Mikael Gustafsson

Works for me, only thing I reacted to was the commercial reel: it felt quite long. I ended up fast forwarding. Some of the feature shots were extraordinary, and the locations looked really good!

I've been pondering about that for quite some time now, and the scale is tipping over in favor of getting a reel done. But at least in my area it seems to shift a bit, sometimes DOP's have reels on their websites and sometimes not. Usually the more established people seem to neglect it, so either I'm posing or way off :)

Thank you for replying! I'm not sure I quite understood, you're not too excited about the layout or? The visual part is quite easily changeable, the service provider has a bunch of different templates that can be modified in all eternity. I'd recommend Cargo Collective for people needing homepage services(I don't work there, no affiliations). It was easy to use and I managed to do most of it myself.

Hello. I'm posting this twice on the forum now, if it's a problem then I'll be glad to remove either post. I wasn't really sure which section was intended for stuff like this. I finally got a website online. I crammed it with most of the stuff I've done during the past five years. The site can be found here: mikaelg.com Please feel free to tell me what doesn't do it for you or if there's something you'd remove or change? No need to be polite, any opinion is welcome! Best regards, Mikael Gustafsson

I finally got a website online with most of the stuff I've dp'd on during the past years. Now I've pretty much just added everything I could get my hands on. I would be extremely happy to hear some comments on what you'd do differently and what you think could be removed? If something feels amateurish or pointless then please let me know, no need to be polite! You can find the website here: mikaelg.com Best regards and thank you in advance, Mikael Gustafsson

Some frame-grabs.

Here's a link to a short I was lucky enough to be working on. It got me into a new film school and I really enjoyed shooting it. I would be glad to hear your comments and suggestions on how it could have been improved. Aside from shooting it I helped out with the props and scenery. The director gave me a lot of freedom and trusted me more than anyone so far. I'm in a huge debt to all the wonderful people from my former school who helped without pay during the five day shoot. http://www.runawaybeer.com/?page_id=194 There's another thread about this project within the "In production" - forum. It can be found here: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=32830 Thank you very much! -Mikael

One way is to register at some image storage website (for ex http://www.photobucket.com) and upload the images there, then just provide image links to them here. I guess you could register and get more space as well, don't know much about that though. Yours, Mikael.

Thank you very much for the encouraging words. I'm really happy with the casting myself, both Ilkka and Jasmin were really nice to work with. Kopparberg sponsored the beers, hence the Zeunerts. Basically we just wanted a brand that wasn't too well known. We got some booze in return, and got drunk.

Chayse, thank you again for the insightful points you brought up. I must say I agree, and I'll have to elaborate a bit further on why this particular detail caught my eye. We're working on a really subtle, and slow paced, maybe I daresay beautiful film with a lot of close ups of an old mans expressions and face. Lot of long shots with very few distracting elements. Most of the stuff is going on in the persons mind, we're not being presented with dialogue or blatant action. Because of many reasons the persons situation is two-folded, and I wanted to make that clear even with the visuals. The other light will always be coming from the overcast sky, a colorless, extremely soft blanket of light. On the other hand we have a pressurized petrol lamp that the person is carrying around, this light will be harsh, warm and fiery. At certain parts the lights take over each others roles depending on what's going on in the story. I had been thinking about the softer light quite a bit, and your screenshots and explanation seemed to fit in like a piece in a puzzle. I'll try not to mimick what you've done, but use the idea of softening bounce and see if that works. No idea why I've never thought about it. Thank you again, and I'll be sure to keep in mind what you wrote.

A detail which I totally forgot: the production stills from the first post are shot by Dan Gustafsson and Matias Nystedt.

Another set of screenshots:

A huge bunch of screengrabs:

Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I'll try and use some similar ideas on the next project. I'll be extremely happy if we can pull off even half of what you've done there. One additional question though, what exactly is a "light fay"? My guess would be that it's some sort of Ninelight or Maxibrute, but smaller? Thanks and take care! Mikael

Just wanted to chime in concerning the 180 degree rule. Since people are being flushed by images, photos and films in such a rapid fashion as today, I would be bold enough to say it's getting a bit passé. Of course you need to establish the area where the action takes place, but after you've shown it I wouldn't stick with just safe cuts. Naturally depending on the situation. Agreeing with Mr Hunter is the short way to put it.

