Satsuki Murashige

When it’s done well, I think filmmaking is as mysterious and miraculous an art form as music, painting, or sculpture. That’s just my take, but I’m compelled to ask - if you feel this way, then what are your favorite films? Has any film moved you as deeply as a great piece of music? If that’s not art, then what is? My feeling is that those reticent directors of the era like John Ford were more than a little insecure about their artistic sensibilities and afraid of appearing sensitive and caring. Ford in particular was a fascinatingly contradictory person - as successful professionally as he was, that insecurity and resulting brutality and alcoholism may have ruined his life. Tag Gallagher’s book about his life and work is a great read. Ford’s films at their best show the true depth of his character, which is why I consider them to be art. The endings of ‘How Green Was My Valley,’ ‘My Darling Clementine,’ and ‘The Searchers’ make a lot of sense when you consider his rumored lifelong unrequited love for Katherine Hepburn. But the most delightful part of his films to me are all the small parts played by his ‘stock company’ that have so much life and vividness in sometimes just a scene or two - Thomas Mitchell and Donald Meek in ‘Stagecoach,’ John Qualen and Charley Grapewin in ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ Barry Fitzgerald and Rhys Williams in ‘Valley,’ Alan Mowbray, Francis Ford, and J. Farrell Macdonald in ‘Clementine,’ Arthur Shields in ‘The Quiet Man,’ Ward Bond in ‘The Searchers,’ so on and so forth. It’s just amazing to me how he managed to do that film after film, for five decades.

Not worth it at that price, IMHO. Either pony up and get a Venice, or go for an FX6/FX9 with Sony G Master lenses for the autofocus. You can still shoot XAVC 480 with the Venice, you don’t have to use the raw recorder.

Sure, although most would involve changing the ISO/EI or shutter speed, or shooting on location. 1. Perhaps they are trying overpower the natural ambience or practicals in a location they can’t fully control. Say you want a contrasty look with dark shadows, but you’re getting ambient spill from a large skylight that you can’t black out or flag off. The spill is filling your shadows, so you overlight and ND down to increase the ratio between key and ambient fill. 2. Similarly, you’re shooting with fire fx and you don’t want the flames to clip, so you light up everything else to be within the same exposure range. ND just lets you maintain a shallower depth of field at higher light levels. 3. You want to cut the shutter to eliminate motion blur in a later sequence. Same idea as over-cranking, saves time re-lighting. 4. You want the artist’s eye color to pop, so you overlight to get their pupils to stop down. 5. It’s cold inside the studio, and you’re trying to keep everyone warm by turning on all the big tungsten lamps?

Maybe the DP was planning to shoot some high-speed overcranked shots. Then they just have to pull the ND out to be ready to shoot, rather than having to add more lights. Much faster, and makes the director and AD happy.

I think it's more the opposite - what's being lost is the experience and knowledge of how to do certain kinds of big budget filmmaking setups because 99% of those shooting now don't have the opportunity to learn or see them firsthand. So, if and when you do get a project with a budget big enough to play with these toys, most won't know how to use them effectively. For example, if you've spent your whole low-budget career never having more than 2x2 G&E crew, then when you do get the budget to light a big night exterior setup with multiple condors and 18Ks, are you really going to know how to place them so that you don't waste the whole night shuffling them around and not making your day? Or if you've never had the budget to do lockdowns that require a lot of timing and coordination, and to dress whole streets and extras for period look, are you just going to fall back into the mentality of stealing shots and running around solo with the camera while the whole art and production departments stand by in confusion? We've had many conversations in the past about why there are so many out-of-focus shots in big studio projects today. Well, this is part of the reason. Sometimes, it's part of the style of the film and it works - I just re-watched 'Lost in Translation' last night, and the occasional soft shot mostly works with the intimate documentary-style feel of the film. But that film isn't all handheld, it isn't all available light, it isn't all stolen location shots - these low budget techniques are used when appropriate, to help tell the story. The rest of the time, it's carefully controlled and executed - the straight-overhead wide shot of a bed is a classic cinematic convention that you would never see in a fly-on-the-wall documentary, yet it works so well here. It doesn't stand out as being artificial, it works for the story. We've gotten quite a few questions on the forum about how to pull off that shot. Similarly, the hostess tray car mount shot that opens the film, reflecting the neon Tokyo cityscape over Bill Murray's close-up isn't a low budget technique - though nowadays with much smaller and lighter cameras it can be done very cheaply with suction cup mounts. To me, that's the best-of-both-worlds, and an example of what we stand to lose if we don't pass our knowledge along - but also if fewer and fewer of us have a chance to use these tools because there isn't ever enough time or money try it.

