Satsuki Murashige

Nope, I'm a heathen. There's my problem, I guess... I actually went to the theater with a friend who went to Catholic school so he could tell me what was embellished, but all we could talk about afterward was how awful and depressing the experience was. He was so offended that he almost walked out at one point, while I just found it boring and gruesome. But again, I've only seen the film once years ago so compared to someone who's seen it many times, I'm sure I've missed a lot of details.

It mostly looks great, nice work! Great composition, shot selection, movement, art direction, grading. I agree the campfire scene is underlit - it would have worked better if you were able to backlight or cross light the trees in the background for more depth instead of the white snow in the midground, which already being white doesn't need that much light. Also, it would have been nice to augment the fire from underneath with some small tungsten units. Or just move the actors closer to the fire. But basically, the background needs to be brought up first, then the foreground to match. I guess you really needed Superspeeds on this one. :) Maybe the best thing would have been to use the HMI for a low hard backlight directly toward camera thru the trees and use a large bounce source high and as close as possible to key the singer in the foreground, with the warm firelit folks in the midground. It wouldn't necessarily be realistic but it might look nice.

Depends on whether you're doing a lot of handheld/steadicam or not. If you're mainly on dolly or sticks, then swing away will make your life easier. The lightweight mattebox is better for balance though. If you're doing handheld, Element Technica has a nice 15mm lightweight rod setup and handheld bracket so you can ditch the whole Red 19mm/baseplate system. It screws into the bottom four hex screws on the front of the body, leaving the base of the camera totally clean. Look into dual battery rigs. Test your workflow - find out how they plan on finishing the film, and at what resolution/format and prepare accordingly. Find out how they plan on recording sound and getting timecode into the camera, since they may not know that the camera doesn't have a standard timecode generator. Help the DP shoot tests and create a look for dailies. Hire a good 2nd AC. Hire a good data manager. Don't let them be the same person. Get a decent heavy duty tripod head. An O'Connor 1030 won't really cut it for anything more than a totally stripped down package. A 2060 or Sachtler Video 30 is good for a studio sized package. Make sure you get those lenses collimated by the rental house. If you have time, ask to see them projected so you can spot any problems they might have. And see if they can get you a Red Null, possibly mated to a Zeiss Sharpmax: http://blog.abelcine.com/2009/05/12/red-null/. You really don't want to be futzing with back focus in the field.

Pick a viewing LUT (color space/gamma/RSX) in prep and monitor on set with it. Additionally, use the spot meter tool in Raw View to check your exposures. It lets you quickly see what IRE values the various parts of your frame are hitting. It helps to map one of the User Keys to "View in Raw" so you can quickly switch between Raw View and your chosen LUT for this purpose. Waveforms are not that helpful with the Red because the HD-SDI out is basically a 720P proxy of the recorded raw image. Also, don't assume just because the camera has a "Log space" setting in post processing that you have overexposure latitude like color negative film. There isn't much headroom there at all. Better to think of it like any other HD camera. *Question for Stephen: What ASA do you set your meters to? And how do you make sure the camera/sensor is actually working at the same ASA? Curious... thanks!

This kinda reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Jerry points out to Newman that his planned millenium bash is actually a year early... "thus making it quite lame." :) I didn't think the cinematography in "Passion" was that amazing either (and I'm a big Caleb Deschanel fan). I only saw the film once when it came out though. The color scheme of contrasting blue moonlight/warm fire light felt a bit one dimensional and schematic to me. I felt it was logically motivated, but not emotionally motivated - at least, I didn't get any emotion from it and so to me it was very noticeable in a distracting "oh wow, it's very blue now because it must be moonlight" kind of way. I think this was the case with the whole film in general. It all somehow felt lacking in depth to me - characterization, story structure, shot selection, framing and lens choice, use of color and contrast. I understand that there are many fundamentalist audience members who believe that this is exactly how it should be, that Jesus Christ's story should not be open to interpretation but instead should follow the Bible story in exact detail without embellishment. But I think this idea is contrary to the nature of good cinema, which at its best unconsciously reflects the various filmmakers' view of life through their choices. Thus, such a film has contained within it the sum of the life experiences of many different people which gives the film balance, ambiguity, and complexity. I felt that in this film, many key artistic contributors rigorously avoided making choices that would reflect their own points of view, and the film was poorer for it. I didn't feel surprised by any of the cinematographic choices made - like Chris, the images were exactly what I would have expected to see, knowing that Gibson and Deschanel were trying for a "historically correct" period feeling. I think they just went too far in the direction of photographic naturalism, and that there was a lack of interpretation in lens selection/framing/contrast/color/movement/etc. that made the cinematography skillful but boring to me.

