David McDonald

Yeah I'm sure it helps...but I'm just starting fresh out of school and would like to get a few more projects under my belt before really calling myself a director. I guess anyone can call themselves whatever they want whenever they want really, but I like to feel like I've earned it a bit before really tooting my horn. :)

You could really call yourself whatever you want if you're out shooting stuff but I wouldn't really say you're a DOP until you're actually shooting films with a crew and you're directing the photography. I'm still hesitant to go around calling myself a director until I've done more projects and get more of my films seen at festivals etc. and I've directed a decent amount of stuff and even won some awards (including best director at a festival). I guess I like to be more on the modest side of things when giving myself a title but I personally wouldn't call myself a DOP until I'd shot at least 5 decent short films, music videos, or commercials.

I think it's just an evolution of the word...people say "speeding" some times because it sounds more active. It just sounds more like "rolling"..."speeding" The correct word is "speed" though. But it doesn't really matter anymore anyway...the sound guy could just say rolling or whatever and everyone would get it.

I did some tests on some footage to get a similar look as this using Final Cut's 3 Way Color Corrector, and basically all I did was raise the levels on everything, particularly the blacks (so there's very little contrast) and then messed around with changing the colors slightly, I'm pretty sure the blacks are changed in most shots, like the shots with the army men look quite green in the darker areas. It's possible he's using presets like Magic Bullet, but I wouldn't say it looks like a bleach bypass or desaturated look. It's mostly low-contrast with color tweaked in the blacks (except for the shots with the girlfriend, dad, friends etc. which look like normal contrast). I've seen some behind the scenes on his videos and he never really does anything crazy with lighting....I think he has a few fresnel lights, probably 1Ks, 2Ks and some smaller ones like 300s or 500s, and he usually has blue gel or diffusion on them, and sometimes just bounces them off the ceiling or puts one behind or to the side for some back/edge light. I think he has a few nice lenses (for a DSLR I'm assuming), probably a decent wide one like a 21mm or 24mm, and in some of his videos it looks like he's got a nice long lens like a 70-200 or maybe 50mm or 85mm.

Yeah diffusion gel is pretty much a must at the very least. If I were you I'd look into getting either 4x4 frames with diffusion gel on them, or even larger frames like 8x8 or 12x12 to put big silks on, so that you can cover entire windows or soften the hell out of your light.

David Mullen nailed some great points and covered a lot of important stuff. I'm assuming you're asking about rehearsing with actors ahead of time, before the shoot day. So what I usually do is get the actors together at someone's house or at school or something and just go over the scene at first without telling them anything. You never know what they might come up with, and it'll be easier for you to see where things in the script might not be working or where some of the trouble areas in the scene might be. Once they've done it once, you can start giving adjustments to them. I'm assuming you won't be working with really professional actors at first so there's a good chance they will do something wrong at first or maybe not get the point of something...but that's not necessarily a bad thing because it gives you an opportunity to do some directing. There's all different ways to direct actors, but it might be good to start off giving them their character's big objectives and aspirations etc. Once they know what their character really wants it will make a lot of what they do come more naturally. As for direction, I would strongly recommend against giving them little short, useless direction like "Can you do it a bit faster?" or "Do it more angry this time." That kind of direction is terrible. Sometimes in a pinch you might be stressed out on set and running out of time so you might throw something like that out there, but it rarely gets good results. You need to give the actor something they can play. It's almost impossible to play "more angry" without just saying your lines louder and yelling pointlessly. The most important thing you can do with all your direction is at least give a good explanation why. If you're gonna tell the actor to be more angry, at least pair that with a reason and some context; "I need you to be more angry because this guy is trying to get you to do something that you've already said you don't want to do 5 times and it's really getting to you." Or another way of avoiding giving very basic, unplayable direction is by giving them an action verb. Instead of saying "be more intense with him," which kind of doesn't mean anything, you could say something like "Pressure him...if both of you don't pull this off you'll be dead. Convince him!" If you give the actor a verb like "convince," the scene will practically play itself. An actor could improvise a million different things just with that one verb. So in rehearsals, it might be good to go through those basic action verbs. I find it's helpful to even go through the script before meeting with actors and try coming up with some good action verbs for EVERY line. If you know the intent behind every line, and you've prepared verbs for the actors to play on every line, if they do something wrong in rehearsal you can quickly give them one of your action verbs to try out. It's also good preparation as a director because it gets you thinking about all the lines ahead of time and how they should be played, or how you want them played, and you will know exactly what you want when the actors are there...instead of fumbling around trying to think of what to say when you get asked a question.

