Jarin Blaschke

“Over”exposure and “over”development have similar effects and different effects. Both add density overall but in different ways. Increased exposure affects everything evenly and decreases grain while increased development affects things proportionally and increases grain. The “Babylon” recipe uses both ingredients, and I would posit with intention: I would guess the look was the primary factor, above practical needs - otherwise he would have used 5219 for everything and called it a day.

That is a good formula for a harsh high contrast image with especially hot highlights, which is reflected in the look of the film. 

 

There are creative reasons for pushing or pulling film, outside of exposure needs.

My tests say Summilux is the closest, although the Primos have more pleasing bokeh in my opinion (Sasaki blames Summilux’s aspheric elements for this). At least on celluloid, performance is very similar : primo is more even performance, while summilux has extra performance in the very center.

 

Cooke S4s have chromatic aberration, splitting green/magenta at high contrast edges. Master Primes have flat highlights and less “dimensionality” on film, but could be an asset for digital formats - I haven’t done a digital comparison. I like Leitz Rs a lot, but they are visibly softer in contrast than Primos and I consider them a different look.

 

J 

As far away from the window as possible, which shrinks the source (for sharpness/hardness)and brings the beams closer to parallel.

We actually had convex mirrors made for “The Northman.” I put an 18k into it to emulate sunlight or moonlight in the studio or outside at night, so I can’t speak about bouncing the real sun. It would be much more forgiving when tracking the sun, and it would put out a pattern more wide and desirable compared to the standard 4-foot flat mirror. However there is substantial light loss with the convex.

For we light snobs, the convex mirror was a very useful tool because it shrinks the source to a proper point, and the “sun” or “moon” starts looking like the real thing. Crisp, believable shadows. To shrink an 18k to the relative size of the sun, we calculated that we’d have to place it over 250 feet away. The convex mirror allowed us to place the lamp 15 feet away from the mirror, and the mirror 30-40 feet from set. You just had to be sneaky about hiding the diverging angle of the rays.

Our mirrors were 1.2 meters wide and 150 or 300mm deep depending on what we needed to do. Light loss was about 3.5 stops with the 300, - you’ve been warned.

-Jarin

Frank: Large silks defeat the mirror of course, and unless your silk is only 4’ wide, you’re only using a fraction of it. Unless you mean multiple mirrors?

1 hour ago, Phil Rhodes said:

I find most people are willing to accept at some level that HDR is a pretty good idea. Some DPs aren't particularly aware of the Vision grade, though; I've spoken to plenty of high end people who finished the conventional version and then let the colourist do the HDR. Approaches seem to differ.

Well, I meant DolbyVision theatrical, which tops out at about 100 nits, but blacks are complete- a spooky effect in the theater when you dolly into a black doorway.

For home HDR, I capped highlights at about 130 nits. More than that affronts my eyes. Unless you are watching the film outside in broad daylight in Arizona.

 

j

This is mostly accurate. Our Primos were adapted for us, the main differences are a round aperture rather than the spiky Primo aperture, some added barrel distortion, and subtle “cat’s eye” bokeh. The field also seemed to be deeper than a typical Primo. I basically asked Dan for 70% primo, 30% Cooke Panchro series 2. Who knows what he did and how he did it.

We also graded a DolbyVision version, which is THE way to see the movie.

2 hours ago, John Rizzo said:

Not sure if anyone heard about this yet,

 

Columbia Collage in Chicago which is one on the top schools for Motion Picture Film Courses is phasing out film and going totally digital, not only that but word from the camera cage is hat all of the film camera s are to be junked.

here is a excellent podcast from last week in response to this:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOGQeCkS7U&fbclid=IwAR3qm-JYQhsLr-5ry3e2bq3K6-HDi5JtLS9sXfwpPgmceR88ddElWVrKCQg  

 

Ok, well, the last time I shot digitally was 2017 so there are a broad spectrum of experiences. I'm shooting a commercial on 35mm in a couple weeks, of all things...

There is an unprecedented rise in 65mm production as well. Maybe it's just getting more stratified and we could lose a film technician pool to feed the upper end, but for now there is a different film situation than 5 years ago.

 

Jarin

It sounds like a test is really necessary!

