Satsuki Murashige

I've worked with a few old timers who got their start working in porn in the 70s, including the DP of "Behind the Green Door." Apparently there were a number of pornos shot on 35mm with Panavision cameras. Haven't seen these films but I hear the production values were quite high with sophisticated lighting on the story segments. Then for the dirty scenes they'd close the set except for one electric with a handheld "crotch light" and go to town. These guys lamented that their nice lighting never got seen properly because they were never allowed to supervise creation of the answer print. :blink:

Worked with a 1st AC who referred to the eyepiece chamois as a "teddy bear a**ho**" (TBA). We found using a large round on an old-style Arri eyepiece lead to frequent "prolapses." :lol:

One crazy thought - if you don't have enough wattage to pull this off, how about flashing the negative in camera for a brief second? If you're using a 35mm camera, you could open the door of the camera body at the right time. Combined with some camera shake, plus debris and smoke from art dept, you might be able to pull it off. This technique was used by Slawomir Idziak on "Three Colors: Blue." He wanted a momentary blue wash on a character's close-up so he wrapped the camera body in a blue gel before flashing the film.

Jon, I see what you mean about that underground tunnel sequence. Overall, I agree with Felipe about the "softer toe." I guess it could have been an artifact of the perforated IMAX screen, I really don't know. Didn't look bad though. The IMAX aerial footage was very impressive. Luc, I think you'll find that Pfister uses cool/warm color tones a lot in his work. He won't usually use them for a whole film but only for select scenes to suggest a character's emotional state. Cool (bluish) tones generally represent depression, sadness, bleakness, hopelessness - in "Insomnia", the scene where Al Pacino's character shoots a dead dog in a garbage-strewn alley and uses the bullet to frame a suspect shows the main character at his lowest point. Think also of the scene in "The Dark Knight" where Bruce Wayne sits by the windows of his high-rise apartment after the death of a loved one (hope I'm not giving anything away for those who haven't seen the film yet). It's actually a very common use color (read David Mullen's production diary of "Akeela and the Bee", for example) but I think Pfister's use is effective because he's so restrained. He establishes a neutral color balance for most of the film, so when the "blue" scene comes along, it registers with the audience. Other DPs will use a strong color bias for whole sequences or even the whole film, I'm sure you can think of several examples. One of my favorites is "Narc," shot by Alex Nepomniaschy, ASC. Almost every scene has a cool tone except for the domestic scenes with Jason Patrick's family. The film is about corruption, and how the only way to survive in such a world without going mad is to preserve your own humanity. The brief warm-toned domestic scenes remind us of that.

Looks great, David. What's your approach to the processing of the footage in Redcine or Red Alert? Do you lock in your settings in prep much like setting your printer lights with film, and then just expose with a light meter? Or do you have a computer on set where you can check the occasional .R3D file and tweak your post-processing settings scene to scene as necessary?

If LA is an option, I'd be looking at AFI and Chapman for production. Only go to SFSU if you want to spend a lot of time watching movies and writing about them. On the other hand, they have some truly great professors in this area - Bill Nichols for example teaches a great documentary film class. You won't find those film history and film theory classes at Academy, which is more of a trade school. SFSU does have a real soundstage but most of the production classes are not very helpful for an aspiring professional technician in my opinion. The one exception I can think of is Pat Jackson's post-production sound class - Pat was a sound editor on films like "Apocalypse Now," "K19", and "Jarhead." She's a fountain of knowledge, very energetic, and extremely helpful. SFSU has a club called the "Cinema Collective" which is run by a group of film students. If you go there, I'd recommend joining the Collective as they are very energetic about putting on events, workshops, and getting their members on a lot of productions. Many former members are now working professionally in LA and SF and continue to contribute to the club. For cinematography, I highly recommend John Aliano's classes at City College over the classes at SFSU. John's a working DP who treats all of his students as aspiring DPs and teaches them the basics of AC/grip/electric work as well as exposure and lighting. Also, CCSF is a community college, so you can just take the classes that you want without going thru a program. The students are generally older than at SFSU, 20s-50s, which makes for a more diverse creative environment (not everyone's trying to be the next Tarantino). Anyway, good luck choosing a school. Let us know how it goes. :)

