Chayse Irvin ASC, CSC

Do you find that directors or producers want to see montage reel for you David? You have amassed a collection of films that look fantastic, some are good, and have distribution. Most the comments i get from directors and producers are that they like it but want to see more... but I have nothing else to show them because none of the films i've done have distribution. Thanks Rob. The shots of the girl on the swing is S16mm Fuji Eterna 500T. Same with the grainy unlit night ext stuff and the very last shot at the end. Anything with that character actually. Thanks Derek! I feel like the imperfections in films and particularly cinematography are what makes it feel honest; and if done right can be expressive and subjective at the same time.

Thanks Justin! Thanks David. I saw you at cine gear a few days ago but chicken out when it came to saying hey. I was hoping to catch you at the ASC golf classic... but it turns out not many DP's play golf haha. God knows I had no business being out there... it was ugly. The main reason it looks so high quality is because I edit my reel in Apple Pro Rez 1080p and the red is in Pro Rez 2k. I edit on a Macbook Pro with a gang of 1TB FW800 drives. In exchange for free gigs i had all my old 35mm negative rescanned to HDcamSR by just bringing the cans to that jobs session and then that to ProRez. Getting the footage in Apple Pro rez has always gone down in different circumstances. This last RED show I put it in my deal memo and just pulled R3D's. This wasn't the case on a S16mm feature I did last year... I had to wait months and months for a HDSR version of the film. Finally got it last month and went into Deluxe off hours on the weekend and transfered clips to ProRez. I did a EFilm DI on a short that you can see a bunch of Beach Bypass footage from in the reel... still having figured out how im going to get my hands on that version. But in the reel I self timed the apple pro rez offline edit. I was hoping to get a DPX from EFilm and compress my own prorez version with Glue Tools, but the DPX is in LOG space. I'll have to transfer the HDCAM SR version a deluxe again. The compression is h.264 with AAC audio at 48kHz. I alway compress off the FCP sequence itself. I've tested many different workflows to this and always got the best results in terms of color/contrast constancy. The data rate i restrict. For the 480p my bit rate is at 3500 kbps. 720p = 6500 kbps and then optimized for Download. To make it stream with these settings you need to have the streaming function set to "Fast Start". For DVD's I get a really really nice compression by doing One Pass CBR (constant bit rate) 9mbps Mpeg2, audio being Dolby Digital Pro 2.0 192kbps. And i burn them through DVD studio pro. DVD's are 16x9. I restrict to constant bit rates as oppose to variable because variable will try and compress in areas of the image like shadows or highlights and during transitions, grainy areas of the image, ect. My demo is 3min and I can max out all the stats and still have it fit on any DVD. I burned myself by doing a past reel in 2.40 when most if not all my footage was 2.40. Now I have well composed 1.85 stuff... but I had a version where it had the matte break off and go bigger for those shots... but the directors i sent it too complained and said it would be better all 2.40. I laid a matte in Final Cut Pro and did reframing in there. Then in compressor I set the dimensions to a 2.40 frame eg. (720p version = 1280x544) Then I set a "Source Inset Crop" to "Panavision 2.35:1" (bottom: 131, top: 131). All of them are presets in Compressor... however they were there till the last version for FCP.

http://www.chayseirvin.com/demoreel.html Some RED, 35mm, S16mm, and Varicam + pro35.

Yes Ryan. I used a black promist 1/4 on everything in the film. Helped create this nice fall off that looks so great on film.

Awesome awesome awesome! loved it man.

Big Ellen Kuras ASC fan.

She was adorable. Amazing voice too.

Ugh. What a burn. Hacks... I'm glad that is a much better video.

Looks great Jamie! Love the shots on the train tracks.

IT works out to be ok. This is just one take. We redo this shot over and over again with different layers and they edit between all the layers for 3 different sections of the song and sections of the location. We did a lot of layers, 16hours worth. And then we did a different set up for 20 seconds of the video which side scrolls. Thanks for the support gus.

Granted Hard Candy was 35mm w/ DI... but thats also a 17 day shoot and one studio set. Perfect circumstances for a project with that budget.

