Miguel Angel

Thanks so much @Jeff Bernstein.

Just came back to say that we have been nominated for Best Documentary and Best Cinematography at the Kinsale Shark Awards 2024 in the International Shortfilm category! ? 

Very happy about it! 

Thanks @Uli Meyer and @Tyler Purcell :). 

The British Cinematographer Magazine has published an interview about the project.

If anybody is interested, here is the link:

https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/miguel-angel-and-borja-larrondo-the-road-bad-and-the-place-dark/

Have a lovely day!.

We have been nominated for Best Short Documentary at the BAFTA Student Awards 2023!!!!
 

As expected, I didn't get any awards in the British Arrows but I am extremely happy with the nomination ? 

However, I got a Gold Craft award for Best Cinematography at the Clio Awards 2023 for the Electricity's Positive Bill commercial. 

I entered the piece in the Student category as I was a student through the years that it took for us to film the piece and also because the fee was $50 instead of $675!

I am extremely happy that the jury thought that a documentary could have a lighting and camera design worth recognising! 
 

I got another award! 

Best Cinematography - Bronze in the International section of the Kinsale Awards!!

And an amazing nomination for Best Cinematography at the British Arrows!! ? I don't think that we have any chance of getting any awards on this, the level of craft, production and budgets is, literally, millions away from our doc / commercial but I'm going to the gala to see all these super big names and take photos with all of them! ? 

On 1/6/2023 at 1:14 AM, EDDUS RAY said:

Absolutely beautiful work Miguel. Do you mind sharing some of your process for this? I'm curious what lenses and lighting approach you took

Thanks

Thank you for your kind words Eddus, 

Apologies for the late reply, I have been super busy NOT being a cinematographer ha. 

I am not sure if I have a process per se when it comes to lighting, what I like and what I always try to achieve is to light things as if they were unlit or as if they were lit by the natural and available light that might come from sources outside or inside the places I am going to shoot on. I usually end up placing all those sources.

I love using practicals to light and I feel that if you are clever you can block scenes and place practicals in strategic places to just light a scene with them. However, I also love lighting people so I can definitely use a source to light medium / close up shots mimicking the light from the practical.

In this documentary we didn't know what we were going to find, we were sent a couple of photos from one of the clinics but that was about it. 

What we did though was (in between the director, Borja, and myself) imagine how we would like our locations to feel and we set some rules as to how we were going to shoot things (I also love doing that, so I suppose that that's part of my process!). 
We wanted it to feel unlit, intimate and honest. We also knew that we wanted to shoot at night and people were going to use their phones or torches to light so we bought some front-head lights in Spain that we ended up using to light or that we gave to people for them to use them while working! 

We spent 1/2 day when we arrived in Sierra Leone walking through the town and through some places that some people wanted us to see and where we could shoot interviews. From there we chose some rooms and we talked about how to light them with the tools that we had.

Our gaffer, Sergio Fuidia and our "person for everything", Diego, were super keys on achieving the look that we wanted because they spent a couple of days in one of the markets in Kabala buying Led torches, lights and etc that we could use as our practicals while we were shooting things during daytime.

The source that we used the most was one of the lights that appears at the beginning that gives a pretty unsettling white light that was perfect for the feel that we were looking for. 

And we pretty much placed the sources that you see in the interiors of the places and the ones that are giving light from outside (we had a set of 4 x Astera tubes,  2 x aladdin and one light that I don't remember the name of but is rectangular, is the size of an iPhone and has different settings and temperatures)

Also, lighting people with dark skin is pretty easy!!.

Regarding lenses, we had a 21, a 29 Supreme Prime and a 2 x extender. We chose those for several reasons:
1) They were small.

2) We only wanted to use two lenses (I shoot almost everything with either one or two lenses).

3) I love how the Supreme lenses render faces, they have a great tridimensionality. 

