Robert Mojica

Saying Claudio Miranda didn't deserve the Oscar or saying that he doesn't appreciate the VFX team is ridiculous. Yes, the VFX companies are not payed enough. Yes, they shouldn't have cut off the mic. That was all wrong and unfair, but Claudio Miranda had nothing to do with it. He did his job and in the opinion of the academy, he did it better than anyone else. Though he was not filming actual sunsets, he still had to mimic the look of a sunset with his lighting. He had to mimic the look of Day, Night, Sunrise, Sunset and more, all while being limited to shooting in a water tank. A DP has to overcome a lot of obstacles throughout a production and sometimes having VFX-heavy shots make the job of the DP more difficult rather than making it easier like most people think. His job was to make those scenes look believable even though they are being shot in a water tank on a blue screen. I think he not only accomplished that, but also made the cinematography of Life Of Pi memorable.

And this is coming from a huge Roger Deakins fan haha

I was wondering how they did a few In-camera effects in this video:

1.How did they make the the camera shake at 1:41-1:42 In the video?

2.How did they do the flare at 0:46-0:48 In the video?

3.How did they do the "mirror effect" in-camera at 2:03-2:05 in the video? I watched the behind-the-scenes and they used something to do the effect, but I have no idea what it is or how it works. You can see it at 2:24 in this video:

My guesses:

 

1) shot in a mirror that is tapped/shaked/vibrated.

 

2) a piece of old cut or molded glass in front of the lens catching flares.

 

3) two mirrors. In the bts it looks like they've got a couple of soft sources on either side of the camera presumably there are also two mirrors on each side of the frame.

For #1, are you saying they shot the mirror instead of where the artists were actually standing?

I was wondering how they did a few In-camera effects in this video:

1.How did they make the the camera shake at 1:41-1:42 In the video?

2.How did they do the flare at 0:46-0:48 In the video?

3.How did they do the "mirror effect" in-camera at 2:03-2:05 in the video? I watched the behind-the-scenes and they used something to do the effect, but I have no idea what it is or how it works. You can see it at 2:24 in this video:

Any help would be appreciated

The didnt light it. it is just the sun bouncing off the water. the staged so they were backlit against the setting sun.

Can it be done with lights? Would it look the same?

Does anyone know how they lit this? It seems like they are reflecting light of the lake but I'm not sure. Go to the video to get a better look at it: http://rivetingentertainment.com/thework/musicvideos/new_boyz_chris_brown_better_with_lights_off.htm

Any help would be appreciated

You have to first understand what makes something soft. It's got very little to do with diffusion. Here's two experiments that you can play with in one single exercise:

 

Take a golf ball and stick it on top of a pencil and hold it up just in front of the lens of a 1K, 2K, 5K fresnel. Is it soft or hard? You'll find that the light on the golf ball is softer the closer you are to the lens and it will be at its softest right next to the lens. The shadow of the golf ball cast on a nearby wall will also be diffused or even non existent when the ball is that close to the lens. Now move the golf ball away from the lens and you'll notice that it becomes harder and harder (less wrap-around-y, more defined borders between light and dark) and that also the shadow on the wall of the ball has become sharper. Really close to the wall (when it's furthest away from the source of light) you'll see the most defined shadows on the wall and on the ball.

 

Once this relationship has been fully understood, you will see that hardness, or softness, is all about the relative size of the source to the object. This is key to understanding soft lighting. So the only two variables that define softness is placement of the source and the size of it. Any source can be a hard light, and any source can be a soft light.

 

So why use diffusion at all? Well, by enlarging the source, you're in effect making it slightly softer at the same distance. Also, on direct light sources with no lenses, like a redhead or a blonde, the filament itself emits a smaller more concentrated light within the reflected light, which makes it look harder. By diffusing it you're blending the direct light from the filament with the reflected light from the silver reflector, and this evens out the light (making it bigger) so that it more easily can be played as a soft light at the same distance. Move the light further away, and any diffusion you might have added is now getting progressively more negated. Make sense?

 

So make no mistake - put diffusion on any light, any size, any source and move it far enough back from the object you're lighting, and the effects will be a hard light. It's all about relative size. So in the example you had, the white side light on the Joker in Batman is relatively soft. That's probably a 12x12 butterfly soft box right to the left of frame with an HMI in it. The orange backlight up high in the background might be diffused (or it could just be how it flares in the lens), but at that distance and size, it can never be a soft light no matter how much you diffuse it. The only two reasons you're not seeing a hard shadow in front of the Joker from that source, is that either the soft sidelight is overpowering it (most likely), or the orange backlight is not even aimed at the Joker but rather into the lens.

 

Last truism (advanced bonus :) ) - whenever a source is smaller than the object it's supposed to light, at any distance, it will be impossible to achieve softness (depending on how you define soft). For this gag to work, the source must be bigger than its object (like in the golf ball experiment), at any distance.

Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for helping me understand it better. For some reason I thought that you had to take the light source further away to achieve the "Softer" look. Do you know where I can purchase the type of diffusion you mentioned?

I was looking at images of The Dark Knight and I found this picture. It gave me a better look at how the scene looked off camera. It looks like one source of light which looks like it has some type of diffusion in front of it. Does anyone know what type of diffusion is used for a scene like this and where I can get it? I've used softboxes, but it still does not look as soft as this. Can anyone help?

Please let me know what you liked and what I can do better. I am always trying to get better and improve my skills. I am the Director of Photography on this project and I need to correct all the errors from this trailer so the final product will be better.