Freya Black

I dont think there is any mystery to it.. even DOP,s die..logic dictates there will have to be new ones who are younger to take their place.. if films are still being made.. and the ones that rise to the top.. they will have to have that one lucky break through small budget film ..maybe TV series .music video..these days.. which they got to work on because the dir was their mate or they were in the right place right time.. you see this with every big name dp out there now.. and they have the talent and self confidence to pull it off.. who gets lucky.. I suppose you can help the odds.. move to LA/London/NY.. rather than life in a small town in Dorset (although I think Deakins did !)..

The people who die could just as eaily be replaced by people who are the same age or older.

I don't think music videos are enough to help people get a lucky break these days. Maybe once upon a time when there was a smaller pool that people were fishing from.

One place where talent very much does come into the equation is if you get that lucky break and you don't have the talent or ability or whatever. Then you probably won't get the chance to go further but instead stay where you are taking up space.

Except for maybe... Roger Deakins. One thing that rubs me wrong about these kinds of conversations is we often seem to ignore sheer talent. As if we're all equal in talent and ability, but some are just luckier than others.

I totally didn't. The more recent postings have not been concerned with talent as it's such a small part of the equation but further up the thread I very much addressed this issue wheh I talked about a cinematographer I know, in the UK, who is VERY talented, far and away better than my own talents... and I have watched him for years fight over and over to get somewhere basic in spite of those talents, while those with little to no talent, or at any rate ability, get top jobs in the UK television industry. There were times in the last few years that it was so obvious and in your face that I would have conversations with other cinematographers about what was going on where they would pre-empt a lot of the discussion. We were watching what was going on and we all knew what was going on. It was horrible.

He is finally getting somewhere in a minor way but wow did I watch him go through some crap along the way and how much did that guy struggle to get half decent jobs when everyone could see and commented on his talent, while people with little to none were getting key jobs on some of the biggest and well known "properties" in the country.

Sure talent helps. Especially after you get the jobs and people are like wow!

I mean I'm sure Roger Deakins work on 1984 helped him a lot because it was a film in which he had the opportunity to showcase his talent and lets not play this down... but a film that got a lot of publicity and attention too because you can have talent and showcase it in the films but if those movies don't take off big time... it may not matter as much as you might think.

So yeah I talked about talent.

Freya

Are there any cinema release movies being shot today on 2 perf 35mm or S16? I know that cinemas are only showing DCP pictures these days, in most cases, but want to know if I can go along and see what a movie shot on 2 perf or S16 actually looks like in the cinema. I like the look of film grain. Just wondering if the definition of the image is generally going to be sharp enough for 'general audiences' today, or if people are going to be sitting there thinking "what's wrong with the image? It's blurry and poor quality". I don't have a particular genre of film in mind. Could be a small independent picture or a big feature.

In a Valley of Violence was a Ti West film shot on 2 perf as was The Inkeepers.

Black Swan was Super16 and the new horror film from Darren Aronofsky is also supposed to be Super16, so you can keep an eye out for that when it is released. Apparently there are some trailers for it running against certain screenings of Dunkirk.

Freya

 

By working for Americans a lot. Quite how you do that is something of a mystery - it used to be easier, but it's become so hard to do now that I suspect even the most glittering star in the cinema firmament may struggle to do a Deakins these days.

Roger Deakins worked in TV and then got lucky on Sid and Nancy didn't he?

Freya

 

I think you have to do that and be in someone's inner circle.

Although actually, for the really big stuff, it isn't so much about "being noticed," so much, it's about having a huge CV of big movies so they trust you. That's not unreasonable, but you still have to be someone's mate, at least in the UK.

 

How can you be someones mate in the UK for that? Surely everyone making those decisions will be stateside?

How can you have a CV of big movies if you are based in the UK? That does sound unreasonable. In fact I'd go as far as to say that it doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up.

I think it could be possible to have a CV of really great TV work and then work on a movie that gets a lot of attention too maybe?