And I always place a lot of filters in front of any lens anyways! I had a Glimmerglass 1 and a Black Diffusion FX 2 together all the time.

Hope I answered some of your questions!?  ? 

Thanks @Manu Delpech!!

We got into the long shortlist of documentaries nominated for the Goya Awards in Spain!!! Which is quite a thing because short documentaries is kind of the category that nobody cares about ha!. Yesterday the Spanish Film Academy announced the four short docs nominated for the final round and sadly we weren't there, but that's ok! We are happy to have been in the 1st shortlist! ? 

On 10/9/2022 at 6:39 AM, Uli Meyer said:

Congratulations Miguel!

 

Thanks Uli!!! ? 

Thank you very much @Dom Jaeger and @Tyler Purcell ? 

I just got super good news. 

The commercial campaign: "Electricity's positive bill" won GOLD at Directing and SILVER at Cinematography in the FIAP awards in South America, which over 50 years have been one of the key festivals, together with  El Sol Festival, in the commercial world in South America.

https://fiapawards.com/ganadores

Back in November 2019 my friend Borja Larrondo asked me if I wanted to shoot a new commercial for Medecins Du Monde like the previous one that we had shot together in 2018 but with three twists:

1) It was going to be set in an unknown (at the time) location in Africa.

2) We were going to document what was happening in that unknown location in Africa.

3) It was going to be during nighttime and with no light at all!

I obviously said yes and after months of discussions and preparations we went to Sierra Leone to shoot a documentary about the reasons as to why hospitals there didn't have electricity and how that affected the people from different areas of the country. 

We were in Sierra Leone for several days and when we went back to Spain we had 3 days to review the material and edit it because Medecins Du Monde Spain wanted to launch the campaign as soon as possible.. Nerea Mugüerza, our editor, did an amazing job with all the footage that we got,  she really shaped the documentary and created a sense of story. 
Not only that but she also created the different cuts for the commercial campaigns that the client wanted to deliver.

Right after those 3 days we were ready to colour grade the commercial cuts and then Covid happened and Medecins Du Monde stopped all the processes. At that time we were really sad because we didn't know when we were going to be able to show the reality of what was happening in Sierra Leone but it really helped us achieve what we wanted to achieve in the post production process with the documentary and the commercial campaigns. 

Because of Covid we were able to work with extraordinary colour grader Jenny Montgomery from Company 3, which was like a dream for us because we didn't have any money to give to them. We sent her the material and when it came back it was the first time in my life that I didn't have anything to say in a colour grade other than: "WOW!". 

Sound postproduction had more time to work on it and when we finished everything several months later we still didn't know what was going to happen with the commercial campaigns. 

It turns out that Medecins Du Monde did know what was going to happen because they asked us to shoot a similar documentary in December 2021 focused on the lack of energy in one part of Madrid called "La Cañada Real", which you can learn about on here (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/27/you-kind-of-die-life-without-power-in-the-canada-real-spain). 

I joined Borja and we went to La Cañada Real to talk to people and convince them to let us film their daily lives, after one week being there we grabbed a camera and we started shooting for 2 days.

This time Medecins Du Monde Spain wanted to broadcast the campaign as soon as they could and that meant that we weren't going to have the luxury of time to post  produce things as we wanted. Regarding colour grading we decided that we wanted to work with people who understood Madrid and the culture of La Cañada Real and after some suggestions from the production company, Lobo Kane, we went to colour grade with GradePunk and Sebastian did an amazing job trying to maintain the quality of the colour grading that we had in Sierra Leone but giving a distinctive look to the part in Madrid that he was colour grading.

The great @Phil Rhodes wrote a wonderful article about the documentary back in July 2020 when we were in the middle of knowing who was going to colour grade the documentary. 
You can read about it on here: https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/content/entry/15328/creative-analysis-part-3-the-road-bad-the-place-dark-from-the-cinematograph

As of now, the documentary has been selected and showed in different film festivals and has gotten one cinematography award, the BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD (INTERNATIONAL SHORT) at the Thin Line Film Festival. 

