Giorgi Chavez

John, that's a good observation and something is is very common. My exposures are talking about the main light rather than shadow exposures. As I said above, "I am not taking shadows into consideration" because of the varying ways that people expose shadows I am not going to go into that. Rather, I wanted to focus discussion on the main light, although your observations are more than helpful. EDIT: Also, I agree with you that it is sometimes surprising to see how much difference in stops direct sunlight can be when you compare it to shadow areas without any kind of bounce to fill in the shadows

Of course, most people expose skin in music videos and in fashion photography very differently than in narrative naturalistic films. What I am concerned with at the moment is skin exposures for narrative films. I am concerned with what exposures will render the skin most natural. My spot meter is calibrated so that the f-stop reading will give me 50% middle gray in the camera. I have observed films like White Material by Claire Denis, Ballast, Black Swan, I Am Love, Ondine, among others and have studied their exposures with the waveform display in Final Cut Pro. I studied mostly White Material because it was a good mix of dark and light skinned people in the same frame. From what I have observed, it seems that most fair skinned people are exposed at key/middle grey or 50-60% brightness in indirect light or soft ambient light. When they are in direct sunlight they are commonly exposed at 70% brightness or one stop over key. Sometimes I see 40% or 1/2 stop under key in darker shade. Of course, the shadow regions on their face can go as low as 0% depending on creative decision. I am not taking shadows into consideration because they can vary so much. However, the main light (key light) is often consistent to the percentages that I have noted above. Most dark skinned people in narrative naturalistic films are exposed at around 30-40% brightness in indirect light and around 60% in direct light. (However, in music videos dark skin is often exposed at 50% in indirect light and three or four stops overexposed for the rim light) Here is a small table (this is in no way an end-all-be-all fully comprehensive, but just a table of averages based on observations): Fair skin: Direct light - 70% Indirect light - 50% Dark skin: Direct light - 60% Indirect light - 30% Any comments or corrections would be very welcome.

Some of the shots almost look like it was shot on RED MX, including the screenshot. I think you deserve a shiny gold star for making a 48 hour film look this good! EDIT: I'd like to add - all the lighting looks quite natural!

David, I am wondering how 800 ASA would look with a f/0.7 lens. That would be ridiculous! Or on an Epic shooting 1600 ISO. Photograph in actual moonlight, possibly? I thought that Jane Eyre was beautifully shot, although I did notice that the handheld work on some scenes felt wrong--I believe you mentioned something about the handheld work in one of your other posts. It would have reflected so much more of a serene feel with a steadicam or simply a lockoff. I always love seeing these sort of romantic period films - the colors, naturalistic lighting, landscapes, costumes, everything is always so pleasurable to watch.

I would be leaning more towards digital for the sake of practicality. However, it is highly possible that shooting your project on film will set apart you project from others. 16mm possibly not so much but if you were to shoot something like Super 35 or shoot anamorphic it would immediately draw positive attention to your project and I am sure that many people would appreciate the choice to supporting material on film, including myself.