I really enjoy the lighting and the colours! What intrigues me most are the photos 4-7. The light is really beautiful. May I ask what you used to achieve that? Some promist thrown in here as well? Did you bounce it back to open up the shadow side or is there some other light there? Yours, Mikael Gustafsson

You are very welcome. The transfer went really well, thanks for asking. We did something of an advanced bestlight transfer, and did some secondary color corrections. We pretty much pulled down the green as much as we could, on top of that we warmed up the image. The colours resemble "O brother where art thou" quite a bit. Even though I was sometimes a bit nervous with the exposure while we were using a circ polarizer and two different nd's, it turned out well. We missed one bigger jib shot and underexposed it maybe by one and a half step, we probably just forgot to change it during the stress. I'll post screengrabs as soon as I'm allowed. The actual film wont be online for some time, but we'll be sure to post some sort of trailer.

Hello. This forum has always been a great resource, and I would like to thank everyone who have made sure it stays that way. The only way I dare to contribute at this young age is to write reports of my mistakes during shoots, hopefully someone finds them interesting or even educational. On top of that I am shyly proud of this film, and caving in to the urge to rant about it. I was contacted by a former classmate a year ago. He inquired in case I would be interested in shooting a short film he had been thinking about. He wanted to make a film in the alley with Tarantino, Rodriguez and old westerns. Something very visual and camp, that would intentionally be a bit trashy and sleazy. Not the first short in that genre, but as far as I understood it, he wasn't interested in reinventing the wheel, he wanted to direct ten minutes of entertainment. So we set out to produce our version of Grindhouse aesthetics. Something very American, big, bold and a bit excessive. That was our guideline through the whole process, overdo it in favor of being cautious. I was really happy for the offer and extremely excited to start shooting. Our ambitions snowballed, and we spent a lot of time preplanning and scouting locations. The whole thing grew in size and we ended up with a crew of about 25 persons, six actors and five days of shooting. Locations: Car repair shop - About half of the movie takes place in a dark, dirty and run down repair shop. The space was a big garage at a farm, filled with old car parts and tools. Next to it was a storage facility filled with old cars from the 40's-70's. Really nicely aged and dirty already, the place was short of ideal for the film. The group added old posters, retro oil cans and a lot of other stuff, topped with dirt and dust and some occasional oil smudges. Exteriors - The rest of the movie takes place on roads and on fields all around the area of the garage. To emphasize the foreign feel we framed all our shots so that our omnipresent forest would be hidden behind hills or just blocked somehow. A Scandinavian forest would break the illusion immediately. We found some roads where we got some depth in the images even though we had no sky in the image, with hills, electric lines etc. The best place we found was an even hill in the middle of a huge field. All directions towards it could be used to get clean sky-field horizons without too much logistics. Light: We studied all our reference films and ended up liking Rodriguez´s "in your face" way of using light, and decided to try and do something similar. Exteriors were always backlighted by the sun, as good as every exterior shot had to be time scheduled against the right background according to the sun and time of day. This was a horror to puzzle together schedule-wise. We used an 8'x8' checker as the main reflector to add some kickers or just reveal the shadow side. Some smaller silverboards were used for details. Pretty much every close up was lit the same way, one harsh kicker from one side and one softer from the other. We intentionally ignored light continuity, the sun could be in four different places during one scene, never in frame though. We were extremely lucky with the weather, as good as the whole week was sunny and exceedingly warm. If the sun would never have shown up, it would have been a totally different film altogether. The interior was mainly toplit with snooted 575 HMI's and some CTS. All light coming from outside was balanced neutral 5600K. As daylight we used three 2.5K HMI's through some bigger frames. Here the closeups got the same kickers as outside, vaguely motivated by the lights in the ceiling. When we added smoke the place looked like a 80's music video. Camera: An old Arri SR2 with almost dead batteries. A lot of ND's and ND grads outside combined with a polarizer in the exteriors, and clean inside. We shot on 250D, exteriors around f2.8-4.0, and interiors f2.0-2.8. Zeiss Mark III's ranging from 9.5mm-135mm varying a bit from exteriors-interiors. The last shot of the film was done using a Canon 300mm. We varied the height of the camera quite a bit. Six tins of raw material on 74 shots. Grip: One lousy Sachtler DV 15 which almost broke during some car trailer work. An old Elemack dolly and its jib, worked beautifully and we (at least seemingly) managed to pull off some quite complex shots. We used autopoles to hitch those 575's up in the ceiling, they had to be secured since they couldn't take the 575's weight. The shoot: We had a really uneven group in terms of work experience, and the first few days were quite tiresome. When everyone got a bit warm it started working. We had some professionals who promised to help us out, and that led to the fact that it was one of the most slick student productions I have participated in. At least I had the feeling everyone around me was smiling, even though I was quite stressed out most of the time. This led to some misjudgements I should have avoided, everyone in the group seemed to forgive us though. At least no one has tried to mug me. I am really happy we preplanned everything in such detail, the time schedules were really tight and without all that prepping we would have been screwed. In the future I will try and develop a poker face, so that my stress does not signal itself around the whole group like it did this time. I would also like to remember to point out how important set etiquette is, if everyone knows how to behave it makes a huge difference. I would like to thank everyone associated with the film for all the help, half of you probably read this forum at least as much as I do. Thank you for reading in case you got this far. If you have any further questions I would be happy to continue my rant. I will update this on thursday after the transfer, hopefully happy it all turned out well.... Mikael Gustafsson ps just to clarify that the attached images are production stills from the producers, not frame-grabs.

bump. Price is negotiable.

