Please critique my Cinematography

Davi Silveira · June 2, 2014

Hello,

I just completed working on a short film.. extremely small crew, sometimes I was the only crew member. :) Regardless of that, I'd love some constructive feed back on my Cinematography. Pointers on what to think about, good visual analyzation and thoughts. Let me just say I appreciate all of the professionals on this site helping others to grow and learn.

Sincerely,

Davi

Matthew W. Phillips · June 2, 2014

I love it. The colors were gorgeous. Who did your grading? Very nice eye color too!

Davi Silveira · June 2, 2014

I love it. The colors were gorgeous. Who did your grading? Very nice eye color too!

I did the grade, I'm glad you liked it. I also edited it, my greatest wish was to have had separate individuals for those key areas but I couldn't and was forced to do them myself. My goal was to just take the RAW from DaVinci and bring it back to real life. I really never "Color Graded" cause everything I tried I ultimately didn't like, I just tried to bring up the colors to life like color correction and such. The cemetery scene was day 4 night so I didn't play with that one quite a bit to get it to look semi nightish..

Matthew W. Phillips · June 2, 2014

With all due respect, it seems hard to believe that those were not graded. How did you shoot this?

Davi Silveira · June 3, 2014

All I meant was that technically I didn't "color grade" I color corrected the footage and added a little contrast that's all. I really happy you liked it a lot. This was all possible through a awesome lut I find online.

Matthew W. Phillips · June 3, 2014

All I meant was that technically I didn't "color grade" I color corrected the footage and added a little contrast that's all. I really happy you liked it a lot. This was all possible through a awesome lut I find online.

Sounds a bit like semantics but you never answered my question of how you shot this?

Davi Silveira · June 4, 2014

Sounds a bit like semantics but you never answered my question of how you shot this?

Okay, sorry here is how I shot this... Since that's kind of a general question I'll say anything and everything that comes to mind on the subject. I shot this with my BMCC 2.5k in RAW mode. Typically alone on set I had to use the help of whomever was there to help with a bounce or negative fill. I lit mostly by natural light and a set of 300w(x1) soft frost - 150w(x1) clear. I had also one dimmer. I used a SpeedBooster Leica to MFT with one 35-70mm zoom "Leica" lens. Also used a 28mm Zeiss, 50mm M42 (don't recall the brand), and a 35mm super Takumar m42. ahhh what else, we shot mostly during cloudy days, just the way it worked out, we did not plan that. Recorded audio with a NTG2-RODE mic. I also use a Genuses Matte box with an ND.6. I don't have an external battery solution yet so I was very conscious about battery life and kept it plugged in when possible. I ran the RAW through Davinci to CC and then brought it back for color grading. I hope this answered most of your question. Thank you Matthew for your interest.

Best,

Davi