The commercial campaign has gotten two cinematography awards so far.  Best Cinematography at the Emerging Directors Awards 2022 in Ireland and the Bronze Award in Film Craft in the CDEC in Spain 2022. 

You can watch the commercial campaign here

And the trailer for the documentary here

16 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

No, didn't have any idea about it. I guess I could find a reason if they'd have me.

I think that you should cover it for the BSC magazine ? 

2 hours ago, Mark Dunn said:

I'm sure they'd have your 1200 quid.

They sure would! They took mine indeed but I was very happy to pay for it. You should come Mark!

Hi all! 

Just wanted to know if any of you who live in the United Kingdom is going to head over the BSC workshop / masterclass this coming weekend?. 
I'm looking at you @Phil Rhodes??

Super excited about this as Mandy Walker is going to be there, as well as Sean Bobbitt, Chris Ross, Ula Pontikos and Rob Hardy!

On 5/30/2022 at 4:09 PM, Phil Rhodes said:

Apparently, the film and TV industry, particularly in the UK, has a serious problem crewing productions. I have to say it's not something I have hit personally as when I occasionally need people it's often just for a day or two. For anyone setting up for a multi-week feature or high-end TV production, though, it's apparently grim out there, with crew able to charge significantly enhanced rates as there's almost nobody available. Producers, particularly on mid-range shows that can't afford the new rates, are suffering mightily.

And you know what?

Film and TV has long been an absolutely horrible employer, at least since the contractorisation of more or less all crewing. It's right up there with the most notorious boogeymen like fashion, it its enthusiasm to rapaciously exploit near-helpless young newbies. Borderline-illegal employment practices have been allowed to run rampant, from straightforward nepotism to open-secret initiatives to create closed shops by the back door. Entry involves months - probably a year or two at least - of employment at almost-illegal wages, in expensive cities with not even the hint of recognisable qualifications or employment at the end of it. At worst, it can involve taking the casual abuse of more senior people who know they can get away with it. Not seen it? Try being a new, female, grip or electrician. It's practically hazing, and it's hard to tell whether they really mean it or not. Your average five-foot-one, 105-pound school leaver would certainly be forgiven for taking it personally in the locker-room atmosphere of a film crew lunch break.

And let's not just make this about the more overtly tool-belt-wearing parts of the profession. Post-production houses are notorious for hiring minimum-wage people on zero-hour contracts to fetch takeaways for the better-paid with, generally, zero prospects of meaningful advancement. When the awkward questions about a step up the ladder begin, there's always another offspring of the wealthy who can crash in the family's Kensington apartment for a few months while they work out how comprehensively they're being screwed by a company with a nine-figure turnover.

Whether or not it was ever the producers' problem to clamp down on this sort of thing (and make no mistake: it was), the production office hardly comes off looking blameless. Training has long been perpetually someone else's problem. With a few exceptions, producers and other employing entities, such as rental houses, expect people to just somehow be available, and are rarely asked, and practically never required, to contribute anything to any sort of official training. I know this because I've done it; even on the small stuff I've organised, I have on two occasions been pressured to find some money to pay for a very new person who was acquainted with the focus puller. I did it because someone has to, but financially, that probably just makes me the idiot (I don't do it any more because the stuff I organise is generally not sufficiently like a real shoot for anyone to learn anything useful, but that's beside the point).

For a long time, the requirements for crew - again, particularly in the UK - were so low that it barely mattered, and these deeply unpleasant, catastrophically unreliable arrangements were somehow enough to train new people. Since it became clear that wasn't going to keep working, there have  been a couple of very small scale initiatives to try to regularise things, though almost any of them could be characterised as an attempt to control the labour market. One organised by a big UK rental company does deserve calling out as a high point, but in general, it hasn't been nearly enough, hence the desperate situation we're in now.