Just wanted to add that what I wrote earlier doesn't apply for S16, just R16 that the Beaulieu most probably is running with. A S16 modified Bolex or similar would probably show the fogging because of the wider frame size.

The 30ft spools your film comes in are useable in normal lighting. The Beaulieu R-16 is quite a finicky camera to load and I would never try doing it in darkness. I've loaded everything from 500T to 100T in sunshine, full lit studios to sunrise mornings without ever getting any fogging. As was already pointed out, remember to shoot plates or something not that critical on the first three feet(I usually film ca 5 seconds of nothing before actually beginning). The prepacked Kodak film cartridges warn against opening them in daylight, but I guess it's just a safety clause for them to avoid lawsuits and whatnot. Good luck with the camera, the look and feel of the footage ought to be great.

Bjorn Andersson (bjorn.andersson(at)brevet.nu) serviced and crystal modified my R-16. He also added 16:9 markings in the viewfinder. Naturally this wasn't too cheap, but I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Everything seems to work fine, I've shot some MOS stuff with it and the camera seems to get into synch within a second. Otherwise I adore the camera, it's finicky but really versatile. I'm working on a hardcased blimp at the moment, with a plywood box lined with audio dampening material. I'm hoping to be able to dampen the racket down enough to be able to get some proper audio recordings during our shoot in august-september. On another note, could someone inform me what a remote control cable/switch combination the R-16 uses? I've got a few different ones but I can't seem to get anything except the single frame option working. I've got one electric one but the mini plug doesn't seem to fit anywhere, will I need a bigger plug? Best regards, Mikael

I'd guess he can modify the camera in every possible way. For the R-16 we got for our exam film he did the following: - Crystal sync - 16:9 markings in the viewfinder - Overhaul (cleaning, lubing etc) The cleaning was a few hundred euros. His e-mail is bjorn.andersson(at)brevet.nu He can surely answer the question concerning the model better than most of us as well, I guess it all boils down to what you're after and what you need. Best regards, Mikael.

I'm fairly new with the R-16, but here's my two cents: I've been very happy with mine in all aspects this far. I had it overhauled at Björn Andersson and he did a wonderful job. I'll have to admit it's finicky compared to new cameras. If you care to read the manual a few times and take some time learning to load it properly, everything should be fine. During the time I read up on the camera before lunging for one I came up with usual complaints about loading hazzle and unsteady footage. Most solved with proper loading as far as I know. It may not be the cheapest option, but it's commonly accepted as being a good idea to give a full service to these things before you use them. Makes sense I guess, the cameras being quite old and all. That should help with the reliability. Hope that helps, even a bit. Best regards, Mikael

For sale: Fully serviced Beaulieu 2008s Automatic camera and accessories. The camera is in excellent condition both cosmetically and functionally. It has been thoroughly serviced by Björn Andersson, even the motor has been exchanged for a new one. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/nar...detailsmall.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v159/nar...eu2008small.jpg The set includes the following: Angenieux 8-64mm f1.9 zoom c-lens Camera body (serial number: 818790) Custom built mattebox (Ewa, 3x3 filters) Recelled original battery Reworked original charger Battery dummy with cable attachment Battery cord New, external battery(huge, will last for ages) New rapid charger for the external battery Cokin 85B filter (3x3) Hoya circular polarizer with stepup ring Original sunshade for the lens Original styrofoam box and the original manuals Filter key Zoom lens stick Optional aluminium carrying case Optional additional Cokin filters Optional Vision2 200T/500T film cartridges I bought the camera approximately one year ago. I've spent more than 800? just for the services and all the parts. Now I'm building up my 16mm set, and I have to reluctantly let this go. I shot two bigger projects with this camera, and it performed very well. I can send some screengrabs if interested. I'm asking 620? (800 USD) for the whole set. I'll be happy to answer any possible questions. Best regards, Mikael Gustafsson mikael.gustafsson@saunalahti.fi +358415291083