Evan Winter

I'm only suggesting that we'll see more director/DPs in the future than we do now. I don't believe they will ever outnumber separate directors and DPs. But like we noted earlier, there are only 4 - 5 director/DPs we can even think of who work consistently. I reckon this number will be more like 15 - 20 in 10 years.

I'd argue that along with the next generation of filmmakers we'll see many more director/DPs. Especially if future feature directors are culled from the commercial and music video world where massively shrinking budgets confer a natural advantage on a Director/DP. I direct and DP my work and, while I'll be the first to recognize that Conrad Hall I ain't, it just makes financial sense for me to do it. Plus, I thoroughly enjoy the work and with a few more decades under my belt I may just get to a point where I can impress myself. :)

about focusing on the eyes 1. use a wifi chip 2. place it in the actor's hair at the same depth as their eyes (i know, i know, what about bald actors - in that case they get to wear the chip behind their ears and the camera system will obviously have the capacity to recalibrate the distance to a specified '+' or '-' amount). 3. make it a system that can accomodate several chips. for multi-focus scenes the 1st simply places the chips around the space at the closest equivalent depth to where focus is desired. 4. the 1st holds a numbered keypad controller. the numbers correspond to the chips placed in the scene. i.e. - rack to the eyes (press '1'), rack to the murderer coming round the corner behind the hero (press '2'), stay on the murderer as she walks closer to camera (just stay on two - she has the chip in her hair or behind her ear), rack to the gun on the table in the extreme foreground that the hero is discreetly reaching for (press '3'). i believe the technology to build all this stuff exists...it may be too expensive to manufacture for the short runs required to meet demand in the film industry though. just my .02

I'm enticed to say a changing tent but I also feel like any 1st worth his/her salt with have a changing tent they can loan you for shoot days...so really, until you're getting steady work you should be able to get back with almost nothing other than a winning personality, the willingness to work real hard, and maybe a few sharpies and a good pen-knife (aka leatherman). :) good luck and have fun (if it's not fun go be a lawyer, the money's much better)

We do this stuff on music videos all the time. It's standard practice to retouch. Karl: it's not really 8million frames of work. You set up your 60 odd retouches on a single frame and the programs that are used can often adjust frame by frame to maintain the integrity of the retouches as the foreground, midground, and background moves. Oftentimes, this process has to be overseen by a human to ensure that the program isn't misinterpreting the initial intent in some way but it's definitely not a situation where beauty-work artists are slogging through millions of pictures and hand re-touching every single one. It's more akin to the way key-frame animation is performed nowadays. Plus, with technology advancing at an inexorable rate, it won't be too long before we can do 2x as much as we can now and then it'll be even less time before we can do 2x that! Whenever I sit down with beauty artists during online sessions I'm amazed at how far we've come and just how much can be done. It doesn't mean we should muck about with the image just because we can but I do think that having the option isn't a bad thing.

looks like a lot of fun and i'm very envious of your 3-day music video shoot.... congratulations on the shoot and best of luck with the rest of the production. if you can grab some stills from your transfer please throw them on here for us to check out. you're doing a supervised xfer right? in my humble opinion this is one of the most critical stages in the music video process....if you have to mortgage your parents house to pay for a supervised xfer then do it. ;) a one light/best light, especially given your scenes and setups will not cut it. good luck! p.s. - what stock(s) did you shoot and how did you expose the stock(s)? and were they particular reasons for shooting regular 16mm as opposed to super16mm?

Hey Mike, I'd argue no. :) Cause the Photographer had to do the heavy lifting and 'operate' within the physical restraints of reality to get the initial shot. The photo-retoucher got to work in the virtual world where the limits to what's possible and practical are a little more fluid. As a side note - I'm guessing the woman you're referring to is the black woman lying down on the odd white leather bed thing. I believe that woman is the RnB singer Ciara and I also believe that she is, as yet, all natural. I reckon the retoucher was simply trying to defy gravity and readjust the contents of her décolletage to what he/she believed was a more pleasing shape/position... :ph34r:

David, I was wondering the same thing - I personally wouldn't be comfortable with all the photo retouching because I'd feel as if I was constantly a disappointment in real life. To a certain extent I'd prefer the public know what I really look like rather than have them always see an idealized version of me. However, this all reminds me a little of unregulated sports - if your sport isn't carefully regulated with regards to steroid use and several athletes then start taking steroids soon everyone else is left with a difficult choice - stay off the juice and likely fall behind performance-wise or do the old 'if you can't beat them join them' thing. In a world where celebrities are expected to be more fabulous, beautiful, and intriguing than us regular folk allowing photo-retouching and insisting on glamor lighting from your DPs seem like a prudent 'performance-enhancing' choice. We do, after all, love our beautiful people... Sorry for the double post. I tried to add the following in quick edit but it wouldn't take... To Luke: I'm typically against photo-retouching because I feel it's often overused and ends up giving us plasticky fake looking people whereas I prefer to see some texture in the skin and face - I find the texture itself attractive. However, after seeing some subtle and well-done photo-retouching it'd be hard for me to argue that the subjects of the work don't look better after the work has been done. I'm amazed to see how armpit folds are photo-shopped away, veiny hands are smoothed down to silky perfection, neck wattles are disappeared with precise digital surgery. It's the little details that make the most difference in this case and I can't help but feel that the overall 'beauty' of the subjects is increased.

Apparently lighting is not everything when it comes to doing beauty work! ;) Check out the post-production beauty work performed on these stills: Go to http://www.fluideffect.com/ then the 'Portfolio' section and then the 'Before/After' section. I love taking at look at what can be done and always think it's a gem-of-a-find to see professional before and after work. Hopefully you enjoy!

Darn, foiled again! ;) Thanks David for the response. And now, to maintain the integrity of the soft-lighting question, let us suppose that the scene is meant to play as a dramatically cloudy evening with diffuse moonlight as the key (in which case a Spherical HMI Lighting Balloon sounds perfect). :) :) :)

Despite having come from the camera dept. and now lighting all of my own work I feel like I don't have as strong a handle as I'd like on the different degrees (levels) of soft-light. Which is to say, I'm interested in how you would rank light sources and their 'accessories' from hard to soft? Of course, everything in lighting is very situation dependent, so let's create a hypothetical scenario: It's the last scene of your magnum opus - you have a stunningly beautiful actress and an uncannily handsome leading man standing on a beach facing the ocean and a large glowing full moon. The war for the planet, humanity, and for one another has just ended - they whisper the ever-important 'I love you' to one another and then the woman faces the water and the moon. The man, standing behind her, wraps his arms around her and faces forwards also. The camera begins to pull back slowly, luxuriously, and we fade out... We start looking at a head-on medium shot of the couple. From hard to soft what are our options? note - the camera doesn't pull back more than a foot or two before we fade to black. i.e. - (a fakey list from hard to soft) 1. Full spot Light 2. Defocused Light 3. Kino 4. Defocused Light + Chimera 5. Defocused Light + Framed 216 6. Defocused Light + Framed Muslin 7. Defocused Light + Framed Bleached Muslin 8. Defocused Light bounced off Card 9. Big ole light balloon in the sky Bonus - what's the absolute softest, most wrapping, beauty style of light you could get on this couple. Superbonus - how would you actually light this scene in an ideal world (might be fun to think of a wide, med, and tight scenario - all from a full frontal camera position) p.s - I am not now nor will I in the near future be shooting this scene. :)

Best wishes John! Hopefully a speedy and full recovery is in order.

This is likely coming way too late to be of any use but why not use the music video/commercial route? Shoot Super 16 --> Colour Correct to D5 tapes & mini-dv with timecode burn-in --> Offline on Mac G5 using mini-dv tapes to bring in the footage --> EDL spit out --> Online session with D5 tapes. This seems easier. I'll bet it's more cost effective and your end result is still a D5 master so you're no worse off than if you did the whole hdcam sr, 4:4:4, 3:1:1, capture deck, teraraid byte, hardrive spinning, uprezzing pixels method... Seems like you're going through a whole wack of trouble and you're getting slightly different answers from everyone because no one is yet totally comfortable with an entirely digital workflow. Why not used the tried, tested, and true? Commercials and music videos do it every day and it has been done tens of thousands of times... Evan

