Miguel Angel

Thank you Matt! Best.

Such a great one. Thanks! It is a pity that one of the best interviews to Nestor Almendros is in Spanish and is not subtitled because he was a game changer together with Mr. Nykvist and Figueroa (Is that expression right? :D) Best.

I have to say that it looks absolutely amazing. I love westerns and I contributed so I hope you make it! Best.

I liked it and I would like to see a longer version of it following different routes or different communities! Thanks for sharing it! Best.

Hey Bill! We might see each other as I wanted to take the ASC Master Class either in March or in May, depending on university schedules :) Have a good day! Best.

I like the graded frame over the Vimeo too Tyler and I was in college today re - grading the entire piece (not too much to do though!) and I graded it almost as in the frame above, with a little bit less of contrast and a little bit less saturated so I think that it will be as you said! :) I will upload it during the weekend so maybe you can take a look at it again and see what you think if it's ok? Kemalettin, I read your posts here and I don't know what to say, I love changes! and usually going out of a comfort zone takes a while but at the end of the day it's very rewarding. As for me, I don't know what I'm going to do after finishing school, probably I'll have to go back to Cork to work in a call center! But I don't care as I know I'll have acquired the knowledge I needed and I'll have improved my life by studying and learning :) Have a lovely day all! Best.

I would like to ask you a couple of questions that I asked myself when I was looking for a university, Axel. What's your long - term plan? Why do you want to go to school really? Do you know what you miss in your education if you miss anything? If you know what you miss, get the school that is the best at it. Do you want a general cinematography course or you want something more specific? Do you think you will find it in a school rather than on set? And the most important thing, are you capable of being in a school non - stop without working at all for 2 years? The Cinematography Masters in NFTS is not very expensive (according to USA standards) but it's expensive enough to ask yourself that question, you will need a Bachelor's Degree to get accepted too. If you are taking a look at, let's say, AFI in the States, it is €120.000 the two years, living expenses included if you live cheaply, you will need at least 100 out of 120 in the TOEFL exam. If I were you I'd suggest going to the Open Days in the different schools to ask around, usually students don't lie about the courses and you can get a bit of knowledge of the school by doing that plus you will get to know if that school in particular meets your needs and you can start networking also! There are great cinematography masters in the East of Europe, Prague and Budapest have excellent cinematography courses and their aesthetics are definitely interesting, even more than the ones that they will teach you over the UK. Best.

I can't believe that he turned in Schinder's List, that's unfair and hilarious! I hope he got honours! :) Best!

