Thomas Cousin

yes, IMDB says also it was shot with them.

hi, well, the main question is on the title. i knwo darius khondji shot "stealing beauty" and "delicatessen" with this set. i remember also how they were used on "mr and mrs smith" (only on close ups, intercut with the newer S4 lenses) any other films ? thanks, thomas

Of course you're right that a proper film projection test would give proof. But in this case, a good viewfinder can give some guidance. hi, the viewfinder may give you a more diffused image that it will be on the film, due to the optical quality of the ground glass. if it appears ok while you view it through the viewfinder, it may be less diffused on the negative. just another question for eveybody, what are the different techniques used to stuck a net on the back of the lens ? thomas

hello, i've just looked at the link. seems to be a good idea. i think it may work efficiently. i was looking for this kind of thing. some special dye that reacts with blacklight. i was also thinking about the kind of paint the use in road signs. they re higly reflective, used with frontlight. but your idea david seems a less toxic one since we have to use it directly on the actor. just a word about what treegan said. wa have to use the "blood" in a pretty dark scene (strong backlight, hard contrast, pure blacks, ...think sin city) so we really have to get a strong vivid luminance for the liquid for the camera to see it and then be able to use it in post. hence the need to have a "phosporescent" kind of element. thanks thomas

hello, i'm looking for a special kind of liquid. we want to make a blood effect, but a blood that we can "extract" from the film and manipulate to make it appear as we want in post ( change the color, the texture , ...) do you know if there is a kind of highly reflective colored liquid (like "liquid scothlite" maybe) ? does anyone here has any experience with this kind of trick ? thanks thomas

I recently did a large green screen shoot in a studio and relied on my monitor and waveform, which my DIT had on a cart. In this situation I did not use a meter, as my waveform gave me all the luminance info I needed hello, according to the waveform, where are you trying to "put" the straight line of the luminance of the green screen ? for a given stop, when you look at your waveform and monitor, what is the best reading to obtain an efficient green screen; a screen that the fx team could use without any problems. do you think an average , 300mV , 350mW, would give a good saturated screen. or maybe a little over, 400, 450 mV ? it seems to me that going too high in HD may result in flaring the lens too much with green reflections, and losing the saturation. what are you doing ? thomas

hello, here's my very first reel. please have a look at it at : http://thomascousin.com/demo.html you can also have a look at my stills on my new site http://thomascousin.com/ thank you for letting me know what you're thinking about it ! bye thomas

hello, is there any problems with x-ray machine and your tapes (HDcam, dvcpro, whatever...) in airports when travelling ? thanks thomas

hello, i'm gonna shoot two short films in denmark this summer. does someone here know rental companies i can ask for small lighting packages. we may need some basic lighting units (such as small fluos, fresnels, reflectors, and some grips and electrical assesories) and i wonder where i can find these in copenhagen. i may find some on the net via google, but maybe you can me help find some company you already know and appreciate. thanks in advance thomas

hello, i just saw 2 days ago the images of a short i shot. i asked myself the very same questions about the real skip bleach or recreating the look in TK. i always want to do the maximum in camera. so i skip bleached my negative (7218) for this project. the film will not be blown-up, it will stay on video. but it seemed important to me to add the organic feel right on the shooting. i discovered the result in TK. it seemed very ok to me. i obtained what i was looking for. the special process added grain and texture to the images. but it doesn't appear to be huge grain and "ugly" grain. it's a kind of palpable texture mostly in the midtones. it adds something and it is not distracting.( well, not for me for this particular project) what i like the most is the way highlights are going very high very quickly. that's intensive, exciting, and it's a little odd and disturbing sometimes. right for this short. the contrast is of course higher, especially due to the way highlights reacts. but it's not so drastic. and you can play easily with it. i shot the entire project in interior, and we manage to keep a good contrast for the shooting (to have decent images) but not to much to let the skip bleach do the rest. and it worked. some practicals are going to high sometimes for my taste. but we learnt to dim them a little more to obtain the right value. i just want to add something. the colors seemed of course a little desaturated but not so much. i expected to see a more pronouced effect for a bleach bypass. it IS there but i would add a little more desaturation in the final grading. and it seems to be another kind of desaturation than turning the "saturation knob". more elegant, more organic. the skintones also lose a little but not so much. anyone here can tell their experience about the color saturation of a bleach bypased neg ? to conclude, i think it is important to do it for "real" instead of imitating in post. you can add the two method together to enhanced everything. but it seems to be good to start with a negative with your envy in it. bye Thomas

hello, i've just read a few weeks ago this fantastic book by alexander ballinger called "new cinematographers". maybe you know it already. if it's not the case, you should buy it . it has a full chapter discussing the work (well selected works actually, including gunmo) of jean yves escoffier. it's a great great book. and the section about this cinematographer is as wonderful as the rest. it has discussion with the directir of photography, subtle analysis of his work. and , in "gunmo" it's full of great details about behavior on the set, and the kind of environnement a director, non-pro actors can create, and how a cinematographer plays with this, and "sends away" everything, and sometimes everyone, to just focuses himself of what really matters. simplicity, strong acting, intimacy,..... impressive reading. thomas

oh, and thinking of the real subject of this topic, i'm pretty sure that there is no music at all in "bloody sunday" by paul greengrass. very powerful. no music. just splendid sound editing mixing that cacth you violently. noise of the panicked crowd. and the hard horrible sound of machine guns tearing the air, and echoing in the streets. thomas

hello, actually there is music in "gerry" in the beginning of the movie. the beautiful piece of music by arvo part called "spiegel im spiegel". it's so quiet and beautiful as the car of the two gerry drive in this desert road. i am so glad to hear about movie music here. this is not going to become movie music forums, but it's such a pleasure to read about that here. as a big lover of film music, i feel more often the need to listen to certain piece of music (and also non-soundtrack of course) when preparing a shoot. like paintings and photography, music is such an inspiration in terms of feeling, mood, pace for shooting some scenes. for some time now, i start more and more to make the comparison between how cinematographers light and compose and how music composers create some pieces. and movie music is such a "creator" of abstract pictures. you can imagine them in your head, feel the deep emotions, be anxious, be sad, be melancholic and so on ... maybe this can become a topic for itself, but i sometimes want to light and frame as someone plays music. there is so much examples : i find the work of janusz kaminski so musically speaking for instance : a kind of sweetness with dark tones. a melancholy feeling ponctuated by big shafts of light that resonnate like some big instruments in the background that makes you feel physically connected to the picture. like when you feel the music in your body as well as you hear it. and i also think about harris savides, whose lighting sounds like a large symphonic orchestra, with dark and deep tones, low sound, and slow rythm, like tragic dark operas. coupled with low voices and choir, profound and sad but rich and intimidating. oh and just to add that i also respect enormously the splendid music of thomas newman. very talented composer. and always intriguing and new. and to support a french composer, just listen to the magic and beauty of alexandre desplat's scores. it's wonderful thomas

hi, can you tell us which issue of AC you 're talking about. i would like to find it. must be very instructive. right now, i have an editor-friend of mine editing my very first reel. I really don't know much about how to do it right. so we function very much with our instincts and feelings (is it good ? are there any specific rules in the business world ?). we chose 4 pieces of music.it's going to last nearly 3'30 or 4'. we edit it with a very "cinematographic" style. i mean a juxtaposition of image and music. no real rules. just a kind of narrative line, following graphics, colors, and style. i didn't organize it in terms of chronology or anything. we just kept an "emotionna"l path through lighting and compositions ... mixing different movies and styles. Just following what it seems pleasing to us. it may lack of structure but it seems much more interesting to me.i want to propose to the people who are going to view it a little journey through what i done without really explaining anything. i don't want to present it like a boring resumé. maybe i'm wrong, i can't really tell. whant do you think ? thomas ok sorry for asking again, missed the post. thanks for the info. thomas

hi, do you think different eyes colors have an influence of the apparent brightness of the person in reflection ? i mean when you have a dark eye vs a very light blue eye ? thomas

ok thanks, So i understand what is "tracing paper", the same kind of diffusion material that 216,250 for example, but the kind you can buy at regular store. and "tulle", yes , as in the USA , it's the same kind of veil as you talked about, david, here in france. just doing a little research, i think i have the french equivalent for muslin, it is maybe called here "cotton gratté". i can find it at rental houses, for mounting on frames.i think it's that. but contrary to north america and maybe england, i don't think this kind of material is often used here. it seems strange to me as you seem to use a lot of this for your shooting there. and it's very useful. maybe, just a matter of culture and taste. and laurent, i think "tarlatanne" is quite different from muslin. by the way, merci pour tout. thomas

hello, sometimes, reading this forum or the american cinematographer, i can't really figure out what are the equivalents here, in terms of tools. what exactly is "tracing paper" ? is it like "silk paper" ? another thing. i very often read about muslin or bleached muslin. but it seems that it's not (very) used here in france. does it have another name here ? is it the same diffusion material that you found on 12'x12' frame ? like "spi" or "tulle" ? thank you. thomas