Yes, learn it as fast as possible. You can't get away with not knowing film if you plan to be an AC. If you're jumping straight into shooting, then you can hire ACs to load and thread the camera for you. You should still know film workflow and how to expose but you can probably get away with not knowing how to remove a ground glass or oil the movement, etc. Your profile says you're a student. Are you attending a film school right now? Or if not, do you know anybody attending film school? Try to get on a student production, let them know you've never loaded before but are very interested and willing to learn. You'll have to do if for free for a while until you feel confident that you know what you're doing. Then start looking for paid gigs as a loader. Also, once you've got the hang of things, start going to your local rental houses, introduce yourself as a loader and ask them to show you how to load their various magazines. They may recommend you for jobs coming thru if they like you.

Hi Tim, Looks like a great package at a bargain rate. What frame rates is the camera capable of with the hi-speed gate and CE motor? Also, how much power is required for hi-speed vs. 24fps? I notice the CE motor has two 4 pin XLR inputs - do you need two 12v belt/block batteries for hi-speed? Thanks!

Happy Birthday!

Check out Roman Copolla's "CQ." That had a very naturalistic, slightly desaturated 60s look that I think you're describing. As far as softening, perhaps look into using some older period lenses like Cooke S2/3s or test some net diffusion. Black nets look great on 35mm and Red, but it might be too much for Super16.

Sure. Of course, I also recommend that you shoot a test with the glow stars, or at least spot meter them to make sure you're getting the output you need with your selected gamma/iso/color space camera settings...

Mr. Morten, if you would please go to "My Controls" and change your user name to your first and last name as per forum rules, we'd appreciate it. This topic has been discussed many, many times already so please do a search first before posting, and I guarantee you'll find a wealth of great info already available. Also, if you'd be more specific about the look you're trying to achieve, you're more likely to get helpful replies.

Yes, I 1st'd a short film about a year ago where we did this. We shot 16mm, I believe the stock was Fuji 400T low-con. Shot on wide open Super Speeds. I haven't seen the footage, but the DP has told me the glow stars gave more than enough exposure to read on film without the black light, so if you just want the stars to read then I think you'll be fine. As I recall, the black light had to be very close to actually brighten the glow stars, so we ended up not using it. If you actually want the stars to light the space, then you won't have enough exposure for that. We ended up augmenting with Rosco light pads.

Hey guys, I just found this new site and signed up: http://www.theauteurs.com/. It looks like a great place to watch and discuss hard-to-find films and to find out about upcoming screenings. Sounds like they're interested in cinematographers' perspectives too. And it's a "real name" policy site, which is great. Come check it out!

This may be a totally crazy idea, but what if you shot locked off plates of the location from your various angles and shot the actors on a greenscreen stage?

Here ya go: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?sh...=22577&st=0.

See, that's what I was thinking! Having that thing collapse on the head of a superstar actor making $20 mil/film is one thing. But having it fall on the president's head? They might just reopen Guantanamo for you...

Great posts, guys! David, it's funny that you mention Roizman and "Wyatt Earp" - I asked him about this at last year's Cinegear and he said that he had looked at "My Darling Clementine" while prepping "Wyatt Earp" and had hated it! I think his exact words were, "it's so old fashioned, I didn't see anything in it that was relevant to what I was doing." I thought that was very strange... About Ridley Scott: I was watching the behind the scenes of "American Gangster" where he was talking about the extremely short shooting schedule and that he needed to get something like 50 setups a day, which was a major reason for using multiple cameras and zoom lenses. So in that sense, his choice of spherical over anamorphic is not surprising at all. "Matchstick Men" was a much smaller film and felt like a single camera show, and I suspect the two factors are related. You would think though that if any director in Hollywood could argue for a longer shooting schedule, it would be Ridley freakin' Scott! About "The Dark Knight": I don't agree with Tim that it was full of television-style coverage at all. There are plenty of wide composed shots and long takes, especially for the stunt work. But I do think it was cut too quickly, which meant the wide shots didn't stay on screen for very long. But that's a criticism that could be leveled at pretty much every Hollywood film these days. (Oddly, I saw "UP" recently in 3D, and that film felt "properly photographed" and edited with more thoughtful focal length selection and framing than most other films I've seen recently). About "Crimson Tide": I think the choice to use long lenses was by design, and I think it works for the film. It's not supposed to feel like a gritty documentary and I doubt the sets were designed for that anyway. There's not a lot of z-axis camera movement, but more x and y-axis dolly and jib moves. The use of colored lighting is also a heavily stylized choice. Somehow, the design kinda felt like a German Expressionist film, very Murnau-esque. Love the dutch shots too. About wide angle vs. telephoto photography generally, and which is "easier" compositionally: I'm of mixed attitudes about this. I started shooting 35mm stills early in my cinematography education and only had a 50mm lens to begin with, so I learned to compose everything with it. Then I got an 18mm super-wide lens, and at first it seemed like I could pretty much point it anywhere and get a good composition. Looking at my prints later though, I found I had a much better ratio of good to mediocre/bad photos with the 50mm than the 18mm. The 18mm wasn't good for everything after all, and care had to be taken whether or not to include foreground elements, depending on whether I wanted an obvious wide-angle look or not. Instead, I found that the 50mm could be made to look wide or telephoto depending on the compositional elements, the camera position, and the focal distance. Later, when I got a 75-205mm telephoto macro zoom (which I rarely used because it was big, heavy, slow, and full of fungus), I found that I got a much higher number of mediocre photos and fewer bad ones, but less good ones as well. The fungus acted like a built in diffusion filter, which created some interesting artifacts. Now, with a much wider array of lenses at my disposal when shooting a film, it's ironically often harder to find an artistic criteria for focal length selection. The more mundane criteria of getting a particular shot size in a given space, while framing out undesirable elements that can't be art directed for want of time or money is more often the reason I choose a particular lens over another. I suspect this is also the case on big budget films to some extent, the basic problems of filmmaking never really go away. I think the wide lens by its nature usually necessitates more "design" on the part of the filmmakers of art and space, composition, camera movement, blocking, hitting of marks, focus selection, previsualization of editing and transitions, etc. So it's just easier to avoid all that, blur out the background, and simplify compositions to a single element or subject. Now, you could just as easily design a film with long lenses in mind and make it work well, but it's really a matter of the previsualization and design that goes into the film in the first place that will make it seem non-arbitrary. The quality of the story content is whole other matter...

Good to know. What kind of stand and clamp do you use to hold the c-stand? Also, it looks like there are two c-stands flying in the Obama video - what's the purpose of the second stand? Is it holding up a second light or is it just for added support? Thanks David! *Just wanted to add - it's also a good idea to run power to the backlight back toward the camera and put it on a dimmer where you can reach it. Then you can make quick tweaks to the backlight's intensity without moving from behind the camera.

Yos, please go to "My Controls" and change your profile to your real name, as per forum rules.

It's common practice to use a c-stand instead of a light stand for this type of thing and arm the light out from the side. For heavier lights, try something like this: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4432...i_Max_Boom.html. BTW, check out the crazy boom rig the grips rigged up for the infamous Obama "fly swat" interview @ 0:50 -- . Never seen someone do that with a c-stand, let alone with two of them. I guess the c-stand legs are acting as counterweight?

Looks beautiful, nice work! Love the anamorphic lens work. What film is the music from? It sounds very familiar - I want to say "A History of Violence" but I'm not sure.

Just to add to Jaime's post, that was shot on an older zoom lens (Fuji? I forget). The Optar primes we used seemed sharper. Jaime can you post some stills from the Optars? To the OP, the Optars will all cover 2K. The wider lenses will not cover 3K, but the 50mm will cover 4K 16:9.

I guess losers can't be choosers!

If I never work again on a film where an actor is required to vomit on camera (real or fake), I will only be too happy...

Gahh! Upper body workout indeed. Bet you're pretty ripped by now though... :) Which lenses are you using? Lomos? If so, are they still marked in meters and how is it pulling in metric? Sounds like an adventure all right! Keep the AC diaries coming Annie, they're a great addition to the forum.