Any good advice for this visual look?

Andre Hansen · February 11, 2014

Hi

This is my first post in here, but I have been reading posts in here for a while (virtue of a good cinematographer, right?).

I have a big project coming up this summer, hence me and the director are looking at particular visual elements for the movie.

We have agreed on the style, but practically I have a few questions:

I know Kaminski pulled the shutter out of sync on this one. But how do I achieve a similar effect (we don't know if we are shooting on RED, Sony, Alexa or DSLR before next month)? It would probably be for night ext. with street light or a dark scene int.

How do you get something like this? Is the light solely coming from inside? Saul Leiter.

And here's also a Leiter. Any advice for achieving a 'blurred window-effect' with atmosphere and contrast?

And last but not least: any suggestions on how to approach low-FPS-shooting in ext. night? Aiming for un-clearness and blurriness while still able to perceive what's going on.

I'm also greatly inspired by the look in Bleu by Kieslowski.

Thank you!

Edited February 11, 2014 by Andre Hansen

Adrian Sierkowski · February 11, 2014

Well for the first effect, on digital you'd pretty much have to figure out a way to do it in post--since digital cameras (minus the alexa studio) don't have a mechanical shutter, and also don't literally pull the image down.

For #2, I would say the light is coming from outside,since she is so close to the window-. probably shot with a pola filter to take all the reflection off of the glass.

#3 could be accomplished with vasaline on the window-- or fake snow/ice from the art department for the window. The BG is blowing snow-- could fake it, if you're going for snow-- or a hazer would be helpful.

Maybe instead of just changing to FPS to a slower one-- you could change shutter angle to something like 360 degrees-- depends on what you want really and what camera you're on, but you could grab a cheap stills camera that shoots video and do some tests.

Phil Rhodes · February 11, 2014

The shutter blur can be done fairly accurately in post. Use something like levels to isolate the brightest parts of the image to taste, then motion blur, and composite back over the original. Shift upwards to approximate the effect of the streaks originating in the highlights, depending on the amount of blur. Simple. With most blur filters you won't quite get an identical effect, but it's extremely similar. There may be a blur filter out there somewhere that'd approximate this more accurately.

The second shot is just through a bit of textured glass. There clearly is some light on the camera side of the glass as the highlights are visible, but mainly I'd assume it was lit from behind.

I suppose you could simulate the frost effect by spraying dulling spray (or hairspray), or something like petroleum jelly, on the glass, then it would be climate-independent. But you'd need to test and practice to get the right effects, and beware of cleaning it up. You don't want the cleanup bill for someone's classic car.

P