Frank DiBugnara

Thank you for the advice... On a reflective reading, I'm getting the majority of city lights at 18% gray or even a full stop under. I think I'm still comfortable pushing a stop to get a little more exposure and then rely on the telecine to do the rest. There are large chunks of black sky in the frame...will be interesting to see how tight the grain stays there. Not too worried for telecine with a little noise reduction. The director wants the shot to be a pan...but I think I'm going to give them a static at 12 fps in addition just for fun.

I'm shooting a city skyline at night with 5218 and a Zeiss 135mm T2.1 prime. I did some spot metering at the location and am wondering how far I can safely push the stock and still get good results....blacks holding up, etc. I'm planning on one stop and am confident that grain will hold up. Any thoughts on pushing just a bit farther? The meter says I can sure use more stop. Final destination is an HD transfer...and shooting tomorrow so no time for test.

Patrick, I asked about your choice of stock to see if you had considered 7201. I've had great experiences with it----While its feel is different than that of '45, it seems more versatile and can take more abuse when photographing in low budget and difficult circumstances. Its improved performance in shadow and lower-light areas alone makes it a great choice. Some others have gone into a more in-depth comparison of the two stocks in the archives.

I know someone who spent several months shooting in Africa. I can give you his phone number if you would like to call him....please email me for it frank@filmblu.com Also, why did you choose '45?

Standard approach with little time and low budget: It is amazing how good things look when shooting a slower stock and shooting into the sun (subject backlit by the sun) and no silk at all exposing for the shadow (letting highlights blow). Then maybe using various bounces to model the face.

I'm not sure what you're describing specifically, but here's a few that will satisfy your fascination for the optical illusory: Shoot on a green screen set with green Kino tubes for 10 hours and walk into another room. It will look very purple as your brain "puts in some minus green gel" as it tries to compensate for all the extra green it was exposed to in excess for so long. Recreate the famous experiment of the guy who wore the special glasses that made the world appear to him as upside-down. After a period of time, the brain internally corrected the image. He then took off the glasses and the world appeared inverted again for a while. The students I tell this story to always wonder "what does it look like during the transition?"

Caught a preview screening last night. I think it was by far the most desaturated major release I've ever seen. About half way through the war scenes I was trying to figure out how the look was achieved. It seemed like a very high contrast image where the shadow information was already gone and then a separate step to milk up the blacks without adding shadow detail. While not the most "beautiful", I thought the look suited the story well--and a visual departure from the ENR of Saving Private Ryan.

The bay I was in had a max of three simultaneous power windows at any given time. We tried to keep them sublte, but at times it is fun to really try to get the subject to "pop"--It feels so much more acceptable to have a more noticable window in a spot than in a narrative piece.

Thanks. I appreciate it. The specs are: SR3 Advanced Zeiss Prime Set (9.5mm to 85mm) Century 6mm Zeiss 12 to 120mm Process at Fotokem Transfer to DigiBeta on a Spirit at Encore Hollywood Filters were just NDs and Polarizer--Some smoke softened the interiors

I just got to see some footage from the last spot I shot. It was my first experience with the Kodak '01 stock in 16mm. I've heard others say that in a 35mm print there is not as dramatic a difference between '01 and '05--but I think the '01 takes 16mm to a new level. A totally grainless sky, for example, was a little tricky in 16mm prior to this stock (except for maybe '45). Now we have the tight grain of '45 but much more dynamic range. The interior stuff is '05--which looks great and intercuts well. But expecially in NTSC, you appreciate what '01 brings to the table. Raw Footage of 7201 and 7205

Daniel, This has been discussed quite a bit in past--it might be good to search the archives. Basically, the camera is bigger and heavier (and all the complications that come with it). The film is a lot more expensive per foot and you need quite a bit more per minute. As a result, lab costs go up, but telecine costs usually stay exactly the same as 16mm. The film stocks are exactly the same (just larger)--so the lighting approach for a high-end look will likely be similar. On a low budget, 35mm can be a bit more forgiving because you are gathering more information. Also, when the low budget is low, it is a lot easier to "just grab the camera and go shoot" with 16mm where as with 35mm there is more complexity, more cases, heavier lenses, etc. I'd say figure out your post production path and final output (35mm print? Video only? DI?) and do a side by side comparison. If you are finishing strictly on video, for example, there are many instances where people say that super16 looks very close to 35mm or "close enough".

