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Martin Solvang

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Everything posted by Martin Solvang

  1. Hey, Anyone have experience with shooting moving cars with different shutter angles? Fex 90degrees.? Camera will be moving around the car on a Russian arm in speed. I'm looking to get crisp images and also to find the sweet spot where the wheels appear to move backwards. Shooting on red epic. All tips apriciated.
  2. Robert: hmm, thank you for the input, u make some strong points. Allen: Thnak you, I agrea on the final shot being to shaky. Kieran: Not the strongest story, you are right about that.
  3. Thank you Simon for your input, I´ll take it into consideration. And yes I am a funny guy. I´ll definately shake the camera less next time, especially the next packshot.. M
  4. That was supposed to be: "Neither was there only direct sun the day we shot, but your probably noticed how we faked our way out of that." English is obviously not my native language, sorry..
  5. Hey again Brian. I can see you have strong opinions about this, good. I would have hoped you had more belief in your over-seas colleauge than to imply that I dont know what cinematography is about. My experience is that a job can be alot of different things, ranging from the ideal situation where you get involved in all aspects of the film, to just lighting (this project being the whole package). That depends on time, the director, money etc. You probably know what I mean. I dont want this (hopefully last) post to be about me, as I´m not offended or personally hurt by your comments. But remember that "the general consensus" is based on you and two other guys. My remark about cultural differences is in my opinion very valid, the director hasnt tapped any heads so far..: ) My experience is that most directors acknowledges this, in fact they take pride in their cultural backround and use it, so do I (even in commercials). Considering your comment on how the story is not coming through (based on camerawork and editing), now that is something I´ll have to consider for future projects. You migh be right in that a visual "language" like this needs to be more developed, thank you for being honest. As for all the films you´ve seen, I´m really happy for you. I was not implying any disbelief in your competence. I am however pussled about your comment on using the sun and how that is so easy. I dont think so. Neither was there any direct sun the day we shot, but your probably noticed how we faked our way out of that. I thank you again for being so direct and taking your time to comment. If I were you however, I would work on my tone and not be so condescending. It creates a very unconstuctive environment, as you force people to defend themselves and their work, an activity I normaly dont get into (and as you can see I havent defended my work, rather I try to emphasize on my cultural and cinematic views). I hope I have managed to comment on you, and not on your critique of the commercial as that would have been immature. I´ll try and bring with me your advise and hope you look into mine. m
  6. Thanks for your comments. Not gonna try and defend myself, but i didnt feel your critique was very constructive on f.ex lighting, (this being a cinematography forum) but never mind. Brian, I have to dissagrea on alot of what you are saying, in my world of film making and photography not everything is so black and white as you say. Most of the stuff you dislike is what i like the most about the film, funny right.. Might be a cultural difference "Europe vs. US"-thing. Again, thanks for the replies. m
  7. Shot this unofficial commercial for a rock´n´roll brand of clothes (cheap monday) right after finishing film school this june. Would like to know what you think about it. Considerng the weather that day, going from heavy rain to hard sun, I´m pretty happy with the lighting. This was shot on Arri D21, recorded with Codex portable, and color gradet.
  8. working day and night !

  9. Can I ask what you mean by half-lighting a subject for contrast test? Thanks!
  10. Hey, I´m testin stock again and thought I´d try new methods this time. I´ve pretty much done the same stuff every time I´ve tested stocks so, time for change.. What kind of tests do you guys do? Any special techniques? What do you communicate to the lab etc? (Anything other than the ASC test is welcome.) Thanks..
  11. Here in Norway 2-perf is not cheaper than 16mm. I did the math on that earlier and found it to be about 20% more expencive.. Considering the fact that we are ending up in 1:1,85 it would also be quite a waste of film. There are certainly many aspects on shooting 2-perf that way up for that increase in price though. I find the increase in resolution presents a huge difference. Seems the step up from 16 to 2-perf brings you into another world. Tested it on a Aaton Penelope a couple of months ago, was hugely impressed. The only way I can see it becoming cheaper is if I was to go higher on the ASA and using less light. That could have been a posibility, but was not the thing I was looking for on this project. m
  12. So, lets assume you´re on a low budget production and your option is s16. There are many tips on how to tighten grain structure, get sharper renderings and get those rich blacks (and much more). I´ve been trying to collect all the info i can on how to make s16 resemble 35mm or rather get the most out of s16. This is an atempt to get all those tips and hints into one thread. I assume most of you are overexposing a bit (2/3 stop) and then printing down or correcting in the DI, but there are so many other experiences out there. Are you correcting the K-factor in your meter to measure 18% grey? Are you using HMI´s only for a different quality in light? Are you considering the color reproduction of the film and communicating this to production design? I would rather start this discussion, then ask questions in ten other threads. Please contribute with your take on theese issues. Hopefully they´ll all be excessible in this thread. I hope the technical level in this thread can be kept on a high level. Let´s discuss!
  13. Hey ! I don´t know all the artists tricks, but i can tell you what I did on my latest project, a short film, shot on S16. First of all, I spent a lot of time with the director discussing what he felt about a "documentary" look, and what a docu-look can be. There are a thousand different ways to go, but we decided to specify a bit more, refering to what we wanted as realistic, naturalistic and un-polished look. After reading the script with the director, and looking at what it was really about, we found that applying a look to our film was not the right way, but to really look for what the script was asking for and working based on that. It might sound a bit self-explainatory, but I often find that the hardest thing in what I do is understanding the essense of the story I´m telling. If, and when I understand (or at least think I understand), the look and feel of the story "comes by itself". OK, enough with the semantics. Shooting on S16 I decided to go for as little grain as possible (based on the lighting setup I knew was available, I chose 160T) I wanted to go for strong colors, so I tested different stocks and colored lights, and ended up using Fuji Vivid. I sometimes feel that fuji has a little to much magenta for caucasian skin-tones, but in this case, that was just what I was after, I even enhanced it by using flourecent practicals on location that are basically full magenta. Most of the scenes where lit with practicals. I also mixed colors and divided rooms into warmer and colder areas. I lit the film with color, but without heavy contrast (there was alot of it in the stock), I even front-lit some caracters trying to get things somewhat flat. When the story called for it, i back-lit scenes, but I basically gave the film a stronger visual feel when the story was slowing down. When there was action and dialouge, I trusted actors to deliver what the camera did not. It was an interesting little game between us. I don´t think one has to, but I ended up doing the whole film hand held. I worked with an Aaton and with a canon zoom (working at around 25-50mm), at some points I even pulled the focus myself. I guess I put myself in a situation close to that of an news camera-man. The difference being that I knew allmost everything that was going to happen. At a point I found that I knew to well what was going to happen, and I had to make things more accitendtal-looking (interresting stuff). We allso did pretty long takes for the actors to get into their thing, and for me to improvise my way into the story as a sort of character. I guess what helped me alot when operating the camera was really getting into the mind of the observer, "what is important to me right now." I uploaded some frame-grabs from the film to my flickr-account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinsol/set...57616174904170/ When I´m describing it , I´m hearing what you could call a video-look, being described. Well, mabye that was it, what ever you called it, it worked pretty well for the story, and that´s what it´s all about for me. Off course my job is only a small part of getting to that documentary look. It has to be there in the acting (at least on this project), casting, and especially in the editing. Our editor ended up jump-cutting between takes and in time to get to the best result. Good luck!
  14. Studio lights are operational from below. A real hustle on location when it comes to tilting.
  15. Tom, I agrea, the Angenieux is most probably spherical, the new Optimos are aspherical as far as i know, but the 10-150 is from an age where production of aspherical elements was difficult. I found an interesting thing on the nodal point(s) not being what you describe TOM, check it out: http://doug.kerr.home.att.net/pumpkin/Pivot_Point.pdf The only reason we think the nodal point is where the image is flipped upside down (and where we are mislead to tilt/pan the cam on f.ex the F7) is because "the entrance pupil" where i supposedly acctually happens, sometimes/often coencides with on of two nodal points. These are not my thoughts, I just found them interesting, having believed for years I was using the right term... OK, now I feel like a nerd.
  16. Adrian, guess I understood the question differently :D I really don´t think it´s that scientific, in a world where most of us will never shoot anamorph (in Norway f.ex), the understanding of optical aberrations in all it forms are important and fun.