Sure, self-image has always been a thing. Roger Deakins also similarly claims to ‘not be a technical person.’ Christopher Nolan apparently still doesn’t have a cell phone. I suspect that they would rather be thought of as artists and craftspeople rather than as technicians. Rather ironic that for Mr. Deakins especially, he keeps making films that require the most cutting edge gear and technical wizardry, but I’m sure he’d say that it was all in service of the story. Back in the Golden Age of Hollywood, most directors abhorred the ‘artist’ label and fought against it vehemently, often adopting a tough, working class macho facade. Funny how things change.

Yes, but that’s including their equipment rental, right? What would their day rate be just for labor?

To be good, yes. To get hired? Not so much.

In the interviews where Mr. Doyle talks about not knowing anything technical, I believe he was referring to his early days (which is why I said ‘when he was starting out’). Obviously, by the time he was shooting ‘Chungking Express,’ he knew what he was doing.

A lot of salty takes here... Unfortunately, this genie is not going back in the bottle. This is where we are now, and for the foreseeable future. The ‘moving picture’ business has expanded exponentially with the advent of web content and streaming services. The audience has simultaneously increased and split into various niches, and as a result overall budgets have fallen dramatically. Anyone can crowd-fund, self-produce, and self-distribute their projects; anyone can start a production company; anyone can be a filmmaker; thus, anyone can be a cinematographer. This is where we are now. There are way more shoots happening now than ever before. The vast majority of them are not traditional studio/union film narrative projects bound for theatrical/broadcast/prestige streaming. But we all knew that already, right? Because most of us here have worked on those sets. Most of us probably make the majority of our income on those sets. When I said that we are all the beneficiaries of the technological shift, I meant that literally. Most of us, including me, would not have careers in the ‘moving picture business’ today without it. Food for thought while we’re casting stones...

If you can’t find a location with blue LED street lamps, I would do it with in-camera white balance and color grading. Here’s a quick and dirty grade on my phone with Lightroom Mobile:

The white balance of the light should match the white balance of the camera to get the intended result from the gel. So if your light is 5600K, set your camera to 5600K. If your light is 3200K, set your camera to 3200K.

If you’re working with a script supervisor, they sit next to the director at the monitors and make notes during the take. If the director wants to keep a particular take, then that take gets circled in the notes. If someone in the camera department is keeping a camera report, they will also circle the take #. In the 35mm film days, sometimes only those circled takes would get printed at the lab for dailies in order to save time and money. With digital camera footage, I don’t know if there is a metadata tag they add, but everything gets sent to post.

The old standard formula for exposure is: 100ISO @ f/2.8 = 100fc (footcandles). 1 footcandle = 1 lumen/sq ft. https://www.standardpro.com/how-to-measure-light/

Well, it’s just one person’s opinion so please take with a grain of salt and get a few more opinions for a well-rounded outlook! I haven’t used the C70 or C300Mk3, but from experience with the C300Mk2, the EF photo lens autofocus with at least the L series 50mm, 85mm, 16-35mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm are decent. If your subject happens to look down, the autofocus can loose the face and default to the background, which is problematic for interviews. Maybe this has been improved with the newer cameras, not sure. Re: RF mount Yes, the timing of releasing EF mount-only cine cameras at the same time as switching focus to RF mount is poor planning. RF lenses are also eye-wateringly expensive and large. Frankly, I think Sony FX6/FX9/A7S3/E-mount ecosystem makes more sense for corporate work with the vast amount of interviews that could use Face/Eye tracking, but I also recognize that many production companies are locked into the Canon ecosystem after all these years with C300s...

