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Vincenzo Condorelli AIC

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Everything posted by Vincenzo Condorelli AIC

  1. Any style is fine as long as it serves the story well, what I only find a bit annoying is when this kind of trendy low key look is manifestly achieved in post and looking so fake. I often see day int with clipping windows and very extreme low key inside apart from the key on the talents (sometimes not even that). That’s well beyond expressionism, especially if it becomes the main trait of the visual style for days int throughout the piece. In my humble opinion it’s just not real. As for the nights int, I don’t think this issue has mostly to do with practicals lighting, but it rather depends on predominance of soft lighting. In the project I’m currently shooting I’m only using practical lights and china balls of different sizes as extensions for night interiors, while lighting the far backgrounds objects out of the windows (trees, buildings, so on) with M40s Or M90s. This way I always try to achieve some highlights (whether from the practicals or from outside) that balances the predominant soft lighting. I must add that it’s my first time shooting with Alexa LF, because of the 4K requirement from the OTT streaming platform, and I’ve been so far satisfied by following my usual approach from previous workflow on Alexa: EI at 400 to protect the shadows. This way a get a “denser” signal while working at low levels and no noise. I only had to tweak the dailies with the DIT once (Look files tend to crush the blacks too much) so that he knows what are the levels I want to deliver on a daily basis, of course when I’ll sit with my colourist at the grading I will have more time and space for fine tuning.
  2. yes mark, it is intended for their domestic audience, kind of romantic mood, flattering lighting, exteriors and interiors, mostly shot at magic hour...have you got a link to your works?
  3. hello everybody, as am about to shoot a commercial in paris, featuring indian models, i was wondering if you guys wanted to share ideas on which gels to use to enhance the skintones for the beauty shots. these are the models: http://inega.in/v2/models/male/manu/ http://inega.in/v2/models/female/ana/ thanks a lot
  4. am prepping a feature doc for theatrical release and considering the canon c300 as an option due to its small size and the fact that the director might be operating on her own a few shots (intimate situations with the characters). we're going to have a few helicopter shots and i'm very concerned about the possible wobbling effects, as it is well known the case of the dslr (because of the cmos sensor). unfortunately im not going to have the chance to test the helicopter shot before the actual shoot therefore i was wondering if any of you have more infos/experience about this issue. thx a lot
  5. what you call "kraut camera" has been for 90 years the leader in movie camera manifacturing by setting the highest quality standards for the industry worldwide. ive got the honour and privilege to be friend of one of arri's top manager, he was telling me that when they set the price of the alexa they did consider any detail, starting from the cost of the plastic buttons of the menu in order to be competitive and achieve the highest quality at once. arri would never come out with a prototype on the market, cause they know reliability is a key factor in this business and they utterly respect the craft of cinematographers. it's serious stuff, not playing for the fan boys. .
  6. if you want the so-called "film look", then you should shoot film. and that does not mean that film look is the only acceptable look that can be created nowadays.
  7. if the image tells something on its own, something that cannot be delivered by any other medium, then it is a great image. for me this is the very starting principle of cinematography, what really matters before any other technical and artistic consideration which apply from case to case.
  8. the director i'm working with on a feature doc for theatrical release (we're at early prep) proposed to take chris marker's "la jetéee", the classic from french new wave, as a main visual reference. the proposal makes quite sense cause half of the film will rely on archive photography, the other half is what we'll shoot and it deals with contemporary events. in this way the whole film could have an organic visual narrative and a balance between the past and the present times. besides many theorical debates (whether la jetée is photography or cinematography) i've not found much on the internet and i was wondering if anyone would share more technical infos about the way the film was captured. my guess is that it was shot on agfa film stock, as most of european films of those times, medium format 6 x 4,5 cm (equal to 1.33:1 aspect ratio). could anyone share any more info on this? thx a lot
  9. i've finally seen tinker tailor soldier spy...what a fantastic piece of work, that's the cinematography i love most, subtle and well refined, serving at best the narrative
  10. lighting-wise, as adrian already pointed out, i see no big obstacles to face. i like very much the references you posted and in any case, such low lighting approach would benefit more from grain than electronic noise unless you're going for something like david lynch's "inland empire"! kodak vision 3 500t indeed could be the right choice, if i were your dop i'd rated it at 320 just to get a nicely exposed neg. once i shot it at night in a park, with available lighting just from mercury sodium lamps in the wide shots and i was quite happy with the grain. shooting at magic hour in the alleyway and the housing street won't be a problem. in both scenarios, i'd suggest your dop to try to use only available light bounced out from big reflectors (poliboards...the cheapest you can get). it will catch up all the beautiful nuances of the sun light at that time, something no articial light can ever do. your dop should definitely scout both locations and take notes about the direction of the sun and the exposure you get (incident reading will be enough), then you could finalise your shooting list & camera positions. as for the interior, of course the tv set won't provide a decent exposure by itself but there are many cheap ways to cheat it. you could just use a couple of arri 300 kw mizar, gelled with 1/2 ctb and some diffusion for key, direct lighting and have a gaffer (with a good sense of pace and rythm :) ) move his hands in front of the lamp to fake the tv effect. that's the simplest way to do that. a 1200 hmi will be enough for the source coming from the window. at the end of the day, you won't spend a lot on lighting for sure. finally,when shooting the tv set beware of the stripping effect, check what kind of beat frequency it has (should be 60 hz) and see if you can adjust the shutter angle accordingly to that.