  17. aspherical = non-spherical I generally think it´s important to differ between lenses - glass or plastic elements ground or moulded to a spherical/aspherical shape based on the prinsipals of convex, concav or combinations of both. optics - sets of lenses
  18. Hey, a spherical lense is considered a simpler lense in optics as it consist of a part of a full sphere or a sylinder. The problem with spherical lenses incorporated into optics in general are that they produce optical aberrations, witch can for example result in loss of contrast and resolution, often towards the outer parts of an image. Aspherical lenses are dificult to produce as they need a more hands-on aproach in production (a least when they are made of glass..) The lens will bend certain parts of the image, and reducing the optical aberrations that we all hate in cheap zooms, older zeiss primes etc. Another great thing is that an aspherical lens may incorporate the optical qualities of many spherical lense elements, making the acctual lense mounted on the camera, lighter and with less breating when focusing. The new master prime series from Zeiss has been put together with aspherical lense elements and produces super sharp images (to sharp maybe..?) the only problem is that they are much more expensive to produce, bye and in our case - rent.
  19. Hey, I shot a short some months ago using UV-lights (fluorecents). I shot on B&W film, Kodak Plus-X 64ASA, in combination with HMIs and Tungsten. My experience was that the UVlight was hard to measure. I metered it both reflected and directly, and it gave me some weird readings. When I tried to photograph the light with a digital SLR it didn´t have an effect at all... I found out that most CMOS and CCD sensors have UV-coating and that no visible (to the sensor) UV-light passes through. I then went back to my old Contax and re-shot everything and finally got the results I needed to go through with the film. Measuring with a spot meter was the closest thing I got to knowing where the exposure was, but in the end trusting my eye was even more successful. Considering the Canon has ccd-sensors I would at least do tests. When looking at the spectral sensitivity of the sensor compared to the UV-lights I used on my project (different UV-lights produce wavelenghts in different parts of the spectrum..) I would say your in an uncertain zone...spectraly speaking...LOL http://www.ph.tn.tudelft.nl/Courses/FIP/no...p-Spectral.html Good luck.
  20. Hey, considering the depth of focus and the light level in the background (and the fact you like to shoot at about 5.6), I would generaly say that bigger is better. When looking at the shadows though, one could say that a bigger lamp further back would produce some of the same contrast in the subjects face. My experience with bigger lamps are that they are easier to control, soften, etc. The pics above are a little to color corrected for me to be certain about anything, but I believe that instead of using tungsten you would be better of with HMIs and CTS (warming gels) to get that little extra warmth that the sun sometimes produce.. Picture number 4 looks to me as if there is a flash somewhere in there also, and pretty close to the camera. To try and answer your question, 2 x 5k is not a whole lot when competing with mother nature, but maybe this can help you..: http://www.arri.de/lighting/europe_asia_au...calculator.html This helped me alot in pre production..
  21. 2. Does it really matter if a shot is below half a T stop? Who else is going to recognise it but you? The audience will never know the difference about different films stocks, lighting and looks. I sugest you read some books on these subjects. I am very sure the audience recognices differences in light, and how they affect the look of the film. Stock choices have more subtle effects on the film, but on a subconcious level they are very important, as all visual choices are!. (look at the wrestler f.ex) In my opinion, one of the biggest mistake one can make is to underestimate the audience, they are often smarten then one thinks (I only know the European cineasts though..) Read this old-schooler..: Painting With Light..
  22. Great idea !! I´m on twitter ( http://twitter.com/MartinSol ). This post is old though and there seems to be no interest, but if someone knows more about this, please let me know..
  23. Hey, I have a mag like that, but I didn´t know the mag had to be modified for s16.. I only have the acctual mag, not the motor. For sale now..
  24. Hey, I shot this short as a part of a rehersal in the Norwegian filmschool. The assignment was to use an existing script (by a British author) and develop a film in to days. I´m most interrested in comments on the last to minutes, where I worked alot with de-focus and unconventional framing. The film was shot on DV and has not been colour corrected. In terms of lighting, this was shot in existing light only. The Unsaid: http://www.vimeo.com/2718475
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