Freya

The crew and gear package should be scaled to the budget on any film. My advice was just that as a DP/Producer he should probably team up with a production staff that has more experience than him so he can learn set procedure / protocol and setiquette and avoid the "fish out of water" syndrome when you go from commercial to narrative. You don't want Christian Bale barking at you cause you're in his eyeline. That sorta thing.

 

I wasn't suggesting that every tier 1 project has their act together. Far from it. Just that there's more likelihood of meeting potential colleagues who can recommend you on bigger stuff if you hire them on your film. If you go with no production staff and just a splinter crew of set techs in an effort to "trim the fat" you lose that opportunity and create more of a headache cause you have to run the show and shoot the show at the same time. Not recommended.

Christian Bale probably won't be going anywhere near the kind of thing that is made in the UK TV industry!

I don't think there is so much made in UK TV that could be considred Teir 1 either... unless you maybe work in natural history department or something of that ilk.

Yeah it's useful to have that kind of support from production staff, it's just that there would need to be some kind of budget to make that happen. I think the best bet for that would be to try and hook up with some other people in some way as has been suggested earlier but if he is going to make his own shorts then he should try and make them with as much donated support and as little money as possible as it's essentially throwing money away otherwise.

I'm not sure how much chance there is of getting production staff who are working in TV to work on some little short either. If you can then that is great but they will probably be busy working in TV and not so inclined to work on some tiny project like that but if you can make friends with someone and convince them it is an exciting project then it might work I guess! :)

Building up relationships with rental houses and manufacturers could be a good idea though.

Maybe that would help in getting to know some production staff people of the kind you mention.

Freya

You can do that, but it'll be incredibly expensive and microscopically likely to bear fruit.

Have to agree. Especially if you are just starting out doing narrative things. I think it's best to start much smaller.

Try to spend as little on equipment as possible. Concentrate on the lighting and how you are going to make it work for you. Then later do bigger things perhaps.

I've been around a couple of large scale TV production sets in the UK and was surprised what a mess they were and how poor the results were. When someone rocks up with a cherry picker, a couple of techno cranes. 2 grip trucks, a catering truck. An Arri Alexa and boxes of lenses. Steadycam equipment and steadycam operator, Full DIT setup, Audio department with wireless audio. A wevi. Huge lights/gels etc and just blocks off an entire street without any permission and spends the entire day and night filming a short 1 minute segment. I'm expecting to see something impressive.

I don't expect the results to looks far, far, worse than something I could have knocked up myself on no-budget equipment in a few hours without much effort.

That was the BBC though which is an especially weird organisation but I wasn't impressed at all by the "legit sets"

but then a ship might as well be rudderless if the captain is lost at sea.

Oh and I got a tiny glimpse into part of the shooting of Guy Ritchies "Rock N Rolla" and it seemed like they just had a little grip truck and were quite minimal in comparison.

Oh and when some low budget British thing came to the area, you always knew it because they would block off important streets and irrelevant surroundings that irritated the hell out of everyone and then trash the place and leave it that way. Like fake posters everywhere or graffiti or whatever the art deparment was doing they would abandon it.

I remember when Fast 6 came to the area, they didn't really lock down anything and put up signs saying "Fast 6" this way and all the security and everyone was super polite and nice to anyone who had to get by. If they didn't have giant Lee lightings cranes and stuff and signs everywhere saying "this way to the Fast 6 camp".. you would hardly know they were there. Which is funny as they were probably the biggest production to come to the area but they were totally chill about it all.

Freya

I should probably have mentioned TV too, but all I can say is that it has exactly the same issues as features. Incredibly rarefied and with essentially no way in unless you're part of someone's inner circle.

Oh god this is going to be really embaressing....

I don't think you can get to work on major feature films as a cinematographer in the UK by being part of someones inner circle. I'm kinda hoping you meant like the tiny Brit films that the government funds Phil.

I think to get to be a cinematographer on stuff like that you have to have been noticed for something you did.

In which case it usually needs to be something good and special and not some tiny Brit film with virtually no budget. I think that kind of work is really, really hard to get even if you are shooting low budget stuff out in LA.

