Joshua Jackson

The First Five Years Productions, LLC has just finished and premiered the first season of the absurdist comedy, The First Five Years! The Series was shot with Magic Lantern Raw. The series utilizes several in-house proprietary LUTS, color transforms, and pipeline applications to supplement the Magic Lantern workflow. If there is enough interest, we'll post a case study on the workflow. I also welcome critical feedback as well! Either way, take a few moments to escape reality in the odd universe that is The First Five Years. The entire series can be found at the following link: http://jackandcarmen.com

These are a few stills and a link to the trailer of the latest film I was Director of Photography and Colorist for. Would love for some good critical feedback on lighting, tone and color! 24fps @ 1920x840 transferred to DCP 2K [2.39] for projection CAMERA: Canon T2i TRAILER: Lune Bateaux Pictures -- Muffet -Joshua

That's a great description of the application of the cosine law for use with a light meter! The reason I mentioned the screen gain is because things can get just a little more complicated when using silver screens, which aren't used very much except for circular/linear polarized light in 3D films anyway.

Actually, footcandles and lux are not units of Luminance, but rather units of Illuminance. There are four main measurements of photometry: -Lumens: Total Power of Light (weighed to human eye response) that a light gives off. [lumen] -Candelas: Total Intensity (Luminous Flux) given off PER solid angle. [cd or lumens/steradian] -Illuminance: Total Power Incident on the surface of a square meter. [lumens/m2 or LUX] -Luminance: Total Intensity per Solid Angle from a light with a given size. [cd/m2] Footcandles are the US (read non-metric) version of Illuminance, measured in lumens/ft2. Footlamberts are the US version of Luminance, IF the luminance is measured from a Lambertian (perfectly diffusing) Surface. This does not readily apply to screens with gain other than 1.0. Often cosine falloff adjustments are needed for the proper interpretation of the levels read. Incident Light Meters give you an exposure for a surface that would be a given percentage of the light incident. Often this percentage is erroneously called 18%, but to find the actual percentage you plug in this equation for the meter's calibration constants ( [K*PI/C] ). Sekonic gives you readings for 15.7% on the incident meter, for instance. What this translates into on your camera is dependent on the ISO speed and manufacturer's deviations, of course. Footcandles, Lux, Foot Lambert, and cd/m² are great for the reasons listed above and serve to give you "absolute values" of the scene, etc. EV, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and camera-centric values give you "relative values" to a given meter and camera calibration.

http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/US_plugins_acrobat_en_motion_support_processing_h247_h2407.pdf The H247 manual at kodak specifies 1.0g of Sodium Hydroxide to PreBath PB-2 for use to aid in the removal of remjet for ECN-2 Processing. Alternate Prebath PB-C1 doesn't require NaOH, however.

"Medium" grey is what your eyes perceive as medium grey. In the linear world, it is 18% reflectance. You need an accurately printed Grey Card to get an exact readout (and even then, it could be +/- 5%). In what context are you needing a medium grey?

My sophomoric response to the original post: Personally, I'm not interested in an approx. 25% budget increase on film stock to shoot at 30fps as opposed to 24fps. I have a gut feeling not many studios are going to be all that interested in that kind of increase either. So, no. I highly doubt 24fps will become outdated anytime soon. I think Karl's right...that pretty much just leaves a film vs. digital debate.

A cheesy comedic spoof on the reality series Intervention. Attempted to wrangle the gritty, reality look which was surprisingly more difficult than I initially thought. As always, Youtube compresses what was initially a somewhat decent H.264 compression.

Well, odds are that your computer monitoring profile is in sRGB. So, in short, unless you set up your post workflow to accomodate this wider gamut, then you won't be able to tell the difference in a way that matters for end product gamut mapping. On top of that, you'll need the correct signalling profile (i.e. HDMI Cat. 2, for instance) to carry it through the workflow. Really, it depends on where the end product will be going.

18% grey cards should fall at exactly 46%/46.2 IRE/328mV on your waveform monitor IF you have it set on a normal gamma (if you're not sure what gamma is, then assume it's normal). ALL video cameras (consumer, professional, HD, SD, RED, etc.) initially captures light linearly (i.e. an 18% grey card is captured as .18, with "white" normalized to 1). It's where the linearly captured light is mapped that makes them different. Video cameras without a "gamma" setting applied or those that don't map to a Log space, will set to a gamma of .45. 18% (.18) raised to the power of .45 gives us... 46.2%. Now, shooting in something like PanaLog will map that grey card closer to 30%.

