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Karl Eklund

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  • Occupation
    Cinematographer
  • Location
    Sweden
  1. If contrast and fall off are the same in your mind might just be because they are usually interchangeable, however I think the better way to "see it in your mind is": Contrast = The difference between A and B. Fall off = "The rate of the contrast difference", i.e. is it going from full strength to half in 1 feet or 5 feet, 20 feet, etc... In practical terms it means that the sun has 0 fall off, but lots of contrast (which is also why it is such a hard task to emulate it properly with artificial lights). Basically you have to decide with lights if you gonna control the "contrast" or the "fall off", it is hard to get both right if the scene/objects being lit are very big/complex. The example you give is a good one, but it is also basically saying that contrast and fall off are two separate things which they are (which is why it isn't good to "combine" the two terms).
  2. Top 5 is kinda hard, depends on who made the best movies, or who seems the best to work with, etc... But my 5 are, and in no order: Chris Doyle - Hero and In the Mood for Love, he is just very poetic and colorful. Roger Deakins - Always good, and always serving the story. Conrad Hall - Road to Perdition is "the" masterclass. Haskel Wexler - Mostly because of his big part of Days of Heaven (he isn't nearly as credited for that as he should be i.e. no oscar), and the fact I got to work with him for a while and he truly was brilliant. Gregg Toland - I admit I only know I have seen Citizen Kane of his work, but simply put, Citizen Kane is about as good as it gets, and if he manage to bring out that with a first time director then he surely knew how to work with people.
  3. I have had the same problem on win 7, 8 and 10. I don't remember if I tried it on a new installation with no QT or Vlc. The thing is that windows use all its resources for it, like a RAM-leak, writing huge pagefiles (which is on fast SSD seperate from OS). I had hoped that win 10 couldn't be so overpowered by RAM-leak.
  4. I have "huge" problems with large prores files in windows. I edit highlights for golf tournaments now and then and when working with prores files that are larger, i.e. 80-200 GB each, then windows more or less goes crazy while trying to cache the files for preview (so I have to turn off in Windows not to preview files I click). The files themselves plays back fine nowdays in premiere pro or VLC, its just that when they are caching (no idea why windows gets so fooled by the file) it drains 100% of the RAM (I got 32GB ram...). Basically a 100GB file can lock up my computer for 20-30 min... Can't move mouse or anything really... So I would advice caution if working with large files, smaller files aren't an issue, like 2-10 GB... Also, I myself haven't been able to export out reliable prores files from windows, I can make some that shows all the same encoding stats as a prores made in an AJA Ki Pro, but still won't play back in an AJA, and that have issues with broadcasting houses. So just don't bother with prores anymore, unless I'm given it by a client.
  5. Blade Runner is one of my top 5 movies. Blade Runner's visual is basically film noir-neon, I hope they capture that style again. I don't think Dennis and Roger can "beat" Blade Runner, but I do think they can make a good and even a great movie (I think the script is the bigger hassle, because Dennis and Roger are both gifted. I would like the script to be only "spiritually linked" to the first, I don't want it to be a follow up or prequel, I want it to let the original remain ambiguous). Roger strikes me as one of those cinematographers that truly works for the director (and story), he can create beautiful visuals, but only does so if it enhance the story. His work on The Assassination of Jesse James showed that he can create "cool visual effects" with light streaks thru smoke (the train robbery), because I truly love the xenon lights in blade runner... He has worked with noir style-ish, not full noir, maybe "noir light" (somewhat of an oxymoron) in some Cohen movies. He hasn't done a single movie that is just like Blade Runner (but then again who has?), however he has done most of it if not all the important visual elements of that movie in his other movies. So, if they want to recreate the style/atmosphere of the first movie, he should be able to reach it, and if they want to go down another road he is pretty good to have as a driver.
  6. I got to meet and work with him on a smaller project around 2008-2009 and I have yet to meet someone who is so sharp and quick to see what is right/wrong with a scene/cut. He was then in his mid 80's but had no problem running around shooting and giving great input. He had a really funny humor too, which is also evident in the interviews with him. He also had the nice quality to give advice and be respectful to a young guy like me, I've worked with others that have been in the business for a long time (no way near as good) they have had a demeanor of "know-it-all". Haskell when I worked with him was still interested in learning new things, he was using miniDV cameras (this after shooting on film for 50 years), he seemed to have a sense of keep learning and keep improving even though really he was a legendary master of cinematography. It is very inspiring to work with people like him.
  7. This is why if I work in PS or After Effects in RGB-mode use transfer/blending modes, so that I can change the contrast without affecting the colors, much like doing a luma-adjustment, or using HSL instead of RGB. Does it really turn to a reddish in if the shade starts off greenish or blueish? I don't have PS installed on this comp right now, so I can't really check. Anyways, I no longer use curves/levels/contrast if I need to keep the hues correct.
  8. The usage of "Linear" varies and means different things really when talking about Log vs Linear and when talking about rec.709 linear. Basically all digital sensors are linear by default, which subsequently means that highlights gets way more nuances/shades than black levels if stored in a linear file. It is because in digital, twice the amount of light on the sensor creates twice the electrical charge, So when storing data in a 256 shades of grey format (8bit) you will "waste" a lot of the shades on the highlights if the mapping is normal. Let us say you got a camera that can record 9 stops of dynamic range, then basically you will have the shadows of 3 stops be fighting around 30 of those 256 shades of grey, The midtones of 4 stops get 90 shades, and the bright last 3 stops will take the remaining 126 shades. So you see that the highlights take 3-4 times as many "shades" than the shadows. Now, my numbers aren't exact, but they sort of say what the problem is, i.e. there isn't a fair distribution of shades between the stops. So, what Log does (or should do) is making sure that every stop gets the same amount of "shades". So lets say we have 9 stops, and we need to squeeze it into those 256 shades, then each stop gets about 28 shades each (compared to linear in which the shadows 3 stops combined only had 30 shades). So that is "Linear vs Log". Then you have linear in other terms which basically just means it doesn't have a gamma applied to it, but as Dan pointed out, rec.709 has a gamma. What it can mean is that there can maybe be a "counter-gamma" to it (don't know a proper term). Like, now you can shoot in "flat mode" which looks like Log, but might not be log, and that might be stored in a codec that uses rec.709. LUTs I would say are good for shooting without baking in the look, it allows you to ballpark much better how the final image will look once graded. Most common LUT I would while shooting in Log or RAW is the rec.709 LUT. Log is very lowcontrast desaturated look, which is crap if you want to show the director/producer what it will look like.
  9. I would recommend 2K instead of UHD. Last time I scanned S16 it was to FullHD (2011), which was more than enough resolution given the lenses used maxed out at around 1200-1600 pixels in sharpness (superspeeds used around T1.3-5.6). It was shot on Vision 3, T200 and D250 so with better lenses UHD might have been worth it, but then it cost like 3-4 times more to do 4K, and we would struggle in post even with 2K which was twice the cost from FullHD and only 10% more resolution. I took the DPXs into after effects and made ProRes files for editing, in FullHD. But you can just as well use premiere nowdays. Are you scanning and storing them in Log or Linear? I did Log and then used the cineon-effect in After Effects (premiere has it too) and once finished editing just re-linked and graded in AE. You are looking at around 1TB per hour of footage. When I scanned last time I was moving between MACs and PCs, and USB3 wasn't really out yet, so I had to stick to USB2, which was very slow and the bottleneck for production. Just transferring the scanned footage took a 24 hours (and then it isn't backed up)... With USB3, that should be around 3-4 times faster, since my disks stopped around 20MB/sec, and nowdays they go about 60-80MB/sec on USB3 or Thunderbolt. So expect 1-3 days of just transfer/backups including rendering out proxies.
  10. The simplest and cheapest one I know is aluminum foil, crinkle it more for more scatter. I used it on set once together with some gels to create a "water-reflection effect." You can if you want cut holes thru it, put different gels on different parts to get some interesting patterns/blending of light...
  11. It's been on my top 10 list since I first saw it. I just love the visuals that Michael Mann/Dante Spinotti had at the time, from Manhunter up to Insider. One of my favorite pieces is the shot of DeNiro in his apartment looking out at the ocean. All blue and black. The last shot is also worthy of closing the whole movie. All and all "epic crime drama" without screaming "Hey, look how epicly I framed this and wohooo".
  12. I've shot with both, and I used 250D for sunset and sunrise shots, wide open at f1.3 to get the right sky color and ratio between street lights, I needed the extra speed it had over 200T (especially if I had to put 85 of it). But for regular outdoors during the day I would use 200T with 85. If the budget would have allowed me I would even have gotten 50D so I wouldn't have had to stop down with NDs on 200T to shoot outdoors, but for the shoot where I mixed the two I had to settle for 200T because it is really good for going back and forth between daylight and tungsten. Heck, you can even shot it without 85 outdoors and still get great results. I believe that's what Lubezki did on Tree of Life, because he didn't like how filters "homogenizes" shots.
  13. I saw it in cinema a month ago or so, I could tell quickly it was shot on film, because of the textures and all. I was sitting to far from the screen to see if it was super 16 or 35, I have poor eyesight :) pretty sure it was a digital projection. Super 16 resolves fine around 2K (and that is down-sampled from higher quality so it isn't debayered or anything like that at 2K), and what is more important than pixels this, pixels that is the contrast and shallow depth of field, that also gives an apparent resolution that is higher. Film also have a higher resolution when the images are moving thanks to each frame being different, something that the new Aaton Digital Penelope tries to mimic. Lore is very high contrast, blue (we see more detail in blue compared to red), and use lots of shallow depth of field shots. One reason 35mm film might look bad too is that sometimes they tend to mimic super 16mm, like Argo, and Killing Them Softly, in the latter they push the film stock so the grain becomes more predominant. In Argo they did something like blowing the 35mm up and down down res again, I don't remember exactly but they did blow something up 200%, but I don't think it was Super 16mm.
  14. Ironic you mention The Dark Knight since a person died on that shoot while operating a camera. I would think it is common sense for a person making a DIY-thing that it will probably not be as good as manufactured by a name brand, but there are so many things in this business and others as well where equipment are used for things they were not intended too. Do we need to buy professional clothing pins now too, for cooler lights? Or does things have to be an "apple-certified box" for you to dare stand on it? You worked with or under Roger Deakins, since you been on Shawshank and 1984, if I remember correctly he has some "home made lights" (modified by his gripper), do you dare work with him? I mean, Jesus, the dude can't afford real lights? I've seen plenty of shitty things done with professional gear, no sandbags on c-stands so they are leaning more than the Tower of Pisa. But I rather work with crappy equipment and use it accordingly, than working with great gear and idiots. I think it is very reasonable to be cautious of homemade stuff, but don't fool yourself or anyone else that DYI is guaranteed to be crap, and manufactured is guaranteed to be fail safe. By the way, I have plenty of tools and machines to build all kinds of things, like c-stands, but if I need some, I will buy, even if it is expensive to me.
  15. That is probably smoke. The key is just to spread it out in the room, and let it settle a bit.
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