 

I will venture to say that it will be more sensitive to red than a tungsten stock, as an educated guess, perhaps similar to 5219's sensitivity to red...

 

J

On 1/18/2021 at 2:32 AM, Manu Delpech said:

Film will be just fine. Killers of The Flower Moon is starting next month for a seven month shoot, David O.Russell's next one is shooting right now (probably on film). Paul Thomas Anderson shot his latest film a few months ago on 35mm as always. Patty Jenkins only shoots on film and she's got three huge films lined up: Rogue Squadron, Wonder Woman 3 and Cleopatra. I'm guessing/hoping that Indy 5 (directed by James Mangold) will be film too. No Time To Die is releasing (probably pushed back to Fall 2021), A Quiet Place Part 2 as well (film), Shyamalan's Old (he actually paid the extra himself to go back to film on this one), Death On The Nile, Last Night in Soho, Mission Impossible 7, The French Dispatch, West Side Story and so on.

There are also obviously other films shooting that we don't know of, then all the directors currently shooting on film are going to continue to shoot on film. 

*cough* "The Northman *cough, cough...* : )

6 hours ago, Stephen Perera said:

Hey Jarin, we look forward to when you can give us details, anecdotes, stories of it all.....and how you found working with the Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 (so IMDB says) and 35mm film of course as we know......what light metre you were using.....what EI you rated the stocks ta......everything

Thanks. Without divulging much of the film or its aesthetic techniques, I’ll probably post my findings within the next week regarding the portfolio of Kodak film stocks, how I rated them, etc, within the next week or so.

 

jarin

We wrap principal photography tomorrow!

For a 87 day shoot, only two days were lost due to false positives in our testing regimen, otherwise no covid hiccups.

I was tested three times per week.

Rob has a very long post production process ahead!

J

Yeah, right nowI'm doing exterior moonlit nights now with only 1 1/2 stops difference between the "moonlight" and the ambient "starlight." I also get costumes and sets to make nothing lighter in tone than the average skintone of the actors. Otherwise, you can't set your fill to anything consistent.  You really have to compress tones for night work!

 

J

Yeah, I also light these with the same basic technique as day interiors, but with a little cyan+desaturation and a much lower fill/key ratio. On film, I'll put the fill light at -4.5 while the direct moonlight plays between -2.5 and -3. It looks terrible to the eye on set but falls into place on the film. You can put things further down the scale on the Alexa, the equivalent of -4.5 is probably -5 to -5.5 on the Alexa.

There's a new additional trick I came up with for moonlight. If it's any success I can share next year.

Thanks! We've been very fortunate to not shut down from COVID (knock, knock). A couple more months to go....

 

Jarin

On 6/20/2020 at 4:30 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

35mm motion picture color negative film was only tungsten-balanced from 1952 to 1986 because there was only one stock at a time, other than during the overlaps with the next generation. It wasn't until the 1980s that there was more than one type of movie color negative stock available. And if you are only going to have one, to convert tungsten stock for daylight you need an 85B filter, which loses 2/3-stop, but to convert daylight stock to tungsten, you need an 80A filter, which loses 2-stops of light.  Still camera color negative stock, however, was daylight-balanced because daylight flashbulbs were used inside.

The first Kodak color negative stock, 1950-1952, was daylight-balanced because 3-strip Technicolor was daylight-balanced, but in 1952, 3-strip converted to tungsten balance and so did Kodak.  The slow speed of the 3-strip process when it first appeared in the mid-1930's required daylight carbon arc lighting to get enough exposure.  Besides, silver is naturally more sensitive to bluer wavelengths -- to make a color stock balanced for tungsten, you basically make the blue layer faster to compensate for the lower level of blue wavelengths. But it is easier to light sets with tungsten lamps, hence why Hollywood wanted color negative film to be tungsten-balanced in the 1950s -- lighting everything with carbon arcs was difficult.

Well, since film naturally sees blue more readily, you could argue that a tungsten stock is a more “native” stock: the longer the wavelength, the more sensitization you need.

I would hypothesize that a daylight stock needs extra sensitization for red, and to a lesser extent, green, rather than the other way around.

In this theory, a tungsten stock naturally “sees” more blue than a daylight stock, and overexposes blue in daylight conditions. A daylight stock has to work harder To boost red and green to balance the color for a given speed.