hello, often, when you use a S16 ground glass for commercial work, you can have one with the 1,33 marking on the center. no need to have the mount to be recentered on standard 16. just shoot super16 and in TK you can "grab" the smaller 1,33 image in the center. furthermore, sometimes you have a 1,33 making in the center , which is the protection for TV. it is a lot smaller in height that the "full frame". as is you can frame your project in 1,33 and use only a small portion of the neg which going to result as a grainier image. just an idea if you're looking for a grainy look. thomas

hello, at the beginning of "scream 2", you can see Peter Deming selling pop-corn at the cinema playing "Stab". i have to watch the movie again, but it seems that Lance Acord is playing a little cameo as a hunter in the monkey's flashback in "being john malkovich", beside Spkie Jonze himself. and , as everybody must have noticed (it is said in the american cinematographer), you can see Rodrigo Prieto playing a small part as a mexican male prostitute in "brokeback mountain". thomas

hello, for a long time now , i have been interested and curious about how colors are used throughout a movie. it's a great part of a cinematographer's job (along with costume designer and production designer of course). a lot of time, the choices and uses of colors are made on a subconcious level from all of us. following logical sens, feeling, emotions.... but sometimes, we carefully prep with the other crew member a special use of one or several colors. it plays a great role for the evolution of the movie, the emotion required for a certain scene,... my post is there for all of you to explain the best example when you used specifics colors on a film. association of colors to create a particular emotion for the viewer, contrast between two colors for a reason in particular, use of a color to reveal something to the audience. and maybe explain how you specifically preped before the movie, and so on. thank you for sharing your experiences and opinion about this. thomas

hello, not really a question. juste to know if someone already encounters some problems concerning grain while shooting with 7229. i shot it for a few night scenes on a film (first time for me using this stock) and i just saw the telecine. the result is very very grainy. i am ready to expect a little grain from a super 16 500 stock especially in dark moody night scenes. but this time it was extremly grainy. even in normal processing, normal exposure. i know better the 7218, and i was expecting the same kind of grain structure or almost the same. plus, the footage appears to be darker than i expected and as i said very grainy. i try to be pretty accurate concerning my exposure while filming, so i can say i didn't underexpose accidentaly the footage. could it be a problem with processing ? or something else concerning the stock itself ? thanks thomas

hello and happy new year. while reading the beautiful book "new cinematographers" by alexander ballinger, i found harris savides saying "on almost every commercials and video i do , i shoot tungsten film in daylight situations, which just makes a cleaner negative for telecine". apparently, he means he doesn't balance with filter during the shooting. but what exactly does he mean by that ? "cleaner negative" ? how ? thank you for lighting this up. thomas

hello, thank you all for all the comments. following the subject, i have one more question. i probably going to use bleach bypass on the neg on the 7218 for a project very soon. and i will not be able to have tests. so i am turning to you guys. what will happen to the latitude of the '18 with such treatment. the latitude will be reduced but in what extent? i looked at old comparating curves i had (normal neg and bleach bypassed neg), and you seem to lose a lot of latitude. i would say you lose some 2 to 3 stops of latitude. what would you say about that ? what was your experiences ? thanks thomas

hello, according to the 7218 push. i tested it 2 years ago for my first film on S16mm as a DP. there was a scene on the street in paris and i was afraid to miss light a little. the location was pretty dark and the streelights didn't add a lot of light. so i want to test a rough test on the same streets at night wide open with the 7218. a "normal" pass then a 1stop push pass. the lab blew up the test on 35mm (i had that chance at the time, since then the following shorts i shot, i can't barely shoots tests and furthermore can't test blow-ups, it's sad). so i saw the results on screen. and the difference was there but not very noticeable. there was a very slight addition of grain in the pushing test but, the kind of texture you can live with for a s16mm blewn up print. it was ok, the grain was not screaming all over the screen. maybe, the blacks lost a little of their strength. however, another opinion about the 7218. according to your needs, i found that you can rate easily the stock at 800 and even 1000 asa, and not push the neg. and you will obtain results very good. the stock has such a beautiful latitude in the lower part that it can handle underexposure very well. thomas

hi, i know that when you do a BB on the negative, you have to underexpose (take your 500 asa stock at 1000 asa for example) it a full stop when you're shooting. but is it a true rule that apply all the time ? the additional silver left on the neg will add more density, so the neg will be darker and the positive image will be "lighter". it's true for an "average" image. but what if i shoot a fairly dark environnement ? with low key, dark paint, dark design, etc etc would i underexpose my BB neg as well ? thomas