Excellent. Thank you both. That answers it perfectly.

17.6%, to be more precise. If you divide 0% black (In reality, around 3% black) to 100% white into a "zone" system (Ansel Adams), 17.6% will give you the exact medium between the two. 3.12% (-5), 4.4% (-4), 6.25% (-3), 8.84% (-2), 12.5% (-1), 17.67% (0), 25% (+1 stop), 35.35% (+2), 50% (+3), 70.71% (+4), 100% (+5). These values are per an 11 zone scale. This "zone" scale readily applies how we see light to how the medium sees light when measured against "stops." It's a nice middle man. If you notice, 12% is roughly a full stop under 18%. So balance to 12% grey if you want to overexpose your image by a little more than a stop. People get into heavy debates over %'s of "middle grey," but most of the time the confusion comes from calibration constants in individual meters. It's like this: REGARDLESS of what your meter tells you, you as a cinematographer will have the ultimate say "where" your "medium" tone will fall and what will and will not be picked up with detail. If you run your tests all the way through (setting printer points for black level to finding your ideal rating), you'll know whether or not that 18% grey card falls dead in the "perceptually" medium point...or not. Remember, it's called "calibrating" for a reason. Just another tool in creative control.

17.67% (0), 25% (+1 stop), 35.35% (+2), 50% (+3), 70.71% (+4), 100% (+5) 12.5% (-1), 8.84% (-2), 6.25% (-3), 4.4% (-4), 3.12% (-5) It's logarithmically mapped. Mapping to an 11 zone system. Of course, 100% is only "white," while real-world elements push far beyond this, upwards to 600% on a film's shoulder. Sometimes more.

I'm attempting to learn more about digital color correction and I'm currently mastering my images in linear and vid spaces. I've had success converting vid spaces to linear and have had good results in color mastering, but I'm having difficulty finding out what "floating point" means exactly. Any clarity on this would be appreciated.

Thank you very much, David.

I have a few questions regarding the Local 600 (specifically Eastern Region). I have read the other threads concerning the topic, but I have some specific questions that haven't been answered (and I do not want to hijack another thread). Here is where I stand. I am working as an on-staff Director of Photography for a local production company in South Carolina. The company is a legitimate enterprise and will be coming into full corporate status come January. We have many projects coming up and I want to begin "earning" days to go toward Local 600 eligibility. No, I am not being offered union jobs. Although I am aiming for DP recognition, I am not under the assumption that I'll start at the top. This topic is for me to understand how to start from the bottom to eventually get from that point, on a long-term scale. Yes, I do understand that there are dues and fees. No, I cannot afford them. I am mapping out a general plan for the coming years as a working DP and I want to plan in such a way to get to that point. I understand a keen sense of the artistic palette of a cinematographer is necessary, but I am also a business-minded individual and I do not believe in many "over-night" success stories. One of the plans in my goal path is that I will be keeping every piece of paperwork (memos, tax sheets, pay stubs, call/crew sheets, invoices, 1099, etc.) for every day I work, regardless of the size of the production, seeing as how I've read that this is necessary for consideration. I will also begin communicating with the local 600 to make sure that I'm moving in a direction that lends itself to my eligibility and eventual entry and not down a dead road. Questions: -Am I on the right track? What pitfalls should I be aware of if I am getting most of my days via a single company? -I'm assuming over-preparation and documetation is advised; is there anything regarding a production that the CSATF doesn't care to see? -Does my experience/earning of days as a DP help in gaining union projects? How can my experience be used to get onto union projects? -Can eligibility into the union itself help land union projects, even if one cannot yet afford to join? -Can eligibility expire? (wanted to ask before I talked to the Local 600 contacts) Thank you for your help. Anyone who would like to help as a mentor would be greatly appreciated. All posts from IATSE Local 600 members and those actively pursuing union status are welcomed.

I'm very sure it could join the "not so various" and sundry cliches: -It's what you don't light -It's what you don't say -It's what you don't do -It's what you don't focus upon It's definitely something on which to spend more time and study. I believe some sort of collected study would be interesting; however, the subjectivity of the actual affect of the OoF material could itself exceed any grounded studies. There are seemingly infinitive variations on the amount of "out of focus"ness possible.

Hey Karl, Did you ever get to a point where you're processing ECN-2 for stills?

