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Cinematographer on Indie Bollywood short


Davi Silveira

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Just wanted to share a short film I was the Cinematographer on. The whole project was completed from start to finish in one month and a half, given our time frame I'm happy with the short film. I've been privilege to meet some great people, the whole thing was based here in Seattle.

Camera: BMCC 2.5k RAW

Lens: Rokinon 17mm 2T and the Sigma 18-35mm Art 1.8

Edited: Final Cut X

Colored: DaVinci Resolve 12

Although it's in another language and sometimes hard to understand; it was a crazy fast experience, I'm very glad to have worked on it. I've worked on lot's of Bollywood Productions in LA and Las Vegas back in the day as a PA. Particularly "My name is Khan" It's funny after all those years I'm now involved in an indie Bollywood Production. I hope you enjoy it...

Please, I'd love to get some feed back on the Cinematography of the short. I wan't to improve and get better. I'd like to know any constructive feed back on things. The last night scenes of the movie were shot on available light, no bounce or anything... It was also our first days of the shoot and we were still not up to speed on things. I think some of those suffered the most.

**there are some shots one or two that were shot on the BMPCC with a very bad soft lens and they unfortunately made it in the film, also some weird artifacts from shooting in the night in really low light at the very end of the movie.**

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Really sorry Davi, there are two problems with this. Firstly it's quite a long video for people to watch here on cine.com but the other problem you have is that the story is so engaging and well directed that it completely distracts you from the cinematography! ;)

 

You need to dump off this Srinu person and find someone who isn't going to upstage you so much! ;)

 

I really enjoyed this short. I laughed in a few places and was impressed by how clever it was. Especially the guy getting punished for his good deeds! ;)

 

Bits of cinematography that stuck out to me as slightly crap was the white walled stuff in the house. Not much you can do about that but you know what I am talking about. Some of the other stuff seemed a bit ungraded blackmagic especially the low light stuff where it seemed like there needed to be more contrast or less washed out black. There are some focus issues at the end of the movie too but I don't mind it. I skimmed about and mostly framing seems to be really quite good and it's nice to see that someone has thought about it. There is a little too much centre framing every so often but it kind of works as it's not the only thing. The framing at 13:18 looks noticeable off. Main character awkwardly in the shot. Picture frame at other edge too. Would be better if you made good use of the change of colours in the background. Always try and pay attention to what is in the background even if out of focus as well as the foreground stuff. A lot of people make that mistake although you rarely seem to do it in this.

 

That's the best I can do as the story is just too engaging!

 

On the upside Great Short!

You should submit it to south by southwest or somewhere, maybe sundance too.

Hopefully it's not too long for them, it is really good.

 

Freya

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I think there is a big difference in quality between the day exterior scenes which have nice depth and contrast, and the interiors which are generally staged against plain white walls and lit very flatly. I would say that you need to apply your exterior strategies to your interiors and learn to light with contrast. Choose locations with darker colors and a variety of textures, use art direction, stage scenes in depth by using doorways and windows, and light in depth by creating areas of light behind dark foregrounds and vice versa. Darkness is your friend. Basically, control the light within the frame and shape it to direct the eye.

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I think there is a big difference in quality between the day exterior scenes which have nice depth and contrast, and the interiors which are generally staged against plain white walls and lit very flatly. I would say that you need to apply your exterior strategies to your interiors and learn to light with contrast. Choose locations with darker colors and a variety of textures, use art direction, stage scenes in depth by using doorways and windows, and light in depth by creating areas of light behind dark foregrounds and vice versa. Darkness is your friend. Basically, control the light within the frame and shape it to direct the eye.

Thanks Satsuki,

 

I agree, I know it's mostly due to the fact that there was no Pre-Production at all. We began shooting Dec 29 and finished the movie Feb 13th early morning! For a Valentine's day release. No Location Scouting, Art Director, or texture. True I could have done a little better on the bland white wall... I hung up that picture just to add something to the wall, there was nothing there originally when we first shot the scene. Everything was done in lighting speed with no pre-plan. I walked into a scene and 40 mins later we were shooting.

 

Ultimately, it was a learning experience for all involved. I know better than to shoot in those conditions but I also need to meet more people and keep making more Narratives. Obviously I want to grow and improve in the right way, by being Professional. We will make more and they will be better planned with pre-production (location scouting, lighting schematics, script breakdown, blocking!) I know that the most important thing about telling a story is keeping things simple in lighting, blocking, dialogue, visuals, etc. But that can only come after lot's of planning and testing.

 

Thanks again for both Comments

Edited by Davi Silveira
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Well, I guess we have to do the best we can with what we're given! I'll often lobby the director pretty strongly to block scenes in tighter shots against windows, mirrors, and through doorways when I'm in a similar situation just to get some kind of depth and contrast. A lot of web series and corporate shoots are like that - scout, art, shoot in a single 10hr day with no budget for OT. A lot of flying by the seat of your pants, which is good training I guess...

 

There are also tricks you can do in grading that can help quite a bit, adding vignettes, power windows, and grads to white walls after the fact. Am doing this right now on a web series in fact, it's amazing what you can do with a whole bunch of secondary corrections.

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