There's a rental shop in L.A. that I went to for the first time called Indie Rentals (www.indierentals.com). They are a tiny shop in Hollywood that deal in prosumer to pro digital camera rentals and digital accessories (mini-sized digital dollies, smaller lights [biggest is a 5K I think] and some kino stuff). Anyhow, they think they'll have the RED camera on the shelves for rental in 2007. What's more they currently plan to rent the camera for $500/day. Now, I'm not well versed on the whole RED camera thing but isn't this system supposed to be in the same league as the Panavision Genesis? And if so, doesn't a day rental rate of $500 seem like a steal? Evan p.s - IndieRentals guarantees the lowest price on their equipment so definitely check them out. I quoted them a rental price for a company that listed their prices on the web and the rental associate from Indie went online saw the price and offered (somewhat begrudgingly I'll admit) to beat their competitors price by $5 (not a big discount on their competitor's price but I did my research and I saved $80 on a $200 rental so I was happy). p.p.s - I'm not heavily vouching for IndieRentals, I've used them only once but the gear was in perfect working order and considering the massive hoops any rental place in L.A wants you to jump through to take their equipment out the door Indie was pretty easy-going. p.p.p.s - I just re-read my post and boy do I sound like a shill. I'm a little disgusted with myself for sounding so zealous but I was genuinely satisfied with the experience. :)

I like the idea of having our own awards. Seems like a fun and informal way to recognize the people we respect and the work we love. Evan

Unfortunately the music industry is in a very very bad place right now and is losing money like a sieve does water. Music video budgets are getting slashed left, right, and center and where A-List video directors once shot 350K videos near monthly we now see the same guys & gals wrestling over 90K vids. Sure online sales of music have helped but they've helped like the proverbial finger in the dam - it appears to be too little too late. The entire music industry format is broken and the fix is going to require an entire overhaul that restructures everything in the production-to-delivery model. It's truly a scary time for music industry people and even scarier for music video people. In relation to piracy I think that while it is only a stop-gap measure the studios should delay sending their films to Quebec until after their movies have been released in other markets. It's ridiculous that pirates get only a slap on the wrist in Quebec and if the government there won't help then that's fine - it's their prerogative after all. However, it's also the movie industry's right to protect itself and they could attempt to somewhat stem the outflow of cash, due to piracy, by simply giving Quebec their films late. Again, I don't think this is a solution. It just buys the studios time to figure out how they're going to make money in the next 10 or so years as the online piracy industry booms. The music industry was too stubborn to see that the world was passing them by. Hopefully the movie industry can learn from their sister industry's mistake. Evan

Hi Karl, I personally enjoyed a lot of what 2006 had to offer from both a cinematography and story point of view. Perhaps take a look at (in no particular order): The Departed (interesting remake and well acted) Children of Men (great storytelling and some cinematography genius) The Prestige (subtle and spellbinding lighting and all sans DI) United 93 (shaky hand-held cam the way shaky hand-held cam was meant to be done) Pan's Labyrinth (sublime storytelling and daringly dark cinematogrpahy) The Queen (brilliant acting and attractive looks at the British countryside) Apocalypto (National Geographic feeling digital docu-photography on the Genesis) Blood Diamond (heartfelt acting, a worthwhile and socially important story) The Good Shepherd (tightly lit and tightly told) Casino Royale (sumptuously rich photography and a rollicking good time - wasn't overly keen on the ending 20 mins though) Little Miss Sunshine (Not my cup of tea but I laughed a lot and was entertained and if this is your type of movie you'll have a marvelous 2 hours of staring up at the 'silver screen') The Inside Man (a return to top form for Spike Lee, a scene chewer for Denzel, and some very bold cinematography work in the interrogation scenes) Superman Returns (some will hate this one but I enjoyed it and it was a real look at some of the awesome strengths and illustrative weaknesses of the Genesis camera system) Honorable Mentions: The Devil Wears Prada Miami Vice The Descent (great lil' low budget horror) The Illusionist The Fountain Little Children Notes on a Scandal Babel (stellar acting but was more several short stories than one true feature) The Last King of Scotland Admittedly the above are a very Hollywood bunch but those end up being the movies I see.... *sheepish smile*

