Louie Blystad Collins

Totally agree Guy! I wasn't very clear in my message. I totally agree that a great idea and vision is worthless, if you don't know your tools and limitations, what I was trying to say is that sometimes with new technology and kit, young film students almost forget the craft they are meant to be expressing/learning and focus entirely on gadgetry, specs and trends. It's like with Iphone slates, whats the point, if you have a perfectly good professional slate?? We all like our toys and gadgets, but just don't replace what works with something that doesnt match up. That is a tragic step backwards within the industry. You points are very relevant, and I would never underestimate the importance of safety and knowing what you are loading the circuits with. Otherwise life and reputation are at stake, and you could easily destroy some expensive kit. It just makes me angry when I teach Cinematography and Lighting masterclasses to students around the world, who are all fixated with the specs and measurements, rather than what they see. Many of my early teachers like Freddy Francis BSC, would often confiscate lightmeters and zone system tables etc, and make the students just stand back and use their eyes. Once he had his basic exposure set, everything should fall into place relevantly, when it comes to contrast, colour and any planned grading or loss of quiality down the line. With a bit of experience, it becomes very easy to incorporate most adjustments you may have in mind for the grade etc. Any DoP could tell you, that you can measure a LED light to be 3200K for example, but your eyes will say otherwise when you look at it. It's like blindly setting the whitebalance on camera to 'daylight', well quite often it may be technically correct, but to the human eye/brain it is clearly too blue. So what do you go with, your eyes (and the audiences eyes) or the number in the camera menu. You can tell the audience all day long that a specific shot was meant to be warm and high contrast according to your gadgets, but that doesn't really change the end look and result you are stuck with. Especially nowadays with HD monitors almost displaying the end result on location. It is even easier to paint with light now, and if they did that whilst using LEDs, they would quickly remove them altogether. The day when fashion and beauty photography uses LED lights for their beautiful glow and attractive look, well that might be the day to consider LEDs as a serious contender in the film/media industry. As a lightweight camera light, or a means to fill in a car scene, great, as an alternative to all the tried and tested existing lights, no way Jose! In the case of this student in Mexico, it sounds like the school have been SOLD the idea of low power LEDs and been told how great they are, when actually any DoP with some experience could tell you that LED lighting, as it stands today, is nowhere near as attractive on skin as tungsten or high CRI rated modern fluorescence. My painting analogy was also misleading, because I have always built my own lights if needed, and really push the limits of what is available kit wise (and budget wise), my point was that you can't replace existing tools and mediums, with new ones that aren't up to scratch, purely because they are new and being talked about. It's very much like HD Cinema. In the right hands, and used wisely and with experience, it can look amazing and beautiful. In the hands of someone trying to be fancy by using HD video for the sake of it, it will end up looking quite bad and artificial, and not visually flattering to the audience. Combine that with dodgy looking LED lighting, and you have a recipe for a very fashionable esthetic disaster. ( In my opinion like parts of 'Public Enemy'. Even Johnny Depp looks awful and his skin looks absolutely terrible on the big screen, even the exteriors look spot lit by LED panels and look REALLY SYNTHETIC and super fake.) Obviously inventing, testing and pioneering new technology and techniques excites all of us in this field of work, and it is vital to keep up with the current inventions, but the new technologies must stand up to scrutiny and evolve by demand of the user, not by companies trying to be politically green, or trying to convince us their kit is best. Very much like domestic energy saving bulbs. Nobody in their right mind would say they prefered the strangly green/yellow dull glow, that took 3 minutes to come on, when you enter a room. But because the users (public) said to the retailers 'this is no good, and doesn't replace the usual bulbs' they had to improve the technology, and are now pretty damn good. I feel very strongly LEDs are the same, if we as users and customers don't refuse to use these inferior builds, well then they will be forced upon us and embedded in the industry. If we are brave enough to say, 'well actually they look pretty bad, and are unreliable', well then they might get improved