Rotating would definitely cause lighting problems. I think your best option is to just get enough green screen to go all the way around. You could try moving the green screen as the dolly moves but that might require another dolly or some kind of crazy rig that you probably don't have access to. You will need markers to go on the screen and someone who is capable of 3D tracking and making 3D backgrounds to blend together....or you have to shoot really good plates of a bedroom and concert that will blend together.

It is possible to do a motion control move with a regular dolly....It may not be robotically perfect...but if it's a fairly simple push, you can just try to push it exactly the same multiple times. I've done this before, setting straight track on the ground, and marking off measurements on the floor; you have a piece of tape for every second (the distance will depend on the speed of the push), and you can have someone call out the seconds with a stop watch and have the dolly grip hit each mark at each second. The result will be pretty damn close. You could also try shooting reverse plates. I mean, shoot the 'reflection' of the woman...have her face the camera and put her hair and any wardrobe stuff backwards and shoot her straight-on, and do the dolly move the opposite direction. And then do your shot from behind her normally, and rotoscope her (After Effects rotobrush would work nicely) or use a green screen, and composite in the reverse plate into the mirror frame.

I'm assuming this is low budget so you're probably not going to have access to the lighting equipment that would be ideal. You would ideally want big lights like 12ks or 18ks. I recently worked on a film that was shooting on a beach at night like this and we only had a couple 1.2k HMIs and it did NOT work. It looked like the actor was standing in a studio with lights pointed at him. Everything in the surrounding area was pitch black. What we plan to do to pick that scene up is shoot evening/day for night stuff since there isn't much budget for the lights we would want. As long as you don't see a bright sky or the sun, you can get away with quite a bit if you have a good post-person that can deal with blue-ing it up and darkening things. Also, I dont think shooting HDV is the best idea...though if I knew the specific camera I could comment better. I would personally shoot with a DSLR (5D/7D) if I were you, since the low light abilities are probably the best for a situation like this with a low budget.

Well, again, that's pretty vague and doesn't really give anyone much to tell you. You want them to look natural like they haven't been lit? I'm not even sure that Pfister's style is like that. And I'm not sure if what you're going for is "evenly lit." By 'evenly lit' do you mean high key? It may be difficult to achieve evenly lit, naturalistic lighting with the lights you've got...it sounds like you've got hard lights with no diffusion which could get ugly and look very 'lit'...But again, I'm not sure if that's really what Pfister does very often so maybe if you can post a clip from youtube that you like then we can begin to give you advice.

I personally never do color in-camera. You can always make it black and white in post...but if you set it a certain way in-camera, there's no turning back. I would set everything pretty flat in-camera (contrast, saturation etc.) and just do what I want with it in post. This guy has a pretty good video about setting up a 7D to shoot your video flat. I couldn't find anything on 5D but you could probably look at what he does and just do it on your 5D. http://www.vimeo.com/7622493

That's kind of a broad request...What is it that you like about Pfister's work in the Prestige? Or particular scenes you'd like to emulate and then maybe it'll be easier to give you advice.

There are tons of alternates that could fit in these lists but here's how I'm feeling at the moment: Movies Saving Private Ryan Road to Perdition Benjamin Button Directors David Fincher Steven Spielberg Darren Aronofsky Cinematographers Roger Deakins Andrew Lesnie Janusz Kaminski