I don't know what to say about it.

Freya

Yes I know you weren't serious.. I haven't seen the film either.. ut its had pretty much uniform glowing reports .. so was surprised to see in a film that long there isnt really any story or character development .. which IMHO would be fairly vital part in a feature film .. as opposed to an amazingly hi tech doc..

 

But yes I haven't seen it.. Im sure its visually amazing.. and probably worth the ticket price for that.. but I hope there more to it than that..

I have a feeling there is a fair bit of story but I think people will confuse a lack of dilogue for a lack of story.

Also it's not a straightforward linear narrative, and that can be difficult for people sometimes too so the combination of the two may make some people feel like there is no story but Mr Nolan is kind of famous for non-linear narratives. It also may not help that people basically know the story, or maybe that does help, I'm not sure.

I have a feeling there is a story. It's a narrative film after all.

The character development issue may be a bigger one and I suspect that may be a bigger problem for some people than others. There are a lot of people who really need to know a lot more about the characters to feel any attachment to them, so that could be an issue but films can be lacking in some area or another and still really work I feel.

To a certain extent the criticisms may come down a bit to "It isn't like all the other films I normally see" which for a lot of people is the point and why they are excited by it.

Freya

On another note... I really liked this review of the movie:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-20/-dunkirk-and-the-great-films-that-won-t-be-made

The reviews coming out are so overwhelmingly positive and excited that I can only imagine that some people are going to be dissapointed with the film. It can't be all things to everyone and when something has that much traction behind it then it can start to be hard to live up to the overwhelming hype.

I'm wondering how long it will be before the word "overrated" gets used.

I think it's clear that Christopher Nolan must have achieved something special to get this much excitement for a movie about the second world war that doesn't feature any super heroes. Well other than Harry Styles of course.

However people may well get overwhelmed by the excitement about it and expect something it can't do or be.

Anyway we will see.

Freya

 

 

sure buts not a historic doc.. or if it is its the most expensive ever made.. The Russian revolution was a story but there was a bit more to Dr Zhivago... owning a Hawk is a story but Kes gave us a bit more.. ;).. know what I mean..

I think you hit the nail on the head right there. The story about owning a hawk could have many different kind of films made from it that could all be amazing in different ways.

I was joking around but there is this obsession people have about story and there are different levels of story and I'm not a believer that story is the be all and end all the way people talk about it. Alice in Wonderland has one of the worst storys ever but it is a great book. It has such amazing character and dialogue. This was the damning criticism from Tyler that there could have been more character development so you felt more of a connection with the people but maybe it's not supposed to be about the individuals but about this event that happened to huge numbers of people.

I've not seen the movie myself so I can't be sure what it is like but I think movies can be good in different kinds of ways and I think they should be good in different kinds of ways.

Freya

Did anyone get to see a trailer for Darren Aronofsky's "Mother!"?

It sounds interesting but it's the first I heard about the movie!

Freya

hang on.. there is no story.. ! thats a fairly major negative (pardon the pun)..

er... it's Dunkirk... of course theres a story! ;)

Freya

I think the biggest issue here is the lack of up-grade-ability. In a typical theater, you have your screen and you can swap out projectors for, I would assume, far less cost than ripping out what is essentially a wall as technology changes. WIth this, you're stuck at 4K, it is what it is. Further, I wonder what kind of power consumption and heat this thing will generate.

I kind of assume it will just be attached to the wall somehow but I think you make a fantastically good point about power consumption and especially heat. If it puts out a lot of heat it's going to be yet another reason for people to not go to the cinema when there is a heatwave.

I also wonder about dead pixels?

I'm not sure how upgradable the current digital cinemas are though. I mean I think it would have been more sensible if they designed the DCP servers so they could be upgraded easily without having to replace the whole server. I mean they are basically computers. They could be given new software... or even new cards or motherboards etc inside the casing. However I suspect it will require a new DCP server to upgrade to high bitrate 4K or whatever.