  11. it definitely shows :rolleyes: cinema (and any other kind of filmmaking) is a collaborative media, the main skill of a director should be the ability to get the best out of each of his collaborator, both the talents and the head of dept. all the greatest directors did and do so. it is not a one man show. there can be exceptions, but this is the rule.
  12. any list leaving out masters of light such as john alton, jack cardiff, gordon willis, haskell wexler, connie hall, vimos zsigmond, lazlo kovacs, nestor almendros, michael chapman, allen lindau, sven nikvist, vittorio storaro, luciano tovoli, giuseppe rotunno, raul coutard, janus kaminski, christopher doyle, emanuel lubezki, harri savides (just to mention a few you missed) is quite pointless. a few years ago AIC - the italian society of cinematographers - with IMAGO - the european federation of cinematographers - published a beautiful book about the 150 most meaningful films (in terms of cinematography) ever made, how can you just limit 110 years of glorious history to 10 films?
  13. i'd also like to add that as a cinematographer you'd be concerned with the budget of your department first, the rest is not really your business, besides the artistic collaboration with head of production design and wardrobe. i guess you''ve already got enough issues to tackle so you'd leave those of the art dept out of your mind ;).
  14. first of all, i believe we're lacking some basic information here in order to give niall any concrete support. apart from the budget, what is the film all about? what kind of locations? is it mostly gonna be shot in exteriors or in a student flat? or maybe in a castle? day or night? what's your lighting pack? are you gonna be operating as well? all these factors should be carefully assessed before thinking over the infamous hd vs film dilemma. and we'd avoid to limit our mindset to the resolution vs sharpness issue, there's a whole world besides that. who cares about resolution if, for instance, it is a film on the 1970s? in that case the look niall is after would definitely benefit more from the grain and texture of the 16mm (or s16mm) than any other digital acquisition system. resolution as such, imho, means nothing. as for the budget contraints, i really believe that they should be seen as an asset rather than an obstacle, cause niall you're in school, it is the time to experiment and to try to think different! look for a solution, contact the kodak guys and ask for a convenient deal, they're usually very supportive of film students. do the same with the lab. think different indeed. hopefully, after you'll graduate, you'll be up for work in the real world and it is very likely you'll end up shooting with a f-3 soon. but now you have got the chance to shoot a project with the greatest creative freedom, no producer harrassing you, no commercial bounds, be bold and creative then, dont go for the easiest solution, you've got to distinguish yourself and show off what you can do. on a more practical ground let me add that, low or no budget circumstances such as this, when shooting film there's a higher degree of focus and concentration than shooting in hd, right because of the stock limitations. this very often translate in a better working enviroment and overall higher quality of the final outcome. once again, limitations can be an advantage or, as orson wells said: "there is no art without limitations". if, as you just stated niall, 16 mm is the look you like most and find more appropriate for the project, then go for it, that's what really matter. try hard to make it happen, that's the key for the success of the project. finally, one last remark on the srII: it is a beautiful piece of camera, but as far as i remember the viewfinder is quite darker than the sr3, so practice a bit before getting on set. good luck with the shoot!
  15. my beloved l-758cine got stolen from my studio 6 months ago and i've not replaced it yet cause i've mainly shot hd since, and i must admit i got quite well used to working with waveform & histograms. but am gonna get another one soon though, cause i miss the spot meter function a lot, that's the most precious tool you have in order to build the contrast of each scene and the balance between shadows and highlights. as for the incident, with practice and experience i had ended up using it just for the key and doing by eye back, kick and fill. finally, the shutter angle function can be useful especially if you'll find yourself in situations in which you need to get some extra exposure by tweaking the angle. in that case, why doing the math on the spot, the priority is to be sure of where you set your exposure. therefore a student, my strong advice is: go for the sekonic.
