Satsuki Murashige

Then I think you’ll be fine lighting as Miguel and David suggest. Definitely don’t shoot it with white light and grade it red! That’s just unnecessary.

What camera and codec will you be shooting? Digital or film? If digital, raw or 4:4:4 codec would be ideal. 4:2:2 or less could lead to artifacting. Lighting-wise, how are you achieving the red color? Gels or RGB LEDs? If you’re getting soft-looking images, one thing you can try is to dial in a less pure red color. In gel terms, instead of using Primary Red, try Fire Red which has a bit of yellow in it. This will help expose the green channel or green-sensitive film layer and help with sharpness. Then you can shift the color in post back to pure red if that’s the look you want.

Alan Rencher posts here, so I’m sure he will mention it here if and when that happens.

I’m part of the beta tester group for the Rencher Industries Lock-On Battery Booster: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFDQxM9h8cu/?igshid=3xfi3yc9ncvg It is supposed to boost or buck 14.4/28.8v battery sources to regulated 24v for cameras like the Moviecam SL, Arriflex SR3 and 235, etc. I haven’t received my unit yet, but it seems like the right tool for the job. Personally, I will be using my 28.8v 2F1 Block Battery on-boards thru an 28v Anton Bauer adapter plate. You may have issues with pulling too much amperage from 14.4v batteries, depending on the make and model.

Thanks for putting this together Mei! We better get to watching then, not much time left in January!

Well said, Neal. You summed it up much better than I could, in far fewer words!

The clip is from ‘Pride & Prejudice’ (2005), directed by Joe Wright. The film has beautiful cinematography, including some very long Steadicam oners and creative staging. Hard to believe it’s Mr. Wright’s first feature!

Here’s a recent discussion thread, you can find more by using the search function in the upper right corner:

I don’t think that would be allowed without a permit either. It seems to mostly benefit one man band shooters, vloggers, news camera people and the like, as far I as I can tell. Still a win, I think. Hope they all continue to clean up after themselves and respect the integrity of the parks though.

I shot a narrative project back in 2012/2013 that got shut down while shooting without a permit in Death Valley. The Park Ranger who found us was pretty sympathetic, considering the situation. He said personally, he wished that more filmmakers would shoot there so people could see the beauty of the park, but rules were rules and he had to follow them. I had another shoot about a month ago on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay (with a permit), and the Park Ranger was great. She even took us on a quick tour of less visited parts of the island after we had wrapped. But it’s a big country and I’m not surprised that attitudes can vary widely depending on the location.

Thanks Mei, I’d vote for ‘Dogtooth’ - I haven’t seen either film. Has anyone seen ‘Sound of Metal’ on Amazon Prime? I hear it’s quite good.

Thanks for the kind words, Imran. 01. Has a hard frontal fill light from a dimmed-down Dedolight 150w tungsten, which doubling as an eye light. No other fill or negative, as we are in a dark studio. 02. Has a hard strip light across the eyes, similar to 01. I used the Dedo again with a DP2 projector to cut a strip across both eyes, diffused with the DP Eyeset filters to feather the edges of the cut. There’s also a low beadboard with another Dedo bounced into it for fill. *I added Fire Red gel to this light, as I was playing with mixed color temperatures for this project. 03. Same as 02, except no eye light this time, so just key and low beadboard. 04 - 06. Key only, plus a soft kicker from camera left. I don’t remember what the unit was specifically.

Here are some soft side-lit portraits, the key for the first three frames is a 2K open face tunsten lamp thru 8x8 Bleached Muslin. For the last three frames, the 2K is replaced with an S-60 Skypanel thru 8x8 Bleached Muslin.

The bigger the key, the more you have to move it side-ier to keep the shadow side dark. You may then need to add a dimmer fill light on the key side or a frontal eye light to keep the eyes from going black.

My thought is to continue to lean into one’s own style. It may be that industry tastes are changing, but only you can do what you do. There are directors who still want that, you just have to find them.

I think this topic deserves its own thread! I’ll be starting one on personal cinematographic influences soon.

Of course, if it’s windy that might not work so well.

I think the trick will be to get the mirror back far enough. I think at this point it’s about what you can rig safely. Ideally, maybe a row of mirrors hanging down from the balcony one floor above would do it. But if that’s not possible to do safely, then maybe tying a large silver lamé rag from the roof to the balcony railing that spans the whole window can be used as the reflector instead. Then put 2x M18s on the balcony floor and up into the rag? It won’t have the same hard light quality as the mirror, but it might have a chance of covering the whole window.

Do you want to evenly cover the whole window with the mirror reflection? I don’t think that’s going to be possible at that short distance. It also seems like you have a pretty wide angle view. Are you concerned about possibly seeing the M18 or the mirror rig?

While that’s true, I think a lot of this is driven by who young directors, producers, and creative directors want to work with. In many cases, they simply feel more comfortable working with their peer group, not older people who may have more experience or skill. I also think many creatives prefer the look of available light style photography. There’s a generation break in photographic style currently, maybe as large as the one in the Hollywood New Wave era. A lot of young Hollywood directors in the 1970s wanted to work with their contemporaries, rather than the older studio-era DPs then too.

Pretty much this.

Hi Adam, I might have told this story before, but I 2nd AC’d once a fairly large non-union commercial. The DP was an old guy who joking referred to himself as the ‘used-to-be the $10K-a-day guy.’ I don’t think he had shot much video, he was used to 35mm film and union crews. The producer was clearly trying to save money, as we were shooting on two 5DMk2s. Here’s the A Camera: 1st AC Paul Marbury with the 5D Frankenrig. The DP operated the A Camera, while the producer’s teenage son operated B Camera. I think he was probably 13-14, and his buddy was his ‘AC.’ It became pretty clear that they hadn’t been trained yet when I went to common-slate both cameras and they didn’t know that they were supposed to roll their camera. After they were told to roll and I clapped, I noticed the young man cut and roll again. I mentioned this to Paul, but the DP was already so pissed at the situation that he wasn’t inclined to help the producer out by letting him know so it could be fixed. Afterwards as I was wrapping up my data station (there were about four times more B Camera clips than A Camera clips, mostly short clips containing only slates and takes with no slates), I overheard the Director and Producer saying ‘you gotta just get their foot in the door and fake it ‘til they make it. The editor will never know the difference.’ As I hand them the drives, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I think the editor is gonna know...’ That was the most egregious example I’ve seen, but I’ve heard worse.

Yes, I’ve seen it. It’s strange how he saw the war as an opportunity to fulfill his ambitions of being a military commander. He managed to become a Rear Admiral in the Navy before he was discharged. At the same time, he put himself in harm’s way to film wartime action. There’s one anecdote of the filming of his propaganda documentary ‘The Battle of Midway’ where he stopped a young man from taking a camera up to a targeted position, going up instead himself. I believe that’s where he was wounded in the arm by shrapnel from the Japanese bombers. It’s the struggle between the disparate parts of his psyche that I think is fascinating. What makes a person profess to believe in one thing, yet often behave opposite? If they are truly themselves in their choices, does it show in their work?

In film school, my cinematography professor ordered a few pizzas for the class and kept them warm with 2K fresnels. I always remember that!