much faster, as they have too much money invested. I was at a media technology fair in the UK recently, and even the companies making the LED panels stated in their presentation, that most of their current LEDs were so varying in colour and lifespan, that their only way 'around' it was to mix up the LEDs and hope nobody noticed the differnces between units. Well that is just rediculous to me, and is not the way to 'improve' and 'replace' exsisting kit. Like you say, I agree that you MUST know your tools in order to achieve your ideas (obviously), but image technology doesn't always make things nicer visually, just better technically. Nowadays I hear students arguing about codecs and resolution, when they hardly look at the footage to judge it in the first place! In the early days of HDCAM, I would hire cameras with pro-mist filters or similar, for a drama/commercial/music promo shoot, and the techies at the hire houses were horrified that I wanted to 'distort' this expensive HD image I was paying for. To me that is the sometimes BIG difference between a technically knowledgable artist, and a pure techie who happens to work around cameras. It's the lazy 'fix it in post' people I am appealing to, not someone like yourself who obviously understands the nuts and bolts of the industry and its components. Your points are even more relevant nowadays, with so many mixed technologies being thrown together on one location or circuit, so I know your article is super relevant. I just wanted to bring the discussion back to the origins of the skills and esthetics in photography, rather than just number crunching, which to a young film-maker can be very scary and off putting. Thats why we hire guys like you, to make sure we dont blow anything up ;) This discussion started because this young student is facing an education using completely inferior lights, purely due to trends and green poilitics. I wanted to make his case about the art, and not the specs, which is the essence of cinematography. My organic toothpaste joke was meaning to say, that if a student paid to study classical fine art in a university, and was told they could only use this new, politically correct paste, well then they are not being taught the original techniques and craft they signed up for. It may be progress, and I believe we must raise the bar, but for heavens sake at least let the students learn with a variety of kit, so they get the fundemental experience needed, and then later can find their own niche or prefered kit. All in all, I agree with you totally Guy, I just wanted this student to fight for the right to learn the esthetics and complex craft of cinematography, rather than turn it into a matter of one piece of kit against another. Allthough the question is about one type of kit against another, the repercussions and consequenses of a school or industry investing in the wrong kit, are huge in the long term of the craft. -Louie- Louie Blystad-Collins DoP www.louiebcollins.com

Hi there. Allthough mentioned briefly in the other posts, most people here seem to be writing PHDs in lighting technology!? WHY HAS ALMOST NOBODY MENTIONED THE FACT THAT WE SEE WITH OUR EYES, NOT VOLTMETERS AMD CHROMA-METERS!! At the end of the day, what matters in CINEMATOGRAPHY is the look, feel, colour and texture of the results. Clearly Kino Flo and Compact fluorescence bulbs look much better on skin, and has the glow a light source should have when lighting faces. LEDs are so unnatural in appearance and colour spectrum, even the expensive ones that claim to have a high CRI rating, and 'true' colour, CLEARLY don't. Allthough my chroma-meter shows me the strange mix of colours present, Really you just need to look to see that. LED panels project light in almost a laser like way, and reflects off textured skin in the most un-appealing way possible. With old school 'fire based' tungsten lights and CFLs the light comes from a bright core and glows outwards from the center. This is the type of light our brains are hard wired to recognise (the sun), and it softens skin tones and roughness. GUYS JUST USE YOUR EYES, AND PUT THE CALCULATOR DOWN NOW!! Lighting is not just about projection and low power consumption, it is an artform that is vital to photography and painting alike. You don't get fine artists painting with fashionable organic sustainable toothpaste, because the results wouldn't be the same. Whatever anybody here states, you just have to look at the hardness and torch like direction of LEDs, and most importantly their UNRELIABLE DISCOLOURED, SYNTHETIC TEXTURE to know that LED panels are years away from esthetically replacing Kinos and CFL bulbs. The idea is good, and it will be progress one day, but please don't listen to loads of scientists and technicians, listen to the artists and audience who feel what they look at, they don't care what the device was made of, just the results it's displays. IF YOU DECIDE TO COMPLETELY LIGHT YOUR FILM