M Joel W

In my experience, 18% gray is somewhere around 40 IRE (in theory it should be brighter), and caucasian skin tones exposed at key end up around 50 or 60 IRE. For night exteriors I'll expose one and a half to two stops under at most, which usually puts caucasian skin around 25-30 IRE if I remember correctly… That's what I've gone for as a cut off point when looking to get the absolute "darkest" look. For TV, you want to keep your skin at normal levels, so like nearly 50 IRE I would say. Watch Lost, for instance, and see how bright they light night scenes. For night I would say 30IRE is the darkest you should go on any face you want it to read; obviously so long as you have a portion of the face exposed at that level and/or nice eye lights you can go darker for the rest... I'm an autodidact so this could be crazy, but it's what I go by. The darkest shots in the feature I'm grading now have their brightest skin tones between 35-40 IRE and they look so dark I'm worried the network might object. Could be totally wrong, but want to chime in since I'm curious what the pros think...

For the purpose of cinematic language, the human eye is neither wide nor telephoto. I've heard fields of view from 180º to 40º quoted, but it's all meaningless from the director's perspective. From the director's perspective, this is what's important: the angle at which our pupils converge correlates with the distance at which an object we're viewing lies from them and we need a cinematic way to convey that variable distance, but using just one camera. In the case of point of view shots, what we're looking at (distance-wise) is conveyed through focal length. The eyes "select" differently from a zoom lens, but the zoom is the cinematic equivalent of looking at something or honing one's focus in on it. The act of looking at a field then focusing in on a flower can be conveyed, cinematically, with a wide POV of the field with a zoom in to the flower (or a cut to a more telephoto shot of the flower). This can be complemented by a rack focus or pan/tilt if needed. And for this reason, a POV can be wide or telephoto, depending on what its owner is looking at (the entire room, a small object across the room, etc.). Remember, most zooms are found in POV shots or are motivated by subjective alignment with someone looking at something (even if that "someone" is the director, hence the popularity of the zooms in the 70s, an era wherein the presence of the director made itself most felt). Hence, grammar-wise, POVs are focal length agnostic, remarkably so. You can limit your POVs to medium wide angles if you want a natural representation of space or if you like the feel of that focal length, but grammatically there is no need or precedent to do so. As for the shot in question, a telephoto lens is inherently more distanced than a wide angle lens. It puts the viewer further from the subject, assuming an equal shot scale. There are many kinds of distance: tragic, voyeuristic, comic, Brechtian, etc. In the case of Cinderella Man, which I have not seen but assuming your description is accurate, the director is going for tragic distance with that lens choice. Spielberg and a lot of the other masters will do the same and shoot the saddest moments with a bit of distance (though Spielberg will more often use other distanciation devices than focal length) to make a really poignant moment work without being too awkwardly "close" or too explicitly manipulative. An obvious example of this technique (distance facilitating tragedy) is the "nooo!" shot, in which a tragic character collapses and screams "nooo!" while the camera pulls out (or up).

This is like asking a painter what brushes to buy. Really depends on taste and subject matter. The most useful focal lengths for most productions are 18mm to 100mm, imo. Some directors go wide in general (Terry Gilliam), some do everything but stick toward medium wide (Spielberg), some stick around 50mm (Ozu, Hitchcock), Chris Cunningham once wanted to shoot a feature at 300mm exclusively... I like 18mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 105mm. Or any kit that fills out that range nicely. You can get a Tamron 17-55mm VC f2.8 lens for $500 and that's pretty useful, a good lens with ugly bokeh. Or a set of f2.8 nikon primes and an adapter but you lose image stabilization and interface with the camera. I like to shoot day exteriors between f4 and f8. Interiors around f2.8 or f4. Wider when needer. This varies tremendously based on budget and style. Then you need ND filters, a follow focus (ideally), a tripod, a mic, etc. Are you really planning to direct and shoot a feature with a $1000 camera rig you own? It will not be easy. A dSLR and fast normal zoom is a nice kit to get started with and you can get "cinematic" results, but it's just a start.