Under extreme circumstances, what if you had 100 days worth of work according to your payroll stubs from one company (LLC)? What, in detail, constitutes a company in this sense?

Ollie, here a few more formulas regarding photometry that might keep you busy on rainy days (of course, what you DO with these formulas will have a greater impact than just "knowing" them). Footcandles = (Candelas)/(Distance in feet²) Lux = (Candelas)/(Distance in meters²) *Both based on Inverse Square Law (E=I/d²) Intensity per unit area is inversely proportionate to the square of the distance. 1 Footcandle = 10.76 Lux Luminous Flux (measured in Lumens) is a measure of the power of visible light. If the light evenly distributed over 360 degrees (isotropic), then: 1 Lumen = 12.56 Candelas If the light is not evenly distributed over 360 degrees, you'll need to find the steradians of the solid beam angle: Ω= 2*Pi[1-cos(Beam Angle/2)] And then, Lumens = (Candelas)(Ω) Candelas is luminous intensity. (measured in lm/steradians). Illuminance is a measure of luminous flux per unit area. This is measured in footcandles (lumens/feet²) and lux (lumens/meter²). Luminance is the luminous intensity given off by a surface. For a Lambertian (perfectly diffused) surface: Footlamberts = (footcandles)(reflectance %) -reflectance in decimal form (100% is 1.00) For lenses: Angle of View of lens: Angle = [2 * (arctan ( L / (2f) ) ) ] where L is the length(mm) of the frame in the direction you want the reading. Horizontal dimension for horizontal AOV and vertical dimension for vertical AOV. f is the focal length of the lens. The ASC manual has a ton more. Peace.

Well, if you ever need a nerdy AC, let me know (*snort) :ph34r:

The change came, not from the changes in the actual filmstock, but with a change (particularly Sekonic) in their calibration constant value. Now, we know that Footcandles = [(25)(f/stop²)]/[(ASA)(Shutter Speed)] , right? Well, number one, not all companies that manufacture exposure meters use the constant of "25." This constant is based on what reflectance the company wants to be represented as medium grey. Of course, the 25 is a numerical value set by ISO 2720: 1974 (source) and was adopted two years later (Actually they offered a range of suggested numerical values around 18-35ish, or 180-360 if formulating lux). 25 is typically used to formulate Footcandles to f/stop for a medium value to be represented as 17.6%. As we know, not all companies (Sekonic, Minolta, Pentax, etc.) utilizes this same value. Many use a constant that represents the medium value around 12%. Basically, under the same lighting setup, different brands and models of light meters will show different footcandle values, but the same recommended f/stop if properly calibrated. Here are some starter references that I've found to springboard on for further study: -http://www.johndesq.com/pinhole/norwoodscales2.htm -United States Patent 4176955 -The Manual of Photography: Photographic and Digital Imaging By R. E. Jacobson -http://www.largeformatphotography.info/articles/conrad-meter-cal.pdf -http://www.apug.org/forums/forum48/39738-sekonic-l-28-meter-scale-question.html

Important note: Meters pre 1976 and meters post '76 will give you a different footcandle reading. As of 1976, the standard of footcandle measurements changed and thus footcandles listed on present day meters will give a footcandle value that is 125% of the previous footcandle readings. This won't be much of a problem if the meter is calibrated, but could raise some issues if you work a lot with the formulas for luminous flux and luminance. So, an L-28C shows 250FC, while the L-398 shows 320FC. Keep that in mind if working to calibrate multiple meters together. The reason for this is because of a change in the "calibration constant." If you care about any of those formulas or don't know much about this, I recently posted some basics of photometry dealing with this in a recent thread on luminous flux in the lighting forum.

Are you AC? An AC, gaffer, and grip are all going to pretty much have their own bibles with their own glossaries that are going to be more than long enough. Not that terms don't bleed into each other. Other than books, I've found that I'm learning the most by listening to commentaries, talking to experienced people on this board, and reading magazines like American Cinematographer and ICG. I'm young, so saying that I'm still learning isn't that big of a deal, but I'm sure many veterans here can tell you that they still do and that their's no shame is not knowing something if you are making 100% effort to learn everything that you can. Which is also why it's bad to lie on your resume. I'd rather come on a shoot with a humbled resume and exceed expectation, than to fluff up my resume beyond my current means and fail to meet the mark.

For Lux, replace that "25" with a "269."