Back in January I shot a trio of music videos for this one group. I worked for next to nothing on these low budget videos in exchange for a place to crash for my move to LA. The first two videos were a disaster. There were 3 days of shooting for 2 videos. The First day I had a gaffer, 1st AC, and a Key Grip. 2nd Day I had a Gaffer and 1st AC. 3rd Day I had only a 1st AC (because no one would show up)... and they fed us carrot soup for lunch... A few weeks later the last video came up. For this video I was promised things wouldn't be like they were on the last two, and for the most part they weren't, apart from my two most experience people leaving half way through the day... volunteering. :-( During prep for the video the Director expressed he wanted this cross processed look... well first thing I though was to shoot cross processed film. Unfortunately this was too low budget and they were getting a good deal on a RED. So in shake I made this node tree that would get us the look... maybe not exactly like cross processed film... but the best i could do without printing or something. I then applied that to some exposure tests and I found an exposure that I liked so when shooting I could light it to that stop. That stop was +2 over. I shot the video at 3k 16x9 320asa because we wanted to shoot a lot of 48fps stuff. I thought it was going to be hard getting the stop I wanted but I used Zeiss super speeds and lit the shots to a T2 and just opened up to T1.3 whenever shooting 48fps. I ran a 12k put put Genny out back and powered 2 x 4k ArriSun's for the key lights (the videos concept was a series of the same shot traveling backwards on a dolly) and then ran a stove plug adapter to power 2 x mini9's for the back light. Heres a Clip of the look using Shake: http://www.chayseirvin.com/video/graincomp.mov I also composited grain into the highlights by sending the cross processed DPX into Color and generating grain with one of the filters in there. I took that back into shake and with a lumakey I comped the grain in just the highlights to add texture. Anyway, I saw the video today and was really disappointed. They trashed the cross processed look for something that looks over exposed, desaturated and brown with horribly clipped highlights. I'll post the video when its released... I don't know what it is, but I dont think music videos like me very much. This one I think just pushed me into retirement.

What file type are you compressing from? Pro Rez, Uncompressed, DPX?

Just tested it. 1.2 is a bit high (but actually looks better for the clip i was testing), start coming down and you'll find the perfect setting.

Compressor will have a filter option called gamma correction. I can't remember but i think the proper compensation is 1.2. I've found that the gamma in turn effects the sat, so let me know if it works.

Awesome!

Thanks Satsuki, I'm defiantly influenced by John Toll. I love his work, particularly in Thin Red Line. I found the red is much better with highlights then any Digital camera I've ever shot. Even when it clips there is no chromatic aberration unless there is an abundance of saturation in the clip. I found this out during my tests when I keyed with tungsten and balanced to tungsten with the sky as a back drop. The LUT also helps with the highlights a lot. Its not easy balancing windows to the key light, I certainly think windows should be bright, but there are problems when when sunlight is coming in and flaring... but because of my test im confident when I take a reading that it will or wont work. Next time i hope to expand my tests. I would like to create multiple custom LUTs; Day int, Day ext, Night int, and Night ext. I really hope that RED activated that look options inside the camera. I noticed that importing RSX files is an option, but its not activated yet. Thats definatly the next step, being able to view my image right on set. There are good monitors like the Cine-Tal, but its out of my budget range right now. But I've seen it set up with multiple different luts. The DP then just puts a tag on the slate telling the colorist which custom LUT to apply for that take, but the DP is able to light with the monitor. This was on a D-21 show my mentor shoots. My LUT didn't work with all the footage... in some situations I was forced to compromise because of time and setting. Example being Picture 13 Because of the mirrors behind him I had to have my source further back and more sidey then I wanted, I found the characters eye light not looking the way i intended, we rolled once and then I stopped the director and asked to relight (hehe you only get one of those a show). It was difficult because I had to raise the contrast of the shot and the mirrors behind him showing where I would put my light. I ended up bounce the dedo right off the wall, (which is what made me raise the contrast so that the highlight didn't clip but still tossed enough light on the characters face, this made his fill side very dark, if I added my own fill it wouldn't have been the look I wanted for the scene so I just went with it) you can see it in the mirror. I gave the dedo a naturalistic shape so it looked more like sunlight then a light bouncing off a wall... it looked great to my eye, only had two guys on my lighting and grip crew... just had to make it work. In dailies the darker half of his face turned black with the LUT. I knew it would happen but I also knew there was lots of info in there because of what I was viewing onset. I took the image into Redalert! and adjusted the curve slightly and thats the image you see there. I didn't sleep the night before because I knew the mirror was going to screw me some how... but it ended up working for the best.

Sorry everyone. I had to dead that thread and the images as a request from the director. Anyone I just wanted to share some screen grabs from the shoot. SCREEN GRABS The color space is Camera RGB, Output LUT is REDLog. I do Log so I have the latitude then the curve grades it into linear space. Basically baking in a lut and then timing. My monitor is REC709. This is just a onset reference for me when Lighting. It doesn't work for everything. Like night ext or some underexposed night int... but its a good starting point. I used the dedo often for the key light and quickly found out it made an amazing sunlight too. The deep blacks are from the custom LUT. cant remember which picts were which. sorry.