WITH LEDS AND SHOOT IT IN UNFILTERED HD, GOOD LUCK, CAUSE ITS GOING TO LOOK TERRIBLE AND THE LEAD ACTRESS WILL HATE YOU FOREVER. YOUR CLOSE-UPS WILL LOOK LIKE A SKIN ANALYSIS SHOT, AND YOUR HARD SHADOWS WILL LOOK LIKE YOU NEVER LEARNT THE BASICS OF LIGHTING TO START WITH. YOU MAY THINK YOUR KIT IS COOL, BUT THATS NOT THE POINT OF CINEMATOGRAPHY. By the time you have added diff, warm gels, and filled in the hard nose shadows, you could have just used a globe or couple of 'normal' bounced lights anyway. LEDS ARE CURRENTLY IN THE EARLY STAGE THAT HARSH GREEN FLUORESCENCE WERE 15 YEARS AGO. NOW KINOS ARE SOO MUCH BETTER, SO WHY STEP BACKWARD AND USE INFERIOR LEDS, JUST BECAUSE ITS FASHIONABLE AND THE NEW GADGET TO HAVE ON SET. A good cinematographer with any pride, should use what looks the nicest on camera, and what flatters their talent. If that means working around practicle issues, well that's part if our job. Your school is trying to future proof their investment in kit, but will be making a large esthetic sacrafice in the process. What next, light it completely in post and ignore actual photography skills ?!?! Kinos are still lightweight, low power and fairly versatile, so why give you something less to work with and most importantly train/learn with? In this age of video the art of cinematography is being pushed aside for self-shooting, low budget, undiciplined, unplanned lazy shooting that is almost completely reliant on post production and software to make it look professional. If they give you just LEDs aswell, well you are held back from the start. IN RECENT YEARS I HAVE NOTICED THAT ALL THE NEW DoP SHOWREELS I SEE ARE GLOSSED UP WITH GRAPHICS AND POSTPRODUCTION, BUT THE ACTUAL RAW CONTENT, COMPOSITION, LIGHTING AND USE OF COLOUR IS ABSOLUTELY RUBBISH AND UNCONSIDERED. IF THE PLAYSTATION GENERATION IS TAUGHT FILM MAKING BY GADGETS AND PROGRAMMIMG, WELL THEN THIS INDUSTRY IS GOING DOWN, AND WE HAVE SEEN THE END OF PHOTOGRAPHY AS WE KNOW IT. USE YOUR EYES TO MAKE DECISIONS, NOT CALCULATIONS AND TRENDS! Good luck with it, and fight the power! ;)

Hi There. I'm a british DoP who lights and shoots all of my work, varying between Drama, Documentary, Commercials, MusicVids, etc etc. I remember having to figure all those things out that you mention, and all I would say is that you are distracting yourself whilst shooting, by overthinking it. Our job is to get coverage, but more importantly get coverage that comes from human interest and curiosity, not clinical observation. A bit like a SWAT team entering a room (bare with me..;) you must figure out who's covering which way before you roll tape, so you can cover the behaviour/actions ike a viewer when it all suddenly happens. If you are calculating wideshot to close-up ratios whilst rolling, you are not shooting as a viewer anymore, and stilt your coverage. From my personal experience, when I look through that viewfinder, I JUST WATCH and use the camera to pick up details im curious about, and maybe get peoples faces sharing this experience with 'me'. As a classic 'establisher', you can play safe and go into it shooting wide, just to establish where you are, who's there, and whats going down. Then when someone initates speaking, or begins moving, you hone in on that, either crash in roughly and cut out later, crash in smoothly and use the whole take (and sync sound), or slowly creep-zoom into the detail you want to explore, depending on the pace and energy of the people you are filming. You must try to match that pace and energy, because if you deviate from that, you will dis-join from your subject, and lose the audiences interest. A handheld shot can be amazing when locked onto a subjects movements/bodylanguage, like a hunter almost syncronising his/her breath with the animal. I realise I am using some slightly weird analogies, but following a person through a lens is very similar in a primitive way;). What im getting at, is that KEEP YOUR STRATEGY SIMPLE, AND SHOOT FROM THE HEART. If you try to shoot coverage of reality, whilst ticking boxes in your head regarding shot sizes, you end up with coverage that is all over the place in terms of timeline, so the editor and director sit in the edit pulling their hair out, cause the workable options they have are minimal. If your strategy is to cover every 'event' in wide-mids-CUs, you end up missing half the action, and in the edit they will hear some great dialogue, whilst watching the shaky coverage of the floor, while you were 're-positioning for the variety'. In my opinion, one of the things to avoid when shooting reality, is to identify the camera-ops footsteps when moving around. I find it pops the bubble, and reminds the audience of your presence in a bad way. So if your subject walks across the room, just follow them from where you are stationary(maybe on a long lens) as far as you feel relevant, then maybe pan back to see reactions etc. So like the swat analogy, when you enter a room and