Bruce Greene

I do this with still photos shot in color negative film when color turns out to be the wrong approach.

The grain will never look the same as B&W film grain, but you can achieve quite good results. The key is to color correct the color version under the de-saturation operation.

I would practice in Photoshop, using a still from color negative, and use the “black and white” adjustment layer, and playing with the color sliders in this control panel. You’ll be able to quickly see how the color effects the monochrome version of the image.

The scenario you describe is the perfect use of a spot meter.

just keep in mind that the reading you get from the horizon will be the exposure to reproduce that area of the exposure as middle grey.

so if you want your horizon to be bright you’ll need to give it more exposure than the meter reading. If you’re shooting film, that might be two or three stops more exposure than the spot reading for example.

I don’t use my spot meter much these days when shooting digital, but I rely on it for shooting film, especially landscapes.

This might not apply to you, Leonardo… but might to others.

My daughter never went to, or even thought about film school.

But today she has made a career as a writer/producer of TV series promos for major networks.

She studied English literature and writing in college. And it turns out that the ability to write is very useful in the entertainment business. She learned video editing on the job, with no previous experience.

This is just to point out that film school is not the only way forward, and that a creative mindset and skill can be an important asset.

Best wishes to all just starting out!

I wouldn’t worry about Netflix, since they very very rarely buy small films, and when they do, their camera requirements do not apply.

That said… if this is all you’ve got, use it and make your film.

Your cinematographer may well be driven nuts trying to shoot with a camera best used for YouTube Vlogs.

Keeping focus, constant battery changes, and low quality recording formats will make many challenges!

The camera will be cheap, but time delays and difficult post color correction may well make this an expensive choice.

Better to find an old RED or Arri Alexa to shoot with I think.

2 minutes ago, Owen A. Davies said:

I was actually planning not to use any kind of correction filter. I heard that you can get much more out of the dye layers by not filtering out the blue in camera, but instead correcting in post. Heard it can produce a pretty vibrant look with warm skintones. I'm going for somewhat of a vintage look, hence the grain of the 500T.

You’ve been misinformed.

For best options in color grading, correctly balance the color exposure in camera by using the 85 filter. Or use daylight balanced film.

If you don’t use the filter, when you remove blue from the skin tones, your shadows are going to turn orange due to under exposure of the orange range of colors. Neutralizing the shadows will result in noisy shadows, or you’ll need to crush them to black.

To give yourself a fighting chance at a normal color correction when shooting without the filter, increase your exposure by exposing at ISO 250 or 200.

Use the orange 85 filter on your camera when shooting daylight.

If for some reason you won’t, over expose by one stop to allow not under exposing non-blue light.

This has got me thinking that optical/chemical printing of both motion picture and still films has become a very niche workflow.

Maybe it’s time to retire the orange mask?

For still photographers it would make scanning negatives with a camera much easier and perhaps lead to increased film sales?

Just thinking out loud …

My last confetti scene was shot in daylight, in the shade of buildings.

To make the confetti sparkle I used my biggest lamp, an 18k HMI to backlight (or as close to backlight as I could without the lamp being in frame).

To make the confetti sparkle, high contrast if your friend, so a hard light from the side or back looks best.

You can see the effect here at about 2:50 into this clip 

22 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Bruce, it's about composition, not about anything else. I notice you really like 2.35. I hope I don't catch that bug because I don't think many clients or subjects would appreciate it! LOL

2.39:1… well I’ve shot a bunch of films for the theatrical market in the former USSR.

The distributors there strongly prefer scope format, so I’ve shot quite a bit of it. ?

Im not sure I really “like it”, just what’s required. Most of my still photography is close to 1.85/1 format. Probably because it’s close to the native format of the camera! I have very very few photographs in portrait mode though…

A fun project to be sure!

But, it will not teach you to shoot movies I’m afraid.

Please let us know if you have an exhibition of your photographs. I’d love to see them!!!
 

In the film days… I had custom correction lenses made to fit in the Arri and Panavision eye pieces.

These days, I just wear my glasses if I must, but since the focus pullers have a better view than I, I rely on them to confirm focus and operate without glasses. Almost always I can tell when a focus error is made from the sound of the focus motor not matching the action.

For you, just measure the common eyepieces that you use and have a custom lens or lenses made. Mark the lens with a sharpie on the edge so that you insert it with the correct orientation.

Blanks look different than real bullets. But, dummy bullets, that are sometimes used in revolver chambers when seen in the shot, look like real bullets.

it’s possible that it was assumed that dummy bullets were loaded in the weapon, making it a “cold gun”… when in reality they were real bullets which should never be present anywhere on a film set.

The “reports” that the prop weapons were used for target shooting when not filming are shocking, if true.

On 3/13/2019 at 4:58 AM, Phil Rhodes said:

I still have...

I still have and use this system :)

It will be easiest to sync using 25fps, especially shooting the CRT displays.

For some distribution, you’ll need to slow the playback to 24fps, which I’ve done in the past.

It is possible that you’ll come across some LED lighting or computer screened that don’t sync well and you’ll need to experiment with shutter angles for the best result.