Nearing the end of week 2. I was hoping to post some stuff this weekend, but we only had 1 day off and my day was spent location scouting and meetings with the director. I'm hoping to post up a bunch of stills on one of our days off this week. One thing i'd like to say tho is that Gaffer Jesse Keay brought out this light he's been raving about for the last little while... Until now, I haven't been able to have a conversation, with him, without him bringing this light up. Well finally he pulled it off his other truck and brought it to set. It was a Dedolight K400D, and I must say its amazing. Its the most versatile HMI i've worked with. Its bright, lightweight, small, barn doors are extra matted and very strong... yet not stiff and comes with w/ gel clips, the ballast can jump from 400w to 200w and then a Extra dimming stage in which you can dim the light for precision exposure, and the best feature is a 20:1 spot. It's beam angle is insane, much much wider then a fresnel, close to an open face fixtures beam, but this beam is perfectly evenly distributed even when spotted, better than a fresnel at full flood. Apparently it does this with two lenses being in the fixture... one that is unseen near the bulb. Its really an amazing light. I love 400w jokers, but this light replaces it in my arsenal. I just wish I had a bunch because any other light just feels like a waste of time now...

I kind of think a single LUT as a one light print process where you set all your printer lights in prep and have the colorist match it for everything on dailies. The negative is still the negative and is left un-manipulated, but what you screen is a print. Your totally right about the contrast... but I mean you have to have that in mind when looking at the test. I've lit this to a relatively high contrast. But thats why it have Key, Backlight, and Fill exposures written on the slate. In all cases I will have a completely different amount of contrast, but I will still be able to judge that from the test. Did you do a side by side test with the cookes comparing to something else?

T500 is so versatile as a stock. You ND it down to make it 250asa or 120asa if your looking for contrast. I usually make it 200asa and overexpose by a bit... but when I see something beautiful thats happening naturally, want to run outside for a quick shot a dusk, if I slap on a slower lens, stop down to give the focus puller more DOF on a hard shot, decide out of the blue I want to shoot 48fps or 60pfs, ect. I can do it no problem. The only problem is on a day exterior NDing it down so much that you cant see anything through the lens... which i did on my last feature (opps ;-). After that experience I thought the same way, so I decided to shoot all 200T on my next project and ran into problems like throwing a 85 filter in day interior and having to bring in more lights then I wanted to... or compromising on quality of light for an exposure. I'll probably roll with two stocks from now on when shooting S16mm. One for day exterior and 500T for everything else, but I can see myself shooting all 500T on a 35mm project depending on the shooting conditions and locations simply because it can do everything. Now that being said... I find keno's to be not versatile at all! and extremely hard for me to use. I haven't had them in my package for years. The quality of light often isn't what i'm looking for and they aren't bright enough to do anything with. The advantage is that they can fit into tight places and in those situations I would probably use them, but I would prefer bouncing a versatile light like a Jo-leko (joker source4). You can aim and shape them from the other side of the set. poop, you could have an actors face pressed against a wall and still key them with a bounce off the same wall from above, side, back, below and still have the ability to chose the size, shape, and exposure of the light and do it in seconds with a jo-leko. Just like my film stocks, I like my lights versatile. I do have a lot of respect for people who do use slower stocks tho. Andrew Laszlo's night work on "The Warriors" using slower film stocks and slower lenses is amazing. I read his book last year and his techniques are genius.

Thanks Gus. I'm going to try to keep posting during the shoot. The workflow makes it easy to show some stuff on here. RC36 only way to go :-). I didn't test the rating of the camera. I rated it at 320asa which I've found is the most dynamic. Right now it seems to be that a "clip" in the highlights is considered bad cinematography. I personally don't care as long as its supposed to feel bright. But I'm always experimenting on ways to make a clip feel right. I use Zebras to know how much clipping is going on and most often try and find a happy place. I didn't correct tungsten. This still is Daylight BG and Daylight Key. But I also lit it with tungsten. This mixed the color temp. Which is what I was looking for. Then I just made stills balanced to both daylight and tungsten in RED ALERT!. I might have some scenes interior day that I want to feel warm inside with white light outside, meaning I would still be balanced for Day. When it was balanced for tungsten the results weren't very good. The daylight just becomes so over saturated it creates a chromatic aberration and causes the highlights to clip unnaturally because there is so much blue around the areas that aren't clipped. I prefer using only one custom LUT because I light to that custom LUT. I know what fixtures to use, where to put them, how many to use, ect. and as the shoot goes on, I just get better at mastering lighting for that custom LUT. On another project I could see myself creating more custom LUTs for scenes with different looks. But I want a continuity of image for this entire movie that remains static throughout and most scenes are Day Interiors. In color correction I'll be able to do whatever I want, but changes will be easy to apply to everything because it was lit that way. I've had a lot of problems over the years understanding why some scenes look good lit a certain way and some dont. This makes sure its all lit to a certain way, being the custom LUT and Light Meter via visual reference. I usually decide on a lighting style for a film during prep and stick with it. If there are multi different looks I'll put those in my notes, and when the project requires it I will make a custom LUT for each look. I just can't wait for the feature where your able to import a RLX file (cutsom LUT) into the RED for onset monitoring. I'm using Zeiss Super Speeds as usual. I love fast lenses... but the choice was strictly budget based. If I had money I would have tested Ultras, Masters, and Cookes before considering Zeiss Super Speeds. I dont have the focal lengths I like to use (27mm, 32mm, 40mm) But I'm using a lot of wider lenses on this project, Probably 18mm and 25mm, and I really like the look of those wide open at T1.3. In the test I used a 35mm. I love my BPM. I typically shoot it when ever using digital. I just love what it does to the highlights.