have a rough idea of the amount of people there, and their likely movements towards exits/furniture etc, you learn to quickly position yourself for any event. If the person likely to exit has a car outside, then look for a shot through a window or doorway from the same position. Then you can cover the whole movement nicely and smoothly. ONE OF THE HARDEST THINGS TO LEARN AND APPLY, IS TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT CONSTANT USABLE FOOTAGE. It is a documentary director's wet dream, to be able to use every second of footage caught on camera. It becomes the perfect cure for those lost 'story' or 'money-shot' moments that were missed on camera, whilst the camera op was shifting or cramping in some bodypart. When positioning yourself and your kit, make sure it is aligned perfectly for long term use. If you set your tripod too front heavy, or raise your shoulders too high, or crouch awkwardly in a corner, then you wont last and neither will your nice shots. When shooting outside, or on a long lens, just lean against lamp posts and walls to stabilize your shot. If you cover actions as a viewer, you will find that you 'naturally' know when to zoom into hands, or pan back to faces/reactions, because you are feeling and tuning into the events unfolding. If you are tuned into the actions, and cover it as a viewer, the director won't feel they missed anything, cause it was all there. Sometimes to be able to pre-empt human behaviour, you have to observe it carefully and understand the subjects ways of behaving. Apart from stating the obvious, what I mean is that if two people are having a heated discussion, you can usually tell a couple seconds before someone blows up, or puffs and storms out. So when you see/hear the signs, you hone into it as it unfolds. Then you get those powerful moments perfectly timed, almost as if you had set it up ;) Also, when you start wide and just cover the events 'naturally', you will know when to zoom out to a wide shot, or zoom into a two shot of a personal conversation, because THE EVENTS AND ACTIONS WILL TELL YOU WHAT SHOT SIZE IS NEEDED. In a group dynamic you will constantly have to judge the mood and direction of a conversation, because then you know who are the key players in the moment, and you capture all their telling facial expressions and reactions. This is what creates REAL drama and interest, not having the 'correct' proportions of shots. If you tune into the energy of the people involved, you will find your place, and feel part of it all. When you adopt this 'role' that is when you get good stuff that really matters. So for example if you are filming kids, you get down on the floor and share the world with them on their level, or if you are filming some hyped up breakdancers, you stay fluid on your feet, and float around the group with them, and so on, to capture the apropiate energy and make the shots much stronger in their meaning/feeling. IN MY OPINION, IF YOU APPROACH THINGS IN THAT WAY, YOU WILL GET THE MOST ENGAGING AND INTIMATE FOOTAGE POSSIBLE, ESPECIALLY WHEN SHOOTING BY YOURSELF. I have worked on loads of documentaries and factual events, where we had up to 4 cameras rolling simultaniously, yet they used only my footage for large chunks of it, because I happened to catch the right moments, and you could watch it almost without cutting. This obviously depends on the circumstances, but if you prepair for anything, you can usually get loads to work with. Dirctors also like to see sequences, sections that lead in and lead out nicely. This can be hard to get by yourself, and again requires a bit of planning. When you need to get General Views or Establisher shots, and cover live action, all in one short space of time, it requires planning. I even check out my locations on google earth, the figure out according to my rough schedule, where the sun will be at certain times of day, so if I need a shot of a buliding that is west facing, well then I shoot it backlit in the morning, toplit at midday in my lunch-break, or lit by the sunset at the end of the day. I plan it, so then its sorted, so I can focus on live events around me, instead of realising later I needed lots of cutaways, or end up shooting the building in terrible lighting. When you need to shoot a conversation with one camera, one of the hardest things to learn, is to be able to time your camera moves. If timed well, it feels seemless and the audience forget they are watching it through 'your eyes', if timed badly, well then you lose the end or beginning of each sentence, and it becomes unwatchable. One thing you can try, is a sustained hold. So if one person makes a statement, you can either pan around to someone reacting, or you can hold on them listening to the reaction. Often you will find that holding works out, because they often counter-respond anyway. Likewise you can pan around during silences aswell, and not always wait for someone to speak. If you 'feel' like