The fact that 5207 (250D) is a grainier and softer stock than 5213 (200T) might be evidence of this.

?

 

jarin

 

Sorry - how do murder rates relate to Gone With the Wind?

 

J

The question is completely contingent on the style of the film. There is no right answer.

But for me anyway, the more I do this, the more I feel that the audience's understanding of specific 3-dimentional geography is overrated, even utterly unnecessary.

That said, I tend to establish important spaces fully at the beginning of a movie to get it out of the way, but by having a character lead us through the space so it's "organic" and part of the storytelling. It can have intention rather than water the scene down. After that's done, we feel very comfortable in shooting the rest of the movie however we want. Caleb leads us through the house in "The Witch" and Ephraim leads us through the lodgings at the beginning of "The Lighthouse." The cable-up shot up the interior lighthouse tower does it too, but justified differently: we are drawn up toward the light by some sort of "other-ly" power. 

When I'm part of the design, I like to approach the "wide master" the same way as an "insert": with extreme discretion. To varying degree, they take you out of the scene, so I often try to include these images as part of a multi-stage mies-en-scene. Otherwise, at the very least, I aim them toward the beginning or end of the scene. They can be effective "buttons" for closing emphasis but feel clunky in the middle of scenes... but if placed well, that hard "clunk" can be effective too.

Hi: I can't be of much help as far as history, but I have experience with some of the optics mentioned and can share. Some of what I state the below contradicts what others have said above in this thread, but what can I say, my eyes are clearly seeing otherwise. I have a variety of my comparison tests pulled up on my screen now. 

Color bias is all relative, but I find the oldest lenses (Cooke s1 and original Baltars) to be overall cooler in color than anything made later. When I was devising the "ortho" look for "The Lighthouse," Dan Sasaki once mentioned something about the glass types of the era passing more short-spectrum light, i.e.: UV and blue.

(Original) Baltars: "The Lighthouse" "Enclosure"

I like these a lot - the contrast is soft, subtle and open without looking flat. A very beautiful, delicate palate with a subtly cool color, but I wouldn't call it "biased". Smooth, silky skin tones - a hell of a portrait lens. You have to control flares though - I was constantly spot metering bright windows on The Lighthouse - there is a sweet spot where they halate nicely but beyond that they wash out the image. I set my highest limit at +6 reflected for Double-X film. The image circle is relatively large, the 25mm very nearly covers open gate...techically. However, there is a long transition zone before the image edge where the definition falls apart, so "useable image area" is certainly gray and subjective. The museum-commissioned "Enclosure" used full gate Alexa, which I now consider a mistake. I now would not use them beyond Super35. 

They have a curved field and pronounced cat's eye/football bokeh. I believe them to be single coated, contrary to someone's uncoated claim above.

I've rented them from Panavision and TCS in New York. It is true that as-is, Baltars cannot be used with a reflex film camera. HOWEVER, Sasaki worked magic and optically spaced our "Lighthouse" lenses to be used for film. They are probably still kept that way (dual-format) - so there's a little secret for you.

Cooke Series 1: "Back Roads" (certain sequences), tested on multiple occasions, used once on a fantasy Claritin commercial!

These were a close second place for "The Lighthouse." I have them earmarked for a certain, future Eggers film for sure. They have a very similar look to the original Baltars, with a natural palette, and the swirly bokeh is almost a perfect match. The contrast is little higher, though, and the color is very slightly warmer, probably a proper "neutral' but everything is relative. Soft flare control is better. Out of focus backgrounds are a bit more "globular" looking, if that makes sense. The biggest difference, though is that the image circle for the 25 and 28mm is smaller than any other lens type I know, so forget about open-gate.

So they are basically an enhanced-contrast, marginally warmer Baltar with an added soft vignette in Super35.

I've only used them digitally, and would have to ask about adapting for use for film, a la "Lighthouse."

Super Baltars: "Brothers", extensively tested.

These are a very different look than the original Baltars. The contrast is much higher like a contemporary lens and the color much, much warmer - enough that overall I would call it a "warm bias." Maybe this is inherent to the design, but I have a suspicion that it could be from the deterioration of Thorium that was widely used in optics of the 50s and 60s. So maybe they were not always this warm - but this is pure speculation.