Yeah, the industrial vapor gel is pretty nice, works well and looks pretty good. Doesn't match perfectly, but not all street lights seem to match perfectly (tho in theory sodium vapor lights should). Works well with par cans to make pools of light but, as mentioned above, it cuts output quite a bit. I liked what I saw of it. I think 1/2CTS+1/2CTO and 1/2CTB+1/2 plus green over tungsten sources are the traditional formulae for sodium vapor and mercury street lights, respectively. Industrial vapor has a browner look than 1/2CTS+1/2CTO would, though.

I don't have much else to say since I'm not qualified to advise would-be directors (I am a would-be director), but David's advice about placement of the audience, and particularly Hitchcock vs Kubrick (though I would say Kubrick is more "authorial" than simply objective--he offers a strong point of view on the action, his own) is super, super important and very insightful. Don't think of the camera as a camera, but instead think of the camera as the audience. How would you feel watching a scene from a foot away? Would you feel different if you were across the room? How do you want the audience to feel? Before even thinking of shot scale (which can be determined by focal length or camera placement, so don't just think about one or the other) or coverage, think of the audience's (and the filmmaker's) ongoing relationship to the subject matter. A close wide angle shaky cam can feel very exciting, like you're right there in the action--maybe good for a war movie or something. A distanced telephoto shot could make the same subject matter feel more tragic, appropriate for a different war movie. A push-in can bring you closer to a character's psychology, increasing your sympathy for them or signifying a realization. Who gets the POV shots? Are there zooms? If so, are they motivated by a character focusing in on something (Raimi-esque) or the director indicating that you should look at it (more Kubrickian?)? How much does the audience know relative to each character? How does that make us feel about each character and thus change our experience of the story? Everything--sound, shot scale, camera placement, camera movement, range of narration (what we know relative to different characters), "look," etc. guides our experience and is primarily predicated on how much knowledge and emotion we share with our characters. We could do a POV/CU cutting pattern and we would be very close to a character. That's an effective thing to do if you want to empathize with a protagonist. Or do you want to study the scene? Or something in between? How do you want to inform the audience's experiences--though blocking, shot choice, sound, camera movement? There's a ton of stuff to think about and to work with. There's a story there. You can tell as much or as little of it as you want, you can have it be on screen or off screen, in back story or in real time, and you can tell it from any perspective (one character's, another character's, a broad objective perspective, the director's perspective, which might have a moral message or query)--you can modulate however you want between all these choices, most directors do. When most people start making movies, they shoot everything--they just want to get a record of the story on screen. The art of filmmaking is choosing what to show, what to hide, what to imply, and from what perspectives and subjectivities to do so, which then dictate formal stylization. To start, you would do well to get everything on screen in the first place. Write a script, write down the story beats that you need to show to make the story clear, make some storyboards, and shoot. Just get some practice. And watch movies (this is step two for me as I work toward directing more shorts--more watching and learning) and see how it's done. The processes will inform one another. Also check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Bare-Bones-Camera-Course-Video/dp/0960371818 The Bordwell/Thompson intro to film books are good academic texts, worth checking out, too. There are some okay cinematography and directing texts, but those subjects are so broad it's hard to write about them, imo. Most people don't direct a film, if at all, until they're in their 30s. So you have time to practice. There are jobs in the industry other than director, so you can work your way up, or do something else and save up for film school. Just keep watching, making, and thinking about movies. I should follow my own advice...