And as ungenerous as it is, I'm not going to be able to get the smile off my face for a week.

I wish there was a lack of cinematographers in the UK too!.. maybe we are too many! 

You could watch two masterpieces in lighting (and directing) called "Leviathan" and "Loveless", both directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev and lit marvellously by Mikhail Krichman.

You might find interesting night scenes there.

Have a good day!

17 hours ago, Gregory Irwin said:

That’s great Miguel! I’m so glad that was useful. Thank you for letting me know! What did you think about the lenses?

G

Even though I don't really like anamorphic anymore I think that the Technos are quite good AND BIG but they are super lightweight for hand-held!!
They don't feel sharp and they resolve faces pretty well, especially because I think that the 40mm and the 50mm do a great job at focusing your attention at the center of the lens.

The 75mm was my favourite (we had the 40, 50 and 75). 

I loved the close focus on the 40mm and the 50mm! 

I wish they weren't that contrasty overall and looked a bit more like the Xtal Xpress.
I had a Black Diffusion FX 1 all the time on them and shot at 10.000asa on the Venice underexposing 1 1/2 stop as well so maybe I  shouldn't judge them based on this project ? 

Perhaps Ps+technik could develop a diopter to put at the back of the lenses to detune them or take the coat off them to make them a tad softer. 

These are some screengrabs from yesterday's colour grading session where our colourist put a lot of grain in it (90% of the commercial is archive material so we had to kind of match the feeling of what we shot to that)
We used the Technos for 2 sequences (bar and van) and the Supremes for another 2 (office and supermarket)

It is all available and natural light modified with a clrs frame or a 2 meters x 2 meters frame. 

These below are the Supremes

16 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Maybe it was badly processed? I don't find it to be particularly grainy...

We did this in 2020 and just ran another job recently for NFL and I thought the 16mm Ekta (run as color reversal by us) looked pretty nice and not grainy:

 

https://www.nfl.com/videos/who-are-we-nate-burleson-narrates-the-stories-behind-the-2020-season

The very first shots are Ekta and it was a mix of Ekta 100D Tri-X and 7219 plus Alexa.

 

Also here is some E100D and Tri-X S8mm I shot a few years ago:

 

The spot looks absolutely fantastic! 
Love the nights in the stadium and the exterior days. 

Who colour graded it if you don't mind me asking? ? 

@Gregory Irwin just wanted to chime in to say that I shot a commercial last Friday with the Technovision lenses and your lens sheet was very handy!! ? 

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kenfield said:

Well, yes. That's kinda the whole reason for giving my word. ?‍♂️

But here are a couple of samples (Video Village do a "lite" version of the plugin which is free, and can be used on footage up to 1080p in resolution, it just gives you a single, full S16mm and S35mm preset, with no adjustability of the various parameters). These are the same shots with just an Arri Rec709 LUT applied, and then Filmbox's S16mm emulation from the Lite plugin applied (no other adjustments):

In motion, with the halation, grain, gate weave and occasional dust-spec applied. It's remarkably convincing. 

It looks interesting! Thanks for posting this!

41 minutes ago, Mark Kenfield said:

You got a terrific look from that combo Miguel! Well done.

Thanks Mark!!

On 12/30/2021 at 9:18 AM, Alejandro Arteaga said:

Hello! I will be shooting a small commercial january 14th in Canary Islands, almost everything with available light and the production company just turned down the option of shooting it in film because the deadline and the shooting are very close and we won´t be able to process the film on time.

The Director and I prefer the look of 16mm for this particular project so I was wondering if some of you have any thoughts or if you ever used this combo: Alexa mini S16 crop with 16mm lenses and a little help in the color correction for achieving the 16mm look. Also we are going to use the Inspire 2 Drone for some shots and I think the Super16mm crop on the Alexa could be a good idea for matching the two cameras differences in depth of field and angle of view.

