Christophe Collette

Hi there, I did blew out the windows, tried to keep an F2 inside, I was a good f4.5 right by the window. I'll post some images early january once I get my hands on the footage. Thanks everyone! C

Great Work!

It's good! It's really long though, It takes a while before it gets started but you have some great stuff on that! That excalot shot with the girl is really beautiful, love the light, very hard. What was it by the way? C Oups! Escalator...

Thanks Bob! I think I should give it a try next time I do handheld in 35mm, hopefully I can find a rental place that has it in Montreal! By the way, that's a sweet car! C

Thanks Tim, I have worked on already a fair amount of shorts, music videos and commercials as DOP. I am a photographer at the basis but have been Dping for a little while. I want to take a workshop in more advanced lighting because althought I have very good knowledge of photography lighting gear, I have very little in Film lighting and I'd like to try stuff out in a stress free environment. Cheers! C

Thanks Marty, you've tried one of these... ...How does it affects camera movements? C

Hi everyone, I have no clue where to post this so I will post here, yesterday a friend of mine told me about a sort of harnass I presume that has this spring that relieve about half of the weight of the camera on your shoulder, it's like a large inverted "J" that holds the camera when doing handheld work... I had never heard of such a thing, is that what's called an Easyrig?? What are the pros and cons of that?? Thanks! C

Hey thanks everyone for the infos!

Hi there, thanks everyone for your replies! I am really sorry if I confused everyone with my photo... This is a photo of another shoot, which we used as reference for lighting alongside Mark Romanek's CKOne spots... I do not have images from the commercial I am refering to yet... I think G McMahon and Jonathan read through my novel and understood where I was going! I am unsure of what light to use to mimic natural light coming from a window in a place where I don't have a window maybe.... I used that diffused Image 80 and true, the wrap around quality of the light it gives is nowhere close to the light coming from a window, like in the photo I posted of the girl by the window. Imagine this photo without a window but a wall a little farther and that the light quality was the same but artificial, what light would it be? I understand I need a large source, diffused probably, so that's why I went for Image 80... But I needed something a little less mushy, punchier but still soft and large... Maybe a bunch of small fresnel behind one large diffusion... Thanks, and sorry for the confusion! C

Yeah... It is stop motion, but was the car moving along with the motion control device? If so, how did it lined up perfectly? There is never a jerky movement... My guess is the motion control thing was secure to the car and removed in post or it was all shot still, no car moving, and the movement was added ulteriorly or again the motion control crane was fitted to a truck which kept the EXACT same distance to the car all along... It does not look simple anyway to me! C

They are actually mine! A fashion shoot from last spring, but not from the commercial I am refering to. I tried posting the photo, it does not work so sorry I don't have more photo for reference...

Hi Jonathan, light temperature was not an issue I had a color meter and checked it all previously, anyway I was transferring on the Spirit, we were going for a slightly warm desaturated look... So even If I had had tungstene bulbs in my practicals, it would not have mattered much since they were not giving much light and I could have easily color correctedthem in post. But I had daylight bulbs which not quite daylight, more like 4200K but I was going warm in post. I will post another photo in a new thread, I have reached the limit, this was done shooting flash with a small 2x3 chimera... This is the sort of light I would like to create in film which I have not yet been able to... ... See, the shadow is soft, althought the light is punchy, all in all it still looks like soft light but it's got more crunch than those kinos which I am starting to consider not using anymore... But all the chimera experience I had in film were not concluding, I once had a 3x4 chimera on a 1.2k HMI placed about the same way as in this photo and it looked mushy, nothing like this.... It's this in between soft and hard that I'd like to attain, any ideas? I just thought of THE perfect example: the Calvin Klein CKOne ads from Mark Romanek, http://www.markromanek.com/spots/03.html Both the one of the guy and the girl. This looks real. Natural light I mean. C

Hi! I visited Claudio Miranda's webpage, www.claudiomiranda.com, I should be asking hiw directly since he is on this forum regularly but I don't want to bother him, how do you think he did this Cadillac Ad? Photography and Motion Control I understand but how come the car is rolling, did they do this in post afterwards? Removed what we would have seen of the motion control crane or device, and added the movement in post... Well, It is really well done and I'll really like to know how it was really done... Thanks C

Hi, I watched the Beauty and the Beast by Jean Cocteau last night and there is a ton of optical printing in this beautiful movie... The end scene where the Beast turns back to human and flies with Beauty in the sky is really gorgeous althought you can see the plate the two images not imbricking together... I'd like to try optical printing for music videos.... C

Hey, stupid question but what is that burning thing on the ground? Fire? And what is the guy by the camera operator doing with what seems to be a flag, or a bounce, mirror? Thanks, C