Hi Alex! Definitely getting more "set experiences" is something that I recommend a lot because it will help you have a clearer path in school. I know what I want to get out of NFS and I'm doing everything I can to achieve it, and that's because of my previous set experience. Maybe we'll see each other soon! If you're in Ireland, pop up during the Open Days and ask them loads of things, and come to see me! Tyler Thanks for the comment! I'm having loads of fun indeed. It's exactly what you say, having a couple of lights, a camera and a studio to experiment with things, lights, moods, etc is the best thing about being in school :) I personally think that starting at the bottom end of the camera department or the electrical department helps a lot as you get to know how to behave on set, what to do, what not to do, which are the expected times for something to be done and all those little things that are very important (for me as a 2nd AC :D), at least it has helped me and it still helps loads. Axel I'm studying in the National Film School in Ireland not the National Film and Television School in UK, they are completely different! -- On the other hand, last week was very strange. We were going to have a good cinematography class - exterior day / night and the college was going to rent a couple of HMI's for us to play with them, however we couldn't have the class because of the weather as a big storm came out of the blue the day before and the class had to be suspended :(. However, I had offered myself to help a student from the Design for Cinema and Stage course shoot her minor grad on Friday - basically shooting a 2 or 3 minutes piece - At the beginning I thought it wasn't going to be interesting enough because we only had a black space, the cinematography studio, and the girl wanted to achieve a "soft and light" light coming through a window in daylight. So, first things first: Where can we get a window in college? how do we make the shots interesting if we have no flats and no place to put anything? and more important, how the hell do I get a "soft light light coming through a window in daylight" when I'm used to work with 18Ks, 24Ks, Maxibrutes and etc and I only have blondes and redheads? Oh, and we were going to be just three people on set, the girl, the actress and myself. I have learnt an important thing in college and it is that you have to be really creative to overcome all the difficulties of a "school production" and we started to think that way. First thing, window Creating a light coming through a window is no problem at all, but it is a little problem when you want to see the window :D, hence, we went through all the school trying to get a window and we finally got one! A very heavy and old window which was absolutely perfect. Second thing, set. As part of the lighting kit that IADT has there are some autopoles so I asked for two of them with two tripods to hung or suspend wallpaper from them and create a "sense" of space with the wallpaper. It didn't turn out well because we were able to see the gaps between the wallpapers. Again, we started to think about what we could do to make the wallpaper stay straight.. and we walked through the college and we luckily found three pieces of wood which we put on one of the autopoles. We needed to put the paper in a higher position and we decided to hung it from the second autopole so we could put the rest of the wallpaper in each piece of wood.. and it worked better than having no pieces of wood :) Third thing, light I want to become a cinematographer and each time I have to shoot something I have little butterflies in my stomach because I think I won't be able to do what the director is asking me to do. I am a great fan of soft light but I know that to create an interesting soft light you need a big surface of light, I also like shooting at T5.6 hence the necessity of having big lights to create soft light. However, we don't have 12ks / 18Ks / etc in IADT (we don't even have a 5K!), but we have 3 2K blondes which I thought could help achieve the mood that the director was looking for with a smaller number, T2. We also have that great frame with 216 that I have mentioned before! :) and I said: Let's bounce the blondes off the frame! even if it is made of 216, it has to give me something. and it does, it is not as great as a white sheet but hey! it worked. Finding your artistic voice and your vision is what all the teachers are looking for and I love mixing color temperatures and using colors to enhance feelings if possible, I can't help! if I have a chance, I will mix color temperatures so I asked the girl if she could bring a little lamp that we could use as a practical. She brought a fabulous lamp, and all the bulbs we had to make the light dimmer didn't fit, so we used the old ND trick, we dimmered the light all we could (not too much tho) and I put depron on top and on the bottom part of the lamp, that way, the light was going to be softer. As I wanted the light a bit warmer I placed an Amber Bastard gel in it and I loved it! It's such an amazing filter, ain't it? :o When we started to frame I fell that we needed something else within the frame to make the composition a bit more interesting and I placed a table with a cloth and some candles on it. I don't know if I did the right thing but it helped me a bit with the background and I had the perfect excuse to place a light for her in the back! a 300W with a single net, flagged and with Amber Bastard again :D. I wanted to place a practical on one of the wooden pieces for it to light the background but we didn't have either more practicals or the way to hold it! Fourth thing, shooting time The director and I agreed on moving the camera slowly to create a sense of dynamism and liberation which is very difficult when you are operating, moving the camera on the little rails and pulling focus at the same time! I had a great time tho! I am usually not happy with the results I get, however, with what he had and seeing the result we got, I'm quite ecstatic! Things I would have loved to try (but I couldn't because of time constrains) 1) I would have loved to light the background a bit, just a bit. The face was reading T1.4 2/3 and the background was reading T 1.0 so maybe half stop would have been enough because I think it looks very dull? 2) Maybe a warm kick light for her? 3) Definitely next time I will try to create soft light as an ambience and then throwing "a ray of light" through the window so we really see that it is daylight and we have the harsh ray of light there. Regarding the grading, this is what I wanted and what I shot for The director said that the tone of the piece asked for a lighter version of it which I don't know if it's ok or not but it is the one that you can see on the following link: https://vimeo.com/112747436 Take into account that it is a very low resolution video! And it is very likely that I'll be grading some parts of the piece as I want it to be for my reel.. whenever I start creating one ha! and probably I'll grade the piece as the image above for that Vimeo link in the next couple of days. What do you think? Do you think it is better to have a neutral face as in the frame above or with a blue tint as in the graded version? Anyway, thanks for reading again! I hope you don't get bored at all! :) Best!

Hello, It is a tough question. First of all, would you have any kind of style that you would like to get or your main purpose is lighting everything and shoot quickly? It would help a lot if you post any kind of visual references or images for everybody to see what you and your director are looking for. There is an excellent post with great answers regarding the topic you are talking about, you can find it on the following link: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=65455 Have a good day. Best.

P. J. Dillon, yeah! :)

Hi Alexander, No worries! I was allowed to skip all the three years that's right. I don't know if it was the right decision or not but that's what I asked for. The reason why I was allowed to do so is because of my previous experience as a 2nd AC and my work as a cinematographer (not that much but I showed them a period drama short - film that I shot, the second short - film that I had photographed and they were very impressed). They told me that they saw potential on me and that was the reason why they were going to allow that (probably because they saw that I was very determined too, and old, ha) I highly recommend that you go to the open days and if you have worked in the industry before, let them know and asked them for different possibilities. Have a good evening! Best.

Hi Alexander! I am indeed! I entered straight 4th year :) Lucky me!! Have a good day! Best.

