Satsuki Murashige

Hi Jay, I think you’re right about viable content. I certainly would not have had the opportunity to move up quickly if the Red One camera hadn’t come along in 2007. Or to shoot the majority of the low/no budget projects that I got back then. Of course, I would have preferred to work on 35mm and 16mm had that been a choice, and I still would choose to shoot on film today if it was up to me. But 99% of the time, it’s not. And that’s with me already owning my own film cameras...

Stop the lens down, use an ND filter, or put ND gel on the tail lights. Problem solved. We used to do that on film after taking a spot meter reading as well.

Frankly, this is not a camera problem. This is a conflict between your taste as a viewer and the cinematographer’s taste. Modern high sensitivity digital cameras allow us to expose brighter at lower light levels. As a consequence of exposing brighter, practicals and light sources like car tail lights will clip. Highlights on color negative film are not infinite either, they will also burn out if given enough exposure. That’s an exposure choice, which depends on taste and judgement. One could just as easily not raise the ISO and expose to keep that highlight detail. But then that would require the DP to actually light the scene with large units to have shadow and midtone detail, like you do with film...

Seriously? Aren’t you tired of the old ‘film vs digital’ debate yet?

I think so too. I’m sure they’ve gotten better in the more recent models, but the Rec.709 LUTs on the Mini 4K and v1 4.6K were very clippy compared to their contemporaries. Kinda reminded me of how SmallHD monitors used to look in their first few generations.

If you’ve found a recipe that works for you, then that’s fine. I would just be careful about conflating the results with the process. Correlation is not causation. Polarizers remove reflections from some surfaces at certain angles. If you have soft reflections on the cheek, then a polarizer can reduce those. It’s highly dependent on angle and won’t always work. Also, a pola cannot remove specular reflections, which are hard reflections that you get off of highly reflective surfaces like water, glass, and metal. A soft surface like skin will scatter light and cannot reflect hard speculars unless there’s also sweat or oil. A diffusion filter like Black Promist spreads the light around highlights and brighter midtones, creating a localized glow. This halation will reduce the contrast in bright areas, so when it’s combined with reducing bright areas in the frame, your highlights will appear less harsh. Camerafolk have been using lens diffusion to tame the highlights on video cameras for many decades. I would suggest that you test each filter individually at different exposure levels, so that you can see what effect you’re getting from each. You could also try a color grade where you lower the highlights and upper midtones as a starting point and see if gets you to a similar place. That’s invariably one of the first things I always do when grading my own footage.

Always, always charge extra...

No worries, I’m just taking the piss. Back to my pint now...

A lot of the fabrics that they are using in their filters can be purchased at fabric shops very cheaply. I recognize some of the mesh, tulles, and nets. You can just stretch them over an empty filter frame or the front/back of a lens without having to buy an expensive glass filter.

You can try looking for the 2C phenolic gear on eBay or from a film equipment reseller like Visual Products. I would also try contacting film camera technicians like Andree Martin at AM Camera or Jorge Diaz-Amador at Cinematechnic to see if they have a spare to sell. https://www.amcamera.com/contact http://cinematechnic.com/contact-cinematechnic/

Also this. How you process and display the footage is as important as how you expose it. Grading can make a world of difference.

Thanks!

I think this is the answer, it’s just a better sensor (as reflected in the higher price of the camera). Personally, I always thought the MX sensor was really good, even with its color issues. I shot some of my best work on it: https://satsukimurashige.com/sigur-ros https://satsukimurashige.com/abbadon

I think I understood you correctly. As I said before, if there was a polarizer in the OLPF filter stack, then you would not be able to use a normal polarizer filter on the lens without getting a variable ND effect. Since that doesn’t happen on Red cameras, one must conclude that this isn’t the case... Re: speculars No, polarizers have no effect on specular reflections. Polarizers are used for car commercials all the time, and the speculars you get from the backlit metal is still there. If the filter is dirty, then it may have a diffusion effect, but that is the same for all filters. Note that the test has also listed a Black Promist filter in the filter stack. Also, most variable NDs (being two polarizers stacked together), will soften your footage and can create multiple reflections. Here, there is essentially a triple stack of filters in front of the lens. This is generally why you avoid stacking filters for a camera test unless you’re testing the filters themselves.

