Mate Widamon

Hi everybody, I am prepping for a feature and half of the film is taking place in an apartment. We are building the apt in a studio and I will have two rooms with large windows. The view from the window will be block houses and rooftops. We will use a 65 x 15 feet translight as a background with the view printed on it. In the apt I will have plenty of day, evening, dusk and night scenes and we are planning to go with long takes with lots of dolly moves. I'd like to ask for your opinion on translight techniques as I am quite confused. I have found a demo from Rosco SoftDrop. That is a based on a night time print and it is supposed to be lit from the front in order to achieve day and backlit to get the night look. I heard though that it doesnt work very well. Also we would need to hire a scenic photographer from Rosco to do the picture for the print. Anybody has any experience with that? Our art director suggest that we should have 2 translights. 1 with a daylight photo printed on it and 1 with a night time print of the same view so we can change the backdrops according to our scenes. In that case for the night time scenes I would always have the same windows illuminated in the windows of the blockhouses in our view. However my gaffer suggests that we should only have 1 daylight print on the translight. He says for the daytime scenes we should light it from the front and for the night scenes we just reduce the ambient and the make some warm lights in he windows from behind. In this case we would have the variety for each night scene so we could have different lights to be switched on in the windows of the blockhouse. These are 3 completely different ways, Please share me your experiences. All comments are much appreciated.

Wow, this is absolutely fantastic! Thanks Kyryll for all this! Great to know that those shots were made by running tracks along the two sides of the tunnel. Brilliant art department too hiding the tracks perfectly! The rest of the info with regards camera gear and lenses also very useful. And the photos on that site you posted are truly fascinating. I was shocked to read though that several people who worked on the movie got very ill from the fumes of the chemical plant at the location... :(

Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts on this amazing scene!

Hi everybody, I recently watched again Tarkovsky's masterpiece Stalker. The cinematography is simply amazing and way ahead its time. I was just wondering how the famous tunnel scene was shot... The camera is slowly moving forward in the tunnel with a wide angle lens, but no sign of tracks. Since it was shot in 1978 I doubt the use of steadicam. Anybody knows the story behind that scene? Thanks!

Thank you very much for the replies! David your suggestions and the example photos are highly appreciated! I will do a full (optimo, macro, diopter) test and will let you know how it went. I have used anamorphic lenses only with Alexa before, but now I will test it on a Dragon too. Thanks again.

Hi everybody, I am shooting a project with a set of Cineovision anamorphic lenses. (24-100) I have an ECU of an eyeball to shoot with fire reflecting in it. I was thinking to shoot this only one shot with a spherical macro lens cropped down, because I cannot achieve a close enough shot with my anamorphic set. I will try to project fire onto a screen behind the camera or use an LCD screen with fire on it. I have to work very fast so If it does not work I might have to consider shooting the fire as a plate and then composite it over the eyeball in post. Have you done this on anamorphic? All comments are greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much for your words Adrian!

Hi Everybody, I am wondering if you have any experience of shooting at the Hunza valley in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. I am a European DoP and I would be working over there for a week for a local production house. Your comment/advice on this is highly appreciated.

Thanks for this very appropriate photo, wonderful work David! And thanks for everybody for all useful comments! I am still happy I did the filter test today, I'check the result tomorrrow. We only have one set of Masterprime lenses here in Budapest and I am eager to try it, now this project seems like a good reason to talk to production about it. Anybody has any experiance how Masterprime handles lens flare? I am a great fan of Cooke S4, but when it comes to lens flare S4 can be very funny, especially on longer lenses. A clear glass can be useful though, to avoid those rainbow type of lens flares.

Hello everybody, I have an upcoming beer commercial and in terms of colours my director would be very much after a look Roger Dakins achieved in 'No country for old men'. It is budgeted for 16mm so I am doing a filter test tomorrow with arri 416 + Cooke S4 on 250D, 200T. My aspect ratio is 1:1.78 and it goes for digital intermediate. My intention is to complete a test with Antique Suede, Chocolate, Tobacco, Warm Promist and Gold diffuse filters and then see what can be done on Da Vinci in order to achieve that desaturated look. I have the feeling that Antique Suede will provide me the best result since I should not really soften the image. Also, I believe production design and art direction is crucial here, we have to select the appropriate colours for each frame. I have mainly exterieurs, and a pub interieur with light brownish walls and yellow practical lights. Any other suggestions and advices are greatly appreciated! Mate Toth Widamon, Budapest

Hi, This has been a very informative conversation indeed and also great photos as examples. I have just watched 'The Illusionist' shot by Dick Pope, BSC. Beautiful work, I was wondering weather he used shift and tilt for the closer shots or he perhaps had Master Primes wide-open and defocused some parts of the frames in post. Thank You,

Hi, Thanks again, I have watched the above mentioned films. I found 7285 crossprocessed way too rough and contrasty for my dream sequences I loved the childhood parts in 'Blow", but that is 5285 anamorphic. Despite this is a Daylight stock a found the interieurs stunning beautiful, having that 'original slide photo feeling'. However outside I found less details in the faces and a touch of too much redish magenta. Do you think the interiers were corrected to tungsten and shot under 25asa (perhaps pushed to 50asa) or lit with HMI-s? I would not think that you can get rid off that much yellow in telecine if you shoot under 3200K on 100D Ektachrome, I'll try it on the test. How much of its character do you think 7285 (processed E-6) looses on telecine? Would you advise me to scan it directly or should I get a dup.negative first? (The film ends up 35mm print for screen through DI) Thanks,

Thanks very much, I'll watch these films. Also, seems I can get some Fujichrome 64T in 16mm to test. See how it intercuts with the exterieur shots on 7285. I'll let you know. Rgds,

I meant Ektachrome processed with E-6. I would love to check out any commercial, musc video or feature sequence shot with that. Thanks,

Hello, Could anybody please name any recent spherical feature shot on Ektachrome 72/5285? Many Thanks