Despite the contrast, this "macro contrast" does not translate into "microconrast" and skin tones are still very silky and flattering. Still a truly great portrait lens.  

"Cat's eye" bokeh is very subtle, but is still there, apparent when you compare to Panavision SS and more modern lenses.

Just a hint of chromatic aberration, but only when compared to Cooke S2s. Much less than Panavision SS, or Cooke S4s for that matter.

My only complaint is that the aperture blades are not truly round, so bokeh is a little geometric. Perhaps this can be fixed for a long project.

Cooke S2 (and s3): "The Witch," "Back Roads"

I picked these for "The Witch" because of the weird, globular, cat's-eye bokeh, before the series1s were rehoused at Panavision. At the time, the "crystal ball" effect on the backgrounds felt "alien" and unsettling to me somehow.  This semi-petzval bokeh effect is more pronounced than a Super Baltar, but certainly less pronounced than a Series 1 or Baltar.

Among 1960+ lenses, the color is very slightly cool- very different than its contemporary, Super Baltar. This was a subtle aid for our gloomy look. They have visibly less contrast than a Super Baltar too, also good for that low-contrast movie. 

Aperture blades are beautifully round, and most impressively, ZERO chromatic aberration- my least favorite aberration. Plenty of other aberrations though!

For me, skin texture don't quite have the same "shimmer" and magic of a Baltar or Super Baltar though. But this is my personal ju-ju and and hearsay. Please test yourself.

Kowas: Tested only, except for 1/2 of one commercial.

These are an odd duck. They almost behave like lenses that are much older: very cool color, very low contrast and they flare very easily, even more than a 1939 original Baltar, so if you have a moderately bright window in frame, your shadows are significantly lifted all over the image. Despite these traits, they lack the special bokeh of older lenses - focus fall-off is slow, and it looks like you are you using a deeper stop than you really are: the resolution of a 2.8 with the depth of field of a 4 1/2. Because of these things, I kind of consider them the worst of both worlds. 

I would even call the contrast "flat."

The weird thing is that, while the color is inherently very cool, the ever-present washout-flares are very warm, so you get a color-crossover effect from shadows to highlights. Good luck with the grade!

This is a drab, very broken down look - I haven't found a project that calls for them yet, especially as I am moving away from the lo-con "Witch" look in general. But maybe one day a match will present itself.

The one plus is that the aperture blades are very round, unlike a Baltar.

Panavision SP: Tested once

I consider this the midway point between truly "Vintage" and "Modern" look, but didn't see anything special about them in my limited "Witch" test. They are comparable to Panavision SS lenses, likewise have some chromatic aberration, but instead are slower, flare more and have very geometric aperture blades, unlike the round SS. I'd rather go one way or the other, decisively toward the Super Baltar or the other way with an SS.

Other menu selections I have tried: Leica R (like), K35 (don't like)

Other interesting off-menu things I have used: Panavision Petzvals (35mm, 58mm, 85mm), a 50mm uncoated triplet.

No! Ignoramus! I’ll look for it.

I shoot 8x10” film almost exclusively myself, including family photos, so it’s all a serious downgrade when I shoot a movie.

Those 18x22” contact prints Carleton Watkins made are something else. The more difficult the medium makes the photograph, the easier it makes the print.

I’m astounded at the lengths Watkins, O’Sullivan and others had to take to make a mammoth plate photograph in wet collodion in their conditions. A photograph, on fragile glass, on an emulsion that becomes insensitive a few minutes after it is mixed from scratch... mixed in total darkness, in a makeshift tent in absolute wilderness, all 22 inches of image without dust or irregularity of coating. Processing is conducted in haste but perfectly in wilderness. Then the fragile glass image travels on wooden wheels over wilderness for months without breaking or becoming clouded in dust. The Ether and other exotic, volatile chemicals travel similarly for months without fire, explosion or suffocation of the proprietor....

THAT’S PHOTOGRAPHY.

 

j

 

On 4/29/2020 at 4:05 PM, David Mullen ASC said:

I heard that Kubrick shot the first week of "Full Metal Jacket" in 65mm b&w and then ditched the format and footage. David Lean planned originally to shoot "Dr. Zhivago" in 65mm b&w.

I'm sure it would be a special order item from Kodak, you just have to order enough of it to be worth the time.

