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About David Mullen ASC
- Birthday June 26
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Occupation
Cinematographer
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Location
Los Angeles
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Website URL
http://www.davidmullenasc.com
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Will Shermer started following David Mullen ASC
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The foam may have had a dual purpose of dampening sound...
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nighttime with slow speed stocks
David Mullen ASC replied to Deniz Zagra's topic in General Discussion
You could get fine-grained results on 80s high speed stock at night as long as you didn't underexpose them too much. And 5247 with a one-stop push wasn't that grainy. Again, it's all about the degree of underexposure. If you ended up printing your footage in the 30s, it was going to look finer-grained than if it printed in the teens. But you need more light if you are going to be able to expose enough to print night work above the teens in the scale. So these night scenes usually used fast lenses and additional lighting. Most people would say that "high-speed" film was introduced in 1981 with a type of Fuji 250T, followed quickly by the first 5293 250T (not the late 90s 5293). You could see the change in the Oscar nominations for 1982 movies for cinematography: Gandhi (all 5247), Sophie's Choice (5247 and fast 5293), Tootsie (fast 5293), E.T. (all 5247), Das Boot (fast Fuji). -
There are free FOV calculators online. You can also use your smart phone on the location and a director's viewfinder app like Artemis or Cadrage, there are quite a few (not free though.) APS-C is the same sensor size as Super35 so you could also take an APS-C still camera with a zoom to the location and determine the likely focal-length. (Of course, you could use any camera format and then calculate the crop factor to find the equivalent focal length...)
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Assessing the necessary lighting gear during a tech recce
David Mullen ASC replied to Anzer Sizov's topic in Lighting
You'd probably have to work with photometric data of lamps based on foot-candles. Inverse square law comes into play; unfortunately one aspect of lighting through windows is that the natural slow fall-off of natural light is replaced by the faster fall-off from artificial lighting outside the window, which cannot be as far away are the sky and sun. But obviously the bigger and farther you can get, the slower you can make the fall-off rate. I'm afraid that practically what tends to happen is that you get the largest lights you can afford and can rig, even if they are not enough. Yes, experience sometimes tells you when something will be overkill. -
Yes, use black on the camera, dolly, crew, and wall behind the camera, cut the light off of that area, and minimize who can be in the room (park the director & monitor behind the black wall, not in front of it, etc.). Shallow focus will help.
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Focal Lengths of 1930s/40s Hollywood
David Mullen ASC replied to Alexander Nowak's topic in Lenses & Lens Accessories
What I was referring to is that occasionally Kaminski will smear a little Vaseline or something oily on the edge of the filter in front of the lens. I've done something similar in the past. A more subtle version is John Seale using an oily fingerprint on some glass in front of the lens to soften a close-up, as seen in "The English Patient". -
Focal Lengths of 1930s/40s Hollywood
David Mullen ASC replied to Alexander Nowak's topic in Lenses & Lens Accessories
A lot of “Citizen Kane” was shot on 24mm Cooke but a 35mm was the more common wide-angle lens used. (35mm was also the widest prime that could be used on a 3-strip Technicolor camera, but a few times a wide-angle attachment was used to get wider, with mixed results.) 40mm and 50mm were popular, sometimes a 75mm for close-ups. -
Well, technically you can't get use all of Full Aperture with a 2X anamorphic lens on a 4-perf camera because that would be a 2.66 : 1 frame, not 2.35 : 1. But it is common today to shoot framed for 2.35 centered on Full Aperture rather than offset for a soundtrack, but I don't know if anyone calls that "Super Anamorphic". But it sounds like you can use a Full Aperture / Silent 4:3 groundglass.
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William Friedkin (1935 – 2023)
David Mullen ASC replied to Jeff Bernstein's topic in General Discussion
I know an AC who worked for DP Nicola Pecorini on it before William Fraker was brought in, but I thought there was a third DP also, maybe as an interim? Maybe there was only the two listed. -
IF you want maximum softness you have to fill the frame evenly without hot spots, but there’s no rule that you have to achieve maximum potential softness anymore than you have to use the heaviest diffusion gel in front of a light.
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Fogs, Double Fogs, and Low Cons were particularly popular in the mid-1970s.
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Mixing tungsten and daylight on digital black and white
David Mullen ASC replied to Walt van der Aar's topic in Lighting
With b&w film, the difference is only 1/3-stop in terms of extra sensitivity to daylight (or lower sensitivity to tungsten.) But this isn't a factor if you are shooting digital. In terms of color contrast response, since you're shooting in color, it doesn't matter much either. I wouldn't worry about mixing the lights. And you can switch your monitor to b&w to judge the results. -
Quantum/atomic practical effects on 16mm
David Mullen ASC replied to Peter Connell's topic in Visual Effects Cinematography
I remember that ILM used to burn steel wool (like in Brillo Pads) to create the effect of burning embers inside a spaceship that was on fire. But yes, maybe hi-contrast images of a dusty negative of a white field (so black) running through a telecine / scanner could be manipulated... Or create an interference pattern (moire) by sliding two screen patterns of backlit art of points of light. -
You should be fine. If you see the new HBO Camera Assessment Series, the classic Alexa (Mini) is their gold standard for testing and it held up in the 4K DCP presentation at the Linwood Dunn Academy theater I saw, on their large screen, it was not noticeably softer than the other cameras tested (Alexa 35, Sony Venice 2, Red V-Raptor, Blackmagic 12K). And I was sitting in the second row.