Does this make sense for you? Do you have any other ideas? Thank you very much

I used to use the S16 mode on the Alexa Mini a lot with a variety of lenses. 
The ones that I loved the most were the Old Super Speed lenses for S16 (the ones with the triangular bokeh). 

Here is an extremely low budget commercial I shot with that combo (the grading is almost exactly as I shot it). 

https://vimeo.com/310678277

Here is another one with the Super16 + Ultra 16 (I didn't like the look of it after the grading, I wasn't involved in it)

https://vimeo.com/312168266

Hope it helps. 

21 hours ago, Stephen Perera said:

hermano Miguel....donde puedo ver esto? sale en Tele5, Antena 3 o algo así????

Buenas Stephen! 

The link is in the above post but I'll put it here too ? 

https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/edelweiss/

Hopefully you will like it.. and if you don't, let me know too ha! ? 

Hi al!!
 

Between November & December 2020 and March 2021 I had the pleasure of shooting my first mini series as a cinematographer, a docudrama (if that is a word) for the Spanish national broadcaster called Edelweiss. 

It is 4 episodes x 35 minutes each, we shot the documentary bits for 4 weeks around Spain in November and December 2020 with a team of 6 people and the drama bits in March 2021 for 1 week with a small size unit (kind of short-film size).  
The budget was €350K and what attracted me to the project was the story since it is about the biggest child sexual trafficking case in Spain, which happened a few decades ago.

It was an interesting production to work on, with a lot of challenges and a lot of things to think about after wrapping it up, good things and bad things as well. 

The most important thing is that I learnt a lot about how to be efficient blocking and lighting wise and a lot more about management (and I mean A LOT MORE!!)

Here is the trailer (which doesn't show much..) and the full mini series with English subtitles if you want to watch it. 

Edelweiss - Mini series

https://www.rtve.es/play/videos/edelweiss/

Critics and comments are welcome!!! ? 

On 10/18/2021 at 2:18 PM, Pascale Neuschafer said:

@miguelang

These images look really clean in terms of noise. Did you shoot S-log3, or did you choose one of the Custom modes?

Hi Pascale, 

We shot S-log 3 ? 

Thanks!

On 9/24/2021 at 3:39 AM, Dom Jaeger said:

Every frame is like that. There are a few articles discussing the difficulty they had lighting inside a heritage protected building (the French are particularly dogmatic about their historical buildings), but yes, lots and lots of bounce and natural light. But every shot is a masterclass in controlled light, deliberate depth of field choices and framing. Sometimes it seems as if the light comes from the actresses skin itself. And the colour choices are sublime. Obviously there are a lot of painting references, and extended sequences showing the art-making process, which is catnip to me. The camera movement is often minimal, which is refreshing in this era. It’s an interesting blend of traditional techniques and quiet revolution, in terms of what the camera shows. 

A lot of period films like this choose to shoot on film almost by default, but I think film purists should watch this to get a sense of just how good digital cameras can look in the right hands. 
 

 

 

 

The movie is really good and the cinematography is wonderful but it doesn't use natural light that much, which I think is wonderful because the movie feels like it is lit by natural and available light sometimes!

https://www.red.com/news/claire-mathon-afc

16 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

In my work, which entails doing stop pulls on long Steadicam moves, I can’t rely on the signal using WC4s… 

13 hours ago, Gregory Irwin said:

That’s exactly the issue I’ve experienced with the WC4. It’s not reliable. The nice thing about the Prestons is that you can adjust the torque levels of the motors. We normally have them on the lowest level but even that seems too much at times for older lenses. But the signal is always solid for good distances away from the camera and I like incorporating the read outs of the Cine RT or Light Ranger right on the display of the handset. 
 

G

That's what he (and all my focus pullers friends) complained about. 
Maybe they will fix it with the release of the new WCU5 (or however it will be called)? ? 

Was this you @David Mullen ASC when the lens failed? ? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KZ6mIsbDc4