Projectors could be upgraded to 4K but it would be better to upgrade the DCP server too because when the DCP's are played out at 4K they only have the same maximum bitrate as for 2K projection which means they end up being effectively more compressed which probably compromises the advantage of having 4K in the first place.

Even worse some cinemas have been installing special sub 2K projectors for smaller screens anyway as one of the major cinema projection companies was marketing this as a cost saving option, so I'm not sure how much of a desire there will be to upgrade anything that much anyway unless there are cost savings to be made.

Freya

I'm sure prices will come down with economies of scale - the market for giant hi-rez LED screens is much much larger then that of cinema projection

I think you are right too. This thing is perfect for huge music concerts in stadiums and for big conference presentations and the like.

That said it obviously has far better performance, and it's clear that this will become the norm.

 

P

I'm not sure if you can say better performance. It depends on how you judge the performance. I suspect it will be a different experience to seeing a film projected but I don't know I've not seen it.

I'm also not sure it will become the norm. I think it could become a common thing in some contexts but the screens are still small by cinema standards and I think it is mostly practical for smaller cinema screens. However in a future where there are multi screen complexes with smaller screens giving more choices for the customers then I can see this working well. However I'm not sure that is going to be the future of cinemas or if that is more like the recent past. I'm not sure that cinemas even have that much of a future in the sense that we think of them now but we will see.

Freya

Yes, and the reason it's fundamentally "wrong" is that you could comfortably watch it with the house lights on.

or just comfortably watch it in your house even! ;)

Freya

It's why I'm concerned about Dunkrik being all hand held. I'm a dolly/jib guy myself, I think the smooth feeling really helps sell the cinematic nature of things.

 

It isn't all handheld, just mostly handheld. They used Technocranes and other ways of moving the camera too. There is a tiny bit about this in my article on the subject here:

https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/4729-shooting-christopher-nolan-s-dunkirk-in-65mm

Freya

It might save money on new build multiscreen cinemas. For starters you wouldn't need a projection booth. You could just have a common server room where DCP servers feed all the screens from.

Not really, if it can produce comparable picture quality of better why not? Probably impractically expensive right now and audio would need to be resolved - since you couldn't place speakers behind the screen.

You could probably place speakers beneath the screen like a supersized soundbar or something?

Ambitions to do non-feature dramatic work are fine, but be aware that there is absolutely no money of any kind whatsoever in it. Even features, if you can get them, are paid at poverty levels until you hit the big time, at which point you go from very poor to very rich very quickly - or at least in theory you would, I've never met anyone who's done it.

 

Music videos, short films, indie features - all great fun. But either literally or effectively unpaid and you will be required to bring expensive equipment. You'll struggle to even get them unless you have the latest equipment.

 

P

TV is the way to go but it's all about being friends with the right people there.

It is kinda possible though and the cinema world is going more TV all the time.

There are even giant TV's being made for cinemas now:

https://www.redsharknews.com/business/item/4751-samsung-launches-hdr-led-cinema-screen

With things like Netflix dominating so much, it's easy to think that the future of narrative filmmaking might be TV in some form. It also seems like even if it isn't, that it might be the best way for someone in the UK to even have a hope of working on larger movies.

Freya

 

It does sound like feature work in the UK is a very hard nut to crack and TV not much better so I do greatly appreciate that realism and information. I don't think it will frighten me off aiming for a feature or episodic TV at some point, especially if I can manage other work at the same time, but I can't say I wasn't warned! :)

 

I think I'm realistic enough to understand I'm not going to be Deakins in 5 years, I'm just looking to be a better cinematographer and this seems the best forum for that for some tips. Hopefully all of us who consider ourselves cinematographers want to do some narrative work and perhaps some only want to do narrative work, I just want to keep being busy, keep getting better and hopefully keep enjoying the journey!

 

I get the impression that TV work as DP is Waaaaay easier to get than regular DP work on features in the UK.

It's just really, really difficult in itself. It's a much easier target for the most part though.