Viviana, What do you want to get out of film school and are you looking for a grad or undergrad program? Every school has its strengths and weaknesses. Some are strong in film theory and criticism, while others are strong in production. Some are better for making industry contacts, and others are better environments for artists and experimental filmmakers. And you also have to take into consideration the cost differences. Just in my area (San Francisco), there are several options: - Academy of Art (expensive, production-based, modern equipment) - San Francisco Art Institute (expensive, artist-oriented, ?? equipment) - San Francisco State University (affordable, theory-oriented with some production, old poorly maintained equipment) - City College of San Francisco (dirt cheap, production-based, old equipment) I went to City College and SFSU and don't regret it. I know folks who went to each of those schools, and they're all working regularly in the industry. Of course, I also know tons of folks who aren't. Most of those who aren't working didn't take advantage of their time in school - they didn't shoot on their own, didn't try to learn on their own, didn't try to get on professional sets on their own, and didn't try to network and make contacts, so it's not surprising that they're now not working in film. If you do all these things, then it probably doesn't matter much where you go - you'll find work anywhere. But if you're trying to get into production, I'd seriously consider going to a school in the LA/Hollywood area and making lots of contacts there, since that's probably where you'll end up working after graduation.

When I went to Pfister's seminar at Cinegear, he mentioned that he is usually very careful to make sure his exposures are consistent, but that on "The Dark Knight" he got a little sloppy on some of the big night exteriors because they had to move very fast. So some of the shots ended up being more underexposed than he wanted, which resulted in a variation in black levels in those scenes. It's possible that the lenses used for the IMAX cameras may have been slower than he would have liked for those scenes - I recall reading in the AC article on "The Prestige" that Pfister had Panavision make some new T1.3 'scope lenses for use on some night scenes. I doubt the IMAX lenses open that wide, which would have been a problem on those big night exteriors. I'm going to see the film in IMAX on Friday, so I guess I'll see what you're describing then. I thought "Batman Begins" had very rich blacks but I saw the IMAX DMR version which may have been different from the print you saw.

Well, how about increasing color saturation through printing or other processing techniques, like the now-defunct Technicolor IB printing, cross-processing, etc.? I'd like to hear more about that...

Are we talking about negative film or reversal film? With negative film, more exposure means more grains of silver halide crystals get exposed on the emulsion. In the development process, the unexposed silver halide grains get washed away, leaving the exposed metallic silver which forms the image. (Color negative is a bit more complicated in that the exposed silver also gets washed away, but not before triggering a release of colored dyes on each color layer of the emulsion which forms the image). But in either case, you are left with a certain amount of image-forming grains on the processed negative. With an underexposed negative, you will literally be left with fewer grains since the greater number of unexposed grains have been washed away. That means there's less information on the film - color, sharpness, and contrast all take a hit. Conversely, more exposure means there's more information on the film - color, sharpness, and contrast increase. That's why an overexposed negative is often referred to as "dense" or "thick" and an underexposed negative is referred to as "thin" - one is packed with information and the other has very little. Reversal film works in the opposite way because it goes through a two-step development process. A negative image is formed on the emulsion and developed. Then a negative of the negative is formed during another processing step, resulting in a positive image. I don't understand the process fully, so that's the best I can explain it. But the end result is that a "dense" positive is achieved by underexposing and a "thin" one is achieved by overexposing. Again, the dense positive has more information in it, and thus more color, sharpness, and contrast. Keep in mind that reversal stocks already have more contrast and color saturation built into them than their negative counterparts because they were originally intended to be projected directly, while negatives were meant to be printed on high contrast print stocks. So you can generally achieve a much more color saturated image with reversal stocks than negative stocks. Another way to get more color saturation is to push, or over-develop the stock at the lab. While pushing can't add any more information to the exposed film (how can it, when the image has already been formed?), it can increase the density of the grains that have already been exposed. So that's why you get more color saturation but also more "visible grain" by pushing, because part of what we perceive as "grain" are really the black gaps left by the unexposed silver, which has been washed away in development. The larger the gaps (i.e. the more underexposed the footage is), the bigger the "visible grain."

I think part of the look he tends to go for is sharp, very fine grain, rich blacks, medium color saturation with naturalistic colors (or occasionally a 1/2 blue color cast on some day exteriors). This is basically what you get when you expose for a dense negative, shoot on a large format like 35mm anamorphic, and make photochemical prints instead of going thru a 2K DI. Basically, I get the sense that he likes to maintain very high technical image quality standards on his films, much like David Mullen. There are other DPs like Chris Doyle and Lance Accord who are more into creating impressionistic moods by distressing the images thru underexposure, pushing, using old lenses, mixing stocks and smaller formats, etc. Another Pfister characteristic is that he counters this rather conservative approach by using bold lighting and camera techniques. His lighting is usually very source-y and contrasty, without much fill. He's not afraid to use "nuclear" hard light for rims and such, but his key is usually soft and always motivated. He also uses a lot of handheld camera and shallow depth of field. At least, that's my impression.