My suspicion is that you’ll be fine. 800 ISO @ f/2.8 = 12fc for normal exposure.

What ISO and T-stop will you be shooting at? Usually, I’ve found you don’t need much output from tube lights if you’re placing them so close to the subject. Also, if you want the color to be saturated, then you don’t want them too bright or they’ll look more desaturated. If the bathroom tiles are shiny, that will help amplify the light output as well.

This does seem to be the general trend in our business. In some ways, each successive generation is a bit less knowledgeable than the past one, simply due to improving technology in displays, lenses, film stocks, and digital cameras. You simply had to be more skilled to be successful when imaging technology was less sensitive, less malleable in post, and when you couldn’t see exactly what you were getting on the day. Today, we are all beneficiaries of that technology - I probably wouldn’t have had the same career opportunities if the Red One hadn’t come out right as I was entering the workforce. At the same time, I know I lost out on some more in-depth training and mentoring I could have gotten as a 2nd AC had 35mm and 16mm film production persisted a bit longer in my market. It is what it is. I suppose you could argue that these young DPs are learning how to light on the job from their more experienced gaffers and key grips. It is a bit galling that they are still getting calls for those jobs I suppose, but who knows what their rates are. I doubt they are making $3k/day in labor, without gear rental. On the other hand, simply having the knowledge on how to do something doesn’t automatically make the work better. In the case of the available light doc-style DP who didn’t know ASA or IRE, it’s possible that they are producing beautifully shot work anyway, just judging the image off of a monitor on the fly. Of course, there are pitfalls to that kind of approach, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. That’s probably how Christopher Doyle started out in his career...

As far as I am aware, the Canon 18-80mm and 70-200mm are the only autofocus cine zooms so far in EF mount. Sony also make a few for their E mount cameras. That said, I’m not sure the ‘autofocus cine zoom’ is a lens category that makes much sense, as least given the current available options. ‘Cinema’ to me means several things - an aesthetically pleasing look, parfocal, well-spaced, repeatable witness marks for the 1st AC, well-controlled tracking, low-breathing, constant size/volume for use with matte box/follow focus, serviceability for backfocus and other adjustments, and robust build for constant use. A minimum aperture of around T2.8 would also be a priority for me. None of the currently available options meet that criteria. Of course, if you don’t need all of those things then your calculus may be different. There are some quite affordable options in cinema zooms and primes available these days that did not exist a few years ago. For example, DZO Film is putting out some remarkably high quality lens offerings at crazy prices, and they are not the only ones. Re: autofocus There are quite a few lenses that work well for this, while having an acceptable or even pleasing look. So if autofocus is a priority, then I would consider buying two separate sets of lenses for each use case. Personally, I am looking at a Sony FX6 and G Master primes, specifically for autofocus use. I’m not getting rid of my cinema lenses though! Different tools for different applications.

I think the street lamp practicals also going cool might support that theory.

I also think an individual’s frame of reference for such things often depends on their influences. I grew up in a very foggy part of San Francisco, so I rarely ever saw hard moonlight - ‘moonlight’ to me came to mean a soft overcast ambient glow. The Hollywood-style wet-down/hard backlight ‘moonlight’ never felt realistic to me (although it often worked as beautiful and evocative imagery). Much later, when driving through desolate parts of the Southwest at night, I saw that moonlight could be something else entirely.

Makes sense to use a large tungsten fresnel, since so much of the coverage is overcranked!

Could be just the rain! It’s a beautiful image, regardless.

No sarcasm intended at all, I apologize if it came off that way. I don’t believe there is an objectively ‘perfect’ meter, only one that is perfect for you. Hopefully, you will find the right fit. All the best, -Sats

I think you are missing the forest for the trees, so to speak, but you are certainly entitled to your own opinion. Good luck in your search for the perfect light meter! ?