one of the group, your pans should feel 'natural', so that you look at the right people at the right time. When shooting reality, there are also moments where nothing happens, and you must cease your chance to change shotsize or position. Don't decide to change positions when it happens, cause then you miss it, or break the tension. These can also be good moments to capture generic cut-aways like hands, footsteps, smiles, laughter, bodylanguage like happyness or thoughtful-ness, empty rooms etc. When you are shooting a group of people, with 2 cameras, the easiest rule to follow is the 'crossing the line' that normally applies to an interview for example. If you and your fellow camera op make sure that you always keep your same shoulders towards eachother, you can move around without crossing the line. Here's an experiment you can try: If you and another camera op are covering a group from opposite sides of a table, stick a white piece of tape on your left shoulder, and stick a white piece of tape on his/her right shoulder. Then you can both move around either sides of the table, as long as you dont cross around the other way too far, and end up with the non-taped should towards eachother. What this means, is that you don't have a physical line in the room that you are scared to cross, but you retain your formation even on the move. So for example your second camera op sees the opertunity for a nice wide shot from the doorway, then you move around and follow him from the same side of him, so the coverage remains cut-able, without mismatching eyelines etc. IF YOU GET ANY CHANCE TO POSITION PEOPLE, TAKE IT. When shooting reality we are often afraid of asking, or we feel it isn't natuaral anymore. Believe me, it is a lot more natural, if that moment of real emmotion was captured in some amazing soft light, or captured in a doorway that makes the subject look 'lonely' or 'excited' or similar. When shooting a group having dinner, or in a meeting, position their chairs beforehand or shuffle them before you roll camera. That way they will look better, you can create gaps around the table for nice coverage, and you could for example angle chairs slightly, so you can pan from a front close-up to a nice tight profile really smoothly, and capture an whole conversation from one angle. This VOIYER TECHNIQUE works a treat sometimes, as it doesn't cut your attention either, so you feel you are witnessing something for real. So a little bit of cheated positioning, amplified the reality of the behaviour, and therfore made it 'more real'. When shooting a group with two cameras, I find the best way is to allocate people to each camera. Sometimes you can predict their positions, and devide by name, other times the group moves around and mixes up, then you have to allocate halvs of the room. So if camera A is in the right corner shooting the left side of the room, then camera B is in the left corner, covering the right side of the room. Another formation you can use with two cameras, is both of you almost next to eachother, one shoots in wides and mids, the other shoots a floating close-up that moves between people depending on who's talking, laughing, reacting etc. Then you are guaranteed to have coverage of every second, at least on one camera. Finally another tip you can use, is to create a sign language of symbols between the camera ops. As you often dont have any hands free, it could just be the movement of a finger, or the wink of an eye. For example, you are cross shooting a dialogue between two people, using two cameras. You are operating camera A and you are shooting a close-up of PERSON A. In your frame, person A is looking to the left of screen (so on the monitor, stood on the right of frame looking to the left of frame). To tell you other operator on camera B that they must frame the other PERSON B the opposite direction, you could for example wink your right eye, or lift your right finger. Then camera B op can frame their PERSON B in the left of their frame, looking off to screen right. Allthough impossible to explain in text ;) once you arrange simple cues to eachother, you can go with the flow, and follow your subjects like a shadow, without mixing up your eyelines in conversations, which just becomes a headache in the edit. You can also have signals to show what shotsize you currently have etc, so pich your fingers for a CU, and spread your fingers for a wide shot and so on. Sounds obvious, but really works and is rarely used. Sorry about rambling on ;), I obviously love my work, and thought it would be better to say to much, than too little, if it can give you any useful ideas. Good luck with shooting, and if you are curious, here is examples of my work: www.louiebcollins.com Best regards, -Louie- Louie Blystad-Collins DoP www.louiebcollins.com

GO TO www.louiebcollins.com :ph34r: FOR ONE EXAMPLE OF A BRITISH CINEMATOGRPHER WITH MANY INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCES.