight over-the-shoulder which I lit with a Chinese Lantern with a 500 watt photoflood; the rest of the lighting was with daylight Kinos with half CTS for a cool daylight look (which you can't really see here but it was mostly at the top of the stairwell, as if they were running down into a lower tungsten-lit level. The net flag is to darken the foreground head in the OTS shot, since I was shooting past the head of a caucasian actor at the black girl of our film. I think I was at f/4 at 320 ASA (unfiltered Expression 500T):

 

 

This is a cell phone photo snapped of my Key Grip Brad Heiner's rig in the classroom, putting a small truss up with wall spreaders, safety clamped to some vertical water pipes (I think). This allowed me to put three 4K HMI PAR's with Chimeras in a row to get a soft top-side light from the window direction at an f/16 for the deep-focus shot I mentioned (again, 320 ASA using Expression 500T unfiltered):

 

 

Outside in the rain, I had to do these scenes that were NOT supposed to be rainy; here's me watching a shot of a crowd lit with some HMI's through large frames in light rain near dusk, trying to keep it daytime-looking:

 

 

For a smaller scene, the grips erected a 20'x20' griflon overhead into which we bounced an 18K HMI on one side and a 6K HMI PAR on the other, which got me an f/5.6 I think at 50 ASA (5212 with an 85B filter):

 

 

Here's me in the principal's office, which I lit with a JEM ball (like a Chinese Lantern) with an HMI Joker inside covered with 1/2 CTS, to make it warmer than the HMI daylight coming through the windows (f/8 at 320 ASA on unfiltered Expression 500T stock):

 

 

Here we are outside again in light rain using a 20' jib on a Fischer dolly, with a normal geared head and hot gears attached to turn it into a remote head (which was the cheapest method we could think of). I think we were at f/4 on 5212 (50 ASA using an 85B filter):

 

[Guest fstop]

David,

 

In the final shot, at 50ASA with what looks like available light, were you going for silouhettes shooting through the two glass panes with the talent sandwhiched in between? If not, how is that lit? Is that an HMI at the bottom left behind the tree/infront of the walkway entrance?

 

Thankyou so much for all of this fantastic behind the scenes material! This is a wonderful education! :D

[David Mullen ASC]

That lost shot was in available light; the stairwell had no glass, just wire mesh; it was a wide-angle lens (40mm anamorphic) so we saw a wide shot of about two levels of students coming down the stairs; they were not silhouette, just a little shaded in all that flat overcast weather.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> just a little shaded in all that flat overcast weather.

 

Welcome to the house of fun!

 

Hideous, isn't it!

 

I'd love to see what a real expert such as Mr. M. can do with that kind of light, though.

 

Phil

[Guest fstop]

Wire mesh?? That's one ugly building!

 

Knowing you are using a wide lens now makes it easier to understand your vision. The 5212 must have alot of latitude- are you ever tempted to overexpose a shot like that, just in case? How's this section of the film being processed?

[David Mullen ASC]

It's my day off, so I'm mowing the lawn between bouts of surfing the net, thinking about the shoot...

 

After complaining about things like the weather and the work restrictions of filming a minor who is in every scene and almost every shot of this movie, etc. I wanted to mention what's been good about this project so far:

 

The director, Doug Atchison, wrote a fine screenplay that won him the Nichols screenplay award and it has a lot of commercial potential (relatively, for an indie film) plus it has a positive message. After a series of dark, adult-themed projects, it's nice to shoot a movie that I won't be embarrassed for my parents to see! The director is very actor-oriented yet every shot has been carefully planned, mostly by him but with some input from me when we type up the shot lists. It's ambitious but our attitude has been to give it a try but quickly make adjustments when we fall behind (or have to shoot around our missing actress or use a double, etc.)

 

Other pluses:

We're shooting 10 hour days on average, a few 12 hour days for the spelling bees, and we did one 13 hour day. We have 2 days off per week. I'm being paid a decent amount. I'm getting to shoot this in 35mm anamorphic using new Vision-2 Kodak stocks.

 

My crew is really solid, especially the camera assistants and my favorite Key Grip Brad Heiner (our fourth feature together I think) and my Gaffer Rich Paisley, a young man who I've never worked with before but am very happy with because he's fast and low-key and organized.

 

This has been a really good experience with actors. I was nervous about working with Lawrence Fishburn but he's been very professional and undemanding, quiet on the set. All the actors come in knowing their lines and get through the scenes quickly with a minimal amount of fuss or drama. I'm amazed at our leading actress, who is only 11, I think, and manages to pronounce and spell long words very quickly in scenes where she is being quizzed; she's been so professional, for someone who has only done a few films, that it's like working with an adult other than when she's so fidgety and energetic that it's hard to get an eye-focus. She knows all her lines and asks intelligent questions about how the scene should be played.

 

The spelling bees have been our biggest challenges to shoot; the last one took 12 hours to shoot and we burned 16,000' of film in one day with two cameras, so there's some pressure to shoot less film -- but it's hard to make our days under 12 hours and not run two cameras on a lot of it. We could break things up more, stop the cameras more, etc. but probably not get as many shots or cover scenes as well in our time limit. Plus they are pressuring me to drop the 2nd AC from B-camera when we're shooting in the same space, to save money, but it's hard for two cameras shooting with huge anamorphic prime lenses to share one 2nd AC and work quickly setting up two cameras on each set-up.

[David Mullen ASC]

Wire mesh?? That's one ugly building!

 

Knowing you are using a wide lens now makes it easier to understand your vision. The 5212 must have alot of latitude- are you ever tempted to overexpose a shot like that, just in case? How's this section of the film being processed?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sort of the point in these early scenes, to make her school experience seem like a downer, so actually the overcast weather has been good in that regard. Unfortunately, it's also been overcast in some of our later "happy" scenes.

 

When indoors, I've been shooting Expression 500T (5229) inside for these early scenes, and without the 85 filter in daylight, for a cool, grayish feeling. Outside I was planning on shooting 5212 rated at 40 ASA (with no correction) and pull-processing by one stop to match the look of Expression 500T. But the weather has been so flat some days that I've just shot the 5212 normal (at 80 ASA) except without the 85 filter, feeling that it might match the look of the Expression stock shot in more contrasty lighting. My other option was to use the Expression stock outdoors in this overcast weather, but I tendency is still to use the slower film when I can get away with it. So far, I only had one early scene in sunlight where I overexposed and pull-processed the 5212 to lower the contrast.

 

Also, overcast weather when surrounded by tall buildings can be more contrasty than you'd think.

[L K Keerthi Basu]

Thank you, Mr. David. I really feel the heat of the lights form this photos something like near to me. It is a splendid post to learn the setup.

 

L.K.Keerthibasu