I don’t think it makes sense. There are many reasons why one camera would appear darker or have shifted colors in a camera test, the most common being user error. Here, I suspect that using a Variable ND filter caused some matching issues - you can get color shift and other effects when rotating it. Usually for a side-by-side camera color/exposure test like this, it’s better to use high quality single strength ND sets like Mitomos or Rhodiums, or better yet avoid ND entirely and control exposure with the shutter and T-stop. We also have no data on how each camera was exposed and processed for viewing, which is usually the other point when large variables appear. Red cameras have had documented OLPF issues, like the ‘red dot’ flares (eventually solved with the Skintone-Highlight OLPF and mitigated by the Standard OLPF). But polarization is not one of those issues. If it were, then you could not use a standard polarizer filter on the lens without creating a variable ND effect.

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If your video tap is analog standard definition, then you will need a monitor (or wireless transmitter) that can accept an analog composite video signal. Usually, this will be an older model like a TVLogic 5.6WP, TVLogic LVM-074, Panasonic 1700/1710/1760, or an older Marshall 7” monitor. Newer monitors are generally HD-SDI (digital) only, so they won’t work without an analog to digital converter box. Don’t assume that your video tap is NTSC - it most likely is if Visual Products made it, but there are a lot of PAL taps out there too. Best to make sure before you invest in a new monitor. The other connector is a Hirose 4-pin, as Dom says. Usually used to provide 12v power on broadcast style cameras. You tend to see them on Sony and Panasonic cameras. So it appears likely that you need to provide external power to the tap camera. I would double check with Visual Products to see what is needed.

I think you should shoot it at the right time of day. If you shoot while the sun is up, the landscape will still be hard lit and won’t match the light on your talent.

What camera/format/codec or film stock are you shooting on? And who will be handling the color grade? If it won’t be you, then communication of your intent is very important. For color negative film like 5219 500T, I probably would not underexpose more than 2 stops since the film holds highlights so well but shadows not so well. If possible, shoot a grey card at the head of the roll exposed properly and color balanced properly, so the person doing the film scan knows what to set to. Then you can pull the 85 filter to get the blue look and underexpose the film so it comes out dark. For something like an Alexa, Venice, or Red shooting raw, I would decide on a Rec.709 viewing LUT in prep and then expose while viewing that. Shoot tests in prep at different ISO/EI settings to decide how much noise you like, then stick to that setting while shooting. You can then change your white balance settings in-camera for the blue look and underexpose to taste. I would try 3 stops to start with and go darker as necessary. Raw footage tends to get noisy quickly when underexposed, moreso than Prores. If you’re shooting a codec with a baked-in white balance like Prores, and you have a nervous director or producer who doesn’t want to commit to the blue look, then you can also make a blue look LUT instead of changing your in-camera white balance. I really hate to do that, but it has saved my bacon before on one project when the director and editor decided to shift some shot footage from one story location to another. A blue ‘London’ scene became warm ‘San Francisco’ so we had to push the grade in the opposite direction. That would not have been possible (or would have looked pretty bad) if we had baked in the white balance.

Thanks for the links Simon, I am enjoying the reads! You’re right it seems, Fritz Gabriel Bauer did make his first prototype from a Mitchell movement. But the compensating link movement in subsequent Moviecams (Super America, Compact, SL) was his own design, so it seems Dom is right as well. Anyway, it’s all very interesting!

Simon, are you referring to a pre-SuperAmerica model? I’m not familiar with those at all. When Moviecam is mentioned, I think most are referring to the Compact/SL system. But I’d love to know more about the first few models, there’s not much info out there about them.

I think you are conflating budget and studio financing with directorial style. One thing does not necessarily correlate with the other. Some directors like to have a tight script and storyboard every shot before going into production. Are they always ‘entertainment’ directors? No. Others like to improvise as much as possible and don’t like to stick to the shooting script (if there even is one). Are they always ‘art’ directors? No.

I think this is a gross generalization, and an oddly polarized point of view. From my perspective, most films fall somewhere in the middle of your two ideals; very few filmmakers go into a project with a complete disregard for what the audience may think, and similarly very few go in without any intention of self-expression. At least for me, whether I’m shooting a toothpaste commercial or a self-financed passion project, I’m thinking of both things to some degree.

‘Art’ or otherwise, still ‘a film’ though, surely?

Um, so what is the difference, then?