  16. here the article from vanity fair (the italian edition) reporting about this: vanity fair italia they kept screening the mixed up reels for an entire week! :D going back to topic: the camera car sequences in "drive" are the most beautifully lit i've ever seen...big congratulations to newton thomas sigel asc.
  17. david's list got the best of 2011, starting with "the tree of life", no doubt about that. i'd just add the very fine cinematography of bruno delbonnel (afc,asc) on aleksandr sokulov's "faust" (golden lion in venice 2011) and the excellent job luca bigazzi did on paolo sorrentino's "this must be the place", starring sean penn (as far as i know it will be released in february in the us). but let me share with you an funny, but meaningful anedoct about "the tree of life": in a theatre in the city of bologna, here in italy, by mistake they screened the second half of the film before the first - in some theatres we still have first half, second half and a break in between so they can sell popcorns & ice screams :) - and it seems the audience enjoyed it regardless of the accidental inversion of the storyline. this story went on all the national newspapers and i like to believe that the lesson is: the public can still be captured by powerful imagery and magic visuals autonomously from the verbal narrative and sometimes, such as in this case, the imagery stands on its own, providing for most emotions and meanings of the film.
  18. in any case, this is a rather impressive list: http://motion.kodak.com/motion/Customers/Productions/index.htm i didnt know all those american top tv series were shot on film.
  19. not a good news for sure. i'm not american, i do not know much about chapter 11 and this sort of stuff, what i definitely know is that my life, not just my career, changed after shooting the glorious double x 5222 b&w eastman kodak. that's when i definitely fell in love with the craft of cinematography, that's when i truly understood the meaning of lighting for narrative motion picture. it was a honour and a privilege. nowadays worldwide cinematographers of my generation (those in the mid 30s-early 40s) are facing a huge challenge in a time of great transition. what we need to preserve is not a specific support or a tool, what we need to defend is the integrity of our work, the control and the vision. long live film, but it's our eyes that makes the difference not the support we shoot on.
  20. asa (iso) for video capture on canon should always be 160 or multiples (320, 640 and so on)
  21. i totally agree on this. apart from circumstances in which it is useful to include the 5d mkii footage into a log workflow - for instance, when it is used as a b camera - technicolor cinestyle offers very little gain - not to say nothing at all - to what can already be achieved in camera, by the standard picture styles. as a matter of fact, putting the standard H.264 REC709 color space into a log color space cannot really improve the technical limitations of the same h264 of the 5d mkII: the 4-2-0 long gop color sampling (not to forget the line skipping determined by the scaling, and the aliasing). there are technical limitations that cannot be improved by any firmware and/or application: this should be clear to anyone shooting with current d-slrs. it doesnt mean that wonderful images cannot be achieved, it simply means that it is the cinematographer, not the camera, who makes the difference: correct exposure, proper iso, creative/practical choice of the lenses and dof (for instance, reducing the sharp area means that there's less details for the codec to compress = less work = better quality of the final image, less noise and aliasing). as for the picture style, i see no point in applying something, like the technicolor cine style, that can already be done with the normal picture style by pushing down the contrast level. but what's the point of doing that? then you'll have to increase the contrast back in color correction. the trade off is contrast/details in the shadows, but who does really want a superflat image as a final outcome? whatever you gain in the shadow, you lose it in the midtones. personally the thing i like the most about shooting with the 5d mkII is that most of the work has to be achieved in camera. no matter how you call yourself - but let's admit that videographer is just too awful of a neologism - i believe it is essential that nowadays shooters bear in mind that cinematography is the key, by doing in camera, on set, most of the work. color correction is complementary to shooting, not the opposite.
  22. "nero wolfe" is being shot on canon 5d, that's what ive heard correct me if i'm wrong. the cinematographer though is one of the best in italy, on the forefront of digital shooting and im sure he'll do an amazing job. the director i quoted is an italian one living in london where i had stayed for several years. in any case i believe that the alexa is a great camera and personally i prefer that to the red line. as for the overall quality of the italian tv series im not referring to the cinematoraphy, that is generally the best thing of such productions, talking about the content. apart from what is produced by sky, it not seems that our domestic products can compete withthe foreign production, especially that coming from the states. infact they've got no market abroad. then, of course there are a few exceptions, very few indeed' like "romanzo criminale" that has been bought by hbo (stunning cinematography by carnera indeed). anyway, inthe end it is a matter of taste.
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