Thanks for posting that, Adam, that's a great example. I think, however, there's even more going on in that scene than just that. What Spielberg is particularly great at is keeping the audience at just the right emotional distance from the subject matter. It's not just that an extra CU is unnecessary--it's also that it would feel manipulative, artificial, in this case. I think what's least appreciated about Spielberg is that he's (at his best) extremely formally transparent, far more so than his Hollywood Renaissance peers. He blocks and shoots with clarity, elegance, and emotional impact, but the formal devices he uses are among the least overt and yet they're so emotionally resonant. Spielberg's the master of indirect subjective cues (particularly push ins, aperture framing/composition in general, and music). He doesn't use as many POV shots as some other directors and his camera movement is rarely unmotivated: he'll rarely place you in any one character's head (as, say, Hitchcock might through range of narration and POVs); he doesn't rely on the edit to guide your eye but instead on blocking and composition; and he refrains from making his presence felt in other ways--as I wrote, he avoids unmotivated camera movement and unnecessary inserts when possible. What's crucial about the scene in question is that it feels tragic without feeling emotionally manipulative. For tragedy to work, there needs to be some distance between the audience and the subject, but knowing how much distance and then modulating that distance appropriately as a scene progresses is difficult. This scene is set up with us knowing more than the woman who receives the letter and so we begin sympathetic to her but not actually aligned with her own experience, and while each shot brings us closer to her emotionally, Spielberg eschews any direct POVs, maintaining a bit of distance while still amping up our sympathies (he increases our sympathy but not so much empathy or vicarious experience). We're brought physically closest to her toward the beginning of the dolly right (when we're actually inside the house with her, which we aren't in other parts of the scene), but then when she actually receives the letter it's through the frame of a door and with her back to us--so there is quite a bit of distance, none of that straight-on CU that you're right would ruin the scene. The set dressing on the right clarifies and provides additional emotional impact, too, but organically, no cutting to inserts or unmotivated camera movement needed. That's the thing; the scene isn't only extremely clear without any need for dialogue, inserts, over-editing, or voice over--it also has an emotional trajectory and arc that modulates alignment and sympathy through the subtlest means. I can cut between POV shots or add shakycam to put you in a character's mind or evoke chaos, respectively, but manipulating emotional distance and evoking tragedy/wonder/what-have-you as transparently as Spielberg does is just like impossible. As an aspiring director, watching Spielberg is outright daunting. It's inspiring that anyone can achieve such impact through such subtle means--all the other "greats" are far more authorial or simply overrated--but also these scenes make me feeling hopeless to begin work on my own short films. I have no idea how I will ever even approximate this, myself. For now, I'll start by making shot lists and blocking diagrams of his early films, I guess, but he truly is a genius and among the greats--the greatest ever popular director, imo, though I do love Hitchcock...

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=26629A I've tried neat video (it must be with a temporal window of 5 frames)/chroma blur, as suggested above, and it generally cleans up any moire that wasn't immediately very visible on the LCD (and if it's that bad, there's no cure other than superimposing a still image, as you suggest, or shooting the shot just a tiny bit out of focus, which can work fine, anyway). All these solutions, including the one I linked to and the FCP plug in, do a wide-radius chroma blur and thus reduce color resolution and apparent saturation. Just something to be aware of.

Sorry for the beginner questions, but what do you mean by scenery/solutions? I agree that Spielberg is amazing at blocking, but what impresses me more than that alone is that he storyboards his films so carefully and still manages to keep things lively and naturalistic. It's not just a matter of where people are moving and when but how he coordinates that with the camera. He's very good at keeping action spatially coherent and camera movement emotionally resonant even while coordinating fantastic figure movement. As someone who is starting out as a director (shorts and stuff), I want to know...how can I learn to do this? Does it require very good spatial skills, coordinating all that in one's mind? Should I buy some of his storyboards? Or work backward from his early movies, mapping out blocking diagrams and shot lists as I watch? If Abrams can learn, I figure so can I... While I agree that Super 8 was shot too tight in general, given that Abrams started as a TV director he manages to avoid an over-reliance on CUs pretty admirably. Only the special effect sequences (train crash, the entire third act) felt way too tight and over-edited to me. I was very, very impressed by Abrams' direction of the quieter scenes and they honestly felt a lot like Spielberg to me visually, even when the script (which had problems even before it entirely fell apart at the second act turn) felt self-conscious.