I could attempt to explain what was done but it'd be better if I let Gizmodo do it: During "the State of the Union address last night... we HDTV gearheads had fun jumping between the networks, checking out which net was able to deliver the best HDTV signal....This was a notable occasion, because all the networks were using precisely the same feed?the same cameras, same everything?where the only difference was between the Capitol pool feed and the viewer. We took an HD gander at NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and HDNet, to see who delivered the crispiest, most colorful and most gorgeous HDTV signal of all. For our eyeball test, we looked at a typical array of HDTV stations on our Samsung 1080p reference monitor....We took some pictures, all at the same F-stop and shutter speed, and along with those are a few value judgments." Check out the stills and more information at: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainm...nion-231148.php Personal POV - Am I the only one who can't stand the look of images on the current HD-TVs? Whenever I'm in a audio-visual store of any kind I always see people crowded around the HD-TV display models oooh'ing and aahhh'ing over what look to me to be noisy, overly enhanced, artifact-ridden images. Give me a high-end CRT any day.

Hmmm, I'm waffling now...'Children of Men' is excellent and when one considers that cinematography is not only the art of painting with light but also of composition and camera movement...ack, 'Children of Men' may indeed be my favorite. Is it too late to change my vote? :) evan

AAARRRGGGGHH!!!!! I wrote a lenghty reply to this topic then accidentally hit some button and navigated away from the page and lost my post! :( :( I'm going to try and recreate, in short form, what I lost. Here goes: I direct music videos and so I'm in telecine every month. Not too long ago I purchased a Sony Alpha for previs and I'm very happy with it. It provides a very accurate representation of what the film sees and what the film looks like. By the way my DSLR budget was $1000.00USD The Sony Alpha was a good choice for me because: a) In camera image stabilization - often overlooked and very very important - when trying to match your DSLR settings to your film settings you'll end up setting your shutter to 1/48th the majority of the time. This shutter speed is too slow for most DSLR and will result in unacceptable image blurriness. Most DSLRs provide lens stabilization systems (which means you have to buy specific lenses at a premium cost). The Alpha can shoot acceptable images (to my eye and with my degree of steadiness/shakiness) with shutters as slow as 1/30th (with image stabilization on of course). b ) The Alpha takes all of Minolta's older Autofocus Film lenses (remember to multiply the lenses by 1.5, i.e. - a 28mm becomes a 42mm on the DSLR) and this was valuable to me because I already had Minolta lenses. Plus, it is easy to buy very good older Minolta lenses secondhand. c) The Sony Alpha has a very large viewing screen (this is critical, after all we're talking about on set previs right?). I do believe that the comparable models in the Canon and the Nikon has similar screen sizes (bigger, in this case, is always better). After much research I did determine that overall the best camera for previs would be the Nikon D80, however, it was slightly out of my budget, I didn't have any lenses for it and would have to purchase all new lenses, and it relies on lens based image stabilization. The Nikon D80 did have one definite strength over other systems - it has a very robust range of ISOs. This is very important when trying to match up DSLR settings to film settings. Most DSLRs have a very limited range of ISOs and so, on set, one ends up constanstly compensating for using the DSLR's next best ISO - not so with the D80! As a summary, I would say DSLR previs is a powerful and effective tool for motion picture DP'ing. I personally believe that for the money the best DSLR to get for this purpose is the Sony Alpha but in a 'money is practically no object' world I would definitely spring for the D80. Finally, don't forget that the depth of field that you'll get with you standard DSLR will be less than that of 16mm but greater than that of 35mm. Happy Shopping, Evan