Trust me, Matthew, that's not true at all. You'd be surprised...I've worked with a lot of colorists who would take you very seriously. Just be confident (not arrogant), passionate, and know what you want. Professionals will respect you for it. As far as the look you are going for, I agree that super 16mm with a reversal stock would be a great way to go. If you finish to video, you can keep very tight grain but get some of those bright colors and blacks that are part of Grease's look. Kodak has a brand new reversal stock they recently introduced--I shot a spot with it this year and it looked great. I think I have some short ends/recans in the freezer I'll send you if you're interested. frank@filmblu.com

Kind of pointless to watch to judge quality, but:

Thanks....and sorry I meant to say Internegative (like 5272) and Premier print stock--I'll need both for the DI I'm hoping to do. I have a Kodak rep, but I'm so impatient I was hoping to get prices at 7pm on a Saturday night as I work on a budget....

Oh, I see what you are saying. I was talking more about having to reduce the bit rate to what looks like much below 6 to fit the two hour movie plus a whole lot of other video, mini-documentaries, etc. The type of compression on DVDs that bothers me the most is when the dark areas in particular get very "blocky" where there are these huge chunks of compression. Looks like the software took a large dark portion of the frame and turned it into large squares of compression. This for some reason bothers me even more than the toothcomb thing.

I've searched this forum and the internet and can't find a Kodak price list. Specifically I'm looking for the per foot price of Premier inter-negative 35mm stock. Any ideas?

I was not talking about progressive vs interlaced. I was referring to the sheer amount of video they try to cram on some DVDs. There is so much video that the encoding quality is reduced to to fit more video at a lower bit rate.

Is that from the Studio's final DVD release? Seems like you only see very poor quality like that when they are trying to cram a bunch of extras in addition to the film on the DVD. Also, the "toothcomb artifacts" can come from a field reversal problem which I've found to be pretty common (I made the mistake myself this week) where you make the lower filed dominant when it should be the upper, etc. With that mistake you only notice the problem on some motion, but it is pretty bad. I've been constantly impressed with the image quality that Compressor and DVD Studio Pro are able to provide when the proper settings are applied. After watching uncompressed Digital Betacam footage for hours and then going home and watching the same film on DVD, I'm very not-bothered by the compression. That's impressive considering the file is less than 1/16th the size of the original uncompressed SD footage.

I think I decided from the beginning that shooting 13 pages in 7.5 hours would require putting up some big sources to light large areas and let the talent move within those large pools. With actors constantly moving, we ended up controlling the light by changing the position of the actors to get the fall-off more where I wanted it rather than moving the instruments. That saved a lot of time. If I could change one thing it would be creating more time to get closer with smaller instruments rather than large ones and be a little more exact with where light ends and shadows start. But overall I think we chose good places to put the big sources where the ?moon? was a back edge for one actor and a fill for another, then when they switch position the tungsten became the key, etc. The general idea is that tungsten came from the screen right side (as you face the city) and the moon was screen left. The tungsten came from two Maxi Brutes up as high as they could go on a mombo. I would have loved to make those 20K?s instead, but I had to deal with what the gaffer carried in his truck and 5K was the largest fresnel, I think. Since I had between 4 and 8 bubbles going on each Maxi at any given time, I felt as though I needed at least Opal in front to hide the fact that there were so many sources. That ended up being a bit too soft for my taste?I would have gone with something like Hampshire on a fresnel so it would feel more like a hard street light. The Tungsten had ½ O on it also and a bunch of flags and nets to shape it as best as I could. I must say though, it is nice to be able to quickly pan a bank of globes on a Maxi or turn one on and off to instantly adjust stop. The roof was only 30? off the ground so the basket of the 60? condor was about 30? off the roof top. We hung (2) 12K space lights which I had a hard time finding in LA ironically so I brought them from Arizona. We wrapped the space lights in ½ Blue and they ended up at 100% most of the time. They even threw a little bit of light on an adjacent building. They made a nice cheap moon?but all that gel can be noisy in the wind. Other than that, we had a 2K chimera on a squeeze which was a quick fill when needed and a back edge for Jack when he was seated. I had a few 1K fresnels we made very soft to get into the eyes when needed. I think the general philosophy when working at such a mad pace was to make sure that the faces were on the negative. That resulted of this was leaning more toward a brighter look. The night stuff I?ve done in the past where there was more time ended up a lot moodier. As for stop, I spot metered some of the larger lights in the skyline and it was obvious that we needed to shoot the super speeds wide open at a T1.3 and adjust everything else to that. (Side note: this is why I love my variable-degree spot meter. I can?t believe Sekonic has gone back to a fixed spot meter in recent models!) I?ve never pushed the ?18 stock, but hear others talk about the success they?ve had with that in 35mm. If I had the time, I probably would have tested a 1 stop push to get just a bit more sparkle out of the city but there was no time or money for that so I played it safe to keep tight grain. Every shot but one insert is on the superspeeds. I added the 80mm from the 35mm set and I loved it. If I had stopped at 50mm, we would have never been able to shoot tight toward the city with the T2.4 zoom. There were really no lighting restrictions?it was an industrial part of town and we did not really spill off the roof too much. I did have about 9 par cans with VNSPs and NSPs which was a quick and easy way to pound light on some factory buildings a block or so away when they were in frame. This was basically for Jack?s background when we looked at him near the skylight. Sorry for the long-winded response. I?ll post some production stills later this week if I get them.