Last week wasn't very exciting in terms of Cinematography classes, we had a wide shot exercise and the class itself wasn't as good as the previous ones. As I was busy working on commercials most of the week I couldn't do anything on my own either. After working for four days I decided that I needed to get more things done with my little car (at the end of the day I want to shoot car commercials :D) and I had to know how to use reflections properly and exactly, hence I decided to book the studio, the camera and the lights for today, Monday and Thursday. Then I wanted to use reflections as if it were an actual car commercial and thanks to a 2 x 1 meters frame that was in the studio I think it looks much better than the previous one. Mainly because of three things: 1 - The size of the light. 2 - I used reflections rather than direct light. 3 - I created the full line. Although it looks 100% better than the other frame (probably because I was able to put the line wherever I wanted to) , I am still annoyed with one reflection that I can't get rid of and the tires. There are 5mm between the tires and the under side part of the car, I can't put light behind the car because I will see it, I can't put light above the car because I would notice it. I've been thinking about two things: 1) Placing tinfoil on the table so I can use little LEDS put in the under side part of the car and use them to bounce some lights to the tires. 2) Creating a composition with the picture below and another one with light behind the car so I can erase parts of the car that I don't like (easy option and not the one I like) 3) Throwing direct light under the car and problem solved. It seems to me that the frame has to be bigger so I'll be using 2 2.5x2.5 frames next time :) Anyway, please find attached the frames from the car commercial Have a great day!

Thanks for the compliments Stephen, I'm still learning myself! So, how did it go? I'm curious about how the final shoot looks like. Have a good day. Best.

That was very nice! Thanks for sharing it. Best.

It seems to me that David is talking about any kind of practical light sources that will help develop the atmosphere on the set rather than only the "work lamps", am I right? Practical lights don't have to be that bright, you can dim some of them too (even some fluorescent lamps can be dimmed, although they tend to flick) and if you can supplement / augment them their light is not a problem at all! In fact, those "work lamps" can be easily reduced with ND and depron! And given the low ceiling I would go for David's advise! Some examples:

It is my opinion that the first picture of the above ones works much better in terms of what you are looking for. My suggestion of the Rifa light is exactly what you did with the dedolight although the Rifa light would have given you a softer light, that you can create easily with a little chimera on the dedolight (if you have any) If you still want a reflection on the piano, get a big white polyboard off the frame and look for the reflection on the piano, it might be interesting! What I would try doing is I would try flagging some light to have just a rim light on him. And maybe you might want to give a little bit of light to the cloth hanging off the piano? Maybe it is something worth trying? Best.

You're welcome. Bear in mind the height of the celings in Arrow, your basement doesn't have that height but I'm sure you'll figure something out! Glad you liked it. Best.

I don't remember Reservoir Dogs very well but I would say that that sequence doesn't have any practicals, or if it does they are not used as "main" sources, as opposed as in Arrow where the light in the "warehouse" is supposed to come from the practicals, sometimes they use sunlight too though, but in very specific moments. That sequence doesn't mix colours in the way that Arrow does either. And the use of really harsh light emphasized by smoke is not in the garage part of Reservoir Dogs, which shows very clean backgrounds if I'm right? Please, see some examples below from the series Arrow: Best.

What about trying these two things that I suggest in the picture? If you are going to put lights outside then I would suggest to change the colour of them with a gel or something, Peacock Blue is nice as well as Steel Blue :) I would also do a test with a practical very very dimmed on the right hand side of the frame on a table. If you move the piano a bit away from the window, you will have a lovely background a bit out of focus, which might help dissimulate the "street lights" :) Best.

I concur with David, practicals are always fantastic and if you can base your lighting on them, even better. Although that is a different approach. By the way, have you seen the series Arrow? they have parts shot in a warehouse, mixing practicals and hard sunlight :) Best.

Sometimes car commercials are a good example of overpowering the sun. If I remember correctly, for mediums and close ups there were three acting as kicks and two as a side light or frontal light. Best.

If you take a look at "The Judge", "War Horse" or "Indiana Jones" just to name but a few, shot by Kaminski, you will see that sometimes he uses light to overpower sunlight for very specific reasons although he uses the sun as a kick light and lights the actors with 12/18k's almost all the time. In some commercials I have worked on I've seen the cinematographer lighting a face with a 18k through diffusion like 8 or 10 meters away from the actor's final position. There is also a good example of what you are asking for in the following commercial: Derek Rose - Adidas http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8b90kaLrcQQ The basketball player in the middle of the bullfighting square was lit by 5 direct18's from several angles plus the sun. It was quite hot there, not because of the HMI's tho! Hope it helps. Best.

You're more than welcome. It could be a Coral or a Chocolate filter in camera or it could have been done in the grading stage although I really think it was done in camera. To learn more about filters you might want to take a look at these websites: Lee Filters website About minute 12. http://www.leefilters.com/index.php/camera/filters#nd-videobox The Kodak Guide - It's very useful!- http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/US_plugins_acrobat_en_motion_newsletters_filmEss_15_Filters.pdf The London Filter Company Have a good day.