These Days

Kevin Zanit · July 2, 2005

So we finished week one today (Friday). We actually only worked Thursday and Friday on a character?s documentary and student film (these will be movies in the movie).

We shot the documentary stuff on day one. It went pretty good; it was all mostly available light shooting (as it was a documentary). I used two cameras on some of it. I am a little concerned that the logistics of both cameras might actually slow us down more than help us. That said, the time we save in coverage is pretty substantial. The biggest problem was that we moved so fast we ended up 3 hours ahead of schedule. It was only a problem because the location we planned to wrap in could not close down until latter in the day (a coffee shop). We killed some time while the producers tried to get us in earlier, which they seceded in.

The only real issue was the matter of how documentary looking the ?documentary? should look. I felt it should look pretty unrefined, but the director wanted it to look more polished. Fine by me.

The director and I are still feeling each other out. The night we wrapped day 1, he called to talk to me about the days work, and he expressed interest in having more input in the composition, but was nervous about offending me (I think some bad experiences in the past with other DPs). It told him I didn?t mind at all, and thought that he should frame it up in a way he was happy with, and I would then give my input.

That brings us to day 2. Day 2 went pretty good. It was a mock ?student film? shot in black and white (we shot in color, but I turned the chroma on the monitor down to view a black and white image, and then in post we will make it black and white). All night interiors, so I had to black out all the windows. The director told me he wanted to make it look as good as possible with the equipment we had (a kino that I never used, a 650 fresnel, and some china balls). I mostly just used the china balls, and practical lamps. We were all really happy with the look of all of today?s work. The director was much more hands-on with the composition after our talk the night before, which I was totally fine with, and he seemed real happy with our coverage.

The only real challenge of the day was that I was working with less crew as some were off doing the load-in, but we really did not need much in the way of crew as we had ?a light and a half? (as the AD would put it ;) ).

Tuesday we start back up and into the ?actual? movie. It is a tricky location (really small), but I have some ideas . . . more to come.

I didn?t really take any pictures as there was nothing all that interesting. Here is one from day 1, just a character talking into two cameras during an interview. I was just augmenting daylight from windows with a Kino Flo just to give a little shape to the light, pretty basic.

Kevin Zanit

Jon Rosenbloom · July 3, 2005

Couple questions: Are you shooting in 24p or 24p advanced? What kind of monitor are you using? Any video tech's as part of the crew?

Kevin Zanit · July 3, 2005

I am shooting 24p standard to keep the post workflow as simple and standard as possible.

I don't know what the full model is of the monitor we are using, other than that it is from the Sony PVM series.

I am not using any form of a video tech. I may get to have Elhanan out for a few days mainly for fun, but he is pretty busy lately so we will see how that goes. There is so little to do with these cameras. During the prep I just looked to see how well the cameras matched (with the settings matching). They matched pretty well, so no real problems there.

Kevin Zanit

Jon Rosenbloom · July 3, 2005

Yeah, they're great little cameras. I've only shot 3 or 4 shorts on 100a, and my attitude has been that if the image on the monitor looks good then we can make that image appear again in post. It's kind of haphazard, so I was wondering, since you're doing a feature w/ some hope of some kind of projection, if you're doing anything to be more precise about the digital process.

Kevin Zanit · July 3, 2005

I am shooting it fairly similar to how I would shoot another format.

I try my best to get it all in camera, so that I don't have to trust post production to dial in the look. I will still refine the look with color correction, but it does not become a crutch.

To ensure accuracy I just shoot with a monitor set to bars, and tented in. There is not much more than that to make sure the monitor is WYSIWYG with this set of equipment.

The settings in the camera are fairly neutral bearing in mind projection. I am shooting with very low detail (-4 to -7) and the black level floats around some (-4 to onetime so far -12). Most of the color settings are set to zero. I am shooting with Cinegama in most situations.

Kevin Zanit

David Mullen ASC · July 3, 2005

Why 24P instead of 24P Advanced? Aren't they going to edit it in 24P instead of 60i? It's a lot easier to remove the pulldown with 24P Advanced in FCP.

Kevin Zanit · July 3, 2005

Because at this point they are going to edit in a 60i timeline.

I actually am talking to the editor again on Monday to confirm that he is absolutely positive that this is the approach he wants (the footage we have shot so far has been in 60i).

David Mullen ASC · July 4, 2005

24P or 24PA both capture at 24P (actually 23.976) and both record to 60i (actually 59.94) -- the only difference is the type of pulldown they employ to convert 24 to 60. 24PA uses a sequence where the video frame that contains one field from the 24P frame and the second field from the next 24P frame can be eliminated to get back to 24P in editing. But this also means that the Advanced pulldown is less smooth-looking than normal pulldown because it's meant to be eliminated. You'd edit in 24P and add a normal pulldown at the end for a 60i version.

There's a good diagram of this here:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/24p_i...P_nattress.html

Kevin Zanit · July 4, 2005

Which is why my original preference was to shoot in 24pA, but I am not the person in charge of post.

Thanks for the link, because I think it helps explain it better. We start back up on Tuesday, and my plan was to talk to them on Monday to just confirm everything, but also to subtly restate my case as to why we should go with 24pA.

It does not affect my life much, other than that if we do need true 24p for the future shooting in standard mode will not provide the best quality (versus 24pA).