I am really tempted by this. What would shipping across the country cost? Using media mail, of course.

Although it doesn't cover everything, this is bar none the best book I've read on the subject of camerawork: The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video For technical stuff (grip and electric-related, specifically), this is a fun read: Set Lighting Technician's Handbook: Film Lighting Equipment, Practice, and Electrical Distribution

The 11-16mm lens is too wide for a polarizer (unless you want a really extreme look, with some sky dark and some bright) and a 50mm too tight for that rig (I'm sorry, but the glidecams are not very good). Also consider that within a given scene you'll usually want to maintain a consistent stop…going from f2.8 to f1.2 without motivation is uncommon. The t2i has very good highlight detail for the price. For exteriors, I shoot neutral with highlight tone priority and underexpose half a stop (relative to a meter; half a stop under looks normal to the eye) and don't have problems with contrast, generally. It's not great, but for the price… With the hvx I used a polarizer and grads for everything, but with a t2i or better it's kind of nice being able to skip them. A polarizer can, however, reduce glare on water and foliage dramatically. So at noon, judicious use may be in order... You can also just use it at half strength, too. I mean I guess it's a matter of taste. None of the lights you own will do any good. Jokers are okay, but they will slow you down tremendously and aren't that strong once diffused (and if they're not diffused they look sourcey, could be good or a problem depending on how naturalistic your style is). Generators are very loud and slow to move. Better to do a good job with limited gear than rent more than your crew can use effectively. Moving hard lights, a moving sun, alternating use of polarizers and switching f-stops…seems like a recipe for disjunctive cuts. But then again I don't really know what I'm doing; I am still a student...some people use this stuff well and certainly it's possible to. Personally, I would just keep it simple, buy a few 8x4s of shiny board from home depot or a lighting rental place and use them for fill, white side for direct light, shiny side if it's overcast or in shade. C-stands for static shots, hollywood them as need be for moving shots… These are much more flexible than 6x6s because they're faster to set up and can be moved easily by a couple crew members or held down with a single c-stand. Also shiny boards are more reflective than lame. I would also consider a 12x12 eighth stop silk if you're concerned about harsh light for reverse shots and at noon. A little slow to use, but still faster than lights, super cheap to rent, and works well and continuity will be okay since it retains some directionality. A couple tricks to avoid eye shadows under a silk: fill with white board from below; hang a large flag over the silk so there's less toppy light and more from the sides.

Me? I've worked with bolexes plenty and have shot a bit with SR2s. I don't know how that factors into a discussion of digital cameras, though. I didn't even mention film. If we're talking about movies that are shooting on dSLRs film probably isn't an option, budget-wise.

These videos are ridiculous. Instead of propagating the ridiculous (but at least kind of egalitarian) myth that a dSLR will make you a "filmmaker" they propagate the yet more poisonous one that yet more expensive cameras will...because they're more expensive. Straight from the school of "buy a red; be a DP." Studio pictures, with budgets in the millions of dollars, rent more expensive cameras? Who'd ever guess it? If you have the money, of course rent a better camera. First hire better talent, sound, production design, and lighting, which are far more significant factors. Anyone who's intimidated by dSLRs to the point of ignoring their remarkable image quality for the money is uncomfortable enough with his own craft that he has to look to the expensive cameras he's using for validation.

Overcast or sunny? If overcast, there may not be much you can do. Shiny board, maybe. If it's sunny, you can follow the talent with white board (shiny board wobbles too visibly when reflecting direct lihgt, imo, but might work in some cases) and if the ground isn't in frame, cover it with a white bedsheet, which will bounce a lot of light into the talent's face without looking fake. Polarizers are okay...generally they darken the part of the sky that's already darkest so I am not sure I'd use one with a steadicam or wide angle move. At least not always. What are you shooting on? Money can definitely buy highlight detail...