Hi, I just finished a commercial for an insurance company, if I get a link to it, it will be posted but I don't think it will be released til january. I got some feedbacks from the prod, they absolutely loved the close-ups but were not astounded by the larger scenes. They said it looked a bit fake.. To me, It did not look fake but looked a bit plain... The order was soft and moody, as if there was just natural light... the appartment was pretty luminous but I was shooting 7217 with an 85b (had to shoot 7217... Budget was tight and the prod house had the film, so they asked for me to use it...) which kept me from shooting with just plain daylight. I added a couple of 6K fresnel through a light silk diffusion which were outside the building and were aimed just a tad above or beside the windows so that I do not get hot spot and light appears to flow in naturally... It brought my reading inside in the middle of large room I was lighting from f 1.3 to f2.8. Inside, I lit my actors with an Image 80, large kino, 8 tubes, which was also diffused with silk on a 6x6, backlight in the hair was another kino without diffusion tied up to the sealing (deported) behind the actor which I kept a stop over my main. I tried to keep a bit of contrast in the faces lighting from one side only 90 degrees to the left side, no fill on the face, but anyway it was really soft so I did not really need more than a bounce board, Basically I tried to mimic the light I had in the appartment but reinforcing it and making sure my subjects were popping out of the background a bit... But the whole place was white, I used negative bounce here and there in a few set ups in order to give a bit of modeling in the light but it was a bit too lit, the kino englobed everything even when placed the closest possible to the subject and exposing for that. The close ups were beautiful, very real, but in a large view, it looked blank... The place was small, hard to conceil lights, I use catpoles the closest to the wall as possible and deportations... I am just starting my career Dping, have been climbing up from cheap music video to commercials in 6 months, I do not quite feel I have the knowledge to do what I am doing but I am doing it. What are possible options in such a place to make things more moody without going hard with the light... I'll post a photo so you get the type of light I mean, in this photo it is natural light... I thought of an Hmi through a chimera with eggcrate maybe, more contrasty than the image 80 diffused... Maybe undiffused image 80 to bring the reading from the subject at a higher ratio of difference to the background... Hard light fake window patterns coming inside shots..... I was shooting with Cooke S4 lenses, kept a constant f2, so I used a ND3 or ND 6 once in while... What would you do?? I know this is very up the air without seeing theplace and my images but I am asking anyways.... Here is a commercial that very much looks like my footage in the large scene altought I did not have that amount of space to play with lights and only had a few lit practicals here and there with "daylight" bulbs... www.jetfilms.ca, you click on directors, find Maxime Giroux, look for the commercial entitled "Comte-Le temps s'arrête...." How would you make this less bleak while keeping it soft, I mean by less bleak, to sort of have denser areas... And here is the photo, forget the window there... And another one... Thanks a ton, I know this is a weird post, I am just trying to see differently. Christophe Oups I posted twice the same image, sorry! I have trouble with other one, anyway, you get where I am going. Thanks!

Any leads???

I really have to disagree with you on this Sergi. In my humble opinion, overexposing two stops is overexposing a lot... I'd expose normally and do the rest in Telecine. C

Find yourself a version of Mpeg Stream Clip. This is what I used to do my reel... You can edit in FCP once the file is in quicktime. You will loose a bit of quality in the process. C

Hi, my Holga (older version) has two settings, sunny and cloudy. Sunny is in the vicinity of 1/60 f11 +- a bit since they are not quite acurate, cloudy is 1/60 f5.6 1/2 +- a bit. ISO 320, tri-x pro. 1/60 is the official Holga speed, althought I tend to think it's more like 1/45, the rest I found out running test comparing it with a dead on Nikon FM2. So be careful, I carry a lightmeter even when using the Holga, you get really great photos using these cams so it is a shame when they are not useable... ...And what's even better is that each Holga or Diana is different. I adapted mine to fit a synch cord and I shoot studio stuff with flashes, It's really funny. I also have a Diana, and the settings I found were pretty much the same with it. A trick if you want to shoot Delta 3200, coat the inside of your holga with matte black paint, the inside is shiny and you get funny flares everywhere, with my camera anyways... And tape everything with black electro tape. Check this out if you really are a Holga freak! www.holgamods.com C

Salut Jean-François, I don't think it is very hard to get that look though telecine, to me it looks just like plain desaturation + adding a bit of green to your image plus darkening the blacks. I'd probably shoot with a Nd horizontal Soft Grad to make sure you pick up enough sky so that when you boost up the contrast, it doesn't wash away... I shoot part of a short film exactly where you took this photo. Incinérateur Des Carrières... Funny... Une photo référence d'une shot d'en dessous. Christophe

Hi everyone, I am looking into workshops, DOP workshops, lighting workshops. I do not have a tremendous amount of time ( a month to the max ), neither do I have a tremendous amount of money... What are my options? What is the best lighting workshop one can attend? I do not care where it is given, I'll travel. Thanks for sharing infos! I am currently looking into a workshop given in Guthenburg, Sweden, but it seems a bit short, 5 days.... 1800 euros... Christophe

Yeah true... But one great thing about digital is actually the fact that you don't have to change film for different situations, it's all included! I own a Canon 5D, great camera... Incredible resolution, great tonal range and a fantastic ability to shoot high ISO without too much noise. And all this for 3K....A bargain. I think it's just the look of the final image that prevents me from fully going digital in still. Again, too clinical... But some like it clinical. Narrow DOF looks bad in digi though. Even with good lenses.

Hi Joey, thanks for the comments, all of it was shot in or around montreal, all but for the BW beach shots which which were shot in Halifax (Martinique Beach) in october. The corn field is about 45 minutes out on highway 10 going south, around Mont-St-Hilaire but there are endless corn fields everywhere here so... And the sandpit is just a little ways farther still on highway 10. The appartments are all my friends places, downtown and plateau. There is just a lot of bringing the right stuff in there, most of the DA on the clips is stuff I bought at value villages and equivalents on a road trip across Canada, from BC to Quebec a year ago... I got this trailer full of funky stuff from all across, a bargain. Cheers! If you ever need a location in Montreal, just email me, I know my way around.

I have just finisihed watching House of sand from director Andrucha Waddington, cinematography from Ricardo Della Rossa... ...The photography is stunning, I thought I would just suggest it here! To be seen! Christophe