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Joshua Provost

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    Cinematographer
  1. A basic question to help my understanding of lens choice from someone who has never shot film... I'm trying to understand the lens choices and field of view as I read an AC article. Someone may say they shot with a 50mm or 40mm lens, because it gives a certain field of view or perspective. I guess my real question, is how are they composing their shots, with the full aperture gate in mind, or the projector gate? There is some cropping involved, so I'm wondering which a DP has in mind when choosing a lens. Also, a follow-on, when a Hollywood film is released on DVD, is it similarly cropped to the projector gate, so it matches what audiences see on the big screen, or is it a larger portion of the negative?
  2. Greg, check out that Cutting Edge DVD and make Walter Murch your best friend. :)
  3. Yaron, Some of the best suggestions were covered, but I'll just add a little. 1. Shoot with the iris as open as possible. There is a catch to this. The iris may be able to open to F1.6 or so (don't know what camera you're using) when at full wide, but only F2.8 when full zoomed. To maintain flexibility, I usually establish the lighting to F2.8 or above, and use ND to bring it right to F2.8. That way I can go full wide to full zoom without changing exposure. You'll need a variety of ND. My DVX has 3 stop and 6 stop built in. I keep a 1 stop and 2 stop around to get in between increments. 2. Zoom in. Example: If you want to shoot a close-up, you can go full wide and put the camera right in front of the person, or you can go full zoom and back the camera up. Either will get you a close-up, but the zoomed one will have a shallower apparant depth of field, becaue the field of view is so small. The background gets blown up so you see it is out of focus. Now, extend this beyond just close-ups. Even medium shots you can probably still back the camera up as far as possible and then zoom in. This is huge. It's probably a more dramatic depth trick than even the iris. 3. Adjust camera sharpening. This is huge. Nearly all cameras do a great deal of sharpening. The camera is fighting against your shallow depth of field. It is taking out of focus objects and sharpening them to make them seem like they are in focus. On my DVX, I have turned the Detail setting all the way down. The image is still sharp exactly where the focus is, but nice and smooth everywhere else. Beyond that, sharpening is just ugly. Check it out, I think you'll be pleased. 4. Light for depth. In B&W, you have to use light to show the depth of the scene and to isolate obejcts. Not so in color, but you can still light for depth with pools of light at different distances, and rim lights to set objects off from the background. This doesn't really effect depth of field, but creates pleasing perceived depth in the scene. 5. Block for depth. Given any shooting environment, position the camera and talent to create distance between them and the background. You can't stick people against walls and expect to get shallow depth of field. 6. Compose for depth. Many people tend to clear out the space between the camera and the talent, but it can help to have foreground objects that will be out of focus. Position the camera to shoot through and around these obejcts. Also, make the background interesting, but not too interesting, so it creates a nice image but doesn't distract. 7. Camera movement. Any type of camera movement (pan, tilt, dolly, jib, crane) will give great feeling of depth because you can see the dimensions of the space change as the camera moves. This is particularly true of dolly in/out and across scenes, and jib up/down. With these movements, the shallow depth of field isn't as important, because you can sense the depth. Shallow depth of field is only a big factor on static shots. There you have it, two lensing suggestions that actually effect depth of field, one camera tuning suggestion, and four non-camera tricks.
  4. Greg, The film really comes together in the editing room, but editing should be considered far earlier, during storyboarding, or even back to the screenplay. There are a lot of elements the writer and director inject that will inform the editing. There are other things they can do to really make editing difficult. For instance, it's unsettling to go from a moving dolly shot to a locked down tripod shot, if the dolly hasn't stopped moving yet. So, timing the start and end of camera movements like that is critical. You can't cut to or away until the move is done. They also need to shoot enough coverage to give some options in editing, even if they have a clear idea of what shots will be used. They also have to consider getting the right mix of shots so they don't inadvertantly create the wrong visual message. Going from a very wide shot to a extreme close up sends a clear dramatic message, but what if that's not the message you wan to send? Well, if that's all they shoot, with no medium or normal close-ups, then you are stuck with the wrong message. It's more typical to start with a wide master, cut to a medium shot, cut to close-ups and/or over-the-shoulder shots, then maybe to a tighter close-up at a certain moment. This slow build up allows you to hit a dramatic moment when and where you want to. You mention a good point about transitions between scenes. This is an area that doesn't get a lot of attention. However, when it is done right, it is a beautiful thing. I am always impressed when a dolly is used to end one scene connected with the same dircetion dolly in the next, perhaps cutting when an object passes in front of the camera. There are a lot of ways to do it. I also like L-cuts, where the audio from the next scene comes in a few second before the video cuts over. Everytime I have edited a project there is always some major shake-up. Maybe some shots that are unusable for some reason, and you need to find a creative way to cover the mistake. Maybe using some footage that was the camera rolling before or after a cut, but it has some good look or reaction. Sometimes an actor may lose his sightline and the shot becomes unconvincing, you might be able to use an insert in that case to motivate what the actor may have been looking at. It may even become a stronger shot as a result. It all requires a lot of thought in advance, or a lot of creativity after the fact. Josh
  5. The problem is that different video cameras are designed to work natively at different color temperatures. Some are best near tungsten, some near daylight. Usually this is not a published specification, unfortunately. If you can figure it out, by all means, get it close with a filter, fine tune with manual white balancing, and finish in color correction.