That seems like a lot of work... If you own a slate already, it's probably already got "ROLL" "SCENE" "TAKE", etc. printed or engraved on it. You can just buy a 1" label maker and print labels for the production title, director, dp, date, for each job which looks very neat and professional. Most of the sound guys I've worked with who bring a TC slate use this method. I still use white camera tape and a sharpie on mine, no one from production has complained yet. I do make the handwriting very neat, though.

I haven't read the AC article yet, but it's possible that I misunderstood what Pfister was saying. Daryn Okada and Richard Crudo were there at the same seminar I was, so maybe David M. or someone else who knows them could check the facts with them. Or better yet, ask Pfister directly. I thought he was clearly saying the 35mm scope portions were scanned at 8K. But maybe I was wrong.

Well, are you shooting B&W filmstock? Because if so, it will be more sensitive to daylight balanced lights, meaning you can use less light to get the same exposure. If you're shooting either color filmstock or video, then this is not an issue. But, keep in mind that HMIs are much more efficient light sources than their tungsten counterparts, so while you may save by renting tungsten, you'd need to rent a much bigger fixture to get the same effect (ie. 5K tungsten instead of a 1.2K HMI) with all the associated costs to power and man that light. There's no free lunch.

Will it make me look like you? :lol:

Ah, well that's not so good then. But it's still better than being paid 1/2 rate for doing twice the amount of work (like my last job). Pretty good - I'm co-producing two shorts for the Red Vic PSA contest (details: http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...howtopic=32135). One that I wrote, and another that Charlie Kuttner wrote. We'll be shooting on the Red next Monday so I've got less than a week to pull together a lot of elements. It's going okay so far though. Then another AC job this Friday - continuation of that sleep apnea industrial, no crazy handheld or diopters this time, though.

As long as it pays well, why complain?

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Hey all, Someone sent this to me yesterday. Sounds pretty cool but very short notice, 12 days til the deadline. Apparently they're looking for something that's "not slick." I'm gonna try to whip something together next week if anyone is interested.

Hey Kirk, Don't use the camera's internal NDs. You want to cut down the amount of light that's hitting the ground glass, and the camera NDs are behind the adapter so they won't do you any good. The Mini35 has a built-in ND filter wheel for this purpose. I would also rent glass NDs since you have a matte box, that's the proper way to go. They should be around $8/day a piece, so they won't break the bank. You can use the internal iris down to about f/2.8. If you go much beyond that the pattern of the ground glass will start to come into focus. Ditto with the taking lens, keep it around f/2.8 or wider. That flicker probably was the spinning ground glass coming into focus. You need to open up the internal iris and the aperture on the taking lens, remove the internal NDs, and switch to glass NDs or use the ND filter wheel on the Mini35. The adapter also has a speed control on the side which makes the ground glass spin faster, so you can set it to a higher spin rate if you start to see it. Well, it's all up to individual taste, but most DPs I've worked with shooting HVX/HPX cameras use Black Press gamma because it reduces the amount of visible noise in the image by slightly crushing the blacks. And as I'm sure you know, the HVX is a pretty noisy camera. Beyond that, just make sure you light it well and don't underexpose. One trick that I learned is to set white balance A & B to the same white card and then dial in a bit of warmth into B with the phase. Then you can easily toggle between A & B before you roll and get the color balance just how you want it very quickly without resorting to special filters or white balance cards. Anyway, good luck with your shoot and let us know how it went.

Yeah, who knew they even made these? Seems like you can get any junk food you want "flaming hot" these days...

Just finished a two day Red commercial in Santa Rosa with an HKSC cinematographer (not Chris Doyle, unfortunately!). Alex Worster was the 1st, I was the 2nd/data manager. It was 100% steadicam, so Alex had his work cut out for him. About the camera - let's just say we got very familiar with Red tech support... and I'll never do another Red job again without recommending that production rent at least one backup body. Anyway, now I'm itching to shoot stuff again. What's Pinnacles, Jon?

Indeed. If someone wanted to shoot an all "golden hour" short in the bay area, now would be the time...

My parents have been much more supportive of what I do since I started getting paid work regularly. They still worry when business gets slow, but that's just the way it is as a freelancer! For a while when I was only doing freebies, I would get the lecture about finding "a real job." Ultimately if your parents are anything like mine, they just want you to be able to support yourself and not have to struggle so hard to do so. Once you prove to them that you can make a living working in film, they'll stop nagging you ('course, then they'll start nagging you to get married and have kids, but I can't help you there ;)).

BTW, just came across this article about future plans for IMAX. Not good... http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080620/media_nm/imax_dc