In my own life right now I'm mostly trying really hard not to worry about the way things are and hoping I'm going to get lucky somehow. It's nearly August and I'm still here. If you have a way of earning a living and you can do some narrative stuff too on the side then that seems a great way forward and then you can just hope you get lucky somewhere!

Hi Freya,

 

Much appreciated, all constructive advice is certainly taken on board. We've actually spoken before, you interviewed me a few years ago for Red Shark News about a film I made using a camera Sony lent me, small world!

Oh god! I recognised the name and couldn't work out from where. I think we were both at the BSC show once and I saw your name tag but couldn't work out where I recognised it from!

Well if you managed to get Sony to lend you a camera then that is a great start. You could use that kind of ability to help you with equipping for narrative work too! ;)

I'm also right here if you need publicity for a project and have a tech angle! :)

Freya

Not sure where to post this. News seemed like the obvious place but I can't post there but this seems of interest to everyone here as it is about one possible future for Theatrical presentation.

Giant LED displays for the cinema:

https://www.redsharknews.com/business/item/4751-samsung-launches-hdr-led-cinema-screen

Freya

I hate to tell you this Toby but everything being written here is really good advice.

Yes it's possible to make a living as a DP on non narrative work in the UK I know plenty of people who do this

and manage to make it work somehow. This isn't what Phil is talking about though but relating things to your exact situation and interest in narrative stuff.

Narrative work is much more difficult because generally the work is unpaid or poorly paid in the UK

I do think the tip about the NTFS is a good one. I have had some good experiences with this kind of things myself,

I'm always a bit bewildered how stuff like this happens but I used to help out on a lot of student shoots doing sound because nobody wanted to do sound at the time. Later one of the students decided to do sound so I was mostly dropped because I wasn't even a student although I still got picked up to do work from time to time even after that as people knew I was nice and did a good job. One short I worked on even won an award from Kodak apparently!

In a similar fashion, I once played Gamelan at the Birmingham Conservatoire, (high end music school) despite being thrown out of GSCE music when I was little. It was a shock for me as they are such incredible instruments and if you were a student then that was probably your one chance to play on instruments like that but it doesn't use standard western musical notation and the students decided they would mostly rather be in a brass band instead.

I think they felt that the Brass Band would be closer to more conventional music and help them more in their careers or something. Not sure what to make of it. You could probably joing the salvation army and be in a brass band.

So I had some positive educatonal experiences that I didn't pay for. ;)

The NTFS is the premier film school in the UK and they actually have budgets of some kind for their shorts and stuff and you can probably make contact with the kind of people who might have a chance of being in the club for the little bit of UK film funding that goes around.

Having said all that the situation with movies in the UK is especially bleak. It is generally funded by government institutions who have certain tastes and may attach certain conditions. It's also all about being in with the right people.

There are the american films being shot here but it would be easier to get on as crew on those than cinematographer because these are generally shot by the most famous cinematographers in the world.

Television is more of a possibility as the UK does still have a bit of a TV industry in spite of things.

However I know someone who I personally feel is one of the best DP's in the UK and whose work I really admire and in spite of the fact his talent should be plain to see, he has struggled to get work in the TV industry until recently while much less able people have worked on all kind of leading TV productions. It is sad to see this kind of thing so obviously happening but it does and it's because in the UK it's is much more about who you are friends with than your ability. For this reason your relationships with other people are really important.

His story has a happy ending as he is finally getting some work in that sector but be prepared that it might take years and years.

I get the impression that it is also really quite hard even in LA to get top positions as a cinematographer but there is a lot of smaller work that can be done out there so people can get by shooting narrative stuff rather than having to rely on industrials and event shooting etc. This means it's a lot easier to get directly relevant experience there.

I don't think it's pessimism, whether you want to approach the situation with a positive outlook or a more negative outlook is up to you but it's also worth being aware of the situation as it might help you to not get beaten down by it and also to give you a better idea of how to approach things if you are really determined to give it a go! :)

Freya

Okay I'm going to be a good girl now before I get myself banned.

Although I think you are possibly worse than me Robin! ;)

Freya