Alexander Disenhof

any ideas?

Hey everybody, thanks for all the feedback, its great to hear all this stuff. Sorry I haven't replied in so long, but its finals time, so I've been super busy. To answer some questions that came up - we used the Cooke s4 primes (my first time using them). We shot in 4k, and I was told by the editor that he used h.264 in compressor (gamma 1.2?) to get the video online after editing it in Final Cut. I have some more questions for all you knowledgeable people out there. A few of you said that some of the wide shots still feel like video. I totally agree, and I am just wondering what can be done about that? Any tricks in lighting more subtly maybe? Or is it just unavoidable to get that wide on most digital cameras without it screaming video? Also, for the bathroom scene with the overhead lighting, where I think Michael said looked like a fresnel pointing downwards (filmschool-esq) it is actually two kino bulbs taped over the mirror she is looking in, with a lightpanel i rigged behind her for some fill (it was a tiny bathroom, and the mini lightpanel was the only thing i could hide). I'm just wondering how you all might have lit it. Would you have motivated the source from somewhere else? The bathroom was about 8 feet wide, with yellowish wallpaper. Thanks again everybody! Alex

Anyone else? its hard to get good, constructive feedback at school, believe it or not. Some more details of the lighting/grip package we had... 2 -1.2k HMI pars 5 -650 tungsten fresnels 4 -1k tungsten fresnels 2 -4 bank kinos 1 - 500w china ball 1 mini lightpanel duvatine, 6x frame with ultrabounce/silk/light grid, a bunch of 4x diffusion frames various stands, and thats pretty much it. thanks for taking the time and watching it

Hey everybody, I am a student at Emerson College, and I just finished shooting for the first time on the Red Camera. I had an operator, and mostly focused on the lighting, as many situations were really complicated to light with a small student package. This is the trailer, tell me what you think! http://www.untunethesky.com/bowtrailer.mov

Hey Matt, just visited your website, you got some great stuff there. I was most interested in the fact that you roll! I'm from Boston, am studying cinematography (and working my ass off at it) and try to skate as much as my body allows. How long have you been in NYC for? You know any kids on the Boston scene (Alex Hogan, John Hamilton etc...?)

Very well said! I'm glad somebody said it too!

looks great, cant wait to see it! thanks for posting through your whole process, and then showing the lights you ended up using, its great to see and learn from!

As far as I know lenses do have a "sweet spot", and stopping down two stops allows for the lens to perform at its best. This said, if a lens is of high quality, than it should still perform reasonably well at T1.4. A while back I shot an entire short film wide open on superspeeds, and while there were some occasional focus issues, the picture quality itself looked fine. If you need to shoot at 1.4, then shoot at 1.4, but if you can avoid it, than maybe try shooting at a higher stop.

What kind of look are you going for? flat high-key lighting? Low-key with spotty lighting? Is the hallway white or light in color, or dark? Some more information is needed.

"I would buy or borrow a camera and get good at making pretty pictures." Making "pretty pictures" isn't usually the job of a cinematographer though. The cinematographer's job is to tell a story through images, sometimes this means making those images UGLY. I would learn all you can about light and composition, and then work on the technical things. Thats what I'm trying at least!

It depends on what you want. If you want it to look like there is bright sunlight coming into a darker room, then yes, you would underexpose the subject's face a little bit. That said, if your scene calls for seeing the actor's face more clearly, you might balance out the light coming from outside by either raising the light level of your room, or NDing the windows.

I'm sure this is somewhere in the annals of this forum...I just couldn't find it. Anyways, I am looking to shoot a time lapse of the sun rising over the city tomorrow morning using a Bolex and Plus-X reversal film. I thought that maybe exposing for three or four frames every minute for one hour would do the trick. Any suggestions? Also, how should I set my aperture? Should I just keep metering the the light as the sun rises and adjust the F-stop accordingly, or should I set the stop to what I think it would be once the sun rises and let the image come into the correct exposure? I know that reversal doesn't have much latitude, so I want to get this right. Any help on this today would be awesome!

One thing I would have done differently in your second shot was to make sure that the light pole in the background didn't come out of your subject's head. besides that, they look pretty good to me!

awesome stuff! I wish we had kids at my school who could do that...

This thread just put a big smile on my face! I don't remember much about the cinematography of any of these pictures, as I was only 4 years old when the first one came out, but I do know that they had a pretty big impact on my childhood! It is too bad movies meant for kids are often overlooked, because movies like these can impact their intended audience (in this case young, impressionable kids) more than any other genre of film. The films I saw as a young child still have lasting impressions on me as a young adult! As for the new animated feature, I am scared to see it, because I don't want my old memories of the Ninja Turtles to be changed!

some cool stuff there! Just wondering how you lit the video, specifically the longer shots of the store, and also how you dealt with the reflections that I would presume would normally come from the glass storefront.

Hey Tim, thanks for the thorough answer! I will definitely contact those offices. I go to Emerson College, and I work a lot as a DP and in the electrical department (as a gaffer, BBE, etc.) on tons of student films, so I would love to try my hand at some pro shows. Also, if you need any extra hands on anything, I'd be glad to help!

Its been pretty exciting as a New England native and a student in Boston to see all the big films coming to shoot in the city. Has anyone gotten the chance to work on any of them?

Finally saw it. It was a beautiful story, and the cinematography did a great job complementing it. I thought that the use of the stocking on the lens along with the overexposed shafts of light in many backgrounds around the house at the beginning of the film gave it a magical feel. This augmented the child's innocent perspective of the world. The silhouette of Keira Knightly on the beach was also breathtaking. I think this film deserves an Oscar nod for best film and cinematography!

Whats up Kevin? Thats a good question. It seems like it doesn't really matter what school you go to, but who you meet there and how much you personally can get out of the experience, both in experience on film shoots and networking with people. Hope your break is going well and I'm sure we will see each other on set soon!

As a relatively new member to this forum, I can say that I thought that having to use my full name was a little odd, and my mind briefly thought of security, since in today's world you really can't be too careful. But, I am also new to the whole forum thing in general, so I didn't think much more of it and I just followed the rules. I don't think that stupidity has much to do with it - most active members here seem pretty smart to me. I could see people just ignoring the rules too though...

Michael and David, thank you very much for your answers to my question! Also, I want to thank you for taking the time and answering so many people's questions on this forum, I have already learned so much from just reading your posts every day! Being a student, I have not had the opportunity to work with huge budgets, and so David, your info on renting certain lights to consolidate resources and therefore save money for the production is something that I will definately keep in mind as the films I work on get bigger! Thanks again. Alex

The reel looks great - I visited your website and am very interested in the snowboarding film. (I am an avid snowboarder who was actually inspired to be a cinematographer originally by the 16mm snowboard films that I have watched my whole life.) Is there anywhere I could go to see this film?

I am a student at Emerson College in Boston, and I was walking down the street tonight and saw the new film "The Lonely Maiden" (I think thats what its called) starring Christopher Walken and Morgan Freeman shooting. Naturally, I was interested in the light units they were using, and so I talked to the 3rd electrician. I asked about a light about 200 yards away, which looked something like a 12K HMI or something of the sort. Instead, he told me it was a tungston unit, and said that one should not use HMI's at night, because they are only for simulating daylight. To make a long story short, I would have thought that using HMI's at night could be a good way to get the blue light usually associated with the moon. Am I wrong here? Is it just a no-no to use HMI's at night, even for a blue rimlight or something? Or, if they are used at night, what are some of their common uses?

oops didn't mean to start a new topic - this was meant for the thread already started - my bad.