Well the nominations are in and I did a quick search to see if this topic had already been brought up but couldn't find anything. So, I thought I might as well present the field of nominees for the 2007 Oscar for Best Achievement in Cinematography: The Black Dahlia: Vilmos Zsigmond Children of Men: Emmanuel Lubezki The Illusionist: Dick Pope Laberinto del Fauno, El: Guillermo Navarro The Prestige: Wally Pfister I haven't seen 'The Black Dahlia' but out of the rest my favorite would have to be Wally P's 'The Prestige'. Although this is an incredibly hard choice to make because of the power, daring (like darkness much Navarro?), and aplomb of Guillermo's 'Labyrinth' and the raw emotion and genius-with-natural-light vision of Lubezki's ever searching camera in 'Children of Men'. Two of these films blew me away on all levels (Children & Labyrinth) and I enjoyed 'The Prestige' (strange that despite liking it the least as a film, out of my top 3, it still won out 'cinematographically' - I often find it's hard to separate individual elements of filmmaking and one aspect or another always ends up influencing my perception of other aspects). 'The Illusionist' is, for me, the low point out of the 4 nominated films that I've seen. It felt overdone and perhaps even a touch garish in its visual interpretation (the faux vignetting annoyed the bejeezus out of me). But then again I am merely one person and Dick Pope is the DICK POPE. Alas, when working in commercial art one of the by-blows is that everyone gets to be a critic. Evan

Hey Richard, I could say and maybe would say that if I was using your logic. That's what my earlier post was about - using opinion and anecdotal evidence as fact. You said (and I'm paraphrasing) film has a point in its favor - it's organic and this allows audiences to experience the fantasy of storytelling; it allows for the suspension of disbelief. Your evidence for this was your own opinion. I was trying to be a little satiric and counter your claim with my own opinion (and little else). Which is kind of funny because you clearly saw the flaw in my argument: but didn't see it in your own... Anyhow, it's probably the opinions of audiences at large that actually matter. And, I'm inclined to agree with David M. and say that the average audience member is at no disadvantage, suspension of disbelief-wise, when watching the digitally shot Superman Returns (vs. a movie shot on 35mm film) - and that is nothing more nor less than my opinion.

Troy, your post was very informative and intelligent. I agree on all points. :) And Richard, you're arguing that a key factor in film's favor is it's organic quality that allows an audience to suspend disbelief. To support your argument you cite Superman Returns and claim that it looked 'video-y' and that this prevented you from fully suspending your disbelief. I think this is personal opinion and not fact and also not necessarily a point of contention that could be generalized to audiences at large. I will, as you did, use anecdotal evidence to support my point - "I thoroughly enjoyed Superman Returns and was able to completely suspend my disbelief."

Found an interesting CNN article about how the industry's approach to make-up and beauty work may be changing to accommodate the additional clarity and size of today's HDTVs. For ease of use I'll summarize but the full article can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/01/h...=rss_topstories summary: ? HDTV now in more than 30 million homes "The grain structure of film allows a softness that HD video tends not to have, posing more challenges, especially when it comes to capturing female faces," says Stephen McNutt, director of photography for the Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica." ? TV professionals worry about how performers look -hi-def clarity puts any and all wrinkles, pimples and pores on display in well-lit bathroom-mirror detail. -big-screen HDTV could lead to the end of the extreme close-up. -hi-def fears could soon be reflected in artists' contracts. -"I think there's a danger area of saying the extreme close-up is not flattering -- it's a part of the grammar of television to do that," says Tom Houghton, director of photography for "Rescue Me." -"Maybe we don't want to be quite so close, now that people have bigger screens," Houghton adds. ? Makeup, lighting techniques making a difference -new advances in cosmetic applications have done wonders, too, says Patricia Murray, "Battlestar's" head of makeup. -Murray uses foundation and makeup that is airbrushed onto the skin, rather than by sponge or fingertip. Hope you find the above interesting, Evan

While interesting and valuable information this so feels like an ivory tower discussion about an aspect of cinematography (bokeh) that has virtually no effect on the way information is communicated to an audience. :) Granted, I will from now on pay particular attention to bokeh (if only to use it as a help in identifying the lenses used to shoot material i am watching) but does it matter in any way or affect in any way the ability or quality of storytelling? Is this only a purist's discussion or does this talk of bokeh help us as DPs working towards bettering our art? I hope I'm not coming off as snide as I am sincerely asking the above questions and greatly valued the discussion about the low-contrast nature of S4's vs. Ultra Primes and the information about S4's being designed to open up to T2 only (where they still perform 'optimally') vs. older lenses which permitted one to open up to a stop that went beyond optimal performance. Thanks, Evan