LOL...thanks I haven't seen those other films....looks lilke from the descriptions on IMDB that the plots are pretty different....

I finally got a cut of a short I've been working on and thought I'd post it. I'm always grateful to those on this forum who are willing to share advice and knowledge, especially when projects are in pre-production and important decisions are being made. www.filmblu.com Here's some technical specs: Camera: SR3 Advanced Lenses: Mostly Zeiss MK2 prime set (9.5 to 85) and a Zeiss 12 to 120 zoom Stock: 7218 process normal Transfer: Standard Def Spirit/DaVinci to DigiBeta Shoot length: 1 Day (12 hours) with actual darkness/shooting time of about 7.5 hours I also learned quite a bit about creating Quicktimes to post online. Simply creating a Quicktime file from a Final Cut timeline for example will greatly milk up the blacks and reduce chroma saturation. I created a horribly crushed and oversaturated version in FCP from which I created the Quicktime. The result was a much more accurate QT, but still a bit brighter than the original intent.

I agree, it was a triumph considering the budget. In my opinion the low budget look comes from things like: >Wide night exterior of a house (party scene) where the entire house and front yard are almost completely black and the only illumination is a tweenie on the main actor standing in front. Very rarely would a large or medium budget resist the urge to put up a condor with some big guns in it. The DVD talks about how there was no money to light the inside of that house, so they had to put candles everywhere as general illumination. > The print I saw was extremely grainy throughout. Most big budget Hollywood pictures are much sharper and snappier. > Many of the sets and locations would never have been the first or second choice of a production designer who had considerably more budget. The director and production designer discuss this at length in the commentary on the DVD. They even talk about having to steal locations. This being said, all of these low-budget characteristics many times are complimentary to the film. Given the incredibly fast shooting schedule and the $450K budget, I thought they did an amazing job. Often times low-budget filmmakers who pull it off deserve more credit than the ones with bigger budgets.

Was it shot with f900s?

Thanks for bringing it up. It became one of my favorite films of the year--very refreshing. As the director put it, he "walked a tight rope" with the film and I don't think he ever lost his balance. It is definitely getting a love-it-or-hate-it reaction I bet they used a lot of zooms because the schedule was amazingly tight. The budget was $450K and it took 7 years to finally get it produced. Some scenes, especially the night exteriors seem very "available light". The funny thing is that it was easy for me as a shooter to forgive the low-budget look of the film and get pulled into the story. These types of films can be very inspiring (Shattered Glass is another that comes to mind) which are dialogue heavy script-driven projects that rely on the strong script to carry the film. They can be produced for very little money yet have a refreshing and genuine quality to them. Rian Johnson is working on a new project: http://www.thebrothersbloom.com/ and a good interview about Brick at: http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=interviews&id=7324

I'm hoping someone can recommend an exterior small-town set in the Los Angeles area. We're looking for a romantic and charming city store-front street for a Christmas-themed spot. We're open to a real location (perhaps even outside of Los Angeles), yet I think if a set exists ready to shoot, that might be easier as we we'll be creating snow, etc. Any referrals to back lots that you know of or a location scout would be great. Thanks,