The original Ziess high speed primes had a 3 blade iris.

The triangular “bokeh” was always visible on film….

Less noisy image than VHS and much tougher hardware which was better for editing…

If you’re going to see the windows in frame, you will probably need to light them all.

This will require the rigging to get the lamps up to window height.

It’s a big space. At the very minimum, I’d use 9 1.8k open face HMI lamps. But, you might need bigger lamps, especially if you diffuse the light.

I’ve done a slightly smaller room and used at least 6 18k lamps and 4 scissor lifts. Not cheap!

if you can keep the windows out of frame, light from the top of the bleachers.

it’s the courtroom scene in this video clip. 

Seems like the camera was set to 23.98…

If all your footage is 23.98, just leave it and edit in 23.98fps.

if you have other cameras at 24fps, you’ll need to assign 24fps to the Alexa footage. You may need to adjust the audio as you’ll drift sync every 501 frames I think.

Great news! You already have a cinema camera in your phone.

You'll need to find your own career path through the business, but you also need to learn cinema vs still photography.

Write some short scripts, without dialog, and find a way to shoot and edit them. You need to learn how images combine to tell a narrative story. You need to learn where to place the camera to tell the story.

If you find this idea daunting, and hard to imagine, then… cinematography might not be for you.

This will cost you nothing but time and energy so get started … today!

16 hours ago, Frank Wylie said:

You can use a standard keyboard and mouse just fine.

The big issue is having a graphics card with enough meat to do the top resolution you wish to export,a lot of very fast disk space and a good calibrated monitor at a bare minimum. 

The sofware maybe be free or cheap, but the hardware is NOT...

You can use a mouse, but the control will be coarse. Much finer adjustment is possible with a control panel. For serious work, the control panel is almost required for this reason.

I have tried using the “auto” transform from a card in Resolve. Sometimes it works, other times, strange result and I don’t know why.

If you are successful, place this transform node in the middle of your node tree. You will find, I think, that this correction node, while accurate, may clip highlights and shadows. To fix this, use the nodes before the transform to bring back missing highlights or shadows using the lift or gain controls.

Its possible your log to 709 LUT may do a better job if it was created for your particular camera. But the same technique applies. Use nodes before the LUT transform to adjust highlights and shadows.

I think you will find it very difficult to simply normalize this chart log image by simple color correction adjustments. But, give it a try as you will learn a bit!

40 minutes ago, Seth Baldwin said:

Trying to educate my self on the DI process of 35mm film. So far from what I've gathered, after shooting and developing they would have the film scanned to a log gamma like cineon into DPX files. Which they then took through editing and grading, eventually at the end they would grade to a 2383 lut to take into account how it would look on print. Those prints were sent to cinemas. Where im confused however, is when they would then digitise for online distribution like netflix, blueray, ect; would they scan the actual prints or would they use the scans from the originial negative and then just apply a 2383 lut in DI at the end?

From my experience...  From my last film original...

Film was processed and an "off line" scan or telecine was made for editorial.  After picture lock, the takes used were scanned and conformed to the edit.

Color grading was done using a 2383 simulation LUT and a negative was output and the prints made. They looked pretty close to the DI simulation.  DI was done at Deluxe if I recall.

Not sure what happened with the video masters though.  Sony wouldn't give me a copy, and it was a foreign film, so there were not any to buy in the US.  I had asked that they output the video through the emulation LUT, but I'm not sure Sony followed through with that...

6 hours ago, Luca Hain said:

Hey Everyone,

 

for my next movie i'm considering to print my digital Footage on Film once it's through the edit. 

Does someone has experience with the process and may have some results to share?

 

Shooting on film in the first place is not in the budget unfortunately, but to get close to the look we want to try this out.

 

We're shooting on the Alexa Mini.

 

I would be very happy for your thoughts,

 

Best Regards,

 

Luca

If you can’t afford to shoot film, I doubt you can afford the 10’s of thousands of dollars to film out a negative, scan it, and then re-color correct the result.

I’ve only done film outs for a film release, but never rescanned the film negative.

But, if there will be no film release, I would grade the digital movie and output a low contrast log version for creating the film neg, just so you don’t throw away data that you might need to digitally color correct your new film negative. I would certainly run multiple tests of short clips before committing to the work flow.

Good luck with this and please share your results if you ever do it.

If you want to see the reflections, you’ll need to light the interior bright enough to see through them, and this may look unnatural.

Otherwise, you’ll need to flag off the reflections from the glass. Use a black flag rather than a a diffuser, otherwise you’ll just see a reflection of the diffusion.

The flag will need to be pretty big too to avoid seeing reflections of the frame. And it will get dark inside, so you’ll need to light the interior as well usually.

Be prepared to spend some time rigging the flag as it’s the most difficult part of the set up.

Lately, I’ve had producers insisting on shooting these scenes using chroma key to save time and money and this generally works well, but you’ll need to shoot the BG plates as well. Reflections in the glass are then added in post, so shoot those plates as well.

Why not shoot 100fps?