Matt Sandstrom

haha, i love this thread. /matt

and are you saying that this would somehow contradict what i just said or what? i'm afraid you're gonna have to explain that again. duh, everything. while there are new ccd chips these days that can selectively expose different pixels differently that option just isn't available for the super 8 shooter. either you overexpose everything that's in the frame, or none of it. i don't want to come across as patronizing since obviously you must know this. i'm just curious what you're after. you're obviosuly just confused since the word overexposure can be used in many different ways. a better term to use when you exposure an emulsion differently to decrease grain, increase contrast and so on is "to rate it differently". instead of saying that negative likes overexposure you can say that it likes to be rated slower. this is what we're talking about. do you see now how your reflected readings and different brightnesses are completely irrelevant? /matt

amazing. when somebody talks about what kind of exposure a certain emulsion likes to acheive a certain results it's obviously the technical definition that's being referred to. if you could reduce the negative effects of underexposure by calling it a stylistic choice cinematography would be a much simpler craft... /matt

correct exposure is when objects that reflect 18% of the light register as medium grey on the film. if it registers brighter you've overexposed and of it registers darker you've underexposed. the way you use the word is common and acceptable but it's hardly even related and has nothing to do with this whatsoever. /matt

come on, *if* you want deeper blacks and *if* you want to avoid blown out highlights, and *if* you want more saturation then it's obviously "better" to underexpose. the grain issue is non-conclusive as i see it. you get more grain from underexposing but deep shadows also hide grain, so again it depends. simple as that. when was the exact time when eveybody suddenly stopped shooting tests? when i was learning that's all i did, and still do before every major shoot. /matt

a related question, anybody knows how much "extra wattage" the alternator outputs, i.e. how much can you run off the regular car battery while driving or idling without draining it? /matt

would it really? seems like that would only really cut the amount of light and not produce a pattern. such a light with a mask close to the subject would work though. btw if you can't afford a used slide projector you probably can't afford a worklight either. :-) /matt

here's the homepage, now with teaser trailer. sorry about the green artifacts in the wmv version. it looks great in quicktime. (lame i know. please don't see it as an excuse, just a clarification) :-) http://www.mattias.nu/iloveyou/ /matt

i like them a lot. at least the last four. it's a daring move to use hot highlights on hdv, and i'm not sure you quite pulled it off in the second and third shots. i guess the story called for it, so take my critique with a grain of salt, but they would probably have looked better with less punch. it works quite well in the fifth shot though. probably due to the dark background. /matt

thanks. i shot it without gain but it was shot at dusk, the sun was set but the sky still blue, which helped reduce the contrast. and i lit the main character with a handheld camera light. as you can see the faces on the other people are really dark except when they walk past that light. /matt

sure. but i don't know how much worth any answer to such a general question would be. /matt

i disagree. careful use of fill is necessary to get a high contrast look in my opinion. using hard light with no fill often just causes things to look muddy with highlights. unless you flag ultra carefully and dress the set so dark that everything not directly lit goes black, but that's usually not what happens with a single light source. /matt

slightly off to make it extra warm. /matt

thanks. i imported the clips to the apple intermediate codec, downconverted to dv for editing, color corrected the dv material, relinked the timeline to the intermediate, luckily the intermediate codec and the dv codec share the same color space and gamma so the pictures stayed the same, changed the timeline to uncompressed to force high precision effects rendering, exported to apple 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 at sd res for digibeta output, using compressor with advanced frame controls for maximum sharpness and 10 bit scaling. these clips were encoded as mpeg-4 using 3ivx from that 10 bit sd master. i also created a dv master from this, and it's strikingly better than the color corrected dv version even though it only differs one generation of compression. the conclusion is to add all effects at the highest resolution possible and then downconvert. i could have edited in 10 bit sd uncompressed for the same quality without the intermediate step i guess but i don't have the system for that. this is probably the best you can do from just a g4, firewire dv out and a calbrated sd monitor. btw color correction in the stairs shot is very mild. it looked almost exactly like that straight from the camera which was a very pleasant surprise. i had white balanced carefully to achieve this look though. it's an overcast day and before that it just became blueish and dull. the other shots have been tweaked a bit more. /matt