  6. Is there some advantage to correcting frame-by-frame instead of shot-by-shot like most people do? I can't think of any advantage to it, just lots more work.
  7. Jonathan, What camera are you using? Make sure you don't overexpose. You may need to throw some ND on the camera and use zebra settings. If your camera has a number of gamma settings, there is probably one that will give you largest dynamic range for the high contrast situations. There will be lots of sunlight. Use reflectors when shooting people to fill in the shadows. Josh
  8. I'd say the visuals were fairly inconsistent. Some great stuff, and some very average. Writing and acting were pretty poor, they had to pack so much into the pilot there was a lot of exposition, characters just reeling off backstory to get it out there. With the ensemble cast, some of the characters were interesting, others not. I loved Hiro. I thought the teenage girl was coming from a place I couldn't understand (perhaps that's as it should be). I would have changed it pretty quickly, but there were just enough moments to keep me interested, and then at the end with the painting reveal, enough to bring me back next week, but I'm reserving judgement.
  9. Andrew, It's not so much about disabling those functions. You can't disable saturation. It sounds like what you are looking for is to get the camera to acurately reflect reality without altering it. For that, you need a DSC chip chart and a waveform monitor. Depending on the camera, you can use the settings (chroma, phase, temp, gamma, matrix, etc.) to get pretty close to reality. By default, most cameras are overly contrasty, overly saturated, and then each manufacturer tends to have it's own unique color cast, even when white balanced against the same reference. Josh
  10. Ljoski, Aperture does have an effect on depth of field, but going "wide open" can be a problem, since wide open is usually F1.6 or so at full wide zoom, and F2.8 at full telephoto. Also, the small field of view on telephoto gives a much more shallow "look" than full wide open at full wide zoom, even though it's closed down nearly two additional stops. Check it out for yourself. Set up a scene with an object in the foreground ten feet or more from a background. Put the camera a foot away from the object and frame it up with a wide zoom. Then back up the camera and zoom in the get the same object size. Boom, the background is way out of focus. It's the narrow field of view that does it. What I do these days is shoot nearly everything at F2.8 for maximum flexibility with the zoom. I light to F2.8 or for exteriors use ND to cut down to F2.8. Where practical, I try to shoot from as far away as possible and zoom in to get my framing. For certain shots, like when you need to show two characters that are at different depths, it's tough to get it framed properly at full zoom, so I comproise and move the camera closer for better flexibility. Josh
  11. Just like with film, shooting a chip chart at the head of each setup will give you a good reference for color-correction in post.
  12. It's a great camera and has been used to make many award winning features and shorts. Generally it's said to have a more "organic" film look than the Canon, which is super sharp and high-res, and I've found this to be true. It's got pretty much every feature you could want. It has better exposure latitude and low light than the Canon. The B model has the least noise of the whole line, while the A model has the most. Cons are no interchangable lens and no true 16:9 CCD, but The DVX Squeeze mode is very good. FWIW, you might get different answers in a Canon forum. :)
  13. Robert, Probably sharpening. As a test, turn Detail down to off and see if you still have the problem. Probably it will be gone. If so, turn it up step by step until you are comfortable. Most people I have seen run the DVX with Detail at -3 to -7. My experience is the lower the detail level, the lower the digital look, and less noise. Oh, and if it's not noise, could it be diffraction? Are you running at F-stops F8 and above? If so, diffraction messes up resolution and degrades the image in other ways as well. Josh
  14. Jeff, Interesting. There is a big difference, though, between the DOF of F2.8 and with the lenses wide open, which is probably F1.6 on these cams. Would like to see a shot at F2.8, and a shot at F1.7 with 1.5 stops worth of ND on there. Of course, the relative DOF remains the same: twice as much DOF for the 1/3" cam. Josh
  15. My wife of nearly five years has done hair, makeup, wardrobe (and lots of grunt work) on all twelve short films I have directed and/or DP'd. She's also been on-screen in some capacity in most of them. She's the best partner you could ask for. Her only complaint relates to reading too many forums. :)
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