"Mi Kulpa", a short film. Some dark stuff.

Alex Wuijts · July 13, 2013

Hey guys and girls

Just thought I'd share some frames of a short I shot last month on the island of Curaçao. The story is about a young guy who faces a big moral dillema when his mother ends up in the hospital, and the only way for him to pay for her surgery is by helping out an old friend smuggling drugs.

I used an F3 with a PIX240 recorder set to 10-bit 444 RGB. Lenses were the new Schneider Cine Xenar III. I knew I had to shoot most day stuff with natural light and a couple of mirrors or reflector boards. For night stuff and interiors I wanted to stick to lighting that was available on the island, like fluorescents and a couple of bulbs. I also had two weird looking lights with six energy saving bulbs screwed into it that gave me a good backlight on the wide exterior night shots. I tried to keep all night exterior stuff completely monochrome, so no warm contrast, except when he was at home.

For a film like this I believe the best approach is to pick your locations, colours and angles carefully, and let the natural light guide you, so to speak. I love it when actors go dark when they enter a room, and I would ask the director if they could open a window or door in the shot so light would fall in.

The sun on the island would be as top as it comes for most of the day and then plunge quickly into the sea, so I let it all go. I thought I would be compromising the feel of the natural light on the island if I were to fill everything up, and in the end the s-log on the F3 captured so much information in the shadows that I'm not too worried about faces going too dark in day stuff.

I used a T1 filter to filter out UV-light, and that gave a nice greenish hue, so I decided to leave that in for everything.

I shot most part at a 2.8/4 stop. The lenses look very nice at this stop. They have quite a (I think) nasty rainbow-like flare if you open them up to T2, but stopping down to 2.8/4 would eliminate that very well.

The PIX recorder makes the F3 a formidable machine (also literally unfortunately). As far as ergonomics go, it was a b*tch, but I really liked the image I got out of it. I had to check every take to see if it had recorded it, which was also a big nuisance. Don't know whether it was the PIX or my setup (genlocked and tc synched with a lockit sync box).

All the frames are ungraded jpgs.

Let me know what you think!

Edited July 13, 2013 by Alex Wuijts

July 13, 2013

Looks lovely

Alex Wuijts · July 13, 2013

Thanks Stephen!

I thought I should provide a little more info on the shown frames. I can't post stuff that gives away too much of the film, that's why they're all a little nondescript.

As far as lighting:

frame 1. Just the sunlight coming through the kitchen window. It blows out ofcourse but hey, that's life. I love the texture the lenses give faced with strong light like this. The bland colors help too, I think.

frame 2. obviously natural light. I was happy with the detail in the bright skies.

frame 3. A fluorescent key light, a small reflection board to give a faint eye light, and a silver reflector as a small backlight/kicker. I lit the background with one of those weird six-lights.

frame 4. just the sunlight coming in through the window

frame 5. a 100W bulb as a keylight and the six-light coming through the window.