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David Mullen ASC

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About David Mullen ASC

  • Birthday June 26

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    Cinematographer
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    Los Angeles

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    http://www.davidmullenasc.com

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  1. Depends on a lot of factors, like what is cutting the light into a shaft, is there a window frame? How large? Does the light have to fill it? Or is this is empty space where the light itself has to contain itself into a shaft? How much of a spread do you want? How much intensity? How far can you place the light? How even in exposure do you want the area where the light hits?
  2. It would be easy to take stills to see the effect of using two 85 filters on a blue sky and correcting back to neutral versus normal filtering, but again, assuming digital color-correction, it's just as easy to darken the blue channel in post if that's what you want.
  3. In that example, there was a lot of overall contrast added somewhere in the chain, probably in color-correction. And of course, in digital color-correction, you can isolate the blue channel and darken it. The first 85 filter on tungsten stock just gets you to neutral, as if you shot daylight stock. The second one warms up the image quite a bit; that will slightly darken a blue sky but it's more that by making the image more orange, the blue sky stands out a little more (of course, the orange filter also makes it less blue, it shifts a bit to the green.) If you have a really blue sky like that, a pola filter will do more to darken and saturate it, but if you like the orange highlights, then go ahead and use the extra 85 filter. Or do both, or use an 85/Pola combo so there is only one piece of glass. But keep in mind that your reference photo is higher in contrast than normal, and increasing the contrast tends to increase the saturation.
  4. There can be multiple reflections in the eye, just as in real life. If anything, the traditional center point eye light is what is unnatural.
  5. Yes that is anamorphic lens breathing which is a bit different-looking than spherical lens breathing due to the change in compression/squeezing to the background as it goes out of focus, but there’s also probably a bit of traditional breathing (focal length shift) mixed in with that. Anamorphic mumps as with CinemaScope is an entirely different issue, that’s when as you follow-focus to a face getting closer, the squeeze starts to become less than 2X, so during consistent 2X unsqueezing during projection, the face starts to look fatter.
  6. A number of movies have done that -- "Good Night and Good Luck" as well I believe. Shooting color and turning it b&w, whether digital or film, has been more common over the years. Truth is, if you want really clean b&w, shoot digital like "Ida" for example. B&W reversal was mainly just a lot more high-contrast, sharper, and generally finer-grained (depending on the stock) than b&w negative, so you can increase contrast in post but contrasty lighting will also help.
  7. If you liked the skin tones then why did you let the colorist change them? Doesn't he work for you? If you weren't shooting raw, then you were baking in any color temperature settings. Were you recording raw? If so, then usually the color temperature setting on the camera is only metadata.
  8. Nothing wrong with warming up skin tones by lighting through unbleached muslin, but being a daylight source, if the camera was set to 3200K, then the light isn't warm, it's still cool. You can make that light look warm, cool, or neutral depending on your base color temperature setting. Your colorist should be more clear as to what the problem was with color-correcting the skin tones in the shot, too green, too magenta, too desaturared, too saturated? Was the camera set-up properly for the color rendition you intended?
  9. I had the same experience with a screening of "2001", the audience found the deadpan dialogue very funny ("Without your space helmet, Dave... I think you'll find it... very difficult.") And I don't think they were wrong to laugh.
  10. "Key" exposure generally just means exposing the subject for what the meter says will render the subject with "normal" brightness. It could be f/16 or f/2.8! A low-key image has smaller areas of normal brightness, even a few tiny areas of overexposure, but a large amount of the frame is very underexposed or black. It's not a scientific term, it's describing a feeling.
  11. A diffusion filter is only necessary if you think it is necessary based on your visual goals and the image you are getting on the set. It certainly doesn't hurt to carry some filters even if you end up not using them, just in case the sharpness of the image is too unflattering or if you desire a certain effect like glowing highlights. However, keep in mind that if you don't really know whether you need the filters or not, you could always just shoot clean and do the filtering in post if it turned out to be necessary after-the-fact; you aren't stuck with a too-sharp image (but you can be stuck with a too-soft image). There are different types of diffusion filters, some are "mist" filters that cause bright areas to halate, often causing some loss of contrast while softening the image, others blur fine details but don't contribute much halation. Some combine a mist filter and a softening filter. You just have to decide what look you want and why you are using the filter.
  12. You’d cross-dissolve two passes of the same shot on two IP copies onto a new negative, one IP with the blurred areas. Now how they blurred it, I don’t know — perhaps just on a clear piece of film in front of the IP in the projector gate of the optical printer, with some Vaseline applied with a paint brush.
  13. I think it’s done in an optical printer since it dissolves over the shot rather than slides into the frame.
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