Why do you prefer to have highlight tone priority off? It provides an extra stop of highlight detail for no penalty. I think the appeal of the technicolor style is for those who are grading in log and need similar flexibility for their b-camera. I don't know if it offers an advantage to "geurilla" shooters. Certainly I wouldn't use it without metering, whereas I do feel comfortable using the neutral mode without a meter since the LCDs on Canon's dSLRs correlate decently well with the final image. But with a low contrast picture style...it's too hard to judge exposure and ratios without a meter.

Honestly, I think shooting film is harder, but I am very inexperienced at it. I talked with Phil Abraham (DP of the Sopranos) and he strongly felt the opposite; he found he could get away with more aggressive contrast ratios on film and he could basically light by eye since he knew the stocks he used so well, but he struggled to replicate the look on digital. Whatever you grow up with is easier, I guess, so if you're used to film I imagine a dSLR will present some challenges. dSLRs also have bad dynamic range and poor recording codecs so there's less flexibility in post and the look is a bit harsher. I still find them WAY easier to use than film, but that's due to a lack of experience on my part. And honestly, my results with dSLRs are middling at best. But after a few months' practice I think they're easy to shoot with, so don't sweat it if they seem weird at first. In terms of interface, dSLRs are a bit of a pain and a lot of people with more experience in film find them overwhelmingly complicated because whereas with a film camera it's like set your f-stop, point, and shoot, with a dSLR there are a thousand menu options and the viewfinder is nowhere near as useful as a good optical finder. The real technical challenge is finding the proper recording settings and mentally correlating the LCD's image with what you want to get on your computer. When I started shooting with my t2i I often overexposed by about half a stop and I used ultraflat until I realized that this makes it much harder to expose correctly since the image on the LCD is so muddy and then the poor tonality hurts skin tones, too. I've since switched to the neutral setting (with highlight tone priority, using contrast filters and fill light instead of picture looks to deal with harsh contrast), and I get much better results. If you're not experienced with the camera or are getting bad exposures run some tests to get see what ISO setting on your meter gives the best results and then keep metering all your shots until you're comfortable going by the LCD. I found I was overexposing a bit when I just plugged in whatever I metered, so I rated 2/3 stop faster and got okay exposures and detail to about two and a half or three stops above 18% gray, which is decent for digital, imo. In terms of lighting, you've got maybe two stops above and two stops below, way less than with color negative film. So either dress your talent in more neutral tones or you'll have to be more conservative with your ratios. But dSLRs are much easier to light for than older video cameras, imo, which had like a stop above 18% gray before blowing out. In terms of camera moves, skew is a killer. Use IS lenses and short focal lengths and whatever methods of stabilization you have available. Aliasing isn't that big an issue if you avoid fine patterns and throw the camera just slightly out of focus when you can't avoid them (finding how much out of focus you need to go takes practice). Past that, good digital cinematography and good film cinematography have a lot in common. dSLRs are nowhere near as elegant as film and the image isn't as good, but you can get amazing results for the money; they're really unprecedented and democratizing in that regard. It's all a matter of practice! Sometimes that means forgetting old habits, but still 95% of what makes a good image is common between film and digital. The rest is just practice. Shoot a ton under different lighting conditions with different camera settings and see what works for you and what doesn't. I'm not saying my advice above is the best way to go, it's just what worked for me.

Reportedly about half the movie was shot on red and now Malick and Lubezki are using the red exclusively. Funny that kodak would publish an article about the image quality of 65mm film only to have the filmmakers in question turn around and abandon it for an inexpensive digital alternative.