I'm shooting my first RED feature (I've shot 3 music videos with it and a short film before) starting March 2nd. It's shooting in my home town Vancouver, which is kind of ironic that I moved to LA for 3 weeks and the first thing I book is right back home. This film is very low budget and with a minimal crew. I have my gaffer Jesse Keay and his best boy Damon Evens doing both lighting and grip. My focus puller Masayo Takada I've used on all my RED projects and did a fantastic job on each and she's bringing on a volunteer 2nd AC. The story is about a middle aged woman and her affairs with younger men. She eventually falls in love with a 17 years old man and the film is based around 4 years of that relationship. Our locations are fantastic and we are shooting in this beautiful mansion for 10 days of the 20 day shoot. Yesterday we shot a test. The objective of the test was to test the camera exposures and RED build 18, along with a new monitor I've never used a JVC DT-V20L1DU, which looked fantastic good. After this we sent the footage through the proposed dailies workflow and offline and online to color workflow to figure it all out. One of my requirements was to be able to color grade in 2k DPX in color and not have a stupid Apple Pro res workflow for color correction. Here are my tests: http://www.chayseirvin.com/images/opendiaries/ Sasha the Director was my test subject. I also shot these same tests using tungsten lights and then exported tiff's of it balanced to tungsten (the key light) and then with daylight (background). I pull all these tiff's on my iphone and use them as visual references and light with my light meter and eye. I never trust production monitors no mater how good they are. Just the way i prefer to work. The Dailies Workflow: I took this footage and brought it into RED ALERT!. The Color Space was set to Camera RGB, and LUT set to RED LOG. I then created a curve that is what you see on the image above. I saved that as a preset (RLX) thats access able via RED ALERT! and can be applied to each shot with a hot key. After this step, a file is placed in the red folder called a RSX file. This is basically as I see it a Custom LUT. To process our dailies we own this software called R3D Data Manager. This program is great. It will check the data on the red drive for any flaws and will copy the files to any number of drives at the same time. It will also create Apple Pro Rez Dailies for us... which I can load in my custom LUT (RSX) file that as it batch compresses to prores. We have 2 new macbook pros, and a last years mac book pro on set to process dailies fast at the end of the day using fast eSATA hard drives. Post Workflow: Offline is being edited with Apple Pro Rez and then onlined using Crimson Workflow. Crimson sends the offline to REDCINE and then REDCINE produces that DPX sequence. We will probably have to export the online in 20min reels for color... So we can color time and then render, and color time some more. For Color timing we will be using one of 2 high speed RAIDS. We are building another Mac Pro 8 core to be able to power a 2k DPX color time by upgrading it with capture cards for monitoring and ram. I'm hiring a colorist friend of mine to color time it a the home of the directors with me whenever the film is finished. Anyone tried this workflow? Any problems with any of the element?

Asserting a reflector, fill card, and lights simply because those are the tools is an very arrogant way to dp. Forcing your style over a story because you think that is apart of the job I would consider bad cinematography. I think the absents of all these things are why a film like Slumdog is getting recognized. Anthony liberated the viewer and his collaborator from the tyranny of cinematographers that lie, he gave them something entirely honest to look at, and thats why people connected to it like they did. Gave them something reminiscent of a time when photography meant truth. An Academy award nomination isn't recognition? Dark Knight lost nothing, in fact it made 9.9 billion overseas. More people may have watched this film across the world then any other film in history. Sure they do, but documentary's are mostly if not all objective. Artistic cinema has the ability to be subjective, subconsciously place a viewer in a setting or express a point of view portrayed onscreen, which in my opinion makes it the most powerful art form currently in existence and why I think a lot of people connect to great cinematography in a narrative more then in a documentary. Some people get it, some don't. You obviously don't.