One of these days I'll ask Fotokem whether their B&W machine could handle 65mm. A recurring fantasy of mine.

65mm Tri-X would be the ultimate medium. If one could make it work with finicky pyrogallol developer, the perfect moving monochrome image.

42 minutes ago, Tim Chang said:

This is interesting:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4

This guy points out that video lcd screens have a fresnel lens layered in there that disrupts the inverse square drop off and extends the brightness range of the diffuse transmission, making for a more realistic "cloudy sky" look. I've always thought this could be a useful trick lighting an indoor set through fake windows.

TC

Nah, panoramic molton bounce for me ?

Well a slower film is always going to "outperform" a faster one. 250D is certainly cleaner and sharper than 500T. I aim to shoot night exteriors on our next film on 200T and 250D, but we're aiming for a "toothy" sharp film.

3 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

I haven't seen BR 2049 but the trailer looks amazing. So I don't know why anyone would say that Deakins doesn't want to light anymore. I say, let people make their choices. I wouldn't choose the Alexa but so what? I'm not other people.

Mr. T was probably in an off mood or has spent too much time in too many interviews over the last 10 years arguing some point about shooting film, maybe he lost track of the argument he's trying to make. There are countless examples of how ASA 800 or 1600 has made certain DPs lazy or lack expression and intention in their "lighting." Look around at current trends. However, that particular day, chose the worst possible example: Roger bloody Deakins??? We all say silly things from time to time.

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I think it's very reasonable to expect a professional cinematographer to work within 15 stops of latitude, and place 9 stops of tones within a finished frame. How much do you need?

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I personally like both Blade Runners.

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My kooky stab at why tungsten stocks tend to be sharper than daylight stocks is that silver halides inherently only see blue light; they need sensitizers to record green, and even more to record red. At least in black and white, at a given speed, an ortho film is sharper than a pan film, and to take it further, an infrared film is softest and grainiest of all. Tungsten stocks are more sensitive to blue light, which may have something to do with needing to "stretch" their capabilities. But color negative film is above my pay grade - any and all are welcome to shoot down such gibberish theories.

 

-Jarin

12 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Truth is that 1960's stocks were grainier than 200T (even though 50 ASA) so I was hesitant to switch to 50D for exteriors on "The Love Witch", 200T already seemed too modern-looking. I actually would have preferred if 100T was still available and if I could have afforded to push it all one-stop.

I remember when Vision-1 100T first came out, Kodak said it was the sharpest of all their stocks, so I'm not surprised that 200T is slightly sharper than 50D, but some of that may be perceptual, when an image lacks grain, it doesn't quite seem in focus because our eyes don't see sharp grain to tell us that it is in focus.

Ha - yes, Lawrence in Arabia probably has the same grain as a film shot on 35mm today. I once heard a Kodak rep claim that 35mm 5298 has the same grain as 16mm 5219 - that seemed a stretch, but who knows. Recently I found that the real difference is sharpness of the presentation format - Fotokem states that even though 35mm negative is about a 4k format, a 35mm contact print brings it down to 2k. My recent tests of print vs DI confirmed this subjectively - it was obvious although I wasn't counting lines. After a few years away, it was almost shocking how soft a 35mm print looks to our 2020 eyes. However, while much softer, the print has a tonal depth that puts digital projection to shame - DCP looked like bath water by comparison. Albeit sharp bath water. The best of both was a 70mm print, of course. Boy oh boy. Sharp and smooth and rich all at the same time: you could fall right into it. So that's where watching Lawrence of Arabia as a 70mm print really pays off. According to Fotokem, a 70mm print from modern 65mm is about 5k, although the subjective result transcends numbers. My experience seems to validate 35mm to 70mm blow-ups; I previously didn't understand the point. 

Aaaanyway:

I'm sure the effort to make a modern stock truly look like a 1960s stock would take some gymnastics: underexposure, pushing, flashing red into the shadows, maybe an expensive round of IP/IN to reduce latitude and sharpness. The biggest period effect is brought from what you guys focused on: production design, costume, make up and lighting style. 

The published MTFs show 50D as a less sharp stock than 200T. My tests subjectively back that up when I look at two extracted TIFFs side by side.

Now we really digress.... ?

Jarin