Phil is right, dSLRs block IR. Maybe try one of those minidv cameras with night shot if you really want the IR look without spending a lot of money. I would just rent a 1.2k HMI and honda generator. Maybe $250/day? If you have a tiny space and fast lenses you can buy a lot of 500w EBW photofloods and put them in china lanterns around the scene. If the director's unwilling to spring for that, he will get a "Hammer horror" look no matter how you dress it up. Although maybe you could do some night for night and day for dusk and motivate that according to the story and get away with it. I've never done day for night, but if I were to, I would: Try to shoot when the light is very harsh, like contrasty and with a clear sky, and the sky on the horizon is about 90 degrees from the sun, so....noon-ish? Shoot 3200K white balance but then desaturate considerably in post. Use a good polarizer to darken the sky; the polarizer should be pretty effective since the sky near the horizon will be 90 degrees from the sun. You'll need to frame creatively to get as little sky in frame as possible and to make sure the sky you do get in frame is polarized correctly. Wide shots will be tricky, so I'd use an ND grad if necessary. Sky replacement in post is one solution, too. Use the sun as a key light, filling faces with bounce board as needed. Expose so that the key is one and a half stops under, so maybe 30 IRE on faces? Normally during the day you'd be using the sky as a backlight or side light and so it might be a stop or two, possibly much more, hot...so this would be a drastic amount of underexposure. Stack tons of ND filters to get a stop of f2 or so on the lens. That way you can believe there's not much light out there and you can blur out the background, making the tricky continuity of finding acceptable backgrounds a little easier. Even with that kind of approach you'll probably get ugly results. It's day for night, after all.

He's not a big fan of anamorphic lenses, preferring cropped super35 for the ease of use, speed, and lack of artifacts. I believe...

Thanks, Roberto; I have used the stretched oval bokeh trick before. I'm doing this as a favor for a friend and don't know the his budget. Could be big enough for a real anamorphic kit; could be small enough that I'd need a DIY solution, but I want to be prepared for any situation. I put together a home made solution with 5mm spacing of dyed fishing line. Proud of myself I was able to get results this good, but the effect is much too weak except in ultra-high contrast situations, such as that below. Don't think the director will accept it since it's supposed to be a very extreme effect, but I might use it some day, who knows.

Thanks, it looks like the cheaper ones are just resin or glass scratched in one direction whereas the more expensive ones (that you linked to) embed colored rods in the filter. I tried scratching grooves into glass and coloring them, but the effect didn't work at all. I've had some luck with monofilament behind the lens, but the effect isn't that strong and once you dye it the beams are really weak. I'll try in front of the lens, or see if the director can afford to rent or buy what you posted above.

I'm just wondering what, physically, an "anamorphic streak" filter looks like, so I can build one for a friend. I imagine it's basically a scored piece of glass (horizontally) with the etches dyed blue. But how wide are the etches and how far apart. How many? I'm either going to take a glass blank or resin blank for the cokin p system (depending on how much etching needs to be done), score it, then paint it with nail polish or rit dye. Worth the effort or should I just rent the vantage filter? Thanks.

Have you considered City College Los Angeles or UCLA Extension school? Both are relatively affordable and have very strong reputations from what I've heard here and elsewhere. Not sure what degrees they offer, as if the degree matters.

Anyone know anything about the florida state film program? Right now I am interested in directing and cinematography equally, but want to learn more about directing since I have less training there. Opinions from others have run the gamut. Thanks.

Are you sure? I've noticed that the 7d seems to have a slightly better image, but never noticed a difference in latitude (except there might be a tiny bit less noise with the 7d?). Also, bitrates aren't apples-to-apples; codecs have to be taken into account so your comparisons with the red and alexa aren't really helpful. Also, my t2i records at about 45 megabit/sec on average on cheap media so I don't know where you are getting those numbers. I am not disagreeing; I am really quite a newbie to all this, but I am still curious to see your sources as I am working on some projects later this year for which it might be worth using a 7d if I can afford to rent one. And yes, I have used both cameras rather extensively, but never directly side-by-side.