here's a quote from a post i made in the lighting forum. i thought you guys might be interested. shot in cineframe mode on the fx1e. /matt

i'd find my primary light source, filter on he lens for that and let the rest be whatever color it is. as long as you don't get many different colors of light hitting the subjects i feel mixed light just adds character and realism. if it's a daytime shoot i think the windows and your hmi's will overpower the tubes quite easily so just let them be as green as they want. /matt

thanks for your help. here are a couple of clips as promised. one was shot at dusk using the camera light handheld as a side key, you can see where it is if you watch the guy passing by since he looks up at it. :-) one is daylight cross lit with a shiny lastolite reflector. the third is a closeup where the convertible lastolite was used as a butterfly diffusor and the camera light as fill. http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/iloveyou1.mov http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/iloveyou2.mov http://www.mattias.nu/stuff/iloveyou3.mov the short premieres at the buff film festival in malmö, sweden next thursday the 16th. it will be shown on digibeta in an "e-cinema" equipped theater, whatever that means. sounds better than the usual home movie projector in a nightclub or conference room festival setup at least. :-) /matt

nah, i'm not freaked out. i have no problem referring to my black friends as whatever, in their presence it's even fun to use words they don't like and they do the same to me. :-) it's just that in situation where you're talking in generalizing terms, which is dangerous in itself when referring to ethnicity (or nationality, religion, sex and so on for that matter), as well as want to express yourself carefully, such as on public forums like this, african american seems very limited since it only refers to a small number of the black people in the world. sorry for what i started. hope it stays civilized. /matt

it depends on what you're trying to do. i think dark skin registers just fine with normal lighting, but if you have two actors with different skin and you need to balance them you will have to add more light. same if you want to create separation against a dark background. btw what's up with "african american"? i know it's the prefered word for a black person in north america, but what if they're not american? i know i'm gonna sound like the white trash jerk i am now, but what's the international pc word? ;-) /matt

if there was no fire it would look almost like a darker version of day, but the fire will not let your eyes adjust so i'd say you should be able to see the snowy landscape pretty well, but no faces really. that's how i'd say it really looks and that's probably how i'd light it. i'd probably punch up the light from the fire more than reality though. let's say i'd put that one stop under on the faces and the background two stops under (incident. the snow will reflect brighter highlights than that). perhaps a soft cross moonlight at key? 500 asa stocks are great because with the lens wide open they respond similarly to your eyes in my opinion, so just light by eye. i'm far from as experienced as david though, so his advice to test test test would really be mine too? ;-) /matt

ah, thanks. that makes sense. i've been wondering about the etymology because it seemed rather backwards. i figured a high key meant lots of key light, which implies less fill, thus more contrast, and vice versa, but then it's really the other way around. my home made conclusion was that it had something to do with key as in music keys, where "higher" keys are indeed "brighter". /matt

bring a good monitor and keep an eye on it. i haven't shot anything on real hd myself, just cheap hdv stuff where the flip out lcd was our monitor, but i was 1st ad on an hd short and the monitor was all that counted for the dp and gaffer, which makes sense since the camera itself is a light meter and it's totally wysiwyg. (perhaps this is no news since you'd probably do the same on video. problem is i've hardly ever shot anything on video either, certainly nothing where we could afford a reference monitor, so i wouldn't know) ;-) /matt

do you know if there are any self ballasted daylight "full spectrum" balanced fluorescent bulbs for normal fixtures? that would be awesome to carry to location shoots. /matt

it simulates 25p and records to 50i though, which works quite well. /matt

BUT I WASN'T FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. /matt